December mailbag

I've gotten caught up just enough to finally get to answering some emails. I sincerely apologize for not getting back quicker, but football season leads to seven day work weeks and next thing you know, the Christmas tree is up and the calendar is ready to turn. This is the lion's share of the emails I received over the past six weeks or so. The one "theme" of emails I didn't answer were the classic "Why are you guys showing Game A instead of Game B". For nine years I've been screaming from the rooftops that Mark Haggard and myself have ZERO input on the programming for ABC regional college football. As a matter of fact our station has ZERO input, we are simply assigned a game. If there's a mistake, it's not our fault - trust me! We find it amusing that people think we would have the ability to change the game on WPDE from Penn State to Florida State if we wanted to. That is not the case!

On to the emails:

Andy writes:

I live in Florence and have for 3 years. I find it amazing that you always start sports with Coastal Carolina when you have the 2 big schools, Div 1, USC and Clemson 2nd and 3rd. I understand that Coastal is in Myrtle Beach but citizens of this state have been following the Tigers and Gamecocks much longer. I bet if a poll was done, more citizens of Myrtle Beach would rather see USC or Clemson highlights first. I lived in Columbia for 8 years and they had another school there too. Benedict College. WIS would give them much attention but would start with the Carolina. I grew up in the upstate, and WSPA would do the same, Wofford would then get their highlights second. I want to continue to watch wpde but will have to switch to the other stations when it comes to sports. Thanks

Andy:

I appreciate you writing in. First of all, I appreciate criticism where it doesn't get nasty and your argument is valid. In a nutshell, we made a commitment to be the TV home of Coastal Carolina athletics with the David Bennett Show and the Cliff Ellis Show. I would say the biggest argument for leading with CCU over the Gamecocks and Clemson is that the majority of CCU games are not televised while nearly every single Gamecocks and Clemson game can be seen on major TV (ESPN, etc). The majority of CCU games are at 7:00pm - we have a 7:00pm newscast and I can tell you without a doubt that we've led with USC or Clemson in the early show. If we were not giving Clemson and USC their proper due in the sportscast, that would be a different subject, but the reality is we are doing extended highlights each and every Saturday of all three schools. We are well aware of the importance of the Gamecocks and Clemson to our local sports coverage and will continue to do everything we can to bring as much information on both programs as possible. Our commitment to CCU through the coaches shows will continue as well.

Cindy Moe writes

I have an End Zone question. Concerning the team that wins but aren't favored to. Watching the End Zone the past few Friday nights (Rushing to get home from away games just to see it)This past Friday I had my husband record it so our son could see how their team is making a great come back. When our teams spotlight came up, there was very little said about how our guys worked hard to make the come back, and one thing that eveyone in the community can see and know how the game went is End Zone. We have been very disappointed in the display of your program- Spot lighting the team that lost (but were favored to win) and the only acalade given to the winning team was the final score. It really looked that our team lost if you were just going by what was being said. I feel maybe you should promote the winning team a bit more not just the one that is being favored to win. Just a suggestion. We'll keep watching.

Cindy:
Glad you brought this up. We are using every resource possible to bring our communities the most extensive coverage of high school football every Friday night. Our general manager, news director and Ed Piotrowski (hands down the best football shooter among meteorologists!) are all grabbing cameras on Friday night in order for us to get as many games as possible. What happens is that we have anywhere between 10 to 12 shooters grabbing 15-18 games every week. Doing that simple math shows that a number of our shooters have to grab two games in a night (we call it the double dip). When someone double dips, they start at one game and shoot the first quarter or half of the second and then go to the next game and grab the third quarter. When you double dip, you are always running the risk of missing out on significant action from one of the games. You need to have a little luck go your way on a double dip. For example, if someone were to be going to Loris followed by North Myrtle Beach - if the Loris game is scoreless at the half, the shooter has to leave the game even though there are no major highlights. Hypothetically, if that shooter leaves with no scores and then goes to North Myrtle Beach where the Chiefs have a 35-0 halftime lead, then they are shooting a third quarter where NMB may be a lot more conservative with the game under control. That's a dilemma we have to deal with on a regular basis. It would be great to be able to stay for all four quarters of 18 games we shoot, but it simply can not happen. We earmark a couple of the big games on the board and try and let shooters stay for the entire game, but inevitably we are going to miss some action some of the time. Sometimes we get very fortunate and it works out great. I can remember Mark Haggard shooting a Saint James/Socastee double dip where he got three TD's in the first 16 minutes of game action at the Shark Tank and then arrived at Socastee where the game had four scores in the 3rd quarter. Sometimes it works out like that, and sometimes it doesn't. That is why sometimes you'll see a team that lost 42-7 get their highlight on simply because they scored when our cameras were there. I hope that explains what is going on. Here's hoping that every double dip has a happy ending in 2009!

JD writes:

I was just wondering if you guys cover the CAROLINA hurricanes or anything else besides USC,clemson,or ccu?

JD:

The Carolina Hurricanes have a niche of fans here on the Grand Strand, but quite frankly it's a small niche. That being said, if there's room for the Canes on a night when they are playing, I have absolutely no problem with putting them in the sportscast, but our focus is to show as much local sports coverage as possible. We will do our best to show 'Canes highlights whenever we can.


Carlin Munnerlyn writes:

Why are the points off so badly on the "Leading Tackles" for the End Zone? Someone is not doing a very good job. Jamie Munnerlyn has been leading the entire season up until last week where he is got behind by only 3...Johnsonville had a by. He has 114 points before playing Hemingway. I want an answer. This is breaking his heart....Channel 15 needs to quit putting up stats. if they can't keep them correct. I expect a phone call.

Carlin:
Glad you brought this up. Each Sunday/Monday during the high school football season, I get stats from the area high schools. Each team's stats presentation is different, but it's easy to break down yards, averages, etc. The one unique stat is the tackle category. Some schools have their tackles broken down by solo, assist and TFL along with sacks. You take those four numbers and that is your total tackle number. Other schools credit .5 tackle for assists. To try and be consistent, I was adding the four categories above and counting them as one tackle. Johnsonville's stats were unique in that they had it broken down by solo, assist, assist #2, TFL and sacks. The secondary assist was something that the majority of the other schools did not have so I was discounting it. Jamie Munnerlyn (who had a great senior season by the way) had tackle numbers far greater than everyone in the ara because of that second column. After reading your email, I decided to count Jamie's tackle total the way Johnsonville high school gave them to me. I do apologize as I didn't mean to take away what Jamie was doing. The tackle number on the leaderboard in our stats section has Jamie's correct tackle total as given to us by the Flashes.


Barry Fowler writes:

I was just wondering if WWMB-21 is going to carry ACC Basketball.

Barry:
To the best of my knowledge, CW 21 will once again have ACC basketball games. That schedule gets started up in January.

Mike Pirozzi writes:

I was really intrigued by your segment tonight with David Bennett. Something was said to the effect of "football is a microcosm of life. You can learn more on the field than you can in a classroom." Hey folks, get with it. There are so many football players who can't read, write or even speak proper English. They are brought up in this fantasy world that football is everything. You need to stop glorifying these individuals and start stressing educating them to assimilate themselves into the reality of everday life where you have to actually have to work for working man's wages and raise a family without resorting to somebody else to bail you out of your poor decision making.

Mike:
I guess you can take the quote from Coach Bennett in a couple of different ways. It seems as if the negative stories seem to stick out more than the positive ones. I can tell you from a CCU football perspective that the high character guys who go to class, volunteer numerous hours to different community projects and are overall great guys outnumber the bad apples 10 to 1. Yet we are not doing stories about them on the news. If you've been around Coach Bennett as long as I am he constantly hammers home the message that the priorities of a CCU football player are: God and family first, academics second and then football. The context that Coach Bennett was using football as a microcosm of life was that not everything is going to go your way on the gridiron and that often applies to life. A kid like Jamie Childers was ready to be the star quarterback, then in an instant gets meningitis and has a long road of recovery to get back to where he was. Dominique Davenport is the definition of a student athlete and heavily involved in CCU's Campus Outreach program. He saw his season get cut short early with a broken elbow. He'll spend the next six months working around the clock to get back on the football field. I certainly don't condone with some of the young men did off the field during the 2008 season. That has been well documented. But the majority of CCU football players will graduate and be valued members of society. Unfortunately, those stories don't get on the front page of the newspaper or are the lead story in a sportscast.

Betsy Rowell writes:

When will your applications be avaliable for the college scholarship (sports zone). Thank You

Betsy:

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we will be able to give at least one $5,000 scholarship this year. The entire WPDE Scholarship fund is based on our one day charity golf tournament. With the economy as turbulent as it is, Ed Piotrowski and I are hoping that we will be able to secure the major sponsorship to continue the event. We've got some ideas on trying to keep things going, but it's not a guarantee at this point. Our scholarship fund is a small operation that survives thanks to the overwhelming support of our community. We'll do everything we can to keep it going. If we are able to secure sponsorship, we'll have a deadline of sometime in May for applications and all the information will be online at carolinalive.com

Derron Smith writes:

I think my cousin Antonio McAllister ''Bubba'' from ''Timmonsville'' should be on the north and south team.Runningback/cornerback ''Please'' Select him

Derron:

I've got your back on this one, but we have no say in the North/South rosters. We did put Bubba on our WPDE All-Zone team along with his teammate Fredrick Wilhite. I'm glad we were able to do that as they both deserved the honor. It seems to be quite difficult for 1A players to make All-Star teams. I'm still in shock that Kwame Geathers of Carvers Bay and Lake View's Quandon Christian did not make either All-Star game (both 1A players). Glad that Bubba was a part of our banquet - he had a great year and was always giving us highlights on Friday night!

Pam writes:

I just wanted to know the qualifications for the zoneman award.

Pam: I answered this question in a previous blog entry - I went ahead and pasted it below:

There are many questions every year about the Zoneman and the All-Zone team so I will explain the process. First of all, the balloting for the Zoneman is decided by 40 voters. 34 coaches, Hags and myself, and four other media members and other coaches pick the Zoneman on the first week of November. Each ballot is first, second and third place for top player in the WPDE viewing area. Underclassmen are eligible as well as any player in the WPDE viewing area. The reason we choose the first week in November is so we have ample time to gather the ballots, solidify the podium and order the trophy which usually takes 3-4 weeks to get to us.

Many people will be upset that a certain person was not a finalist for the Zoneman Trophy. The fact of the matter is that there are 10 to 12 solid candidates every single season. I can't think of a better process than giving every coach an equal vote. Many of them watch our show and see the highlights of the top players in the area. We have four players on the podium this year because every one of them eclipsed the 20 point mark (3 points for 1st, 2 points for 2nd, 1 point for 3rd). We always have a minimum of three on the podium and I think this year's group is excellent. We have two future Clemson Tigers (Malliciah Goodman and Quandon Christian) to go along with two Myrtle Beach Seahawks (Everett Golson and Jamere Valentine


RICK FOUNTAIN writes:

Do you cover HS basketball games? Do teams need to call in or email their scores? I can not locate Tuesday night scores online.

Rick:

Indeed we do cover high school basketball. The transition from high school football to high school basketball overlaps each other so what we've done as a general rule is to begin our coverage with the four Holiday hoops tournaments in our area (Holiday Inviational Girls, Shootout by the Sea, Florence Pepsi Classic and the Beach Ball) and then begin our Hoop Zone coverage on Tuesday's and Friday's starting in January. Beginning in January we will post scores on carolinalive.com along with an honor roll of the top performances of that night. I have also put in a request to our content manager to get the schedules of both the boys and girls basketball teams posted on each team's page. Hopefully that will get done by the end of the year and we'll be able to get each page updated with scores and records. Have no fear, the hoops brigade is coming!


Todd Crane writes:

Rich, I can't believe that you NEVER even mentioned the Girls HS Holiday Invitational that starts tomorrow in Myrtle Beach, with 16 teams. Even Crescent Banks who is sponsoring the tourney, advertised on your sisterstation at 7:30 last night about the tournament, and they are giving free tickets! Disgruntled!

Todd:
Have no fear, we are providing day by day coverage of the tournament as well as our other three Holiday Hoops events.

Denita Elliott writes:

On the zone cup standings, Myrtle Beach High school did not make it to the semi-finals of Girls High School tennis. They were defeated in the quarterfinals by Hilton Head not the semi finals. Waccamaw and Johnsonville both made it to the semi-finals with one additional win. Myrtle Beach should only have 25 points not 50 points.

Denita:

Indeed you are correct! I've made the appropriate changes in the overall standings. I encourage all fans of a particular high school to double check my math work so we can have the Zone Cup standings correct! I appreciate the heads up.


As always, I enjoy the questions and the interaction. Hope everyone has a great Christmas and Holiday season. We'll be at both bowls and get ready for the Cliff Ellis Show and all the high school hoops you can handle. Also, we've compiled the top 15 local sports stories which will air on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. If you're not going to snuggle by the fireplace with WPDE news, fear not as we will post the entire list and web video on carolinalive.com!

My 2008 Heisman Ballot

Now that Everett Golson has been crowned the Zoneman, we can find out who will win the Heisman in 2008. I wonder one day if Golson will win the Heisman. He's got a long way to go, but his makeup off the field is the biggest intangible going his way. I've been fortunate enough to have a Heisman vote for the past eight years.
This is the year of the quarterback and like many ballots, I have three signal callers on my list. I feel bad that Graham Harrell didn't get an invite to New York, as the Texas quarterback deserved to make the podium. I was very close to putting Myron Rolle on my ballot as I think the Florida State safety is beyond the definition of a student athlete. Now that my ballot is cast, I have a little bit of regret that I was afraid to pull the trigger on a "symbolic vote". To be a Rhodes Scholar and play at a high level of college football is simply astounding. I wish that the Heisman ballot expanded to the top 5 instead of just three.
We know that the top three will be (in no particular order) - Tim Tebow, Sam Bradford and Colt McCoy. I am guessing that Bradford is the favorite based on the website www.stiffarmtrophy.com (a great site to check out if your into projections). You can go around in circles talking about the merits and nitpick about all three of these guys, but in the end here's what my thought process was. I voted Tim Tebow first last year and I didn't see anything that made me need to change my pick this year. It seemed as if he fell off the favorite radar after a week four loss to Ole Miss which followed a less than glitzy statline against Tennessee (the Gators won that game 30-6). Now that we've arrived at the end of the year, a one point loss to the Rebels isn't as bad as it seemed earlier in the year. If you look at Tebow's stats in the loss (24 of 38, 319 yards, 1 TD pass, 0 INT and 2 TD runs), those are some pretty good numbers in a defeat. He doesn't have the same mind boggling numbers as last year, but 28 TD's and only 2 INT's really sticks out as a major plus. Bradford and McCoy are both excellent and are both deserving of this award. In the end, I couldn't come up with a reason to take my first place vote for Tebow off the table. So here is my official Heisman vote:

1st place - Tim Tebow, Florida
2nd place - Sam Bradford, Oklahoma
3rd place - Colt McCoy, Texas

It should be a close race and there should be a little bit of drama and uncertainty when the next Heisman winner is revealed on Saturday night.

A major endorsement for Thig

When Tyler Thigpen was thrown to the wolves in Atlanta for his first career NFL start, I thought the worst. Quarterbacks from Coastal Carolina don't usually get a big window to prove their worth in the National Football League. Three picks and a trip back to the bench was not the cinderella story that CCU fans were hoping for.
But the second chance, changed everything. When Thig went toe to toe with Brett Favre, he proved that he could play with the big boys. What's happened since then is nothing short of remarkable. Yes, Thig is 1-7 as a starter, but he has taken a nightmare situation in Kansas City and has made them somewhat competitive. The Chiefs are an absolute nightmare right now - poor defense, an offensive line that put two quarterbacks on the shelf for a year, and a Pro Bowl running back who has made more headlines off the field than on it.
The Chiefs have three games to go and it will prove to be the ulimate audition on whether Thigpen is named the starter for 2009. The Chiefs will likely have a top 5 pick and have a chance to get one of the top 2 quarterbacks on the board. Thigpen has proven that he belongs in the NFL - if the Chiefs can't figure that out, I'm sure someone else will. Remember, Brett Favre was an Atlanta Falcon before he was a Packer legend and the Saints didn't give Jake Delhomme the starter's endorsement and the Panthers are still thanking them for that.
You can put his numbers up over the last seven weeks against almost any quarterback in the league. But, forget about bloggers and sportscasters analyzing the numbers and being an armchair quarterback - listen to a Hall of Famer (click on link below).



Gonzalez: A disgrace if Thigpen isn't QB in 2009

The Banquet Circuit

I have a whole pile of emails that need answering and that will come in the coming days as soon as state champions are crowned and the banquet circuit comes to an end. This Thursday, the 9th annual Chevy End Zone banquet will take place at the Holiday Inn West in Myrtle Beach. The very next day is the Mr. Football and North/South awards ceremony at Myrtle Beach high school.

There are many questions every year about the Zoneman and the All-Zone team so I will explain the process. First of all, the balloting for the Zoneman is decided by 40 voters. 34 coaches, Hags and myself, and four other media members and other coaches pick the Zoneman on the first week of November. Each ballot is first, second and third place for top player in the WPDE viewing area. Underclassmen are eligible as well as any player in the WPDE viewing area. The reason we choose the first week in November is so we have ample time to gather the ballots, solidify the podium and order the trophy which usually takes 3-4 weeks to get to us.

Many people will be upset that a certain person was not a finalist for the Zoneman Trophy. The fact of the matter is that there are 10 to 12 solid candidates every single season. I can't think of a better process than giving every coach an equal vote. Many of them watch our show and see the highlights of the top players in the area. We have four players on the podium this year because every one of them eclipsed the 20 point mark (3 points for 1st, 2 points for 2nd, 1 point for 3rd). We always have a minimum of three on the podium and I think this year's group is excellent. We have two future Clemson Tigers (Malliciah Goodman and Quandon Christian) to go along with two Myrtle Beach Seahawks (Everett Golson and Jamere Valentine). It was a fairly close race and we'll reveal the winner this Thursday night and air our special on Sunday at 2pm on WWMB-TV 21.

This year's Mr. Football presentation and the North South All-Star game is going to bring us a new and exciting project. WPDE Sports will be producing a 30 minute special that features the highlights of the North South All Star game and the presentation of South Carolina's Mr. Football. This will be a great opportunity to showcase all the great festivities of All-Star week and we will air the special on Sunday, December 14th across the state (WPDE in Florence/Myrtle Beach, WACH in Columbia, WCIV in Charleston and WYFF in Greenville). It's a great challnege to turn around a lot of material in a short amount of time and distribute it across the entire state, but we're excited to give the North South week its proper due.

Looking forward to answering a host of emails in the coming days!