Coach Joey Jones Show Recap 2009-03-25
Ronald Douglas watches practice on Tuesday
Coach Joey Jones and Lee Shirvanian are in the studio for the final episode of the Joey Jones show. Coach Jones lunch choice of the day: the Joey Jones Special Black & White chicken. Lee’s choice of the day is the fish and broccoli. Plus, to celebrate the end of this years run of the Joey Jones Radio Show, they enjoy some of Wing’s delicious banana pudding. But don’t worry, the Joey Jones show will return in August for more Jaguar Football goodness.
A caller asked what kind of volunteer work that can be done for the team or sideline work that needs to be done? Coach Jones urges anyone who wants to volunteer to call the office because there will be some volunteer work that can be done on the sidelines and they have the list of what needs to be covered.
Lee asked about yesterdays first practice in pads. Coach Jones loved the intensity and said it was good to start to see who were the tough guys are. They had some full team stuff and had a couple players catch the coaches eye (I saw a huge hit on a running back that got the sidelines and the 30 or so spectators really excited).
When asked about the uniforms, Coach Jones said that the president has approved the uniforms and will hopefully be able to introduce them in two weeks. They are still working out how the home and away situation will be with the fall schedule this season in terms of uniforms. But they are considering doing something different that most schools but similar to what LSU does and wear a white top for home games. Coach Jones also said that he had thought about going with the silver helmets like he had mentioned before on the Joey Jones Show, but he thinks the latest version really stands out to him and will represent the school well.
Today’s practice will be similar to Tuesdays practice but it will have more special teams time before getting into full team practice sessions. They did not really do much special teams practice yesterday and want to start adding more of that starting today.
Men’s Basketball player Ronald Douglas is going to try out for the team. He is 6’8” and is a very good athlete as Coach Arrow told Coach Jones. So he should be out in pads today and will start working out with the team. They are thinking about putting him at the defensive end position. Douglas played football back in high school, so this is not something new for him.
Lee and Coach Jones talk about some of teams on the schedule this season. Coach Jones mentions that the first thing that came out (about the football teams) was that the Jags were going to play 4 or 5 games. However, Coach Jones wanted to increase the number of games and also increase the level of competition. With the schedule that they put together, both he and Joe Gottfried have put together a good schedule of games that will challenge the players to work hard and play hard. Initially they were going to play club teams, but Coach Jones pushed to raise the competition level to test the kids and also recruit some of the good players that come out of these schools. Hargrave Military Academy turns out lots of really good players that transfer to SEC and other Division I schools and finished 10-1 last season. Huntingdon College is the only Division III school on the schedule, the rest are prep, military or junior colleges. Huntingdon finished 8-2 last season and were considered for an at-large bid to the Division III playoffs after starting the season 8-0. They also outscored their opponents 417 – 158 with three shutouts and finished the season ranked 5th in scoring offense.
Some of these teams will have better athletes than a lot of SEC schools signing classes. They have kids that were recruited by schools from all of the BCS conferences and they are getting players from all over the country. Hargrave is probably the number one prep school in the country with the number of players going to Division I schools. Most people do not recognize the number of future NFL players who come out of prep schools.
Most of these kids that go to the prep schools are just under the cut-off for a Division I school. So it’s not the case that these kids just could not cut it in Division I academically, but rather they may have made a C in an English class and just barely missed the cutoff. So they go to these schools and work hard to better themselves and after two years, hopefully sign a Division I scholarship to play and get their education.
Lee asked Coach Jones what do these schools think of South Alabama recruiting these kids. Coach Jones said that these schools are happy, they want to have more of their kids signing Division I scholarships. It looks better for them and helps them to get better kids into their program as well.
When a caller asked about scrimmages and how Alabama has the ‘A-Day Game’ Coach Jones said that every Friday from here through the end of spring practice will be a scrimmage. But, he also said that every day they are out on the practice field, they are doing 11-on-11 plays.
Lee asked what Coach Jones vision for this program is. He then qualified that question to be mainly about stadiums. With a proposed stadium being built by a group that will be out I-10 West that is supposed to seat 50,000, is that something the USA is going to look at or is something on campus is the ultimate goal for the school? Coach Jones said that probably an on-campus stadium should be the ultimate goal because it adds to the atmosphere of the campus and whenever any other team has transitioned from an off-campus to an on-campus stadium, their attendance doubles.
Back to the schedule this fall, the times are all stated at 4pm except for a lone 11:30am kickoff. Lee asked if these times were set in stone or are they subject to change? Coach Jones said that they are subject to change of course, but this year will be time to test different kickoff times and see what works out best for South Alabama versus Alabama and Auburn obviously.
Lee said that he has had people ask him what is the best way to get their son recognized and possibly help them get a scholarship to South Alabama to play football. Coach Jones said that the biggest and easiest way to mass publicize a player is for a high school coach to make a highlight reel for a player. But USA is getting over 2,000 DVDs and they at least look at them all for some amount of time, but it’s hard to pick players from video. While their highlight reel may show their two good plays from a game, they may have had 5 bad plays in the game and they want to know this. A really good way for a kid to be recognized by the coaching staff at USA, or other schools for that matter, is for that kid to go to a football camp. Some schools may not sign a player unless they have either been chosen as a ‘blue chip’ recruit or have gone to at least one of their football camps. Coach Jones also said that he will not sign a quarterback without actually seeing him play in person.
That wraps up this season of the Joey Jones show. Keep visiting Thunderjags.com for more football news. Also check us out for information from other sporting news from the Jaguars. Also come out and support all of the South Alabama sports, including baseball and softball, which are going on right now.
Go Jags!
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[…] admin posted a noteworthy aricle today onHere’s a small snippetCoach Jones said that the biggest and easiest way to mass publicize a player is for a high school coach to make a highlight reel for a player. But USA is getting over 2000 DVDs and they at least look at them all for some amount of time, … […]