CAA in freefall?

What exactly did NBC Sports Network buy when it signed a big contract to sway the Colonial Athletic Association away from ESPN?

I know what they thought they were getting: A somewhat overlooked mid-major conference with teams stretching from New England to Georgia and with some presence in a few larger markets like Atlanta, Washington, Philadelphia and Boston. A league that produced that scrappy George Mason team that surged to the Final Four in 2006, followed five years later by Virginia Commonwealth's five-win march to Houston.

I also know what they didn't think they were getting: A one-bid league whose 2013 tournament champion was rated so low that it had to play another team for a 16 seed, meaning it was one of the four worst teams in the NCAA field.

But that is what the CAA had become even before George Mason made its announcement Monday that it was joining VCU in the Atlantic 10. For the low $1 million exit fee, the Patriots bought their way out of a league that is falling apart and found themselves in a multi-bid conference that will afford them an outstanding cross-river rival in George Washington and a rekindling of hostilities with VCU.

What really hurts the CAA in this particular departure is that it is one of the 1985 founding fathers that is leaving for greener pastures. The College of Charleston will be added to the league this summer, but that was already planned as a way to replace VCU and two other departing schools, Old Dominion and Georgia State, which had to take a big chunk of disrespect from the CAA this year.

I searched in vain for the final figure that the CAA got from NBC, but I gave up because the stories published in February 2012 simply noted it was an undisclosed amount that commissioner Tom Yeager said was significantly more than the league was getting from ESPN. As a VCU alumnus moving west that spring, this sounded great to me. At least 12 basketball games plus the semifinals and finals on national TV (albeit NBC Sports Network) and a bone thrown to the football schools in the form of at least five games.

But then a funny thing happened. VCU bolted for the Atlantic 10, and I didn't really care about the CAA anymore. The Rams actually made the switch a year earlier than they had planned after the league decided to enforce a provision that said any school that was leaving the CAA would be ineligible for its postseason tournaments. I felt bad that Old Dominion (moving to Conference USA) and Georgia State (which is headed for the Sun Belt) could not get into their new leagues in time for the 2012-13 season.

How far did the CAA fall in just two years? In 2011, after a six-session league tournament featuring 12 schools, victor Old Dominion was joined by regular-season champion George Mason and VCU in the NCAA tournament. Yes, the inclusion of VCU, which placed fourth in the regular season and lost in the CAA final, was somewhat controversial until the Rams went on a run that ended at the Final Four in Houston.

Fast-forward two years and the CAA tournament ended its decades-long run in Richmond with a three-session program that featured seven teams. Third-seed James Madison won the title and was the only CAA team invited to the big dance. After winning a game in the First Four, the Dukes lost to top-seeded Indiana.

Why were there only seven teams in Richmond two years after there had been 12? In addition to the departure of VCU, and the lack of an invite for ODU and Georgia State, UNC Wilmington and Towson did not meet academic standards, so they were also not eligible to play. While I am impressed that such rules now exist, it made the tournament a ghost town when compared to the past few years.

As of next season the CAA will stretch from Massachusetts to South Carolina, and the once-Virginia centric league will be down to just two schools in the commonwealth, James Madison and William and Mary. The tournament is headed for Baltimore, despite the fact that just one school -- Towson -- is in Maryland. And who knows if it will be eligible to play?

As other dominoes continue to fall, it will be interesting to see if the CAA can resurrect itself, or just ends up divided among other leagues that want/need new members. Considering the bevy of recent changes, its survival is on the line.

Baseball, at last

So I am still looking for a full-time job and writing for the Orange County Register about once a week. After covering a few CIF-Southern Section basketball games I have moved on to the baseball beat, and it was a lot of fun to get out and cover my first game on Friday. I trekked to Newport Beach to cover Corona del Mar as it hosted University High School from Irvine. I did not know it at the time, but the pitcher for University, Jordan Scheftz, has already committed to attend UC Irvine next year, so I suspect I'll be seeing his name, and maybe even writing a bit more about him, for a while. I really should have known something was up when he froze one of the CdM hitters with a vicious breaking ball that seemed to dive into the strike zone at the last second. After the game, I got a quick quote from Scheftz as well as both schools' coaches and then headed to a McDonalds on Pacific Coast Highway where I wrote my story. And here it is...

www.ocvarsity.com/sports/scheftz-36463-university-johnson.html

Oh and I want to include kudos to the folks at the Register. Whomever edited this moved a graf and cleaned up a couple more to make it flow much better. I was very happy with it.

Snow job

It was with a mixture of jealousy and relief that I watched my old stomping grounds take a direct hit from the “Snowquester” winter storm that hit the Shenandoah Valley and other areas west of Washington on Wednesday.

Jealousy, because as a reporter you want to be where the action is, where things are going on. I always had more fun going out into poor weather talking to people who had to fight the elements, whether for work or pleasure, than I did sitting in a town council chamber. Relief, because I have done the biggest of the big storms in 1993, 1996, 2003, 2006 and 2010, so I was glad someone else got to take the reins on this one.

Or did they? I heard from a few folks at my old paper that a skeleton staff was left in place to put out the Thursday paper while everyone else was directed to stay home. Oh, and use a vacation day.

Events like this are the very reason people are still reading the paper. I’m sure sales will be better than any other usual Thursday in the last six months so you need to put your best foot forward. You need to show off what you can do. And you don’t do that by telling the reporters to stay home and asking on Facebook for readers to send you their photos and if they are good enough they might appear in tomorrow’s paper. I’m not sure where this directive came from, but it’s pretty misguided if you ask me. And if you don’t ask me, I still think it’s misguided.

Yes, tell the reporters if they are afraid for their safety or if child-care plans change because schools are closed and they WANT to take the day off they can. But don’t TELL them not to work and then dock them a vacation day. With modern technology allowing a newsroom to operate from a McDonalds and people already in place closer to their homes, you can get some coverage that's not within a mile of the office or done over the phone. This would add some more depth and perspective to the story.

But why would you want to do that when you can get your Facebook followers to give you plenty of free material? Of course, in many cases, you get what you pay for. With the ease of use of a lot of these tools more people than ever think they are photographers or writers, and are willing to give their stuff away for nothing. It makes it even more difficult for those of us who do this for a living.

When I started working on this entry I thought I would harken back to the February 2010 storm that dumped more than 30 inches of snow on Winchester. I think the city will end up with about half that from Snowquester, which is still a major storm in the Shenandoah Valley. If you wonder what 30 inches of snow looks like, here are photos of my car and my front porch as that Super Bowl weekend storm was winding down.

The Saturday morning of the storm I went around and got some photos for the paper. Yes, it was fun, but it was also to help the newspaper better cover the storm and try to gain a little more respect in the community. I was gratified when I walked into the Sheetz on Valley Avenue and there was a stack of Dailys there.

I struck up a conversation with a guy who was drinking a cup of coffee, and when he said he wanted to tell me something about my newspaper, I was ready to hear why we were No.2 in town, what we were doing wrong. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to hear him say how much more he appreciated our paper after being able to get copy that morning while the other daily in town was nowhere to be found.

It’s all about serving your readers. And telling your staff to not bother covering the biggest weather event over the past few years doesn’t do that. Asking your readers to give you their photos basically says you cannot add anything to the conversation. And when you no longer bring anything to the table, they will soon find a way to get along without you.