READING LIST: IF YOUR QB1 IS ANNOUNCED IN A FOREST
Catching up on the week in Owls coverage.
Marietta Daily Journal: Bryson confident he can lead Owls into FBS
[Davis] Bryson will take the first steps toward leading KSU to a potential Conference USA title when the season starts at the end of August. It will be the first season as the starting quarterback for the redshirt-sophomore from Woodbridge, Virginia, and the first season for the Owls as a member of the Football Bowl Subdivision.
After a couple weeks of camp, buried 170 pages into the MDJ’s high school football preview magazine, Davis Bryson has been officially confirmed, in public, as Kennesaw State’s starting QB. Maybe?
MDJ sports editor John Bednarowski’s two KSU preview stories were both pretty emphatic that Bryson would start at QB, with zero mention of a competition, yet this interview took place right as preseason practice kicked off. We haven’t seen any follow-up from the program, nor has Bryson done any other media availability following the low-key announcement.
Another MDJ contributor who’s been at practice, Kai Millette, responded online that it “doesn’t necessarily mean [Bryson] will be the guy taking at first snap against UTSA.”
If there’s still a QB battle happening, that’s an all-time misread from the MDJ or a major unforced error from the SIDs to put Bryson in that situation. Possibly both.
AJC: Kennesaw State coach Brian Bohannon leans on ‘our culture’ heading into FBS era
Bohannon has added some new faces to his coaching staff this season, bringing in Chandler Burks and Stewart Cook as co-offensive coordinators and Greg Harris as defensive coordinator.
He talked about having the new coaches at practices with him the past month. “It’s been awesome as we’re all on the same page of what we need to get accomplished and how we need to go about doing it,” Bohannon said. “We know what we must do to give ourselves a chance to be successful, and we’re all working towards that.”
The bar could not be much lower for covering this program. Show up, put a mic in Bo’s face, let him do the EAT routine, move on. Owls fans are desperate enough for some sort of media recognition that we will happily consume even the most obvious PR favors and drive-by stories. Last season, fans thanked the AJC for covering the men’s basketball team via AP reports with no byline.
There has to be a higher standard than this, though. We’re not asking to have multiple team sites on 247, Rivals and on3, or an Owls beat writer at The Athletic. Just do your best not to call the literal first player in program history a new face as he enters his fifth year coaching in Kennesaw, alongside two other additions who’ve been on staff for a combined 15 years.
Watching the AJC interview, there’s actually a more interesting point that never made it into the story: The Owls went good-on-good for an extra week of practice, rather than shifting into a more normal in-season routine with lighter loads and more scout-team participation. I’m all for any move to find an edge when the program hasn’t played a meaningful, full-squad game since ‘22.
Yahoo Sports The new College Football Playoff is here. Are more changes coming in the near future?
Call it a “G5 summit,” where conference leaders plan to discuss some of the most pressing issues upon their membership — the bottom half of the 133-team Football Bowl Subdivision — such as NCAA governance, private equity’s interest and the House settlement-related revenue-sharing model.
But, perhaps, chief among those issues is the possibility of a reshaped postseason incorporating the bowl system, an arrangement that may generate additional television dollars and provide a secondary championship for those G5 teams not competing in the CFP.
Think what you want about a G5-specific playoff. There are very fine people on both sides of that argument. No matter how you feel, pitching it as “the NIT of football” could be the worst sales job in history. You remember that historic basketball tournament currently being choked to death by power conferences? That’s how we save ourselves, folks.
At CUSA Football Kickoff in July, CUSA commissioner Judy MacLeod stressed the need to “stay connected” to the playoff, in whichever format it exists. Most of the commissioners seem to be on the same page. If the G5 loses their playoff spot, fine - let’s take a turn down that road. In our current state, though, does an extra playoff to figure out the G5’s second-best team really solve anything?
Looking at the so-called G5 Summit from an Owls fan perspective: Moments like these are a perfect example of why they had to escape FCS. If the gap continues to grow between the powers and everyone else, that tier of football, one that already had enough trouble catching on in Kennesaw in a cultural sense, would be further devalued. As D1 football sorts itself into codified tiers - power conferences, the G5, and FCS - with the potential for separate “champions,” Kennesaw, Delaware, and the rest of the recent promotions are just making sure they’re in the right place when it becomes more formalized. It’s less of an attempt to latch on to the top than it is a way to create some distance between themselves and the FCS programs they perceive as beneath them.
Wellstar commits $25M to expand partnership with Kennesaw State
Wellstar has provided the lead funding commitment for a new state-of-the-art training and conditioning complex for KSU student-athletes as they compete in Conference USA.
KSU and Wellstar will partner to create a new center to support the physical and mental wellbeing of KSU student-athletes and conduct cutting-edge research into sports performance; the center will be called the Center for Research on Human Sport Performance and Wellbeing.
I’ve always said America has a perfect, virtuous healthcare system. Details are still sparse on the facilities themselves other than a couple exterior renderings, but Wellstar’s lead funding should get the ball rolling on the 44,000-square-foot football operations facility and the more general Sports Medicine Center. In addition, Wellstar is creating the Center for Research on Human Sport Performance and Wellbeing. Definitely doesn’t sound like BALCO or a Soviet training camp to run experiments on juiced-up Olympic athletes.