Posted by Block-C Staff

• By now I’m sure you know that JK Jay had to have back surgery and will be lost for the season.  You probably already knew that “Girdle Gate” was all media fodder to get the masses stirring.  If you’d been checking out the forums though, you’d have known this as soon as it hit the presses.  Some of you that signed up have been having issues posting and such.  I’ve corrected the problem.  If you’re still having trouble feel free to send me an email at “dannyfordisgod -at- gmail -dot- com” and I’ll fix any left over problems.
• The ACC Sports Journal has four questions answered for us this fall.  Whew.  Glad those problems are all shored up.
• I must have missed it, but the CUAD has set up JackLeggett.com for recruiting and such.  Pretty neat set up. The baseball staff has also set up a twitter account for you extra crazies that is updated pretty consistently by hitting coach Tom Riginos.
• I’ve been quietly following Coach Purnell’s twitter and it seems his brother is coming out of things.  Apparently his brother Dwayne had a brain surgery and was put into a coma.  He’s showing signs of waking up.  Feel free to drop OP a line via email to let him know you’re behind him.
• Speaking of basketball, our opponent in the first round of the Thanksgiving tourney this year will be Texas A&M.  Good solid opponent right off the bat.
• CJ Spiller gets a nod as 1st Team All-American over at Scout.
• Don’t forget: t-shirts, Macallan Cup, and helmet schedules folks.

Posted by Chili

Some, I think, Cleveland Browns Rivals site has an interview up with our very own CJ Spiller. The discussion doesn’t really tread new ground, but if you’d like a good general overview of what’s up with CJ, this is your article. Of particular interest are CJ’s goals for 2009:

CS: What do you want to accomplish this season?

Spiller: To be invited to New York for the Heisman… and hopefully we’ll win the ACC and get invited to a great BCS bowl game. That’s the main thing; we haven’t won a bowl game since I’ve been here. That’s really my individual goal: to win a bowl game and to get the fans at Clemson excited about Clemson football

RF365 takes an extremely premature look at next year’s recruiting battle versus Sakerlina, though you recruiting die hards may bug out and scream IT IS NEVER TOO EARLY TO ANALYZE THE PURSUIT OF STRAPPING YOUNG MEN!!!!! And if you do scream that, I’ll nod my head, and immediately leave your vicinity and report you to authorities.

HERE IS NEWS ABOUT THINGS THAT AREN’T FOOTBALL. WELL, ONE IS FOOTBALL BUT NOT THE COOL KIND OF FOOTBALL

- Sticking with recruiting, rehabilitated Edward Norton from American History X has a brief summary of Oliver Purnell’s good ‘cruitin’.

- Former Tiger golfer Lucas Glover won the US Open at Bethpage Black before throngs of retarded Long Islanders (redundant, I know) drunkenly heckling golfers in driving rain. I couldn’t find a clip of him reading the Top Ten on Letterman the other day, so here’s Crispin Glover on Letterman instead.

- The Anderson Independent-Mail Xtra has a piece on Clemson’s Oguchi Onyewu as he and the rest of squad USA take on Brazil in FIFA’s Confederations Cup on Sunday.

- Clemson shortstop Brad Miller was named to the USA baseball national team. Congrats.

Posted by Willy Mac

Football

• Clemson picks up it’s first 2011 recruit in the form of Daniel High School’s Deshaun Williams at defensive line. Nice to get a big corn fed kid to commit.
• ESPN’s Heather Dinich has more faith in us this season than I do.  She also has a lot more faith in our fans to not get antsy and bring down the ban hammer on Dabo.  I see the natives getting restless after two average years.

“I think three seasons is the usual fair amount. This year will still be somewhat of a transition with two new coordinators and several other staff changes, plus it could take a while for either Kyle Parker or Willy Korn to truly take hold of the offense. It also depends how restless the boosters get. Considering the talent still on the roster, though, there’s no reason for Clemson not to be in the hunt for the Atlantic Division THIS year.” – Heather Dinich

• Finally, there is some positive press covering Willy Korn.  This article is definitely worth a read and it has a ton of great quotes from Willy.

Clemson quarterback Willy Korn works out during spring practice at Memorial Stadium in Clemson. (BART BOATWRIGHT/The Greenville News)

• ***NEW*** – The Sporting Gnomes responded to our post and the Heater Dinich comments with their own expectations and needs from Dabo.  I agree completely with a few exceptions: 1) No major scandals; 2) No drop off or damage to the foundation that Bowden built.
• ***NEW*** – ClemPson dammit found some videos from spring ball via FSN South.

Baseball

• There could be some major fallout on the Tiger’s baseball team due to this year’s MLB draft, but Paul Strelow sets things straight in this article. The coaches seem to think things are only going to get better next year as well.
• Casey Harman (pitcher) and Brad Miller (infield) were both invited to the USA National team try-outs.

Straggler links

• Former Clemson Golf All-American Kevin Johnson won his second Nationwide Tour event. This almost guarantees him a spot on the PGA tour next year.
• Former Clemson soccer stand out Oguchi Onyewu is catching some racist heat overseas.  But wait, I thought racism was only in the South and that we’re all savages down here… Good for the guy making this public.  I love it when foreigners call us idiots and try to hold us to high standards.

Posted by Willy Mac

Also, don’t forget that game one of the Tempe Super Regional is tonight at 9pm. If you’ll be stuck at home tonight like I will, check out the open thread on the forums. New to the forums? Register here.

Posted by Willy Mac

Last Saturday night a friend and I were watching the Clemson baseball game as he, like so many others recently, told me “how badly Clemson sucks at baseball this year.”  I then tried to explain the circumstances surrounding our team like the young players, new coaches, changing climate of the game but was immediately cut off after about two or three sentences.

“Oh, you’re one of those Leggett apologist fuckers aren’t you?” As I drew in a breath to retort but my buddy cut me off and commanded the conversation for the remainder of the time I chose to stand in the room and listen to the drivel.  If you want to call me a Leggett apologist, fine.  Go ahead, Chicken Little. Sure, they make some insanely careless defensive errors and they don’t hit as well as the players on my xbox do, but this is a great young ball team that has incredible talent and skill. Since when is making the postseason with 40+ wins considered bad for any team?  News flash: We’re incredibly lucky to be in the situation that we’re in right now with our baseball program.

Furthermore, Jack Leggett is one hell of a ball coach and there are plenty of schools out there that would be willing to pay him tons of money but he won’t even field offers because of his respect for Clemson and his commitment to the program.  Leggett is smart, driven, and passionate.  Perhaps one of his best qualities is the fact that he is a Clemson man.  He puts Clemson first and foremost.  Jack has had to leap through some giant hoops in the past few years.  His house being burnt to the ground aside, he has lost some important assistant coaches and recruiters to other schools and better opportunities. My buddy tried to call me out on this but facts are facts and you can’t blame Leggett for his assistants going to other major schools for more money and actual head coaching positions.

In my opinion, this is all part of what I like to refer to now as the “Bowden Fallout.” There’s always some idiot out there on the internet (sometimes it’s us) or on the radio that submits an opinion comparable to the stink of dog shit and for some reason… it sticks.  People pick up in arms and agree.  Then these hee-haws perpetuate this terrible, hot mess of an idea with their other yokel friends and it builds and builds to the point where you’ve got people clamoring to fire coaches like Purnell and Leggett for succeeding at their jobs. In his sixteen years at Clemson, he’s taken us to the post season every year save for last year. That includes this year… you know… the year we sucked… I guess.  He’s also won two ACC championships and come close a handful of other times.  He’s been ACC Coach of the Year three times.  The Tigers are 680-309-1 (.687) under Jack Leggett. Overall, the man has more than a thousand wins in his career and you think he’s not qualified?

Some of this can be attributed to radio talk show hosts who don’t know when to tell a caller that they aren’t the brightest crayon in the box, hang up on them, and move on with their program like any professional talk show host would do.  A lot of this can also be attributed to other Clemson websites and message boards like the Tigernet who offer knee-jerk reaction opinions and have one sided point systems with no definitive way to check and balance content posted by users other than the method of  deleting of threads.  Even then, it’s usually the wrong threads or threads that offer some semblance of common sense on a subject that get zapped.

Okay, so we’ve got the blue collars getting a whiff of the theory from the radio or “thuh innernets machine” and taking it back to their friends.  See, the problem with these people is that they don’t ever post or call in with their own thoughts.  Even if they do post or call in, it’s just someone else’s mush chewed up and spit back out on the plate.  They’re also too afraid to come to places like this, which is one reason we’re not too popular amongst the Tigernet yuk-yuk crowd.  See, they explain their theories as the end all be all because they saw or heard it through a talk or internet medium, therefore it must be true.

Let’s look at a term that nearly shaped not only our country, but almost caused a global nuclear war. McCarthyism as defined by Kenneth C. Davis in his book Don’t Know Much About History as, “a smear campaign of groundless accusations from which the accused cannot escape…”

Wikipedia provides the following:

“McCarthyism is the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence.”

If it’s not a coach they’re after, it’s people that speak up against their bull headed opinions.  You go against the grain… You’re a “coot.”  You say, “Hey, maybe firing such a respected and storied coach isn’t such a good idea.”  Must be a Gamecock in disguise.  Sure we attack our own sometimes here at Block-C, but only when they provide shaky & non-credible information or viewpoints.

It can be said that in terms of the Clemson sports world that the Tigernet, it’s posters, and folks of similar ilk that enjoy that kind of attitude and ideology shared over there can be labeled as McCarthyists.  If you say something loudly enough times, be it true or not, eventually it will become the truth.  The team doesn’t perform as god-like as people see fit so it’s time to can the coach.  Then what, you get another one and can him too?  I feel bad for Dabo because if things don’t work out, the shit storm that strikes couldn’t happen to a better, more Clemson-minded person.  Granted, Bowden had to go but let’s don’t get carried away.  For those of you not too familiar with Joe McCarthy or McCarthyism, in short Joe McCarthy cried wolf about communists amongst Americans after World War II and ruined a ton of lives with little remorse or basis for doing so.  He also tried to convince our government to launch a nuclear warhead at Moscow that would have killed millions of people and would have had terrible lasting effects on the world we know today.

I guess what I’m hammering at is that next time you get all riled up and pissed about what you think is a poor job of our coaching staff or players, don’t get too carried away and push that red button.  Sorry again to get knee deep in serious shit, I’ll get off of my soap box now.