Tag Archives: Bruce Arians

03.19.23
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A long strange trip it was

Hooter is one of the few Owls to get better looking with age.

Sitting at my desk at the Doylestown Intelligencer three days before this game at BYU in 1986, the phone rings and I get a call from the great Al Shrier: “Mike, we have a seat on the team plane. We’d love you to join us.”

I walk into Editor-in-Chief Jim McFadden’s office and ask if I can go, he said, “Only if you tell Al the paper will reimburse all expenses.” Both Al and Jim kept their word.

Great game and I was reminded of this when Joe Tolstoy finally posted a film of the game last week. I haven’t seen this film in 37 years.

Current Owls working on future memories at 10th and Diamond.

Two things I remember about this trip. Meeting the great Neil Diamond on the street in Provo and not being able to drink a brewski due to the draconian local laws. Diamond couldn’t have been more gracious and down to earth meeting this stranger from Philadelphia by pure chance. He and I talked about Philadelphia, the Spectrum and our other musical tastes.

🙂

The game itself? Still convinced to this day Temple stopped BYU at the goal on a 4th and 1. Mike Palys (the only player with a Penn State offer who turned down the Nittany Lions for Temple) with two great punt returns. Palys picked Temple because Paterno would not allow him to play baseball at PSU. He was an All-American baseball player at Temple. (Ironically, Al didn’t make the trip because he hated flying.)

That wasn’t the only strange thing about the trip.

While in Philadelphia, we waited on the tarmac for the plane sweating in 86-degree weather for a couple of hours to board.

Landing in Utah, we waited for our luggage outside in 32-degree weather.

Not surprisingly, a week or so later I ended up in the hospital with a bad case of pneumonia and the virus that accompanied it attacked my heart. I had to have heart surgery to remove the pericardium.

The first call I received in the hospital was from Shrier, followed closely by other calls from Wayne Hardin and Bruce Arians wishing me luck. (No doubt the first guy had plenty to do with the next two guys placing the calls.)

It worked.

I was in my early 30s at the time so everything else since then has been a bonus.

Even the down times because they led to better ones.

After 19 straight losing seasons, I got to see Temple return to a bowl for the first time in 30 years and finally beat Penn State.

With the advent of the NLI and the transfer portal, you’ve got to wonder if the future is going to get better than the recent past. I have my doubts but I also have my hopes.

Whatever happens, seeing it unfold in the flesh sure beats the alternative.

Friday: Too Close for Comfort

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12.02.22
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Temple football: New Beginning, Part II

Watching Temple coach Stan Drayton interact with former Owls has been an educational experience and the best lessons have been off the field.

Go to events like Cherry and White Day, some road trips, and season-ticket holder day and it’s evident that Drayton has an appreciation for past Temple players that many of the recent Temple coaches haven’t had.

“I went to a practice and he just came up to me and introduced himself and said how you doing,” said Matt McArdle, a starting safety for the 1978 team. “He asked me who I was. I’m a nobody and he makes you feel like the most important guy there. It really makes you feel good.”

If he makes those players feel good, you can imagine how he interacts with his current players. It seems to be working because Drayton has stopped the transfer portal bleeding. Under the past guy, the portal players leaving were starters. So far, only backups have left under Drayton and we’re crossing our fingers and toes and hoping that pattern continues.

Watch this video. What a terrific job narrated by the one and only John Facenda. Great comments from Arians and former Temple President and Chancellor Pete Liacouras (RIP). Also a good look at the greatest uniforms any college team ever wore.

Drayton has a special connection to the Bruce Arians’ players, who came a little after McArdle. At the Cherry and White tailgate, Drayton took the microphone from disc jockey Kevin Jones (a great offensive tackle for Arians) and said, “We’re going to get this thing back to the way you guys are used to seeing it.”

You could tell Drayton meant it.

Then he gave the mic back to Jones and Drayton watched his wife line-dancing to the tunes and had a big smile.

As one of the three white guys in that spot on that day, I stood back and watched in awe and took in the general positive vibe with my friends from many years.

He made a commitment to them and he intends to keep it. He made a commitment to all of Temple.

If it sounded familiar to those guys–in their 50s now–it should. At one time, a charismatic new Temple coach named Bruce Arians made the same kind of commitment to those guys when they were teens and a lot of folks think that Arians worked miracles here.

Although he had “only” two winning seasons, both were against top-10 schedules and, given that background, an argument can be made that Arians did just as good a job as Wayne Hardin. Neither coach has the facilities Drayton does now. In all fairness, Temple doesn’t have to play that murderous schedule now that it did then. In the last five years, the Temple schedules were ranked 97th, 73d, 86th, 91st and 99th in that order.

With Temple’s recruiting base–46 percent of the nation’s population within a six-hour drive of the stadium–it’s reasonable to set occasional G5 league championships and bowl games every season as a baseline goal.

It’s still a tough job but the expectations aren’t out of whack. Nobody is asking to get Temple back into the Sugar Bowl, which is what Pete Liacouras asked of Arians. Winning the new AAC is a much more reasonable goal to achieve than consistently winning seasons against top-10 schedules.

They always say you show the most improvement every year from Game One to Game Two. That goes for seasons as well. This past season was about changing the culture.

Mission Accomplished.

It’s all about the wins from now on and the number on the left has to be higher than the number on the right.

Monday: Greener and Bluer

08.01.22
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Something no one has seen in 38 years

Everybody’s always asked this question at one point in their lives:

“If there’s anything you would do over, what would it be?”

Tough question from a macro level but, in my mind, easy from a Temple football fan micro perspective.

I would not have been so shortsighted taping Temple football games in the 1980s. I taped every single one on old VHS and Beta formats with one caveat: I would tape over the older game for the newer one. My goal then was just to come home and review what I’ve seen live and move on to the next game.

I didn’t think about posterity. I should have.

All but for the 1979 Garden State Bowl game, which I lost moving from one Doylestown apartment to another. It’s probably in a dumpster somewhere. Damn because I’ve never met anyone with a full tape of that game.

West Virginia fans celebrated this win over Penn State a few weeks before Temple fans celebrated a win over this same West Virginia team.

What I should have done is make a VHS library of old Temple games because there’s not enough visual Temple football history out there.

That’s why something Sam Nover said in the final minute of the above taped game struck me as true on a couple of levels:

“I could be doing football games for the next 30 years and never see anything like this.”

Looking back, he was right both coming and going.

At least from the Temple football perspective, no one since this 1984 win over West Virginia has ever seen the Owls make a field goal to win a game off a penalty on the bad guys.

That’s the coming part.

The going part is that, thanks to a guy named Joe Tolstoy (who I may have met but don’t know), current Temple fans haven’t seen this game–at least on the internet–not only in 30 years but tack on another eight years for a grand total of 38. Note the Youtube date on the video (July, 2022) so this is relatively new.

I’ve been looking for film from this game for 38 years and, thanks to official Temple football photographer Zamani Feelings (who sent it to me), I found it. Or more accurately he found it. It was like seeing an old friend you haven’t seen in 38 years.

There is a nice interception from Temple All-American free safety Anthony Young in the pre-game show but what stood out was the two color guys assigned to the game.

First, they no longer do that except for prime-time network games.

Second, they never have one graduate from one university and another representing the other team in the game.

This one did as the late great NFL Hall of Famer Sam Huff represented the West Virginia side and Randy Grossman, who had has four Super Bowl rings, represented Temple.

I don’t think that’s ever happened in an NCAA regional broadcast.

This game only existed in my memory for the last 38 years until just the other day. It was a good win for head coach Bruce Arians because that West Virginia team (coached by Don Nehlen) started out the season 7-1. It beat No. 4 Boston College and No. 19 Penn State a few weeks before losing to Temple.

Now it’s on Memorex and available to a whole other generation of Temple fans. I wish there were more.

Friday: First Day of Practice

Monday: The Day Temple Almost Beat a National Champion

Friday 9/12: Best of TFF (three-day vacation)

Monday 9/15: Back from Vacation

06.14.21
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Underrated win: Temple 29, Virginia Tech 13

The complete Oyster Bowl game, which was only uploaded to Youtube four days ago by Zamani Feelings.

Of all the football wins in Temple history, one of the under-the-radar ones came in 1986 when the Owls beat Virginia Tech, 29-13, in what was then known as The Oyster Bowl.

Paul Palmer and Matty Baker get together 35 years after the Oyster Bowl.

The Oyster Bowl–like the Mirage Bowl in Japan–was one of two “bowl games” the Owls participated in during the regular season and the win was impressive both in Temple’s dominance of the “home” team and how good Virginia Tech was that season.

We were reminded of that win after seeing a photo yesterday of Matty Baker, the quarterback from that era, and Paul Palmer, the star of the game. The two reunited at Temple on Sunday. Baker was a redshirt freshman that year who made the trip but did not play. Baker did play 11 games as a backup the next season and became the Temple starter in 1988. (Lee Saltz was the Temple quarterback in the Oyster Bowl and was credited for a touchdown toss on a shovel pass that gave the Owls a 7-0 lead. Great call by Arians. Saltz also connected with 4.3 sprinter Keith Gloster on a perfectly thrown 52-yard touchdown bomb.)

Palmer ran for 239 yards, the most Virginia Tech allowed to a single player in its history until that point.

Temple finished that 1986 season 6-5 and that day handed Virginia Tech one of its only two losses of the season. That season the Hokies finished their season by beating North Carolina State (8-3-1), 25-24, in the Peach Bowl–which was one of the top bowl games in 1986.

The only other loss Virginia Tech had that season was to Cincinnati in its opener. Virginia Tech beat an 8-2-2 Clemson team, in addition to Virginia, West Virginia, Syracuse, Kentucky and Vanderbilt, among others. They also tied South Carolina.

They could not beat Temple because of the brilliant coaching of Bruce Arians and the elusiveness of Palmer.

As far as under-the-radar wins by winning Temple teams, it has to be near the top of the list.

Friday: A Letter

02.01.21
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Arians will roll the dice in Super Bowl

Bruce with strength coach Link Gotshalk and John Chaney (Photo courtesy of Willard Cooper)

When he was the head coach at Temple, Bruce Arians had a saying:

“No risky, no bisky.”

That was shorthand for “No risk it, no biscuit” and, if there’s one thing consistent about his time at Temple was that Arians practiced what he preached on both sides of the ball.

Arians’ accomplishments at Temple were, in my view, extremely underrated. He was a terrific recruiter and a good enough head coach to post two winning seasons against what in both seasons was rated the No. 10 -toughest schedule in the country.

He produced a Heisman Trophy finalist in Paul Palmer and the “quarterback whisperer” had a trio of fine quarterbacks in Tim Riordan, Lee Saltz and Matty Baker in five years.

In a 35-30 win at Rutgers in 1988, defensive coordinator Nick Rapone followed the playbook of most DCs at that time and went to a prevent defense with 1 minute, 52 seconds left in the game and RU having no timeouts. A quarterback named Scott Erney carved up that prevent and the Scarlet Knights had the ball on the Temple 30.

This time, Arians used the timeout and got in the ear of Rapone and told him to rush eight and drop back three. Temple sacked Erney three times and the game ended with a defensive tackle named Swift Burch sitting on top of him. (That same Rutgers team won at Penn State, 21-16.)

“If I was going to lose, I was going down with my guns blazing,” Arians said afterward, holding the game ball. “We called jailbreak–which is an all-out blitz–on the final three plays and, fortunately, it worked. I’m a former quarterback. I know the best pass defense is putting the quarterback on his back side.”

No risky, no bisky.

In his final game, a 45-28 win over Boston College at the Vet, Arians called two flea-flickers that resulted in touchdown passes to Mike Palys that basically won that game. There seems to be an unwritten rule in college football that if you try one trick play in a game and it works you don’t try the same play in the same game again. Arians never believed in unwritten rules. He made defenses make quick decisions with lot of motion like on this play:

Meanwhile, we don’t see flea-flickers at Temple anymore even once in any game.

No risky, no bisky.

It is a philosophy Arians had at Temple and took with him throughout his NFL career.

Nobody really knows what will happen on Sunday night, but if it involves a risky decision, Arians knows what the call will be.

Here’s hoping when he gets home that biscuit will be the best tasting one of his life.

09.14.20
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CFB: More Chess than Checkers

The beauty of college football is that often a less talented team can beat a more talented team due to brains over brawn.

Take Louisiana’s Group of Five win on Saturday against Power 5 and No. 23-ranked host Iowa State.

The Rajun Cajuns won because of several well-designed plays. Iowa State relied too much on Brock Purdy’s arm and trying to run over the G5 team.

This P.J. Walker throwback pass across the field against USF (where he rolled right and threw across his body) worked for an easy six to Colin Thompson.

A few well-designed plays can be the difference between evenly matched teams and many more can be the difference in an upset. That was evident not only in Louisiana’s win, but Coastal Carolina’s 35-17 win at Kansas and Arkansas State’s 35-31 win at Kansas State.

There’s no way to convince me that the three winning teams had more talent than the three losing ones so it had to be coaching.

Such was the case on Saturday and such should and could be the case for Temple going forward this season. Under Wayne Hardin–and, to a lesser extent, Bruce Arians–Temple was able to win a lot of games by outsmarting teams.

Hardin used things like the wraparound draw, the halfback pass, the shovel pass (which worked for a touchdown for Coastal Carolina on Saturday) and the tight end to completely fool the opposition.

The times it didn’t work usually came against teams with overwhelming talent but most times it did because the Owls were 80-52-3 under Hardin.

Arians brought his own style of innovation to Temple and the play above where he completely fools Rutgers in 1988 was a perfect example. Arians had the tailback block down, leaving the fullback completely open in the flat for a touchdown. Because fullbacks usually block for tailbacks, and not the opposite way around, Nelson Herrera was left unaccounted for in the flat.

That brings me to Temple football recently which has been more like checkers than chess, a lot more brawn involved than brain. With only slight exceptions, I don’t remember Temple outsmarting many people in recent years. The First Philly Special–a throwback from wide receiver John Christopher to P.J. Walker–worked for a crucial first down in the 2015 Penn State game. The throwback pass to Kenny Yeboah in last year’s game was another and the fake out to Ventell Byrant (that resulted in Yeboah being wide open for six) in the 2018 Maryland game was a third.

That’s it.

Hopefully, the current Temple staff is using this extra time to go over some old innovative plays in the Edberg-Olson archives.

Putting them to work this season could not hurt and probably could help checkmate a few foes.

Of the things we want to see improvement on this year, innovation in the play-calling is near the top of the list.

Friday: 5 Ways This Season Will Be Different

12.10.18
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Fizzy’s Corner: Why Not Bruce Arians?

baandpaul

Bruce rode his players hard and 30 years later they still love him for it and he loves them and TU

Editor’s Note: North Carolina recently hired former coach Mack Brown to take it to the next level. Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub, a former Temple player, suggests that Temple do the same with its former coach, Bruce Arians, a younger, more vital, version of Brown and certainly someone who still has a lot of love for Temple as proven by the above photo. Arians has promised to be at next year’s Cherry and White game. Why not as a head coach? Who better to develop Anthony Russo than the original quarterback whisperer?

By Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub

Okay gang, let’s review. Used to be we held on to coaches for five years, but now its dwindled down to two.

Evaluating Collins

Good: Esprit de Corp with the players which helped recover from two disastrous losses at the start of the season – Recruiting seemed to be a plus – Defense continually got better

Bad: Patenaude’s “Broad Street Offense” – Poor recognition of who the QB should be (got it right on the third try, though) – Refused to acknowledge mistakes, including letting Armstead play injured

Overall Grade: 80 – 82 (B-) – Basically, he learned to be a head coach on our time. For more on this subject please go to @fizzwein on Twitter. An infamous Inquirer sports writer suggested I do this. You have the chance to be my first follower.

Where Do We Go From Here?

tapes

Well, Jensen had an interesting take in the Inky today and mentioned Francis Brown, our former defensive backs coach with Rhule, and who’s down at Baylor with him now. His main measurable strength is recruiting and has not been a coordinator. He’s from Camden. I think it’s a real stretch to jump to head coach.

Jensen also says he’d be happy with our Assistant Head Coach Foley. That’s hard to argue. Ed Foley is a great guy and seems to be a solid administrator. As Jensen mentions, if he’d bring in outstanding coordinators it might be the perfect fit. But how do we get truly outstanding coordinators at our pay level?

whisperer

There’s no easy answer here but one thing’s for sure, we have to avoid taking the safe route just because we’re tired of always looking for a new coach. I’ll bet Pat Kraft already has about fifty applications on his computer, and I’m sure he’s been quietly been exploring for some time. Anyway, I’d like a coach who adapts his schemes to the ability of his players and not the other way around. Perhaps then, we’d have the Ridge Avenue Offense. (For you who don’t know the city, Ridge Avenue makes lots of twists and turns, and even reverses itself on occasion.)

I’d like to suggest my perfect coach, who just happens to be available. We know him well, and his name is Bruce Arians. I know he said he’d only coach the Cleveland Browns, but that was before Collins left. He was with us at last spring’s football alumni day, and marveled at all our new facilities; the facilities we never provided him when he was the coach. Further, I don’t care if he has a comfortable gig on TV, as all of us who coached know, it can’t replace being with your guys on the field. Pat, please check in with Arians. It only costs a dime.

Tuesday: Moving Parts And The Search

Friday: That Puff of Smoke

 

12.05.18
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Palmer’s Induction Special Night for Temple

baandpaul

Bruce Arians, Paul Palmer, and the guys were “tight as a fist” last night.

The guys who played with Paul Palmer have tailgated near the entrance to Lot K every home Saturday for too many years to count.

You can tell them apart from the rest of us by the familiar cherry “Tight As A Fist” T-Shirts they wear.

The slogan represents what they have been as people since they first met either on recruiting trips or checking in at Peabody Hall.

hallfame

On Monday, as many as could fit into a car traveled to New York’s Hilton Hotel for the National College Football Foundation Hall of Fame festivities that were broadcast live last night (ESPN3).

Many more watched from home.

As a young reporter in my late 20s, I covered all of Paul Palmer’s games for the Calkins Newspaper group. In those days, newspaper budgets were large enough they send you on trips with the team on the team charter and then reimburse the school.

I flew on the team charter to Provo, Utah with Paul and his teammates and head coach Bruce Arians in 1986. When we left Philly, the air conditioning on the plane wasn’t working on a hot day and we sweated it out waiting an hour in a holding pattern before takeoff. When we landed in Provo, we had to wait outside for just as long wearing nothing more than blazers in 31-degree weather.

Temple lost the game, 17-10.

I interviewed all of them as a youngster but never got to really KNOW them until the last decade or so.

They turned out to be better men than players and they were terrific players.

In two of Palmer’s years, the Owls played the 10th-toughest schedule in the country and finished with winning seasons. With paltry facilities, they beat teams like Peach Bowl-bound Virginia Tech (29-13) and California-bowl bound Toledo (35-6).

The Owls have not played anywhere near the kind of brutal schedule since and, despite that backdrop, Palmer is still the school’s all-time leading rusher.

Palmer’s induction last night represents closure of sorts for the Temple program because he becomes the first Owl player to make it, hopefully of many. The Owls have a pair of coaches (Pop Warner and Wayne Hardin) in the Hall of Fame.

Now they have a player who without a doubt is their greatest ever. Long after we are all gone, because he is there, Temple will be, too.

Friday: Elephant In The Room

 

07.18.18
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Best of TFF: Arians’ Reaction to win over PSU

For our vacation week, we are running a three-part series on the most-read stories in Temple Football Forever history. Here is one on Bruce Arians’ reaction to the win over Penn State published in 2015:
bruceandanthony1

When Bruce Arians led the Arizona Cardinals to a late-season upset of the Seattle Seahawks two years ago, it was the final loss of the season for the Seahawks on the way to winning the Super Bowl. The question for Arians then was a natural one as someone in the press room asked him if that was his biggest win as a head coach. Arians paused for a second and said, no, his biggest win as a head coach came at Temple when the Owls broke a 39-year losing streak to Pittsburgh in the 1984 season.

So, of all the congratulatory messages pouring into third-year Temple head coach Matt Rhule after a 27-10 upset of Penn State on Saturday, the one posted by Arians on his twitter page was priceless:

Rhule had one-upped Arians in the sense that he broke a longer streak over another in-state rival in Penn State (after a 74-year drought), so the two men have been in the same shoes at the same place. No one knew more what a win over Penn State could do for the Temple program than Arians, who said the first question asked of him at his first Temple press conference was, “Why does Temple even play football?” Like the presser after the Seattle game two years ago, Arians paused before a thoughtful response: “To beat Penn State.” Arians came close twice, losing to nationally-ranked Nittany Lions’ teams, 23-18, in 1983 and 27-25 to what would become an 11-1 PSU team in 1984, but never quite got over the hump.

Now that Rhule did, Arians used both twitter and the phone to express his satisfaction with the result. Rhule took the call and said, “Yes sir, thank you sir.” to a guy who was a young coach at Temple once, too. Rhule said he did not know what else to say to the NFL coach of the year. Then Rhule went out to the parking lot at Lincoln Financial Field and presented the game ball to another former Temple coach, College Football Hall of Fame member Wayne Hardin, who came close a few times against Penn State but, like Arians, could not get over the hump.

In the fraternity of college coaches, and the circle of life, all three coaches will now share a pretty neat memory forever because only those three fully understand the magnitude of the moment.

Friday: That Championship Season

04.09.18
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Spring Phenoms Old and New

zamani

Great Zamani Feelings shot of Bruce Arians, Geoff Collins and Todd Bowles on Saturday.

Having seen names like Myron Myles and Lou Angelo light it up on Cherry and White Day and disappear a few months later, I’ve come to take a skeptical view of one-day spring wonders.

That said, spring practice is more than a month of hard-hitting and difficult throws and catches so the cream seems to rise to the top over 30 days and this year offers several intriguing candidates. Forget some of what you will see on Saturday in the spring game and remember a lot of what you see below.

From what I’ve been told from people who have been able to see at least one practice every week, these are the guys who are getting the reps that might surprise you (hometowns in parathesis):

Sean Ryan, WR, New York City

After Ventell Bryant and Isaiah Wright—probably one of the best receiving tandems in the nation—there was a huge dropoff in talent from the first to second unit. Ryan, one of NYC’s top receivers a year ago, seems to be filling the talent void and has made a number of difficult catches with the kind of deep speed that Wright seems to have. Offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude likes to use three-receiver packages and do not be surprised if Ryan is able to make an impact right away.

connection

Anthony Russo, QB.  Doylestown

Patenaude said at the end of last year that Russo was “light year’s different” in practice in December than he was in September. Add that to the fact that Patenaude also said early last March that Russo corrected a “looping motion” in his release plus increased playing time with the ones means that Russo could slot into the role Nutile had at the beginning of last year—a guy in the No. 2 slot who is ready to get his chance in a real game. Mix in the fact that the staff is trying to find new positions for Todd Centeio and there is a clear indication that the first and second jobs are Frank Nutile’s and Russo’s. A lot of the Philadelphia area has been waiting to see what Russo can do in a real game and not a practice or a scrimmage and this year could very well be that chance. It took the staff eight games before it finally decided to insert Nutile in there to give him a chance to run the squad and hopefully they will give Russo the same chance this season that Juice got last one.

gardner

Jager Gardner, Black Mountain (N.C.)

One thing that has been a relatively accurate predictor of future success at Temple for any player has been eye-popping numbers in high school. Folks here kind of knew Adam DiMichele would have projected as a pretty good quarterback here when he tossed 35 touchdown passes as a senior for Sto-Rox in the WPIAL. As a running back, Gardner had far better numbers than the other guy, Ryquell Armstead, who came in his class. Gardner’s senior year numbers: 2,776 yards and 36 touchdowns on 282 carries. Armstead’s senior year numbers at Vineland (N.J.): 1,488 and 18 touchdowns. Gardner got injured and fell behind and now seems to have caught up. Head Coach Collins said this has been a “break out” spring for him. Since Gardner already owns the Temple all-time record for longest run from scrimmage, that bodes well for this year.

Rock Ya-Sin, DB, Decatur (Ga.)

Already one of the greatest “names” in Temple roster history, Rock looks primed to become one of the great producers on the field in this his first season for the Owls after transferring from FCS school Presbyterian. Last season, playing for a Villanova-level school, Ya-Sin led his team with 49 tackles and five interceptions. More importantly, he has stood out during spring practices in an area of need—defensive back—as the Owls scrape hard to find replacements for three departed starters.

theprep

Benny Walls, Safety, Cherry Hill, N.J. and Keyvone Bruton, Norfolk, Va.

Walls was a standout for a great state championship team in St. Joseph’s Prep and clearly the star of Wednesday’s practice when Collins tweeted that Walls had a dominant day. Walls was a two-time first-team All-Catholic playing in one of the best high school football leagues in the nation. Benny has great athletic genes. His dad, also Benny, played basketball at Camden High and his uncle, Kevin Walls, was even more famous–scoring 81 points in a single game for Camden High before going off to Louisville to play his college basketball. Bruton—not to be confused with defensive backs coach Nate BURTON (different spelling) had 18 interceptions for Lake Taylor (Va.) High and is just as likely to be a starter with Delvon Randall as Walls is and this should be a position battle that lasts through the summer.

Wednesday: The Scrimmage

Friday: 5 Things to Watch for at Cherry and White