Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From the Grand Forks Erald, the sports editor. It's mister
Tom Miller.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Good morning Tom, Good morning guys.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Good morning Tom. Were you in Sioue Falls?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I was. I was got a got a nice couple
of four hour drives in me and without wife or kids.
I didn't make one stop. I was dead set on
making the whole track. It's kind of got a nice
little drive. Usually the south, usually to South Dakota from
Grand Forts. You gotta deal with some some annoyances on
(00:31):
the road with weather and all that, but this time
of the year it was glorious.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah. Well, I mean, Sue Falls is essentially the center
of our universe. That's why all the conference things are
always there. So, uh, the Missouri Valley Football Conference, Now,
this was a new kind of get together, right. This
is kind of everybody because they've done like the the
you know, video streaming type stuff, but this was all
(00:58):
one stop shopping basically for everybody in one place.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yeah. It was the first in person Missouri Valley Football
Media Day that I've been a part of. They've they've
done them on zoom or you know before that, just
a conference call, I guess. So, yeah, this is the
first time able to able to get together, and I thought,
I went, really, well, Uh, it was a great opportunity
to to just you know, chat with some folks you
(01:26):
don't get to see all that often and get an
opportunity to you know, interview coaches and players and commissioners,
and so from my perspective, it was a great opportunity.
And I love getting a chance to kind of crank
up the football content in July.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Still, Yeah, I bet you've got all the standard answers,
didn't you.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, that's kind of the nice part about avoiding some
of that, like zoom interview conference calls is that you know,
and from my opinion, the the quotes that the TV
media folks are after are are much different than the
quotes that I'm after in terms of, you know, maybe
with TV folks you might hear a little bit more
often of you know, some of those cliches and gosh,
(02:11):
they're really excited. You know, everybody's really excited at media day,
and I guess I'm there kind of you know, skipping
the bolognay to some extent and trying to dive into
a couple of different areas that that an in person
media day gives me an opportunity to chat up a
you know, like a Doug Phillis from Youngstown State or
(02:32):
Nick Hill from from southern Illinois. You don't always get
those opportunities to to chat one on one with a
coach like that, and and I certainly try to avoid,
you know, I don't I don't care to ask the
question tell me how you guys are going to be
this year kind of thing, at least on the record,
you know. So I'm I'm getting some other stuff and
I'm working on those stories now and they'll kind of
(02:54):
slowly roll out here over the next week or two.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
So were you allowed to talk to NDSU's head football coach.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I funny you asked that. I requested that, but I
was directed towards the kind of the press conference style
zoom partial in person, partial remote zoom press conference style
they were doing. I wasn't really interested in that. I
was more interested in one on one conversation, so kind
(03:25):
of stuck to those in the a different area of
the venue there at the Samford Pentagon. So yes and no,
I could have could have had some some press conference
style chaps with them, and I elected that to.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Okay, well, that's an interesting one. But everybody else was
fairly available. I would assume at that at that thing,
I would assume.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, yeah, you think you're gonna be able to talk
to all ten head coaches and a couple of commissioners.
And that's just not the reality. There's constantly being kind
of whisked the way to shoot this promo for this group,
and you know, do this interview in this TV interview,
and so you know, everybody's time was kind of tough.
But at the same moment, you know, sometimes it's kind
(04:07):
of nice too. You could just kind of skip the
skip like we said earlier, kind of skepticalliches and get
right down to business.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah. Hey, I think there was the the current commissioner
of Missouri Valley Football Conference because Patty steps away after
I don't know, serving forever in a long time role.
But the big question is is, you know, will the
Missouri Valley Football Conference do with scholarships like maybe some
(04:35):
other FCS conferences are looking to do put up guard
rails limit the number of scholarships. You know, these are
huge conversations in the FCS world right now. The indication
was is that we're not going to put up guard
rails for our schools because we we feel like that's
just going to be more competition, so that will be
(04:57):
the game we play. So is that kind of what is?
Is that what you heard over the over the time
in Two Falls?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah. I asked that question to Missouri Valley Commissioner Jeff Jackson,
who's stepping in for Patty Vverto after like forty years
or whatever it was here, and basically, you know, he
gave me a few different reasons why, but basically said
that he wasn't interested in capping scholarships. He did say
that that is a choice that's ultimately left up to
(05:25):
the board, which is comprised of school presidents and chancellors,
so he doesn't exactly get to make that decision, but
he's not interested in it. And my takeaway too from
that conversation was also like, he didn't quite say because
you might get sued, but I think that's also kind
of a reason that one might not cap scholarships. I
(05:48):
think anything that limits the earning potential of student athletes
is going to be challenged in court at this juncture
in college athletics, we like litigation.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Tim go ahead, let's go to court. That's for sure.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
My goodness, I guess seems like that's all they do. Well.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Lots of Legion baseball going on in town.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, yeah, trying to keep track of that all right. Now,
I've got Alex Faber or our new sports reporter. He's
over in East Grand Forks covering that sub state twelve
tournament that got moved from Bamigie. It was supposed to
be have a Mimigi, but their field got smacked with
those storms that rolled through Bamigi a few weeks ago now,
and so that tournament kind of last minute. I moved
(06:32):
to East Grand Forks and East Side's still alive. Lost
of Amigie in the winters bracket yesterday, but beat Pete,
but beat Perham to stay active here today, we'll have
to win a couple more here to see if they
can knock off Bamigie and Alexandria and Fergus I think
are the four teams left with East Side there, so
(06:52):
they're still alive. And then I think Monday starts, the
Royals are in the state tournament there in Williston, I
believe is where that that state tournament is at.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Oh goodness, way out there, okay, and the Royals have
you know, had to kind of think of a tough
run recently. I saw the Blues got a nice win,
narrow win yesterday, I think against the mine, not twenty
six ers Park River Layingdon Thompson usual suspects heading to
Park River for that Legion state tournament. So yeah, I
mean the region providing plenty of plenty of angles right
(07:27):
now on the baseball front.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, I'm ready for ready for Legion to wrap up
here because boy, you know, we we're talking in July,
but you only football opens fall camp July thirty first,
so that's a week from yesterday. So we're we're turning
the page here to the fall sports pretty dark quick.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Well, here's a question. Somebody asked me, would it be
possible that UND goes to multiple quarterbacks within a game?
I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I I'd be stunned if they didn't. I think I
think the better question is is it two quarterbacks or three? Uh?
Which which seems odd, but you dabbled in that with
uh Tommy Schuster, Quincy Vaughn and Simon Rumfo there a
couple of years ago. I would not be surprised to
see any combination of you know, Kamensky, Javance Simon. I
(08:23):
think they all have fairly different skill sets. Although you know,
at some point you're probably gonna have to figure out
who's your athletic change of pace quarterback. You probably don't
roll with two of them. But I sure think that
we'll see all three of those guys at some point
in some way. Uh come fall game. Yeah, I think
(08:46):
you can use I think you can use especially Simon,
in a lot of unique ways. But I also I
don't have a full picture of what uh Javans brings
to the table. You know, he was in town for
a month when springball hits the ground running, and he's
a young football player to begin with. He has he
(09:07):
has an incredible skill set, but I think he was
a little overwhelmed the springball. It could very well sloat
out for him at fall camp. And we're talking about
one quarterback and not three. But the way I see it,
I think we're gonna see multiple quarterbacks this year.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Interesting well, I guess will be one of the big
hot items that we'll be paying attention to as fall
camp is, believe it or not, just yeah, of course, Yeah,
everybody will have their idea of who should get it,
that's for sure. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, well here's the
only thing. And this is just me when it comes
to that stuff, because you know, we've seen some of that,
(09:43):
Like when it was Quincy Von, you know, there wasn't
any secrets. Now stopping it was another thing because you
knew basically was going to come in and do one
thing more often than not if they ran something else
out of that to kind of confuse the opposite it it. It
wasn't always pretty. Maybe we got some success out of it,
(10:04):
but it wasn't always pretty.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
So sometimes if you have multiple quarterbacks, it's kind of
a tell of kind of what you're doing a little bit.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, I was a little maddening sometimes when uh with
watching some of the Quincy Von stuff, you know you
really thought that maybe they'd have opened open things up
for him. But there were a couple of cases, you know,
the uh the fake dive and the pitch to scoping
around them to you know, really set the stage, and
that went over Northcota State in the Aliria Center and
(10:35):
then the one that didn't go so well obviously was
over time at Youngstown State, but the Bison also uh
went through this with Cole Peyton. You know, I felt
like last year with Cole Peyton was in the game,
that was a pretty big tell for North Kota State
as well. And yeah, be curious if that becomes what
what U and D will do with Jadvance this year. Yeah,
(10:55):
because I do think he's gonna have a a uh
elite skill set when it comes to scrambling. I just
think he is going to be very tough to bring
down and that's gonna be hard to keep off the field.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
So they you know, you got together, you visited with
other media, you saw the coaches roll through, got to
talk with many of them, I would, you know, and
we saw the polls come out. I mean, in my mind,
NDSU is a heavy favorite this year. I mean, you know,
as a U and D person, it's hard for me
to even say that without getting an acrid taste. But
(11:28):
you know, just looking at it, they would seem to
be like far and away because there's a little bit
of an unknown with Celtakota State, They're still going to
be great despite you know, some losses. And then you
got you know, Youngstown quarterback that we couldn't tackle, so
so so so, I mean, I mean obviously he was
a thorn in our side, I mean in a lot
of people's sides. But and then Southern Illinois in there.
(11:50):
But I just still think they're you know, in this instance,
I think they're far and away clear cut.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah, there's question marks at quarterback. You know, they they
were able to ride the beauty of a five year
system quarterback there with cam Miller and now you know,
we've seen some some flashes of Cole Payton, but he
hasn't had the full keys to the car yet and
now he will, so there's a little bit of question there.
(12:17):
But yeah, I mean the wide receiver group that they
have and just the fact that they consistently crank out
winners at the line of scrimmage. It's hard to it's
hard to say anything against that line of thinking. It's
gonna be really interesting with the South Coast schools just
because of the amount of turnover that existed there with
the head coaches and the rosters, and there's a lot
(12:39):
of moving parts, and I think everybody's kind of just
assume they get back to exactly where they left off
a year ago, and sometimes history will tell us that's
the case. But there's still a lot of a lot
of question marks with with those two teams that I'm
curious about seeing how that plays out.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, that will be interesting. Like I say, I mean,
these are just preseason and opinions and predictions. They mean zero.
As Tim will often say, it doesn't mean anything. So
other than that, I guess we'll just try to take
a deep breath over the next several days and get
get ready to go with the preseason camp which starts
next week. So Tim, anything else for Tom this morning? No,
(13:18):
thank you very much, all right, we we we appreciate
that the Herald covered the new hockey sweaters unveiling. So
I've already got my two cents in and Tim Blake
says they look sharp, all of them, so he's okay,
So we're all good. Thank you for covering that.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, I am not a Jersey's guy. I don't care,
don't have an opinion where whatever you want winning games
seems cooler than I don't know. I have a hard
time getting too deep into uniforms.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Maybe here I'm.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Too old now, okay, so.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Maybe the one write up is about all we're gonna
get in the old on the Jersey front. Then we're
not going to go into a deep dive.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, no follow ups planned?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Sorry, Okay, sounds good, Tom Miller. We appreciate your coverage,
both local and a bigger picture in our college sports
coverage as well, including University North Dakota football in their
upcoming season from this past week's Missouri Valley Football Conference
media day down in Sioux Falls. And of course you
can catch it all by getting your subscription to the
(14:26):
Grand Forks Herald and their website edition digitally is easy
to use, and make sure you check it out because
Tom and his team love covering the sports that you follow,
and it's all right there at your fingertips. Tom, We
appreciate you and hopefully we'll be a day into practice
the next time we visit. Thanks for this, Have a
good one, okayks.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, absolutely, hope see you out there, Paul camp go.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Wait all right, sounds good. We'll talk to you later. Thanks. There,
goes Tom Miller of the Grand Forks Herald