Now that I've been convinced to try writing this blog, I have to come up with something to actually write about for the first post. Assuming I stick with this, I'm going to write a series of previews for UVA football, which is actually something I'm looking forward to since I've always wanted to do it. However that will have to wait until I take some time to write it.
For now, I will begin by introducing myself briefly and listing my qualifications.
My name is Tiki, which is obviously not my real name, but was my pledge name when I pledged Trigon at UVA.
I've never played any sport at any level above HS. I've never played any kind of organized football, I'm not an expert, I'm just a big fan who's watched hudreds of football games at many different levels and who's read countless books on football history, strategy, and theory. My resume for basketball and most other sports is the same. Also, I spend an inordinate amount of time reading about, thinking about, and talking about sports in general and specifally Virginia sports.
Here's my NCAA08 review for Xbox 360. Its heavily weighted towards Virginia.
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The gameplay is good, although very similar to last year. The recruiting got a major overhaul, and frankly I feel like it is overkill. You get 10 hours every week during the season to call prospects and discuss your school with them. I haven't finished a season yet, so i don't know what happens in the offseason, but so far its kind of annoying.
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UVA sucks. The defense is pretty decent, led by
Chris Long who is ranked 92 overall. The offense is led by
Cedric Peerman who is an 85 overall. After Peerman and
Jameel Sewell (81) the offense is terrible.
Keith Payne, listed on the UVA website as 243 lbs, is in the game at 195 lbs. Thats quite a difference. I thought maybe it was
Raynard Horne instead of Payne, but the player is #32 and that's Payne.
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Some of the ratings are way out of line as well:
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Chris Gould is ranked a 53 overall at K. I will admit that Gould did not have a great season last year, but when you are handling PK, P and KO duty at the same time, your performance is going to suffer. He's a much better kicker than 53.
- Vic Hall is underrated. I realize he's never shown much on the field in college, and his experience at CB is negligible. He's a 75 overall at CB, which might be accurate. However, he's rated as 88 speed and 87 acceleration. Those numbers sound good at first glance, but they are 15th and 20th highest, respectively, on the team. By all accounts he's one of the fastest, most dynamic players on the team.
- Jon Copper is a 70 overall, and his strength is rated 68. He's supposed to be one of the strongest guys on the team, especially for his size. Based on production, he was possibly the best player on the team last year and he's rated below 2 true freshman MLBs.
- Nate Collins gets a raw deal, as he is third on the DT depth chart behind Allen Billyk and true freshman Nick Jenkins. All three are rated very similarly, but Collins was a beast last year, and deserves to be the #2 DT behind Billyk. Jenkins may well be good enough to earn meaningful snaps this year, but I'd be surprised if he's better than Collins right now.
- Also notable were the absences of several players that should not be absent.
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The exclusions of
Marc Verica and Raynard Horne are inexcusable. Verica is possibly our backup QB this year and Horne possibly our backup RB.
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The absence of
Gordie Sammis is a little more understandable, because he was a senior last year. That said, how much work would it take to find out that he was granted an extra year of eligibility? Our OL depth is weak enough irl and when you take away perhaps our top backup interior OL, its a major blow. In fact, there are so few OLs on the team that you cannot redshirt both
Billy Cuffee and
Lamar Milstead because there will not be enough tackles.
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Most of the rest of the missing players are incoming freshman, so I guess thats a little more excusable. The incoming freshman that are included are Cuffee, Milstead,
Peter Lalich,
Max Milien,
Kris Burd,
Jared Green,
Andrew Devlin,
Matt Conrath,
Anthony Mihota (included as a DT, when he's listed on the UVA website as OL/DE),
Terence Fells-Danzer,
Jared Detrick,
Aaron Taliaferro,
Ras-I Dowling,
Chase Minnifield, and
Dom Joseph. That is 15 out of the 24 players that signed with Virginia this year. Key missing players are
Landon Bradley,
Mark Ambrose,
Dontrelle Inman,
Chris Hinkebein (an important omission considering the 53 rating for Gould and the fact that he is a senior),
Corey Mosley and
Zane Parr. Bradley and Parr would certainly be useful considering the lack of OL depth.
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I can add some of these guys myself, but there are two problems with that:
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Obviously Virginia isn't the only team with players missing, and adding to Virginia and not other schools is unfair.
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I'm not good at rating UVA players myself, I tend to be overly generous when it comes to speed and strength ratings.