CrossFit is becoming the sport of fitness for our youth, and at two South Carolina high schools, this sport is has become competitive. PE teacher Jon Wilson founded Blue Flame CrossFit, a non-profit club affiliate at Pickens High School in South Carolina. He and Ed Taylor, a PE teacher from Walhalla High School, organized a CrossFit event for teens in CrossFit programs at both schools.
“To my knowledge, it’s never been done. So we’re just going to give it a go and see what happens,” Wilson says.
“This competition today has just set our kids on fire,” Taylor says.
Wilson describes their competition workouts and logistics. The inaugural event was such a success that Taylor says the kids are excited to compete and expand the competition to other schools and venues.
“You can look and see in their eyes the pride factor in it,” Taylor says.
A good week for LSU fans – the Tigers turned in a promising Cotton Bowl win last Friday to seal a top-10 finish, and head coach Les Miles publicly spurned his alma mater in favor of deepening his roots in Baton Rouge – got a little better Thursday with news that maligned offensive coordinator Gary Crowton is on his way out: Louisiana's favorite scapegoat is signing on at Maryland to run the Terps' offense for newly hired Randy Edsall. It's not clear that Crowton was fired, necessarily, but the sentiment is clear enough: The Tigers' success the last two seasons has come in spite of one of the SEC's most impotent attacks, and with a golden opportunity at SEC and national championship runs in 2011, they can no longer afford the malaise.
Considering the talent on hand (every Les Miles recruiting haul since 2006 has come in ranked among Rivals' top 10 classes nationally), LSU's offensive nosedive since the 2007 BCS championship season – Crowton's first in Baton Rouge, on the heels of predecessor Jimbo Fisher – is shocking. The Tigers bottomed out in 2009, coming in dead last in the SEC in total offense, next-to-last in rushing and 10th in scoring; in 2010, they were 11th in total offense and brought up the rear in passing. Even mere mediocrity in 2008 was submarined by redshirt freshman quarterback Jarrett Lee and his endless parade of pick-sixes. In the draft, only two offensive players in four years under Crowton (third-rounders Early Doucet in 2008 and Brandon LaFell last year) have gone in the first four rounds, with no additions to that list expected this spring barring a gonzo effort or two at the combine.
It will be a disappointment, to say the least, if that's still the case over the next two years. Even with All-SEC running back Stevan Ridley's odd – and possibly reversible – decision to declare for the draft, eight of the offensive starters who opened up a can on Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl are back in the fall, including four of five offensive linemen and former five-star recruits Reuben Randle and Russell Shepard, just hitting their make-or-break year as juniors. Hulking freshman running back Spencer Ware was the breakout star of the A&M win, busting off 102 yards on just 10 carries (including gains of 18, 24 and 26 yards) in the first significant action of his career. That game was the first time since '07 an LSU offense managed to put 40 points on the board against a defense that didn't finish in the bottom 25 nationally in points allowed, and with eight starters back on defense, pointed the way toward a return to the national elite.
The key to the Tigers' SEC and BCS ambitions in the fall, though, is unquestionably quarterback Jordan Jefferson, who remains as much of a mystery after his 27th career start as he did after his first. For the Cotton Bowl, he turned in one of the most efficient efforts of his career, connecting for almost as many touchdown passes in one night (three) than he managed to hit over the entire regular season (four). Jefferson was a well-regarded recruit and has the body of a big (6-foot-4, 225 pounds), athletic, NFL-bound bombardier, but for two years has played more like a within-the-offense manager whose coaches are reluctant to cut the apron strings. Against the Aggies, he uncorked a pair of long touchdown throws to NFL-bound senior Terrance Toliver that gave a rare, tantalizing glimpse of the potential bottled up in (statistically, anyway) the least threatening assault in the conference.
Crowton's exit and Miles' commitment to the long haul are a golden opportunity to import a quarterback guru – Norm Chow, Mark Whipple and Mike Leach spring immediately to mind, among the currently (or soon-to-be) unemployed, to say nothing of potentially poachable targets like East Carolina's Lincoln Riley or the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Steve Logan – who have the track record to unlock that promise, while the opportunity still exists. Whoever gets the call, he's going to be one of the most crucial hires of the new year, and along with Charlie Weis at Florida and Bryan Harsin at Texas, one of the most closely scrutinized. And for good reason: LSU is almost certain to begin the year as the favorite to win the SEC, at least in some part because of the optimism following Crowton's exit. The guy who takes on the task of lifting the Tigers out of their rut will be front and center. If he pulls it off, he's going to eat like a king. If he doesn't, it's another enormous missed opportunity.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.; - In honor of longtime Penn State football coach Joe Paterno and his wife, Sue, and to commemorate the coach's 400th win, Nike, Inc. has made a gift of $400,000 to the University Libraries.
The Paternos are longstanding supporters who have championed fundraising efforts for the Libraries since the 1980s. "Joe and I have always said that you can't have a great university without a great library," said Sue Paterno. "We are delighted that Nike, Inc. has acknowledged this milestone in Joe's career by supporting an institution so important to us."
The building will still bear Paterno's name, in addition to the new Darrelle Devis Digital Resource Center, the Adrian Peterson Archives of Ancient Mediterranean History and the LeBron James Center for Behavioral Sciences, complete with hot tub. Plans for the Matt Ryan Microfiche Nook remain under negotiation.
(Actually, the money will go to fund a "knowledge commons" that will provide undergrads with "a collection of innovative and traditional services and repurposed physical spaces that facilitate information discovery, collaborative learning, and knowledge building." They're still not going to change the uniforms, though.)
Obvious. As part of his annual defense of the recruiting-industrial complex, Doctor Saturday has surveyed many things. Now he has struck upon the most over- and under-achieving teams as seen through the lens of recruiting classes. The overachieving list has a variety of causes:
Oregon. Spread genius.
Oregon State. JUCO/grayshirt addiction.
Virginia Tech. FSU, Miami, UNC, and Clemson all recruit like demons and suck on the field. The methodology here prioritizes wins over teams with good classes no matter their results on the field. The ACC champion is set up to do well here.
Iowa. Own Penn State, greatly benefit from Michigan's implosion.
Stanford. Harbaugh. Sigh.
The underachieving list? well, you don't even have to look, really. Guess which big time rivalry finishes 1-2? You get zero opportunities. You got it anyway:
Hurray! In Michigan's case the underachieving is due to massive attrition, a change in program philosophy, the program delightfully eating itself alive, and the dumbest hiring decision in the history of the world. Notre Dame had a decided schematic advantage.
The rest of the lame are UCLA, Texas A&M, Miami, and FSU. Unsurprisingly four of these teams have changed coaches in the last two years. UCLA is going to have a hard time not firing Neuheisel next year, leaving A&M the only school that may be able to dig out under the current leadership.
Special K is a disease. He infects the world. I could help but think about Special K when I read about UConn's spelling cheer. It's the generic spelling cheer wherein you spell out the thing you like and repeat it three times. Example: "B-A-C-O-N bacon bacon bacon!" In this case it's U-C-O-N-N. It would be better if it was bacon, but it's UConn.
UConn's version is actually a cool tradition, however, because of this guy:
His name is Kenny, and the reason UConn has a cheer almost as good as B-A-C-O-N is because this lone nut created it via force of personality. People love this:
The reason Big Red's cheer has caught on and become a marker of UConn's success for the past 20 years is because, unlike so many things at UConn games, it is organic. There is no sponsor. It is not forced. It is not pre-packaged. No, instead it is a reflection of pure joy at the success of the young men who step out on the court wearing the jerseys that say "UConn." It is beautiful, and cheering along with Big Red is one of my favorite parts of being a UConn fan.
Unfortunately this year the cheer has been pirated by the PA guy and is deployed at times completely irrelevant to the game situation. It's basically WHO WANTS SOME FREE UCONN CHEER. In two years it will be WHO WANTS SOME FREE UCONN CHEER BROUGHT TO YOU BY CORPORATION. It is in this way that genuine things are co-opted and destroyed by marketers.
Also: bacon, bacon, bacon.
Filling in another hockey blank or two. Hockey gets a 2012(?) commit from Max Shuart, a nephew of former Wolverine captain Alex Roberts. Shuart's playing for major midget?unusual for a Michigan recruit at this stage in his career?and has filled in with the U17 team this year. He's got no points in three games with the U17s.
Michigan also just picked up an Alex Kile from Compuware for 2013. Kyle leads his team with 18-19-37 in 32 games, and is ninth in the league in scoring. He was a 14th round pick of London in the OHL draft?it's always hard to tell how much of that seeming lack of respect is talent and how much is signability.
MHN points out that Kile and Shuart were born only ten days apart, so Shuart may be ticketed for 2013 instead of 2012. That would make more sense since a guy who's doing well, but not amazingly, in midget doesn't seem like a guy who's going to make an impact in two years. I couldn't find anything on the internets indicating either guy was getting early hype, FWIW.
Random two year old sings fight song. Aww.
Is there a way to avoid this pun? Rumors of Soony Saad's departure for Europe are no longer rumors. Michigan's going to have to replace basically all of their scoring next year, which totally sucks because with Saad they were probably Big Ten favorites and in position to establish the sort of success that sustains itself over years. Now I'm not sure who the hell is going to be probably better than Robbie Findley.
Yes, dolla bill. The number for Michigan's guarantee game against Air Force: 1.1 million, which tops Ohio State's million-dollar payout to Navy by a few thousand dollars but not their $2 million guarantee to Colorado. It's a little scary that we just went back to a mid-90s Michigan DC and we're going up against the triple option, no?
Bug status. Items fixed:
The iPhone app.
IE bug where content would show up way down the screen. (Inline CSS wasn't getting used on pages other than the homepage, for some reason.)
Up/down voting has returned. It's a bit different, as an update in the software brought a new widget that tracks up and down votes separately and more obviously. There's also a setting to "dim" comments that fail to meet a certain threshold; I picked ?5. No idea what that will do yet. [It appears the answer is "nothing," but maybe it puts classes on these items that I'm not doing anything with yet.]
Have restored image upload facilities for trusted users using WLW. There is new login information that can be found in the post that explains how to use WLW with MGoBlog.
List of known issues in approximate order of importance:
IE 7 users (and I think just IE 7 users) are having issues seeing the box wherein comments are composed. Note: I don't even try to support IE 6, so if your company hasn't updated its browser in ten years I cannot help you.
The message board is ugly and uses space inefficiently again (but at least there are permalinks).
Voting is not applying points to user accounts.
mgolicious is not automatically updating.
Sidebar pagers are goofy.
The message board homepage is also in an undesirable state.
If there's something else wrong email me about it, please.
Etc.: There was a very silly AnnArbor.com article that chalked up Forcier's departure to the "impossible expectations" placed on his shoulders, such as going to class and not taking incompletes. It cried out to be fisked; The Wolverine Blog has fisked it. Tom Harmon is the #5 Big Ten Icon, so 1-4 better have dominated jungles, too. Braves & Birds explores why commentary is so dumb. Wrestling takes out OSU and Indiana; I stumbled across the OSU dual on BTN and decided "what the hell" since Michigan was ahead. It was surprisingly entertaining.
Training kids is very different than training adults. At the end of the day, we want fitter people, but dealing with young athletes requires a special approach.
In this video shot at CrossFit Brand X, Mikki Martin leads a group of CrossFit Kids through a workout integrating—yes, you guessed it—Lego as a motivational tool. Also part of the workout is game of darts using a Venn diagram filled with movements as the target.
By the end of the video, it’s pretty obvious the kids are having fun, but they’re getting fitter at the same time.
A good week for 
The key to the Tigers' SEC and BCS ambitions in the fall, though, is unquestionably quarterback Jordan Jefferson, who remains as much of 
