Rippee Writes: It is game week
Louisville thoughts, Plumlee talks move to receiver and a fake high school dupes ESPN
A good Tuesday morning to you all. It’s game week. Reading that alone should fire you up at your cubicle, in your living room, on your bathroom throne or wherever you are reading this. Ole Miss plays Louisville in a game that counts, with fans, in six days. We’ve got a new podcast out with Weldon Rotenberg wrapping up fall camp, looking a little bit ahead to Louisville and much more. Check that out here or anywhere you get podcasts.
We’ve got a ton of football to dive into today.
Louisville Monday presser:
This will become a regular content piece in the newsletter throughout football season. I’ll do my best to provide any sort of meaningful update from an opponent’s Monday press conference most every week. I doubt I will scour the internet to find out what Austin Peay’s injury situation is next week, but you get my point. Louisville head man Scott Satterfield spoke with local media yesterday. Some notes:
Louisville played a mock game Monday night, has light “Sunday-like” day today and then begin practice on Wednesday like a normal game week.
Satterfield said pretty much everyone is available from an injury standpoint.
The Cardinals saw 10 members of the secondary depart the program in the offseason as well as their safeties coach. They’ll rely heavily on two transfer safeties in Georgia Southern transfer Kenderick Duncan and and Alcorn State transfer safety Qwynnterrio Cole. Louisville ranked 17th in the country in pass defense in 2020, but had a hell of a lot of turnover here.
Pretty clear that Satterfield and his staff watched a lot of Ole Miss-Alabama film to prepare for the Rebels offense.
Not breaking news here, but he fielded a lot of questions about handling Ole Miss’s tempo and how they’ll manage substitutions and getting into different packages. Satterfield pointed out that the crux of the challenge of battling the Rebels’ tempo is trying to be multiple in what do defensively while also being limited in the personnel they can get on the field on a given down.
This will be an interesting year for Satterfield. He went 8-5 in his first year at the helm but stumbled to a 4-7 mark in last year’s COVID-riddled season. But his future is more fascinating than just a year that fell below expectations. He put himself in some hot water in the eyes of his bosses and the fanbase this offseason. You might recall that he denied having interest in the vacant South Carolina job last winter, only to later get caught interviewing for the gig, which he had no real shot of getting, and apparently did not tell his athletic director, Vince Tyra. That’s usually a pretty solid way to burn any goodwill you’ve built up. Satterfield eventually issued an apology via letter. It kicked off what had to be a bizarre offseason. The best path to forgiveness for Satterfield is winning, and winning big. Knocking off Ole Miss would be a nice place to start, though I am not sure I am keen on his chances.
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Get to know Louisville:
We’ll have a nugget on the opponent each day of the week. Today, we’ll start with Louisville quarterback Malik Cunningham. The dual-threat junior is an interesting story. In 2019, he was arguably the third best quarterback in the ACC behind Trevor Lawrence and Sam Howell in terms of passer rating, but the catch is that he didn’t throw it all that much. Cunningham went 112-179 (62.6 percent completion mark) for 2,065 yards, 22 touchdowns and five picks in 11 starts. He ran it 122 times for 664 yards gained (482 net) and six more scores. He was an accurate mid-range passer and a real threat with is feet.
Last year, Cunningham regressed as the offense took a collective step back. Some of the surface numbers were still quite good. He completed 64 percent of his 304 attempted passes and ran for 609 yards (828 yards total gained). But he threw 12 picks in 11 games and lost three fumbles. The Cardinals turned the football over 22 times as a team. Louisville finished the season with a -1.09 turnover margin. That ranked 119th in the sport.
Decision making is the name of the game for Cunningham and will largely determine which version of him comes out in this 2021 season. The coaching staff’s hope is that he rectifies the turnover issues and becomes a stronger pocket passer.
“He’s improved at working the pocket, as opposed to it breaking down and him taking off and running,” Satterfield said. “We’ve really worked on sitting in and working the pocket. Because when he is able to sit there and throw it form the pocket, he is as accurate as anyone in the country. He throws a great ball. It will come down to decision making for him. He’s done better with that. He is dropping the ball to the backs and tight ends well.”
Cunningham has the ability to torch an unproven Ole Miss defense. One could argue the Cardinals’ most feasible path to victory is Cunningham putting together a heroic performance and beating the Rebels by himself. But if Ole Miss can pressure him and mitigate Louisville’s success in the running game, Cunningham will force the issue and turn the ball over.
Plumlee talks position switch
I am a little late on this, but John Rhys Plumlee spoke to the media last week about his move to receiver, what involvement he has in the quarterback room and more.
I understand Plumlee is a bit of a polarizing figure amongst the Ole Miss fanbase, I just don’t understand why. The guy speaks and acts like the kid my mom wishes I was. If you’re ready to accuse me of being a Plumlee apologist, go ahead. My track record from 2019 on regarding him being a quarterback is pretty consistent. I was firmly against it from the start. But he is a talented and charismatic kid with a unique skillset. Yes, he loves the camera, but the camera also loves him. Sometimes we forget the role in-house production and video teams play in over-marketing a particular player.
I found his answer on who he models his game as a receiver to be interesting. He said that, at quarterback, most guys usually relate to and try to emulate one person, like an Aaron Rodgers or a Russell Wilson or whoever, someone you feel has a similar playing style as yours. Plumlee said that receiver is different and that he draws inspiration from different aspects of a variety of players games, whether it’s someone’s footwork, a different guy’s release and another guy’s route-running. I thought that was an interesting way to look at things.
Plumlee said that during camp he went to the quarterback room in the mornings, the receivers room during the middle of the day and back to the quarterback room in the afternoon. Read into that what you wish.
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ESPN duped into broadcasting a fake high school:
You may have seen this story. You also might be like me and still have a hard time wrapping your head around it.
ESPN aired high school football all of last weekend for their GEICO High School Football Kickoff series, as they have for over a decade now. Some of you Mississippi folks may have watched MRA play Oakland (TN) on Saturday afternoon. Well, of the seven games that were aired over the course of the weekend, one was a bit different than the other. On Sunday, IMG Academy took on Bishop Sycamore. IMG is a sports prep school located in Bradenton, Fla, and its football team is usually littered with the nation’s best prospects. They jet across the country, playing a national schedule against the country’s best high school teams. Seems to check out. Why wouldn’t they be on ESPN?
Then there is Bishop Sycamore, an online school based in Columbus, Ohio. The school’s football team also plays a national schedule and tries to get their kids the most exposure possible with the hopes of them attaining scholarship offers. The only problem? None of that is true and the school doesn’t exist. Yes, you read that correctly. Bishop Sycamore isn’t a real school. In fact, it is the second fake school the head coach, Roy Johnson, has created. Now feels like a great time to mention that Johnson reportedly has an active warrant out for committing fraud. The team is comprised of some high school players and some players in their 20s. None of them are legitimate recruiting prospects. Last year, the team went 0-6 and was outscored 227-42. They lost to IMG 56-6 last year and followed that up with a 58-0 defeat this year.
I have no clue how to fully encapsulate this story. Instead, I’ll link you to this Athletic piece and then give you the highlights.
Head coach Roy Johnson created a fake school in 2018 called Christians of Faith Academy, a school originally pitched to be funded by a local methodist church in Columbus. The church quickly condemned this project and Johnson is now charged with fraud for refusing to pay back a $100,000 loan he took out to start this fake school.
Bishop Sycamore lied about the offers its players had, something neither ESPN nor the marketing agency in charge of booking the game discovered until it was too late. In fact, they barely had enough players to fill out a roster. To make things worse, the roster Bishop Sycamore gave ESPN’s announcers wasn’t accurate, so the people calling the game had no real idea who the hell these guys were.
Bishop Sycamore played a game TWO DAYS PRIOR on Friday night, a 19-7 loss to a Pennsylvania high school. That game was not listed on Bishop Sycamore’s schedule. When asked about this, Johnson said they basically ran out a second team for most of the game and used it as a tune up for the starters to prepare for IMG. Once someone dug up the film from two days prior, this was, shockingly, not true. Most all of the players played two full games in three days.
Aren’t most Bishop (Insert name here) named after actual Bishops? Aside from the fitting initials “B.S.” the fact that Bishop Sycamore isn’t and never was a real person is hilarious.
The school’s listed address is a public library in Columbus. The year prior their listed address was some random sports complex.
The fake school has a national schedule of games this year. Hell, in a couple weeks, they’re coming to my neck of the woods to play Duncanville (TX) High school.
How in the hell did no one at ESPN look into this enough to catch this? They prepped an entire TV broadcast without knowing anything? The marketing firm never once looked into the school they had slated to play on national television? None of this makes sense. I guess the moral of the story here is that you can bullshit anything you want to in life if you put your mind to it. Congrats to Bishop Sycamore for surpassing the South Harmon Institute of Technology (S.H.I.T. mascot is a sandwich) as America’s favorite fake school.
School board gets the Bart Simpson treatment
I guess people duping other people is the theme of today’s newsletter? Here’s a video of a school board meeting in Virginia in which the concerned citizens called to speak their mind in their allotted timeslot were, well, let’s hope not real people. Enjoy.
I am disappointed that Don Keedic missed his opportunity to lead his community.
On the horizon
Finishing our opponent preview series on the pod with Vanderbilt and Mississippi State
Louisville preview and a Mailbag Friday
A new sponsor in the works that will greatly help any of you that regularly go to football games and sit in the club/box level seats
Football, football and more football in the newsletter with a golf update sprinkled in tomorrow
That’s all from me today. Thanks for being a loyal subscriber. Send to your friends and tell them to join in on the fun. It’s free. Sign up below. Back with more tomorrow.