Hey when I said “See you Monday!” I didn’t say which Monday!

Once! Upon a time! I thought the Freak Formal was on a Saturday!

Another quick weekend-ish post to apologize for the inactivity this week. A combination of new day job issues (I don’t have a mortgage to pay but I’m beginning to know Litos’ lament well) and old man back issues (as I writhed in pain after throwing my back out walking to the kitchen, I fondly recalled the days when I’d roller skate with a bad back, get off my lawn) meant I couldn’t get to the CAA Running Tally on Monday, or any other day this week. That’s coming Monday, this coming one, I promise you. Unless I throw my back out again while sleeping.

In the meantime, slowly improving back willing, hope to see you at Hofstra Soccer Stadium today for the doubleheader as the Flying Dutchwomen aim to complete a perfect CAA regular season when they oppose Northeastern at 4:30 and the Flying Dutchmen hope to continue their stirring late-season run when they face no. 17 William & Mary at 7.

And after that of course we’ll all don cheap costumes, head over to the Freak Formal and drink even cheaper beer. Actually, I think it’s just called the Halloween Dance. Sigh. Must you rename everything near and dear to my heart, Hofstra? Oh and wait I just double checked and it was tonight. Damnit! What am I going to do with my flannel shirt and Lollapalooza ’92 shirt now?

Anyway, some links here as I decide whether or not to dress up like Eddie Vedder around the house Sunday:

—Both basketball teams have a closed scrimmage this afternoon. The men face Bucknell and the women play Fordham. Damn. I’d pay good money to sneak into the men’s scrimmage if it was the other way around! Speaking of Fordham, the Rams play Villanova, according to Jeff Goodman. Now that would be fun to see, too—the first time Tom Pecora and Jay Wright ever oppose each other as head coaches.

—Way late with this, but my bitter blogging rival Gary Moore has a good writeup from last Saturday’s Blue/White Scrimmage.

—As if you needed another reason to ditch Cablevision (does anyone know who won the National League pennant? Anyone?): Every home basketball game—men’s and women’s—will be televised by FIOS this winter. Seriously, that might be enough for me to switch.

—Quick football note here: Raheem Morris is really starting to sound like Joe Gardi. The second-year coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers—known worldwide as The Official NFL Team of Defiantly Dutch—declared the Buccaneers were the best team in the NFC after their exciting comeback win over the St. Louis Rams (a ha! Revenge for 1999!!!) Sunday. A consensus pick to repeat as cellar-dwellers in the loaded NFC South, the Bucs are instead a surprising—nay, shocking—4-2 and a mere half-game behind the Giants and Atlanta Falcons for the top seed in the conference.

Now, it’s a rather tenuous 4-2: The Bucs’ four wins have come against teams with a combined record of 8-18, and they needed fourth quarter comebacks against the Rams, Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals. Combined margin of victory in those wins: Seven points. And the two losses were to the last two Super Bowl champs, the Pittsburgh Steelers and New Orleans Saints, by a combined score of 69-19.

The Bucs also rank 23rd in the NFL in total offense and 22nd in total defense. Morris’ response?

“Stats are for losers,” he told reporters Monday. Close your eyes and you can almost hear Gardi.

Morris continued to channel Gardi Thursday when he further explained his comments. Good stuff. And of the Buccaneers’ next four games, two are against teams that currently have one win (Carolina and San Francisco) and Sunday’s is against Arizona, which is 3-3 despite a point differential of minus-62. So the Buccaneers might very well still be in the running for best team in the NFC a month from now, at which point the rest of the world will have no choice but to take them seriously.

—Lastly, MSG.com’s Jon Rothstein stopped by the Flying Dutchmen’s practice Thursday and filed five thoughts on this year’s team. I am in particular agreement on his final point—David Imes is going to have a big year. More on him next week. Unless I throw my back out again while eating.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

Behold the power of Bucco Bruce and the Creamsicles!!

See what happens when you listen to Defiantly Dutch and go old school?

Tim Ryan: “How much credit do you give to the creamsicles?”

Sam Rosen: “The creamsicle uniforms paid off!”

Tim Ryan: “Wear them the rest of the year!”

I’m not usually one to open a story with a quote—too cheesy, and all that, though my archives feature plenty such pizza-worthy ledes—but I could be Houdini with the written word and I still couldn’t sum up the first win of the season by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers—known worldwide as The Official NFL Team Of Defiantly Dutch—as succinctly or as truthfully as Fox announcers Tim Ryan and Sam Rosen.

The Bucs, coached by Flying Dutchmen alum Raheem Morris, wore the franchise’s old orange uniforms and donned the old Bucco Bruce helmet Sunday, when they shockingly and gleefully ended their pursuit of history Sunday by storming back from an 11-point fourth quarter deficit to knock off the Green Bay Packers, 38-28.

The franchise that began play in 1976 with an 0-14 season and was finally relieved of its burden as the worst team ever last season by the Detroit Lions doesn’t have to worry about regaining its spot in history. Nobody remembers 1-15, baby, and all it took for the Bucs to fix things was a trip in the Way Back Machine. (I will conveniently ignore how awful the Bucs were during the Creamsicle Era here)

1-0 in the old orange uniforms, 0-7 in the current uniforms—and the Bucs don’t want to mess with a good thing. Linebacker Geno Hayes told The Tampa Tribune earlier today he “…wouldn’t mind wearing them again at all” while Morris mused immediately after the game Sunday about how he and the players would “…have to get into some negotiations to see if we can put on our orange some more.”

I’d just like to point out that I was calling for a return to the original duds when Morris was hired in January. Listen to me, people. I know what I’m talking about. Sometimes.

Sure, the Bucs’ old uniform scheme was a hideous one, but it was original and it assured only the diehard fans wore the apparel. The current look has coincided with sustained success (six playoff berths and, of course, the glorious victory in Super Bowl XXXVII), but it looks like it was designed by a focus group determined to improve the Bucs’ merchandise sales. I hate walking through a mall, seeing someone in a Bucs uniform and wondering if he also wears a multi-colored Yankees hat, or if he’s sporting the uniform as part of a gang initiation.

I should have known things were going to go well for the Bucs and I when a quirky bit of scheduling even gave us the opportunity to watch the game. The Giants were playing at 4 on CBS and the Jets were off, meaning Fox was able to give us a rare out-of-market game at 1.

We got Cardinals-Bears, which made my wife the Bears fan quite happy, but things really began to go my way when Fox made the rare decision to dump that game with the Cardinals up 34-7 early in the second half and take us to Tampa, where the Bucs were surprisingly not getting blown out.

Still, it looked like the Bucs would have to be content with a competitive defeat until the magic of Bucco Bruce and the Creamsicle uniforms emerged in the fourth quarter along with rookie QB Josh Freeman, who displayed the type of poise that suggested he could be the franchise QB the Bucs have been searching for since Doug Williams.

A long kickoff return set up Freeman’s seven-yard TD pass to Kellen Winslow, and following a Packers punt, Freeman impressively led an eight-play, 72-yard drive that he capped with a four-yard touchdown pass on fourth down to give the Bucs the lead with a little more than four minutes left.

Tanard Jackson returned an interception 35 yards for the insurance score in the final minute, which was appropriate icing on a game in which the Bucs set up their first TD with a long interception return and scored their second TD on a blocked punt return. Mmm, defense and special teams setting up scores for the offense. That’s good football.

Good for the Bucs, good for Morris—and good for Hofstra, which really needed some positive sports news after a crappy Saturday in which the Flying Dutchmen football team lost another heartbreaker in the final minute, the field hockey team was knocked out of the CAA tournament with a 5-1 loss to Drexel (I’m pretty sure five goals in field hockey is the equivalent of, like, 150 points in basketball) and the men’s soccer team, which spent much of the season atop the league, missed out on the CAA tournament after a 0-0 tie with UNC Wilmington.

With the Flying Dutchmen four nights away from visiting top-ranked Kansas, I think we need to change up the luck in order to ensure an upset of the Jayhawks. Out with the blue, white and gold color scheme and the lions logo, in with orange and white and Bucco Bruce!!

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch. 

Bits and Bytes: Bucs, basketball & Binghamton

Raheem Morris and Josh Johnson probably don't have to worry about joining the 1976 Buccaneers and Steve Spurrier in NFL infamy.

His days as a Division I-AA star and assistant coach are long in the rearview mirror, but ex-Flying Dutchman Raheem Morris—the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, known worldwide as the Official NFL Team of Defiantly Dutch—proved he hasn’t forgotten his roots Monday by naming former University of San Diego star Josh Johnson the Bucs’ new starting quarterback.

Oh sure, Morris had plenty of reason to make a change after the Bucs and former no. 1 signal-caller Byron Leftwich set the NFL back several decades Sunday in a 24-0 loss to the Giants in which they gained just 86 yards and didn’t record a first down until more than nine minutes into the third quarter. But I prefer to believe that the tiebreaker went in favor of Johnson because he played his entire career at a I-AA school while Leftwich went to Marshall after it upgraded to I-A.

That box score, by the way, is amazing. The Giants shut the Bucs out despite recording no sacks and forcing just one turnover. That’s got to be the most remarkable do-it-yourself shutout in league history.

The beloved Bucs are 0-3, but unlike the truly wretched Cleveland Browns, who look like they might make a legitimate run at the 1976-77 Bucs’ record of 26 straight losses, the countdown to a winless season shouldn’t gain much steam. The pitiful Washington Redskins, who on Sunday “snapped” the Detroit Lions’ 19-game losing streak (the second longest in league history), are on the docket this week and the similarly winless Carolina Panthers await Oct. 18. I’m fairly confident the Bucs will be a perfectly harmless 2-5 by the time Morris returns to Hofstra and grants me an exclusive interview during the Bucs’ bye week Oct. 26 through Nov. 1.

Some other bits and bytes unrelated to the Bucs:

—Brian Mull, who provides excellent beat reportage of the UNC-Wilmington men’s basketball team for the Wilmington Star-News, is just the latest person to disrespect the Dutchmen and risk earning the wraith of all of Dutch Nation (snort) by picking Hofstra to finish below first in the CAA. When will these people LEARN?!

Anyway, Mull picks the Dutchmen sixth, just like noted Hofstra Hater Litos. Mull also pegs Charles Jenkins as his preseason player of the year and, in writing how the post-2006 talent surge has made the league better and deeper than ever, also does a pretty good job of indirectly explaining how the best player in the league could play for a middle-of-the-pack team.

Of course, as Litos points out, that balance makes predicting the CAA tougher than ever. It’s not just pro-Hofstra spin to declare that no fewer than six teams could make a legitimate run at the championship. Of course, when the Dutchmen emerge as the champion, I will not recall this reasoned, rational take and will instead bellow about the Dutchmen shocked the world and the non-believers.

—I probably shouldn’t give anyone a hard time about predictions, even in jest, because I’m a couple weeks away from looking pretty foolish in print (as opposed to, you know, how I usually look). Thanks in large part to a kind recommendation from Litos, I was fortunate enough to write the America East previews for the Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook (which you can order by calling 877-807-4857 or by visiting the Blue Ribbon home page here).

Once I was told I couldn’t pick Hofstra to win it all, the preseason favorite seemed obvious: Defending champion Binghamton, which returned four starters.

Not anymore. One day after star guard Tiki Mayben was dismissed from the team following his arraignment on cocaine possession charges, Binghamton coach Kevin Broadus booted five other players, including two starters—one of whom, D.J. Rivera, led the Bearcats and finished second in the America East in scoring last year—and the team captain.

Broadus has long come under pretty heavy criticism for recruiting players with checkered backgrounds, but Binghamton didn’t mind the bad publicity when the Bearcats were (mostly) limiting their court appearances to the basketball variety. Broadus signed a contract extension through 2013-14, but to the surprise of no one, the administration is in C.YA. mode now and tsk-tsking Broadus for bringing such bad apples to campus.

CBSSports.com’s Gary Parrish properly skewers Binghamton for its hypocrisy here. If Broadus gets the boot, here’s hoping the president and athletic director are following him out the door.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

Bits and Bytes: Poor time management confuses the mind…

The Hat is not in this video.

Twelve hours after I became the oldest rookie in WRHU history (blatant yet delayed self-promotion, many thanks to Christian Heimall and Jonathan Lauder for having me on the air) last Friday, Sully Ray became the oldest rookie in the history of our fantasy football league (in which, you’ll no doubt be interested to know, the conference names are Yankee, Patriot and Colonial) when he joined the rest of the Defiantly Dutch readership (and nine other people, too!) at our fine suburban residence.

You’re probably saying to yourself “Didn’t the season start Thursday?” Yes. Yes it did. But really, you’ve got to admit, drafting after the official start of the season makes a lot of sense for a league “run” by me.

Along those lines, Sully Ray had some sharp words as we waited for the draft to begin.

“Beach you were supposed to work all weekend last weekend and you didn’t,” he said in the familiarly admonishing tone of someone who arrives five minutes early for every appointment, pays all his bills two weeks ahead of time and gets his eight hours of sleep from 10 pm to 6 am instead of 8 am to 4 pm. The responsible adult is so boring.

Alas, the boring responsible adult Sully Ray is also right. I have been lax here, partially because of some paying work that was due last week but also because of awful time management skills that should earn me a starring role on some late-night infomercial.

“Hi I’m Jerry Beach, locally famous author and blogger. Before I took Timmy Time’s course, I spent all day surfing the Internet, watching old music videos on YouTube, watching episodes of old sitcoms and soap operas I’ve already seen 100 times apiece, crafting witty status updates on Facebook and obsessing over my fantasy baseball and football teams. My blog posts were made during caffeine- and exhaustion-fueled bursts in the middle of the night. But one day with Timmy Time has me working a regular 9 to 5 schedule, limiting my television viewing to live sports and living an otherwise productive existence! Thank you Timmy Time!”

Where in the hell was I? Oh yes. Anyway, please accept my humble apologies for the tardiness of posts this month as well as the declaration that I’ll try to be more on top of things. It’s no fun watching Extreme’s “Hole Hearted” and worrying the song was written about me, even if I was 16 when the song was written.

With that, let’s get to the news of the past few days:

— An out-of-town trip for Labor Day weekend and an imploding car, respectively, made it impossible to attend either of the Flying Dutchmen’s first two football games, so I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m some expert on what transpired. I will say that the wins over Stony Brook and Bryant seemed to go about as well as possible for the Dutchmen, who never trailed in dispatching of the Seawolves and Bulldogs and escaped the games mostly unscathed, injury-wise.

Still, the 2-0 start doesn’t seem to have filled the faithful with optimism. Perhaps it’s because the Dutchmen are supposed to beat Stony Brook, against whom they are 12-0 all-time, and a fledgling I-AA program such as Bryant. Or maybe it’s the specter of upcoming road trips to top-ranked Richmond, the defending I-AA national champion, and I-A Western Michigan and the possibility of back-to-back unmitigated floggings.

My hunch is the Dutchmen are, for the most part, playing with house money the next two weeks. A split would be outstanding (let’s not even get into the 1994-like euphoria a sweep would inspire). And going 0-2 won’t extinguish their playoff hopes, as long as the losses are reasonably competitive and not of the James Madison variety.

For the sake of a program that needs all the momentum it can get, here’s hoping the next two games provide some encouragement for the Dutchmen as well as some reason for Long Islanders to come out to Shuart Stadium the first two weekends in October. Otherwise, the bridge to basketball season could be a bleak one.

—Speaking of basketball, your good friend and mine Mike Litos has already begun unveiling mini-previews at his site, and the school batting leadoff in his series is also the school he’s picking to win the whole darn thing. I won’t ruin the suspense by revealing the team here (click the link!), but I will say it’s not Hofstra.

I’d like to threaten to unleash the full venom of Dutch Nation (snort) upon Litos for not picking the Dutchmen first, but the truth is, as evidenced by this pre pre-season poll conducted by the fine folks at VCURamNation.com, we’re in agreement. Of course, I only picked against Hofstra to ensure I wouldn’t hex them. Yeah. That’s the ticket.

—Interesting stuff, too, from Litos last week about the future of the CAA. We’re in agreement that a football conference that is almost laughably better than the rest of the I-AA field will determine the direction of the CAA, but while Litos foresees a I-AA landscape in which the CAA is the dominant football and basketball conference, I still wonder if the CAA will try to ride a handful of programs that could support I-A football into a seat at the big boys’ table.

Litos’ theory that the BCS schools will run away and hide sometime next decade, thereby allowing the NCAA to finally shed any pretense of equality and divide Division I into a I-A and I-AA, is something I’ve wondered about myself the last few years. But I change my mind on an hourly basis as to what it would mean to potential I-AA program such as Hofstra.

On one hand, it would be nice to have a legitimate chance to compete for a national championship, albeit a less glorified one. But I also remember the blank stares I got when telling friends about Hofstra’s outstanding I-AA football program in the mid-90s and how frustrating that was. Apparently, the carrot that lures one to Hofstra as a teenager remains just as dangly and attractive in his mid-30s.

Plus, as much as it sickens me to type this, George Mason proved in 2006 that it is still possible—bloody unlikely, but still possible—for a mid-major to overcome the odds and the obstacles placed in its way and crash the party. Of course, it also helps to have a crooked athletic director on the Selection Committee, but I digress. Why rob the rest of the mid-majors of that once-in-a-generation opportunity just to help the obscenely rich get even more obscenely rich? (Because college basketball is life, that’s why)

—It wasn’t a good opening week of the season for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the official NFL team of Defiantly Dutch, but Newsday ran a nice feature on new Buccaneers coach Raheem Morris, who tells the newspaper he is less than a decade removed from hoping he could someday become the defensive coordinator at Hofstra.

Instead, of course, Morris ascended the coaching ranks in remarkably fast fashion is now the NFL’s youngest head coach. He’s also single-handedly attempting to increase employment among Hofstra graduates: Ex-Dutchmen Kyle Arrington and Kareem Huggins made the Buccaneers’ 53-man roster and practice squad, respectively. If only Hofstra graduates ran websites and newspapers. Sigh.

—Lastly, I’ll end where I began with our fantasy draft, because I’m sure you want to know about my fantasy team as much as I want to know about yours, and let you know that while I may be an inconsistent blogger, I am consistent when it comes to following my own fantasy football advice. That’s right, I drafted the Colts’ Donald Brown, a mere 54 weeks after he carved up the Dutchmen in UConn’s 35-3 win.

Watch out world and watch out Sully Ray, who was in such a hurry to leave a draft that lasted several hours beyond his bedtime that he left his sharp Bethpage Black U.S. Open hat here. Sully Ray wrote me earlier today with a brief but forceful request: “Don’t wear my golf hat.”

Apparently, he’s forgotten how I infuse non-descript hats with character as well as world-wide fame.


Fine, Sully Ray. I’ll trade you your hat for Cowboys wide receiver Roy Williams. Otherwise, the hat and I are going on the road with Extreme.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

In which I interrupt this basketball season to announce the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as the official NFL team of Defiantly Dutch

If Raheem Morris' first act as Buccaneers head coach is to bring back Bucco Bruce--except in blue and gold--he will instantly become one of favorite people ever.

Was traveling all day Friday, so imagine my surprise when I got a text at 1:35 a.m. this morning from semi-loyal reader JG about the only other team I root for outside of the Flying Dutchmen: “Wow, shocker on Gruden.”

That was nothing, though, compared to the surprise of clicking on ESPN once we got settled in our hotel room and seeing the name of his likely successor: Raheem Morris. That’s the Raheem Morris who played safety at Hofstra from 1994-97, otherwise known as the bulk of the Defiantly Dutch Era, and spent time as a graduate assistant and defensive backs coach with the Flying Dutchmen in 1998 and 2000, respectively.

That’s right. Someone who played football while I was at Hofstra is now an NFL head coach. Boy I’m getting old and inconsequential.

I told my wife the news, to which she replied “Oh that’s convenient. Now you get to name the Buccaneers as the official NFL team of Defiantly Dutch.”

Well, yeah.

This is pretty interesting for multiple reasons beyond Morris’ Hofstra ties. He’s just 32, which will make him one of the youngest head coaches in NFL history. Morris has been viewed as a rapidly rising head coach candidate even though he hasn’t even coached a game as a coordinator: The Buccaneers promoted him from defensive backs coach to defensive coordinator Christmas Day, after which he interviewed for the head honcho job with the Denver Broncos.

And Morris’ hiring is quite a feather in the cap of the NFL, which encourages diversity in its head coaching ranks with the “Rooney Rule.” But two years before the “Rooney Rule” was instituted, Morris began his coaching career as a minority intern with the Jets under Herm Edwards. I remember attending a press conference at Weeb Ewbank Hall in which Morris talked about the program. Who knew I was watching the birth of an NFL head coach?

It’s also interesting to examine the Bucs’ thought process here. Three of the four remaining head coaches in the NFL playoffs have been head coaches for two years or less. Clearly, the Bucs think they can be the next team to find a Mike Tomlin or John Harbaugh or Ken Whisenhunt.

And if I think I feel old and inconsequential, imagine how Gruden feels. It seems like he’s been the Hot Young Coach forever, but this is proof that the shelf life of a Hot Young Coach is finite. Gruden is only 46—younger than both Harbaugh and Whisenhunt—but he’s been an NFL head coach for 11 straight years and hasn’t won a playoff game since the Super Bowl following the 2002 season.

The Hot Young Coach is now, officially, a retread…shoved out of office for a Flying Dutchman. What a world. Go Bucs.

***

We didn’t forget there’s a basketball game today against Northeastern, the hottest team in the CAA. The Dutchmen will prove they have plenty of—wait for it!!—pride by coming up with a much better performance than the one they mustered up against Drexel Wednesday. I’ll even wager they’ll hold a lead!

Litos is keeping the faith about the Dutchmen and believes there will be a day when the gang that can’t shoot straight will become the gang that can’t miss. I don’t think there’s much chance of a breakout performance today, though, against a Northeastern team that has yet to be challenged since conference play began For Real. The Huskies have won all five CAA games this month by an average of 17 points.

Charles Jenkins is the pick to click—it has to happen at some point, right?—but I have a hard time imagining the Dutchmen derailing the Huskies’ juggernaut. Perhaps a competitive loss can give the Dutchmen something to build on with William & Mary and UNC-Wilmington—two of the CAA’s three one-win teams—on the docket within the next 11 days.

We won’t be at the game due to the unexpected out-of-state trip, but Sully Ray may step in with some thoughts. Stop back Monday to see if he’s as good with words as he is with T-shirts.

And in the meantime, check out this Litos’ excellent blog from Thursday in which he makes quite a good case for a 22-game CAA schedule. It makes so much sense, it’ll never happen.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com. And join the Defiantly Dutch group at Facebook today!