A new way to recruit

For the last couple of year the world of recruiting has started to change. Instead of players keeping their views on their recruitment underwraps, players are taking all of the their thoughts to the public, while others are coming up with tech savy ways of announcing which programs they will play for.

St. Patrick's Guard Kyrie Irving has been at the front of using social media during the process. Irving, who has signed on to play at Duke, has been keeping people up to date with his views with his twitter account. In October, Irving let the world know that he was hanging out with fellow top recruit Tobias Harris at Kentucky. In addition to the twitter, Irving also has a ustream channel that he takes questions from different fans. The twitter aspects of recruiting appears to be growing with 2010 basketball class: Will Barton (Memphis), CJ Fair (undecided), Josh Shelby (undecided), and Kendall Marshall (North Carolina) all have accounts, some of them are open to the public while others are protected. These few just show how much social media is growing when it comes to recruiting.

On Friday, Harrison Barnes took announcing his college pick to a different level. After giving a speech about the final six six schools that were involved in the recruiting process, Barnes said he would Skype the college coach that he was committing to after a couple of seconds Roy Williams face popped up on the screen. I guess the days of just picking a hat up and putting it on are almost over.

Social media is continuing to grow and over the next couple of years many other top high school players wilil be turning to social media.

Professional Tailgating: USF is still not that good

It was not the best start of the season for the State University of New Jersey, but it appears that they have turned it around by doing what they do best beat the hell of the South Florida. Here are some of the sites from the Rutgers South Florida game.

The game was so big that even the Arsenal fans game out of the game

White Castle and Blue Moon what could be better for a cold windy night of tailgating
The cars coming in late for the game

Our friend gets himself stuck under his car looking for his glove that blew away

Despite a ton of empty seats, love the RU in the crowd nice touch

A National Tragedy

Around Germany today, people were still in shocked over the death of former National Team goalkeeper Robert Enke. According to reports in Europe, Enke committed suicide after battling depression for many years. The story was front page all over Germany this morning

Here is how some of the German newspapers cover Enke's death

Opening Night Notebook

The season is here and here are some thoughts on the opening night of the college basketball season:
• Love the old school Frank McGuire uniforms for the Heels.
• Ed Davis looks old school in his get up.
• Will Graves has to give the Heels some type of outside shot this year.
• Larry Drew II is going to be ok at the point.
• Really impressed by Zeke and FIU, they never gave up during the game and played really well. I thought.
• I think Triche is going to be fine at the point for the 'Cuse.
• 'Cuse's Welsey Johnson might make the biggest impact of any newcomer in the Big East.
• Chris Joseph looks like he is going to give the 'Cuse quality minutes off the bench this season.

Now this is a NFL Crowd

Jags fans showed in mass on Sunday as they played the Chiefs. Only 45,546 showed up to watch the home team. This year the teams has not drawn more then 50,000 to any game and the way it looks it might be a long time before they do.

The fast lane to the NHL Blueline

For year, people have talked about the amount of time that it takes for an young defensemen to develop into a good player, but several players from the 2008 NHL Draft are making a mockery that view.

This year several defensemen from that group are making major contributions around the league. Drew Doughty, Kings; Zach Bogosian, Thrashers; Luke Schenn, Maple Leafs (above); Tyler Myers, Sabres; Alex Pietrangelo, St. Louis and Michael Del Zotto, Rangers (right) have all made major contributions to their clubs. Luca Sbisa made a contribution last year to the Flyers but during the off season was traded to the Ducks and sent back to Lethbridge of the WHL. There are also a bunch of these young defensemen from the class in the AHL including Erik Karlsson, Ottawa.

While some of these defensemen were expected to do great things, Myers and Del Zotto were not expected to shine this quickly. Myers improved his reputation a ton last year with his performance at the World Junior Championships, while Del Zotto impressed during the training camp and has seen significate time on the Rangers first power play unit.

There are a couple of reasons that these defensemens have grown up quickly in the league. One of the major reasons is they are getting great training in the junior hockey. All of the kids that have made an impact on the back line have come from the Western Hockey League or the Ontario Hockey League. These leagues are almost run like professional programs allowing for the players to grow on and off the ice. Another major for the growth is the NHL salary cap. Teams can not afford veterans as their fourth and fifth defensemen, so they are turning to younger and cheaper talent to fill those voids.

Watching a young player growup is always fun. Sure there are going to ups and downs. With these defensemen its no different, but all of them look like they are going to be in the league for a long time.