‘It’s a respect thing’: Why Coastal Carolina is upset it must travel to Troy this week
Make no mistake about it, the Coastal Carolina football team – at least the coaching staff – does not want to play Saturday’s football game at Troy, and doesn’t believe it should have to.
The game was scheduled to be played Nov. 14, but it was postponed to Saturday because Troy had coronavirus issues and injuries that left at least one position group decimated.
So while Coastal prepares to play Troy this week, then travel to and from Alabama for Saturday’s game, Louisiana has a week off and two weeks to prepare for CCU and the Sun Belt Conference Championship Game at Brooks Stadium at noon next Saturday.
“It’s definitely a competitive advantage for them. I don’t know how that makes sense for anybody, but I guess we’ll be on the bus this week going down there,” CCU head coach Jamey Chadwell said. “. . . The championship game is a big deal, but that’s above my pay grade right now so I can’t make decisions on that.”
Chadwell said Wednesday that CCU appealed to conference commissioner Keith Gill, but to no avail.
“We had discussions with the Sun Belt. I think a lot of people had discussions with the Sun Belt about this particular game, and our leadership for whatever reason felt it was just so important to play,” Chadwell said. “So whether 99 percent of the country believes that’s not right, it doesn’t matter, he’s the boss so you follow what he thinks is right and whatever his reasoning is behind that.”
The Chants seemingly need to win the Sun Belt title game to have a chance at a New Year’s Six bowl game, which would mean an unprecedented big payday for both the Chants and the conference. CCU (10-0) is No. 13 in the College Football Playoff rankings, and Chadwell said he doesn’t believe a win over Troy will help CCU move up. It already has two more wins than the one Group of Five team ahead of it in the rankings, No. 8 Cincinnati (8-0).
The Chants need to win the Sun Belt title game to have a chance at a New Year’s Six bowl game, which would mean a lucrative payday for both the Chants and the conference. No. 19 Louisiana (9-1) would be a long shot to be selected for one of those games with one loss to CCU already.
“We’re going to play a game that means nothing to anybody really as far as the big scheme except us. It can only hurt us. It can’t help anybody else, it only hurts Coastal,” Chadwell said. “. . . It’s a respect thing to be honest with you, and our players have seen who respects us and who doesn’t, so we’ll go out and do our best to win the game.”
Chadwell would like the Sun Belt to follow the lead of the ACC, which canceled Clemson and Notre Dame’s rescheduled games against Florida State and Wake Forest this week to “preserve the integrity” of the league’s championship on Dec. 19. The SEC’s two finalists, Alabama and Florida, are playing games this week before their Dec. 19 title game.
“We’re just playing the schedule that’s in front of us,” Gill said Monday, “so I would anticipate that game is going to go on as scheduled.”
Troy (5-5, 3-3 SBC) may be better than its record would indicate. The Trojans were 4-2 before they were hit with a coronavirus outbreak, and snapped a three-game losing streak with a 29-0 win over South Alabama on Saturday in the first game in about a month that the Trojans had just about all of their players. Many were either asymptomatic or were quarantining due to contact tracing and weren’t sick, so they are now fresh 11 games into the season.
“I do think our energy level for the amount of weeks we’ve been going at this is pretty good,” Troy coach Chip Lindsey said. “For instance Kimani Vidal, our running back, came back where he had not played in really three weeks, and he had fresh legs and looked good and was very healthy.”
Louisiana coach Billy Napier said he understands Coastal’s frustration with the situation.
“This just happens to be the case,” Napier said. “I know I would probably feel the same way Jamey did if I was on the other side of the coin and I can respect that, but our job is to get our team ready to play and we’re going to do that.”
Coronavirus concerns
The spontaneous and vivacious celebration on the Brooks Stadium field that erupted after freshman Mateo Sudipo tackled BYU’s Dax Milne at the 1-yard line on the final play of the game Saturday to preserve Coastal’s 22-17 win could prove to be costly for the Chants.
Some spectators and others at CCU that aren’t part of the football program rushed onto the field to celebrate with players, possibly bringing them into contact with someone who could pass COVID-19 onto a player and into the team, and the players also celebrated with students along the wall behind the north end zone.
“Obviously with our fans rushing the field I’ve got a major concern,” Chadwell said. “There was a lot of excitement and our fans were excited and some of them were able to get on the field, so they’re down there and they’re not part of your bubble.
“When they’re not, that brings in some different things into your bubble, the bubble you’re trying to create. . . . We’ve done a good job up to this point, but that was a unique situation and circumstance on Saturday. Hopefully we’ll be okay, but as a coach you get nervous about that.”
Coastal had its weekly testing Wednesday and gets results back on Thursday.
The Chants may already be without a player or more due to injuries after the physical game with BYU. “We’re going to have a few [injuries] for sure because we did get banged up, I’m not sure exactly how that’s going to look,” Chadwell said.
Adding new talent
The early signing period for college football is next Wednesday through Friday, and CCU intends to sign most of its 2021 class on Wednesday.
CCU will surely benefit from its success and the attention it has received nationally this season in the realm of recruiting, though the greatest benefit may come in future years.
Chadwell said the majority of the recruiting for the incoming 2021 class is accounted for, as the Chants had about 16 scholarships committed prior to the season, though some of the players CCU had recruited who committed elsewhere have been inquiring again.
“Now, since we’ve been rolling and winning some of those kids that went other places have been contacting us saying, ‘Hey coach, I see you all are doing pretty good.’ They’ve tried to get back in the boat a little bit,” Chadwell said.
The Chants do have a few more scholarships to give if talented athletes choose them in this year’s class, but a higher level of talent coming to CCU is more likely beginning with the class of 2022.
“Where I think it’s really paying dividends is for the 2022 class, there are more and more people that are interested and know more about us already,” Chadwell said. “Instead of us having to try to really explain about Coastal and what we’re trying to do they’re seeing some of that through TV. So that’s been good. We’ve been able to get in a lot of doors because of that. So I hope if we can continue to win and play at a high level it will help our recruiting going forward.”
The exposure has been increasing by the week. In addition to having ESPN’s College GameDay broadcast live from Brooks Stadium on Saturday morning, Chadwell has had about 35-40 interview requests above his normal weekly media commitments over the past two weeks, CCU assistant AD for media relations Kevin Davis said.
He has done a couple dozen including ESPN’s SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt on Tuesday night and an interview with Socastee High grad Wendy Nix on ESPN’s College Football Live on Tuesday afternoon.
Honors pouring in
The honors for Coastal’s players and coaches are rolling in as finalists are named for national awards.
Senior defensive end Tarron Jackson has been named one of five finalists for the 2020 Bronko Nagurski Trophy, honoring the National Defensive Player of the Year by the Football Writers Association of America, and a semifinalist for the 26th Chuck Bednarik Award, recognizing the Outstanding Defensive Player of the Year.
Jackson is also a 2021 Reese’s Senior Bowl invitee, 2020-21 Senior CLASS Award candidate and William V. Campbell Trophy semifinalist, and has been named to the Ted Hendricks and Lott IMPACT award watch lists.
Senior center Sam Thompson was nominated for the Burlsworth Trophy, which is presented annually to the nation’s top player who began his career as a walk-on, and is on the Rimington Trophy (top center) watch list.
Redshirt freshman quarterback Grayson McCall is one of 17 semifinalists for the Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award and is a semifinalist for the 84th Maxwell Award given to the Collegiate Player of the Year.
Defensive coordinator and linebackers coach Chad Staggs was named one of 46 nominees for the 2020 Broyles Award for college football’s top assistant coach. Chadwell was named the National Coach of the Week by the Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year Foundation and Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. Junior linebacker Jeffrey Gunter was named the Sun Belt’s Defensive Player of the Week, the fourth Chant to earn the award this season, joining Silas Kelly, C.J. Brewer and Jackson, who has been the recipient three times.
ESPN drops the ball
ESPN reports that Saturday’s Coastal-BYU game was the most-viewed game on ESPNU since 2015 (Western Kentucky vs. LSU) and the fifth-most viewed on ESPNU all time.
That begs the question: why wasn’t the marquee game moved off ESPNU to either ESPN or ESPN2, so it would be available to more viewers?
Many around the country, including on the Grand Strand, were unable to watch the game in their homes because they don’t have advanced sports packages through their cable or satellite provider.
It’s unusual for ESPN to not take better advantage of its own cross promotion.
The game was one of just two matchups of top 25 teams on the day, it had the best story line of the week with the teams scrambling and agreeing to play late in the week after Liberty had to back out of its game with CCU because of coronavirus issues, and ESPN College GameDay was broadcast from Brooks Stadium for three hours Saturday morning to further build up anticipation for the contest. It could have brought ESPN even better ratings than it received.
ESPN reports the game delivered a total live audience of 1.425 million viewers across all TV and digital platforms, including ESPNU, ESPN2 bonus coverage and streaming. On ESPNU, the game averaged 1.212 million viewers.
The audience peaked with 2.115 million at 8:50 p.m., when Coastal Carolina stopped BYU at the 1-yard line on the final play.
The live streaming audience contributed an average minute audience of 103,000 viewers, second best for any game on ESPN networks in Week 14. The game also ranked as the top college football video clip in Week 14 across ESPN’s digital platforms with 1.4 million video starts.
The Sun Belt got good ratings on Friday as well, as the Louisiana-Appalachian State contest registered 1,014,500 viewers on ESPN, ranking as the third-most viewed intra-conference Sun Belt game in ESPN history. The matchup was up from the Sun Belt Championship between the same two teams in each of the past two seasons.
ESPN reports that at least four Saturday games on either ESPN or ABC topped 2.8 million viewers led by Ohio State-Michigan State with 4.1 million on ABC.
This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 4:18 PM.
