While We’re Waiting… College Football Trophies, Recruiting, and Tito’s The Man

Cleveland sports fans are waiting. Thus, while we’re all waiting, the WFNY editors thought you might enjoy reading. Because you never know how long we might be waiting. So here are assorted reading goodies for you to enjoy. Send more good links for tomorrow’s edition to tips@waitingfornextyear.com.

Leading off, college football trophies are one of the more consistent traditions around the nation. Many of the trophies have strange origins, and nearly all of them have an interesting story behind them. Johnny Ginter at Eleven Warriors takes a look at some of them, “My favorite thing about Illibuck is that at one point it was a live turtle. Two years later, it was dead. All of the technological prowess of two of the better public university institutions couldn’t keep a turtle alive for two years. There have been ten wooden Illibucks since then, and the sad thing is that with the rearranging of the Big Ten, Ohio State and Illinois will now only play each other once every four years or so. On the plus side, given the state of the Illinois football program, we’ll get to keep the thing for a loooonnggg while.” [Eleven Warriors]

Will Leitch at Sports on Earth talks about recruiting in the Twitter age, which certainly has its drawbacks and ugly moments, “This is all ridiculous, this sad, lonely courting of teenagers over Twitter for a one-year sleepover at a college campus, but this isn’t just the new reality, it’s just the start. Alexander, Okafor and Jones, have enjoyed every aspect of this whole process, and why wouldn’t they? Forget booster alumni and back-room deals: If Cliff Alexander or any future recruit wants any special treatment, it’s just a direct message away.” [Leitch/Sports on Earth]

Should the Tribe be concerned with Zach McAllister. There’s no denying that he was never the same after the finger injury which took him from a #2-type starter to a #4-like option. Steve Orbanek at IBI has the details, “In 13 starts following the injury, McAllister went 5-4 with a 4.06 ERA. It doesn’t seem like a huge difference, but there were other indicators that are somewhat troubling. For one, McAllister did not offer the same length in the second half of the season that he offered in the first. For example, prior to the injury, McAllister averaged 5.97 innings per start and was well on his way to reaching the 200-inning milestone. Yet, after the injury was different story. Following the injury, he averaged just 5.28 innings per start. It’s a noticeable difference, and sadly it does significantly affect McAllister because much of his value is tied to his ability to log innings.” [Indians Baseball Insider]

I think everyone knows that it’s difficult to quantify what Terry Francona brought the Indians this past season in terms of roster additions and win count. But, Craig Gifford at Did The Tribe Win Last Night? does his best, “This was probably Francona’s best coaching job. Despite winning division titles and World Championships with the Sox, Francona never garnered so much as a first place vote for Manager of the Year before winning this season. That is because he was the head of teams loaded with star power and expected to be good. The stars helped to make Francona’s shine brighter. In Cleveland, Francona’s star seemed to make the players glimmer more. To ask an outsider about the Indians, the first name that would come to mind would be Francona.” [DTTWLN?]

I’ll get into this more later this morning, but here’s one take from Patrick Redford at Cavs: The Blog about the Cavaliers’ slow start, “It would be utterly premature to declare the season a wash, set fire to the ships and google “tank gif” for a few months. There is real talent on this team, maybe not quite enough to push anyone in the Eastern Conference hegemony in a playoff series, but enough to justify working toward that end. Nine games into the season and the team has yet to hit its stride, but there are still positives.” [Cavs: The Blog]