Why Plan for 2013 When You Can Go 5-7 in 2009?

Those of you who read the blog regularly know I've been critical of the media from time to time.  I'm sure its not always fair.  When you have to create material daily for often the most important sport your media outlet covers, it can be hard to come up with an original piece, especially when you've been doing it as long as some of these guys have.  Its even harder when the team stinks.

So I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize when journalists try to break out of the mundacity of daily coverage with a thought-provoking piece or two.  For people who follow UVA sports, the Washington Post's coverage (or lack thereof) of Virginia athletics is a popular whipping boy.  Their Twerp-centric coverage of Virginia's 20-9 victory over now 2-5 Maryland doesn't help.  But in the week leading up to the Maryland-Virginia tilt, I thought Zach Berman, who's been doing a solid job (not great -- you have to get more front page stories than Navy for that) covering UVA sports as part of the Post's new Cavalier Journal, had two such stories.  

The first was on Tuesday (we'll cover the second later in the week), when Berman examined Al Groh's sometimes maddening failure to redshirt freshmen.  This is real inside baseball stuff, as most casual Virginia fans wouldn't notice, and only the true die-hards harp about it.  But that's precisely why I applaud Berman tackling this topic instead of preparing the 105th "Groh is Mr. October piece."  I would have preferred that he dug a little deeper than just this season because this is a pattern, not an isolated occurrence, with Groh, and I didn't agree with what appeared to be his conclusion propped up by Groh's quotes on the subject - that it helps prepare players to contribute as sophomores, or even this year.   Unfortunately, my short-term schedule doesn't allow me to dig any deeper right now (perhaps a future post).  But I did want to throw it out there now.

In the article, Berman correctly notes that two players - Eugene Monroe and Alex Field - played as true freshman, and thus exhausted their eligibility last year and were not eligible to return to the Orange and Blue this season.  Monroe played in every game as a freshman, and isn't necessarily a fair example because as a projected top 10 pick, he probably would have left last year anyway.  But Field, who played five games, saw the field for 33 plays, and recorded all of two tackles as a freshman, is not playing football anywhere right now.  Even duplicating his 2008 line - 48 tackles, 7.5 TFL, and 4.5 sacks - would have made what looks like a solid defense even better.  

As ACC Sports Journal notes, Groh this season has already played twelve true freshman, some of whom no longer even travel with the team.  Think about that as you watch Groh burn a year of eligibility for speedster Tim Smith, who has no doubt contributed, but is now squarely behind at least Kris Burd, Vic Hall, and Jared Green on the depth chart, and who's skill set (speed on deep patterns) is readily duplicated by redshirt freshman Javaris Brown.  Or that Groh may have burned a year of eligibility for Dominique Wallace (who will have to hope for a medical redshirt after suffering a season-ending foot injury) when he had Mikell Simpson, Rashawn Jackson, and Torrey Mack on the roster. 

Now, we don't know what promises (if any) were made to players when they were recruited, and sometimes positional scarcity mandates that true freshman play.  Will Hill, who's now next in line at DE behind Nate Collins and Zane Parr now that Matt Conrath has gone down, probably would have been forced to play anyway.  Of course, that wouldn't be the case if the Hoos still had Field.  See how this pattern needs to be broken?

And even if true freshman are capable of contributing, I don't buy the notion, peddled by Groh in the article, that it helps prepare them for when they do play.  The best example I or anyone could come up with is Michael Vick.  When I was covering the same beat Berman now walks, Virginia Tech beat writers were quite literally giddy about Vick in the fall of 1998.  He wasn't playing, mind you, on a 9-3 Hokie squad that played later converted to safety Nick Sorenson as its signal-caller at times.  Vick seemed to do just fine without playing as a true freshman, going 11-0 in his redshirt year before losing a memorable National Championship game against Florida State.

Could Vick have helped Tech in 1998?  Absolutely.  Could he have helped avert the greatest comeback in Virginia history, when the Hoos rebounded from a 29-7 halftime deficit to nip the Hokies 36-32 in Blacksburg?  Probably, but we're glad he didn't.  Could he have made a very good 1998 Hokie team perhaps a great one a year ahead of schedule?  Sure.  It would even have been defensible - Tech needed help at QB in 1998, and Vick ended up leaving after two years anyway.   

But its damning on a team that isn't any good, and downright destructive to the future of the program, whether Groh's going to be here or not.  Alex Field will almost certainly never play on Sundays, but he's no longer a member of the Cavaliers because of 33 plays as a freshman.  Tim Smith won't be a member of the 2013 Hoos, and all he's got to show for it so far is a pair of TD catches in losing efforts.  As a fan of the team, I'm happy to see Tim Smith flying up and down the field on Saturdays.  As a supporter of the program, I see no reason why I couldn't wait a year to see it, with the promise of an extra year down the road when Smith could be really good.

So yeah, its great that Groh is Mr. October.  We just wonder whether he'd be doing a little better in September and November if he managed his redshirts a little better.  And we're glad Zach is talking about it.