Joe Gottfried Honored At His Retirement Ceremony
Joe Gottfried was honored today for his 28 years of service to the University of South Alabama. University President Gordon Moulton hosted the ceremony held on Thursday afternoon at the Mitchell Center. Gottfried served the last 25 years at athletic director before he stepped down from this position on August 1st.
He is a 1963 graduate of Ashland College and would earn his master’s degree from Morehead State in 1969.
Coach Gottfried, a 1963 graduate of Ashland College and 1969 graduate of Morehead State where he received his master’s degree, came to USA as an Assistant Athletic Director in 1981. He served in that position through 1984 when he was promoted to the position of Athletic Director. Previous to USA he had successful coaching stints at Ashland and Southern Illinois. In addition to being in the USA Athletic Hall of Fame, he is also a member of the Ashland College and Crestline (Ohio) High School Halls of Fame.
The Jaguars athletics experienced success both in competition as well as in the classroom under his direction. Plus he probably had the most impact on the school’s architecture in recent years, with the development and improvement of the athletic facilities. Gottfried was also very instrumental in adding football as the 17th program for the school. He initially lead discussions in an attempt to bring football to the USA campus in 2001 and was finally approved by the Board of Trustees on December 6, 2007.
Gottfrieds impact can be seen in the $30 million Mitchell Center, which is the home of the men’s and women’s basketball program as well as offices for athletic department presonnel, Stanky Field which underwent a $3.5 million renovation prior to the 2005 season, a 4,000 square-foot baseball clubhouse built in 1996, the intramural fields on the west side of campus, the softball complex built prior to the 2007 season which was the first-ever for the program, a new locker room for the softball and soccer programs, improvements to Jaguar Gymnasium, the Striplin Center, “The Cage” soccer facility, the USA Track Complex, the Bruce David Lubel Memorial Tennis Courts, the football field house and the football practice fields.
However just as important the athletics is the academics which also flourished under coach Gottfried. With the addition of football, the athletic department is at an all-time high of more than 300 student-athletes. In the latest Academic Progress Rate report released by the NCAA last month, 13 of 16 programs in competition at South Alabama scored above the 925 standard set by the NCAA. Also under coach Gottfried, 83% of South Alabama’s student-athletes that have completed their eligibility have graduated. There have been 37 individual student-athletes that have been named to the Sun Belt Conference Commissioner’s List for maintaining at least a 3.5 GPA while 32 others have made the Sun Belt Acadeimc Honor Roll with a GPA of 3.0 or higher in 2007-2008.
Also 75 South Alabama student-athletes have earned All-America recognition while 62 of the schools coaches were selected the SBC Conference Coach of the Year in their sports. South Alabama has claimed the Vic Bubas Cup 10 times in a 13 year span. No school in league history has earned the award more than USA. South Alabama teams have won 104 league titles, appeared in 54 NCAA Championship events, and have had 123 individual student-athletes qualify for NCAA postseason play. Including two track and field athletes who have won NCAA titles. Plus, in baseball, 95 players have signed with prefessional teams including 17 who have made it to the Major Leagues.
Thank you coach Gottfried for your hard work and dedication to South Alabama Athletics, thank you for taking time to talk to students and fans, and thank you for putting South Alabama in the position continue to improve its level of competion for many years to come.
Dr. Joel Erdmann Named To Replace Gottfried As Athletic Director
On Sunday afternoon, university president Gordon Moulton, introduced Dr. Joel Erdmann as the next athletic director for the University of South Alabama. Dr. Erdmann was one of over 50 applicants for the position after Joe Gottfried announced his upcoming retirement on August 1st.
Dr. Erdmann is 46 years old and has served as athletic director at Southeastern Louisiana University Hammond, Louisiana for the previous two years. Previous to that he served in the same capacity at Division II North Alabama for five years between 2002 and 2007. During his time at UNA, the football team won two Gulf South Conference Championships (2003, 2006) and Division II Regional Championship (2003). While at Southeastern Louisiana the school captured its first ever Southland Conference Men’s All-Sports Trophy and also captured two conference championships while also playing an instrumental role in facility upgrades.
Three candidates were interviewed on campus in the previous few weeks, Erdmann, Brian Wickstrom from UTEP and Derrick Ramsey from Coppin State. President Moulton phoned Erdmann over the weekend and offered the job to him.
Erdmann has previous ties to the university. He held several positions at USA where he received his master’s degree in physical education. He was a graduate assistant coach for the baseball team, assistant to the athletics director, executive director of the Jaguar Athletic Club and other capacities including handling compliance issues, game operations and special projects. He was also a tenured associate professor in the College of Education.
Dr. Erdmann is a native of South Dakota where he graduated from South Dakota State . He earned his doctorate from Florida State University in Sports Managament and Athletic Administration in 1995.
President Moulton spoke about Dr. Erdmann at the press conference on Sunday by saying, “Joel Erdmann brings to the University of South Alabama the experience that comes from having led other athletic programs, as well as a familiarity with and appreciation for USA athletics stemming from his earlier leadership position here. Dr. Erdmann is the right person to take the torch from Joe Gottfried and lead University of South Alabama athletics to the next level.”
Following are Dr. Erdmann’s remarks about his selection to be USA’s fourth Athletic Director since the school was founded in 1963. “I appreciate President Moulton and everyone who was involved in the selection process. I am honored to have the opportunity to lead this tradition-filled department and look forward to capitalizing on the addition of football while maintaining a high level of excellence throughout all sport programs. It is truly a privilege to be a member of the University of South Alabama and a memorable time to be a Jaguar.”
I hope this is the right hire for the position. I thought this would be a good time to hire a solid name to further strengthen the athletics department, however its also nice to have someone that seems to truly appreciate the University and has the excitement and energy to help lead it along. With Football set to kick off its first season in a mere 46 days, that enthusiasm and energy will definitely be tested quickly.
The funniest line to end the statement was from the usajaguars.com press release. The last line says, “A native of Bismarck, N.D., Erdmann is married to the former Tina Milton. The couple has three dogs and a cat.”
Go Jags!
South Alabama Sports Round-Up 2009-07-06
Summer is that time of year when college sports really slows down. Baseball season has ended, football camp is about a month away and most people are trying to find some way to beat the heat. But now that there is some news to write about and its a mere 60 days until kickoff of the inaugural South Alabama football season, we have another South Alabama Sports Round-Up to get out.
Athletic Director
With less than a month until Joe Gottfried hangs up his AD hat for retirement, South Alabama has not been forthcoming about potential replacements as of yet. However I would expect that to start to ramp up very soon with the committee set to reconvene sometime early this month to review candidates. President Moulton has gave the committee a target date of September 1st to have the job filled.
The Mobile Press-Register wrote not too long ago about some candidates that were interested in the position, two of them with previous ties to the university and Mobile itself. John Hartwell, who is the executive associate athletic director for Ole Miss and Joel Erdmann who is the Athletic Director at Southeastern Louisiana have both confirmed that they are interested in the position.
But Erdmann and Hartwell are not the only ones expressing interest in the position. Johnny Williams, former AD at Troy University, has expressed interest in the job. Plus people close to Birmingham-Southern AD Joe Dean Jr. has indicated that he might be interested in the position as well.
Dr. John Smith, vice president for student affairs and faculty athletics representative, is chairing the search committee and has stated that as of late June, there have been 23 applications received for the position with more expected to be received.
Erdmann and Hartwell speak highly of the potential that USA has since the addition of football to its sports program and likening the potential of South Alabama’s success to the quick rise of South Florida since the inception of football at their school.
Football
Speaking of football, coach Jones said that about 95% of USA’s scholarship players were on campus for the first summer session which started in May. Now with the second summer session starting in late June, Coach Jones now has 100% of his scholarship kids on campus as well as most of their walk-ons as well.
Most of the kids have already qualified with the exception of a couple kids they are waiting to see how well they do in summer classes. Matt Autry is expected to enroll in Jones County JC and hopefully will rejoin the Jaguars once he has gained eligibility.
In order to get down to the 30 scholarship limit for the 2009 class, there will be several players grayshirted. So far the grayshirts for this year will be Linebacker Mytez Madden, Saftey Zach Brownell, Defensive Lineman Will Thompson and ATH Mardavian Martin. Jared Palmer, WR from Tuscaloosa, will either be grayshirted or will attend JC depending on his academics. QB Early James and OL Chris Payne, who were mid-semester JC signees, have left the program.
August 2nd will be the first official team meetings and will becing practice on August 4th. Coach Jones anticipates a healthy roster to being practice with only a few players involved in minor rehab at this time. Receiver Christopher Pugh has a torn meniscus, but is currently working out and going to rehab and hopes to be ready once practice starts. Also it was overheard that Coach Turner (one of the brothers) had a staph infection on his hand. I don’t have any details about what type of infection he might have had, but its probably the a simple infection due to a cut.
Staph Infection from WebMD: “About 25% of people normally carry staph in the nose, mouth, genitals, and anal area. The foot is also very prone to pick up bacteria from the floor. The infection often begins with a little cut, which gets infected with bacteria. These staph infections range from a simple boil to antibiotic-resistant infections to flesh-eating infections. The difference between all these is how deep and how fast the infection spreads, and how treatable it is with antibiotics. The antibiotic-resistant infections are more common in North America, because of our overuse of antibiotics. The type of staph infection that involves skin is called cellulitis and affects the skin’s deeper layers. It is treatable with antibiotics. This type of infection is very common in the general population — and more common and more severe in people with weak immune systems. People who have diabetes or weakened immunity are particularly prone to developing cellulitis.”
Obviously lots of interest will be on the quarterback position starting in August. With the #1 guy in the spring, Matt Saucier, moving to safety, the position is really up for grabs. The most experienced should be Oregan State transfer Brennan Sim. But Nic Owens, Myles Gibbon and Kyle Stewart will definitely be battling for the starting position.
Coach Jones was quoted saying, “We have four good candidates coming in. The he hard part of that is that we’re going to have to give reps to someone and get them ready. People don’t realize that when you are starting a new program you have to make a decision on a quarterback fairly quick because if you fool around for two weeks and give four people all the reps than they won’t know many of the plays. We’re going to have to do a great job of evaluating those kids in the first week. I think at the end of the first week we need to decide who is one, two and three, not that it will be etched in stone.”
Like I have been saying, what is probably the best situation for the Jags is to have Brennan Sim (JR) to win the starting job with one of the freshmen as his backup. Then giving the other two a redshirt to give them an extra year of maturity and understanding of Coach Gregory’s system.
Season tickets sales are around 6.000 so far and USA has a goal of selling 10,000. With that many season ticket holders, the Jaguars would lead the Sun Belt before even playing their first season. If you haven’t purchased your season tickets yet, what are you waiting for? Saturday afternoons in Mobile will be a great answer to ‘what are we doing this weekend?’ and for $85 for seven games, you’re not going to get off that cheap anywhere else.
South Alabama Sports Round-Up 2009-06-16
Football
South Alabama’s Head Coach Joey Jones announced on June 1st that Brennan Sim, quarterback from Oregon State, has decided to transfer to USA and will have two years of eligibility for the Jaguars. He has spent the last three years at Oregon State University, spending his freshmen season as a redshirt.
Coach Jones commented about the quarterback situation by saying, “The most important thing is that we are going to play the best quarterback, I expect there to be great competition in preseason camp.” He further stated, “We were looking for someone with a little bit more experience to come in and lead the team. If Brennan can come in and do that then he will be the guy. With his experience being part of a Division I program for three years, I think Brennan will have a maturity level that would be higher than most newcomers. He throws the ball very well and is a good leader, we know from his visit here that he’s a great kid. We’re very excited about the possibility of Brennan coming in and helping us out immediately.”
Athletic Director
The search is still on for someone to fill the Athletic Director position come August 1st when Joe Gottfried will retire from the position. Many names have been thrown around from Phil Savage who was just named the color commentator for the Alabama Crimson Tide Radio Network (replacing Kenny Stabler), Roger Schultz, Joe Dean Jr. (who is favored by Coach Joey Jones) and Joel Erdmann.
Most close to the search are staying very tight lipped about it so far. They still have about six weeks to find and hire one before he leaves the position. While they don’t necessarily have to have someone in the position when he leaves, it would be better to have someone in place sooner than later with the first ever football season set to kick off on September 5th.
USA Athletic Director Joe Gottfried To Retire August 1st
At a press conference in the Mitchell Center today, Athletic Director Joe Gottfried announced that effective August 1st he will retire. This marks the end of an era of unprecedented success in athletics at the University of South Alabama under his guidance.
President Gordon Moulton will conduct a nationwide search for his successor at the University.
Gottfried said the following at the press conference, “It has been a terrific experience, I have been very fortunate to have been surrounded by an outstanding group of coaches, student-athletes, support and administrative staff. To be able to have the success and accomplish the many things we have, you need to have the support of the President and the Board of Trustees. I have felt that has been a big plus, it made my job much easier.”
“Obviously I am very proud about what has been accomplished and to have been a member of the South Alabama family for 28 years. It’s been important to me and my family. We will always be Jaguars and will continue to follow the progress of not only the athletic program but the University as well.”
University President Gordon Moulton commended Gottfried on his many years of service to the University. “Anyone who cares about University of South Alabama athletics owes a debt of gratitude to Joe Gottfried, who has led the growth and expansion of the Jaguar athletic program for more than a quarter century. He has guided Jaguar Athletics to new heights of accomplishment and has set the stage for greater achievement in the future. The entire University of South Alabama family appreciates his contribution, and we trust that he will remain a familiar face at Jaguar athletic events.”
The Jaguar Athletic program has experienced success in competition as well as in the classroom. He has been key in the development of numerous athletic facilities but also on the community with the recent addition of the football program to USA.
During his time at USA, the Jags was presented with the Vic Bubas Cup which goes to the program that demonstrates excellence in the league’s now 19 sports. USA has claimed this honor 10 times in a 13 year span, which no other school in league history has earned more than USA.
Here are some raw numbers. Overall, Men’s and Lady Jaguars have won 104 league titles, USA Teams have appeared in 54 NCAA Championship events, individuals have qualified for NCAA postseason action 123 times (this inclues two track and field athletes who have won NCAA titles). 75 USA student-athletes have earned All-America recognition while 62 coaches have been selected to the Sun Belt Conference Coach of the Year in their sports. 95 baseball players have signed with teams in the professional ranks, including 17 who have gone on to the Major’s.
With the addition of football, the athletic department is now supporting an all-time high number of student-athletes at around 300.
In the classroom the students have excelled as well. In the most recent Academic Progress Rate report that was released by the NCAA, 13 of USA’s 16 programs scored above the 925 standard set by the NCAA. While Gottfried has been at USA, 83% of the student-athletes have graduated and 37 USA student-athletes have been named to the SBC Commissioner’s List for maintaining a 3.5 GPA or better with another 32 who have made the SBC Academic Honor Roll with a GPA of 3.0 or higher in 2007-2008.
Gottfried has been instrumental in the following buildings on campus: $30 Million Mitchell Center, a $3.5 Million renovation to Stanky Field, a 4,000 square-foot clubhouse, the intramural fields on campus, a $1 Million football field house to open this summer, a new Softball adn Soccer locker room and office complex, A new softball field, improvements to ‘The Cage’ (the soccer facility), the USA Track Complex and the Bruce David Lubel Memorial Tennis Courts. Future plans are a new academic center, upgrades to the track and field venue with new seating, lights and locker rooms.
Gottfried was also instrumental in getting the Sun Belt Conference basketball tournament to Mobile for the first time in 1991 and would also bring the highest attendance at the event in 20 years.
This is merely a few highlights to his great time here at the University of South Alabama. President Moulton will have very large shoes to fill.
From the fans of Jaguar sports, we thank you Coach Gottfried for your years of great service to the University and its fans. We are proud at what you have done for USA and we hope you have a great retirement. You are always welcome in the stands and we will miss you.
Jaguars Announce Two New Additions To Future Schedules
The University of South Alabama announced two additions to future football schedules on Thursday. Joe Gottfried, South Alabama’s Athletic Director, announced details of three-game contracts with Kent State and Mississippi State. The Jags will play in Starkville September 12, 2012 and September 10, 2016 in addition to hosting the Bulldogs in Mobile on September 13, 2014.
Coach Jones was quoted saying, “To be able to bring Mississippi State to Mobile is a great plus for our program. These two-for-one contracts are very important early on as we continue to build for the future. I’ll never forget when Missouri visited Troy a few years ago, that was a big deal when they went down there. Any time you can do that you’re advancing your program, and that’s where we’re going.”
Joe Gottfried added, “With the contractual agreement with Mississippi State to play in Mobile, we are clearly sending a message to the community that we are committed to football and to provide our fans an opportunity to see the Jags play teams like MSU, North Carolina State, Navy and others.”
South Alabama will travel to Ohio to play Kent State on September 1, 2011 and September 6, 2014. Kent State will travel to Mobile to face the Jaguars in their first season in Division I-A, also known as the Football Bowl Subdivision, on October 19, 2013 as well. The 2013 season will be the first season that the Jaguars will compete in the Sun Belt Conference and also will be eligible for a bowl game. USA also has previously announced that they will be playing Tennessee in Knoxville and begin a four-game home-and-home series with Navy in 2013. Also the Jags will play a three game series with North Carolina State, two in North Carolina and one game in Mobile.
The Jaguars will take the field for their first game on Saturday, September 5, 2009 to face Hargrave Military Academy at 4pm. Get your tickets now for this historic event.
GO JAGS!
Coach Joey Jones Show Recap 2009-03-04
In the studio today at Wing’s Sports Grill on the Beltine near I-65 just off of Airport Blvd is Head Coach Joey Jones, Lee Shirvanian and Travis Toth.
One of the first questions was how close is the schedule to being finalized? Coach Jones said that they are waiting on one last contract to come through and they should be ready to release the 2009 football schedule. Lee Shirvanian followed that question up with his next one, why does it take so long? When getting game contracts together, lawyers get involved so they have to read through the contract to make sure that it benefits their school. Another thing has been trying to find teams that have open dates that match up with ours.
Putting together the schedule is like trying to put a huge puzzle together, all the pieces have to analyzed and fit together to make an overall picture. But for the 2009 season they are looking at possibly 8 games.Which by all indications all seven or eight games will be home games. While it was not stated the most likely reason that schools would want to travel to Mobile is that its a larger stadium than most they will be playing their first season in Division-I football.
Also, spring practice will be starting on Monday at Ladd-Peebles Stadium and the coaching staff has changed their minds once again for the publics benefit. All practices, including the first week, will be open to the public. Practices will be held from 2:30-4:45pm on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Fridays with the occasional Wensday thrown in there as well. Coach Jones said there will be right at 100 players out there for practice with roughly 16* of them having scholarships. (* NOTE: This number may or may not be accurate.)
When asked what they will be doing at practice Coach Jones said that they have to evaluate all of the kids and give them a chance. In addition to evaluating them, they also have to teach fundamentals. The coaching staff are not going to be too fast in getting into scrimmages, they will be having scrimmages but they have to start with the fundamentals first.
Joe Gottfried visited the show and was talking about scheduling. Again Lee Shirvanian asked why is it so hard to put together a schedule? Gottfried’s response was that since we are an unclassified school it’s hard to find other unclassified schools or find schools who want to schedule you. Plus getting them to travel to Mobile is sometimes difficult. They are working on teams for 2012-2016 and spending a lot of time to work those schedules out so they will benefit our team the best we can. They do not want to schedule another big game the next week after playing Tennesse for instance.
Lee made light about how quick the USA program is going from nothing to Division-I football. Gottfried said that South Florida took 3-4 years to do what we are on track to do in 1 or 2 years. The staff and administration have gotten on board and without them it could not be possible to do it. Joe Gottfried also let it out that in 4-5 years from now we just might be on the schedule to play Notre Dame. Joe is close to some people up there and they have said we are still on the list of potential opponents for Notre Dame. What is really exciting about the possibility of USA playing Notre Dame is that they have a long standing contract with NBC to have their games nationally broadcast. So that would be you would be able to see USA taking on Notre Dame national television like NBC within the first could seasons of being in Division-I football.
Joe Gottfried also talked about how the topic comes up regularly about the possibility of building an on-campus football stadium. He said that that decision is definitely further down the road. But if that were to come true it would just all to all of the current construction on the USA Campus that is generating large amounts of excitment. If you go by the intramural fields and see the football field house being constructed along with the practice fields and all that goes along with that, you will be amazed and cannot help but to get excited about USA. Also the new student recreation center being built at the corner of Old Shell Road and Stadium Drive right beside of Stanky Field. It is such a great time to be a Jaguar.
One caller asked if we would be playing in the Sun Belt conference when we begin this fall. Coach Jones response was that in 2012 we will have our first full Sun Belt schedule. However, until that time we will be playing as an independent school.
Coach Jones, when asked if they are still looking for players, said that the coaching staff is still looking to bring in at least one more quarterback. Just like with their other quarterback recruits that will be coming in he will have to be of the runner/thrower model to fit in with their offense.
Coach Joey Jones Show Recap 2009-01-14
Joey Jones, Lee Shirvanian, Haven Fields and Daniel McCarthy were all at Wing’s Sports Grill in Mobile today for the Joey Jones Show. Most of the episode was dedicated to recruiting talk since we are in the home stretch before national signing day.
This weekend is a recruiting weekend at the University of South Alabama. About 13 prospects and their families are coming to tour campus and what Mobile has to offer. Most are verbally committed but there are some in the group who are not committed. They wil lbe housing them at the Battlehouse Hotel in downtown Mobile and will take them to a coupld good restaurants to eat, including Wing’s for lunch one day. While they are at USA they will have a chance to meet with some of the academia at USA. What the staff wants is for the recruits to leave USA and not have any unanswered questions.
USA is actively recruiting about 50 students heavily in order to fill their 30 scholarship alotment for the 2009 signing period. When asked, Coach Jones said that there are about 20 more students that are sort of on the fence. In the case of oversigning, one option is a gray shirt. A gray shirt is when a scholarship is held for them the next signing season and they agree not to enroll into school until that next spring. So, a 2009 recruit would hold off from enrolling at USA in the fall of 2009 and would enroll the spring of 2010. He would still get a scholarship and would then count against the 2010 scholarship alotment.
Haven Fields is the assistant athletic director for football, he was hired by athletic director Joe Gottfried. He was a former linebacker for Auburn from 1996-1999. He was associate director of athletic development at Auburn University before coming to the University of South Alabama. He works for the football program on the school side to work out things so Coach Jones and his staff’s day-to-day life is much easier and so they can focus on working with the student athletes and prepare for gameday.
Keith Ayers, in the Office of Public Relations for USA, stopped by for a few minutes to talk about a couple things. First he wanted to let the listeners know about the schools plans for national signing day on February 4th. At 4pm in the Mitchell Center they will announce the schools first signing class and they will have some video to show to everyone in attendance. This will be a historic moment for the University and the football program. Free T-shirts, autographs and much more will be available.
The second thing Mr. Ayers wanted to let everyone know is that ticket sales have been ramping up and wanted to urge everyone to call 461-1USA to get their season tickets before they are all gone. The third and final thing is that tomorrow evening the USA Men’s Basketball team will host Troy and it will be K-12 appreciation night so kids in K-12 will get free admission and the first 1,000 will get free USA Football T-shirts as well. This is all tomorrow night at the Mitchell Center.
Daniel McCarthy’s former team in Richmond just won a national championship for Division I-AA football. Lee Shirvanian asked if a playoff would work in Division I-A since it seems to work fine in Division I-AA. Mr. McCarthy said that going through it with his former team was probably the most exciting thing he has ever gone through. Just like every game in the Division I-A regular season is like a playoff game, every game in the Division I-AA is also like a playoff game as well because there are only a limited number of spots available in the playoff for schools to get in.
Mr. McCarthy is the compliance officer for USA, so he is the go-to guy on questions about proper and improper conduct by the staff on recruiting visits. Coach Jones says that when recruiting, “Its pretty much just use your common sense.” But he and the staff do sit down with Daniel from time to time in order to ask him questions, not to try to find a loophole, but to make sure everything is done within the rules set forth by the NCAA.
Mr. McCarthy said he would like to see football recruiting treated more like the other sports in college and have it opened up somewhat. Other sports are much more open than football so the kids get to know the coaches much better and he thinks this would help cut down the number of transfers by students to other schools. This will help players choose the right school and program for them and would allow the school of find good players that fit well in their program.
When asked about how they educate their student athletes about rules, both Mr. McCarthy and Coach Jones responded that they have meetings to go over what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. The caller who asked the question mentioned the Andre Smith situation with the University of Alabama before the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. Mr. McCarthy said that it has gotten to the point where agents have to be approved by the NFL and in some states they have to be approved and licensed by the state legislature to operate in that state. Sometimes they employ a back door runner, someone who might want to get into the agent market or whatever, to work their way into befriending student athletes to steer them to their ’employer’. It can start out innocently by giving them a few dollars then it can easily escalate to more and eventually becoming an NCAA violation. The staff and everyone involved work hard to make sure nothing like this happens.
It was mentioned in the show that Coach Jones is working hard trying to find the right person to fill the offensive coordinator position left vacant when Les Koenning left for Mississippi State recently. Lee Shirvanian made light that if people knew who has been contacted, interviewed or even were interested in the position, we would be amazed. But one person who was interviewed by Coach Jones for the position was former Hoover High School head coach Rush Probst. However, since his interview he has since let Coach Jones know that he is uninterested in leaving his position at Colquitt County High School, at least that is what he has told the local newspaper. We will see what transpires over the next few days.
So come out and support your Jaguars tonight as the Women take on Troy and tomorrow night when the Men host Troy both in the Mitchell Center.
GO JAGS!
Coach Joey Jones Show Recap 2008-11-05
Its a little late but what we were hoping to be the ‘Extra Special Coach Joey Jones Show Recap’ failed to work out. Matthew and I decided to meet at Bob Baumhauers Wing’s Restaurant to see the show live, only to be denied when Coach Jones was not there for the show. In his place was Athletic Director Joe Gottfried.
But even then we were ready to give everyone a recap but the universe was conspiring against us yet again. We were three tables away from their desk but could not hear the show. About 20 minutes into the show they finally tuned the restaurant sound system to the radio show but it was too loud to hear still.
So instead of the normal review I will review my meal at Wings. As an appetizer, we got a plate of Triple Play Cheese Fries. Which was a large platter of curled fries with Monterrey Jack and Cheddar cheese then finished off with bacon and served with ranch dipping sauce. Obviously it was good because its cheese fries but the bacon makes anything better. Instead of going for what I am now calling ‘The Coach Jones Special’ which is Black and White Chicken, I opted for the Royal Rooster sandwich for my entree. It consists of a battered and fried chicken breast topped with applewood smoked bacon and Monterrey Jack cheese and also served with fries. So I ate too many fries.
Matthew ordered the Fried Wiggles which are thick sliced ‘sweet heat’ pickles that are battered and fried. First off, I do not like sweet pickles so they were not of my liking but if you like sweet pickles, by all means give them a try.
Also, today November 10th marks less than 300 days until the South Alabama Jaguars take the field for the first time in school history.
Go Jags!