NC State Head Coaching Search

Today NC State fired Head Football coach Tom O'Brien after six seasons. During O'Brien's tenure the team averaged 6.6 wins and 5.8 loses a year, which is very average. Many people were surprised by the firing, but it was time for a chance.

And now on to who's next. I have compiled a list of ten head coaching candidates that the University should consider. Other open or potentially open head coaching position are Auburn, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Boston College, USF, Cal, USC, Michigan State, Iowa, and any schools who's head coach is hired away.

1. James Franklin – Head Coach, Vanderbilt

The name that has been tossed around most is Vanderbilt head coach James Franklin. Franklin knows NC State AD Debbie Yow from his time as OC at Maryland. He has been the head coach of Vanderbilt for two years and has complied a record of 14-11. A couple of red flags with Franklin: he has only been the Vandy head coach for two years meaning that most of the players weren't recruited by him, this isn't saying that he can't recruit just something to be weary of. Also with some of the prominent open head coaching position listed above he may have better offers than NC State. Update: James Franklin is not a serious candidate for the NC State job.

2. Sonny Dykes – Head Coach, Louisiana Tech

The second name to look at is Sonny Dykes who replaced Derek Dooley as the Louisiana Tech head coach. Under Dooley La Tech was 17-20 and under Dykes, who's father is legendary Texas Tech coach Spike Dykes, the team is 22-14 with a bowl game to go. Dykes runs a throwing spread offense similar to Oklahoma State and Texas A&M. Dykes doesn't have any really big red flags but could be tapped for a prominent position similar to Franklin. If he can win with the talent he has at La Tech, he should be able to win at NC State. Sonny Dykes is my choice for head coach at NC State. 

3. Kriby Smart – Defensive Coordinator, Alabama

Who better to hire as your new head coach than the Coordinator of one of the top defenses on one of the top teams in the country. Kirby Smart has been the DC at Alabama since Nick Saben was hired in 2007. Alabama has had a great defense during Smart's tenure including being #1 overall this season and has lead to two National Championships and maybe a third. The biggest flags with Smart as that he has never been a head coach and he is the highest paid assistant in the country. Tom O'Brien only made a little more this year than Smart did so it may to hard to lure him away from Alabama.

4. Chad Morris – Offensive Coordinator, Clemson

Fourth on my list is someone who NC State fans should be familiar with, Clemson OC Chad Morris. Most of us saw Clemson's offense put up 62 points on NC State two weeks ago. The offense is top ten in years per game and averages 42 points a game. Morris has been the OC at Clemson for two year and he spent one year at Tulsa before that. That is his only experience in college football having been a high school head coach in Texas for about 15 years. Not only would hiring Morris add excitement to our offense it would weaken, in my opinion, our second biggest football rival.

5. Mark Helfrich – Offensive Coordinator, Oregon

More offense, Mark Helfrich has been the OC at Oregon for four years. Most people are familiar with Oregon's offense which is one of the most explosive offenses in the country. The concerns with Helfrich are that he has never been a head coach and he doesn't call plays at Oregon. The other larger concern is that Chip Kelly could leave Oregon for the NFL and Helfrich would be the favorite to replace him.

Here are the next five potential candidates. I'm not going to detail each one, but each of them would make an excellent head coach for NC State.
6. Mark Stoops – Defensive Coordinator, Florida State
7. Charlie Strong – Head Coach, Louisville
8. Darrell Hazell – Head Coach, Kent State
9. Bob Diaco – Defensive Coordinator, Notre Dame 
10. Kliff Kingsbury – Offensive Coordinator, Texas A&M


I expect the coaching search to take about three weeks and I wish AD Debbie Yow good luck in her search. If she wants any help, she knows where to find me.

The end of G4 as we know it

As most people that read this blog know, I'm a nerd, and throughout most of my younger nerd life there wasn't a better channel on TV than G4. Even after the mid-2000s retooling away from an all video games network I still continued to watch because the remaining video games and tech program was excellent. That all change when G4 executives decided to cancel its only two studio show, X-Play and Attack of the Show, and again re brand as the TV version of GQ.

In my opinion this is a huge loss for the video game industry which seems to always be taking it on the chin from everyone. If I'm wrong about that tell me, but it seems that video games is still looked at my the mainstream, old-fashioned, media type as an underground cult that will go away. According to the ESRB in 2010 67% of US household play video games and just to put that in perspective Angry Birds, one of the most popular mobile game came out in late 2009 and began to hit its stride in 2010 meaning that the current percentage could approach 75% to 80% of households. In addition the video game industry generates over $10.5 billion annually which is more than the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL who all have their own TV networks. Granted it is a little bit of a different situation with all of the money going through the respective leagues rather than spread amongst many companies. Regardless with the average American household being 2.6 people in 2009 that means that there are 1.21 million household in the USA and based on the ESRB numbers almost 210 million people have video games in their homes.

With all of the statistics that I spewed out in that last paragraph you're still trying to tell me that there nobody out there that would watch a network focus on video games, that doesn't have to be the only thing on the network but part of a good balance. If I was in charge of G4 I wouldn't be re branding it as a the TV's GQ but reorienting it back toward video games and technology. As part of that change there would be a number of new shows I would add to the lineup:

Arena
Now I know what your saying, the first show I want to add is an old show, but I want to make some changes to it to make it better fit in with today's TV. Currently some of the most shows on TV are reality based talent searches, X-Factor, American Idol, and reality based competitions, Survivor, Amazing Race, so why not combine the two and search for America best gamer or team of gamers. The show could involve a different game each year and a national search to find the top 100 gamers and bring them to LA where they compete in a round-robin tournament to fill a 64 person/team bracket to determine America best gamer.

Interactive Talk Show
The working title above pretty much sums up the show, but it would be more than that. Yes, it would be a talk show where the hosts answer questions from viewers about current video games and technology, but viewers would also get in-depth looks at new video games and technology which would be discussed be the panel. 

Broadcast of Major League Gaming
Once again pretty self-explanatory

Syndicated Shows
Currently G4 broadcasts syndicates of Lost, Cops, Campus PD and Cheaters amongst others. I would get rid of all of those expect for Lost and look to add a techy or nerdy show from the massive lineup owned by G4 parent company NBCUniversal.This could even include a late night anime block to compete with Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.

G4's Proving Ground
Proving Ground was a short lived show that would test concepts from pop culture to see how they worked in real life. The show was ended after the death of co-host Ryan Dunn. I would revive that show and keep the same concept but add new hosts to make the show a little more science oriented, similar to Mythbuster or Brainiac, but with more pop culture.

FIRST Robotics coverage/ Reality Show
And finally a quick bit of self-promotion. As my reader(s) know I've been involved with the FIRST Robotics Competition(FRC) for six years. I would like to see nothing more than FRC get a place back on TV, Championships were broadcast on ESPN in the late 1990s. I envision a weekly recap show on Mondays during the season as well as Saturday after broadcasts of District Championship weekend and World Championships.
In addition cameras could follow a team or teams and produce a weekly show about there progress. More likely a fictional team of high school students would be created and the show would follow their fictional quest to be world champions.

That about wraps up everything that I got, I hope you enjoyed this blog post and will mourn the lost of a once great channel along with me.

SCRIW II

This weekend was the 2nd annual South Carolina Robotics Invitational and Workshops, SCRIW, hosted by Los Pollos Locos and D5 Robotics. Once again I went down along with the Hitchhikers to compete. This year the event was hosted at Irmo High School, alma mater of NC State running back Mustafa Greene.

This year I came down earlier on Friday to help with setup and with the help of Greg and Brandon from AndyMark and a bunch of student we were able to get the field up and running.

Saturday morning came and all 24 teams showed up which meant that everyone would get to play in eliminations. Just like last year I volunteered as a ref, with our head ref being Palmetto ref Tina. We were able to find two other qualified ref and combined with striped shirts we were much more professional looking than last year. Overall the event ran pretty smoothly. We got behind during sync checks and we never really able to catch up. Because of that finals didn't get done til around 7. Afterwards I stayed to help tear down the field before heading back to E-town.

As for the Hitchhikers they had about 15 students including a number of new students. Despite switching out new drivers, expect for Sam, we finished 7th after qualifying and moved up to captain the number 5 alliance. We choose 587, The Hedgehogs, and 2640, Hotbotz and rolled all the way to becoming SCRIW champions. During one of the semifinal matches Sam really had the shooter dialed in and scored more balls than I think we have every scored in a match. In addition the Hitchhikers have never lost an event when we make elimination and have been on the winning alliance of every FRC event in South Carolina in 2012.

I would compare our robot Benji to Captain Krunch 11. Both were well designed but not necessarily optimal for the game. They both got off to fast starts at there respective first regionals before fading at the second regional and championships, but coming back to win there first off-season event. Obviously Krunch improved the following year build one of our two best robots ever, so we'll have to see how the Hitchhikers do.

Overall it was a great weekend and its hard to believe that I won't be at another FRC event for almost five months.

Update

I haven't posted in a while and since its Labor Day and I have the day off I figured I'd give an update on whats going on.

For starters I'm not taking any classes this semester because I'm on a CO-OP. I'm working at Danaher Controls in Elizabethtown, NC as a Manufacturing Engineering CO-OP. I've been there for two week now and it is defiantly an interesting experience. So far it has been a good and I've learned a lot about real-world engineering. My FIRST experience has definitely come into play at work. Our business is based on customer orders and for that reason is pretty fast-paced. Having been in FRC for six years helps me to work quickly and not get flustered by the pace.

Speaking of FIRST, I know that the new season isn't for four month but this year I will not be mentoring any teams and focusing my time on class and volunteering at a number of FRC events. I've already been to IRI this summer with 744 Shark Attack, and this fall I will once again be reffing SCRIW.

As for this blog, I'm still working on what I'm going to do with it. For this fall I think I'm going to bring back This Week in Fantasy, where I discuss league scores from the past weekend of fantasy football and look forward to the next weekend of games. I did it for a week or two last year but got too busy during the week the continue doing it. Since I'm working this year I should have time to do it every week.

If anyone out there has any suggestions for blog post feel free to suggest them.

2012 FIRST Championship

I know that Champs ended almost a week ago but I've been studying for exams and haven't had time to post, so lets see what I can remember.

I had my last class Thursday morning so I didn't get into St. Louis til around 5 and by that point I had missed our first two matches. I let Andrew coach the rest of the day Thursday and we finished the day 0-4 with a couple of coop points. Friday didn't get much better but we did go 2-2 and had a couple of good partners. We lost our only match on Saturday and didn't get picked which rapped up a much improved season compared to last year, but I still feel like we left a lot on the table.

Moving on from 2059's Championship to mine. Overall I had a great time even with the team not performing well. I got to check out and take some pictures of a number of this year's best robot as well as talk to a number of FRC celebrities. I worked out that Krunch was also in our division so I got a chance to hang out with them a bunch, which was pretty cool.

I've got a couple of Thank yous and then I'll end this post and get back to studying:

Thanks to all of the students that took some time to tell me about their robot and design process, it was much appreciated and I got a number of good pictures.

Thanks to Andy Baker for taking time out his busy Championship to talk to me and give me a little advice as well!

Thanks to my former Krunch mentor Tom Filipek for coming over to check out 2059's robot. I know it seems weird for me to be thanking someone for looking at our robot, but when it's one of your old mentors who helped to teach you a lot of thing that you use as a mentor , its nice for them to come and see how your doing.

And finally to all the volunteers, FIRST wouldn't be the same without you.

Now that the season is over what am I going to for seven months?

How to fix the FIRST Championship

Next week is the 21st edition of the FIRST Championship and it will be the largest one yet. It will not only feature FLL and FTC teams but almost 400 FRC teams in four divisions. This is up from 352 last years and its starting to get to the point where it is too big and something need to be done. Over the past couple of weeks there have been numerous thread on Chief Delphi discussing ways to fix Championship and most revolve around moving it to a larger venue. I have my own idea which I will lay out below and it doesn't involve moving to a new venue and here it is:

Before I get to the FRC Championship I want to discuss the FTC Championship and FLL World Festival. There are around 2000 FTC teams throughout the world and 128 of them compete at Championship which is 6% of all FTC teams. Compare that to FRC's 17% participation at Championship and your average FTC team will make there Championship once every 15 years. That means that like FRC most FTC students will never make Championship in there time on their team. Lego Leagues' percentages are even worse because of the quantity of teams, something like over 5000. On top of that as long as FRC is in the same building both FTC and FLL is be overshadowed and won't be able to get much recognition.

To fix this and improve both FRC's championship as well as FTC and FLL's I would give them there own championship event earlier in the year. Reasoning behind it being earlier is that their seasons start in September and for FLL is done before the end of the year. FTC events stretch into the FRC season and normally end week after build season ends. I would compress the FTC season to have all State events end at the end of January and then have the Championship in the off-week between Week 0 and Week 1. As for location, because of the time of the year it has to be somewhere warm and I would say the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. Reasons for Orlando: Its warmish in February (High 73, Low 52 courtesy of Wikipedia) and Disney World and Universal are only a short drive away. The OCCC is one of the largest convention centers in the nation and could fit a FTC/FLL Championship more than double the size of the current one. The brand new FTC Championship and FLL World Festival would also give FRC teams that also have an FTC team as part of their program a chance for the same students to participate in both championships, something that isn't really possible now.

With FTC and FLL having there own event it opens up a lot of space in the America's Center for FRC pits. Now having 150 teams in a division is no better than having a 100 teams per division, so with this new found space FRC would expand from four divisions to eight. Archimedes, Curie, Galileo, and Newton would be join by new divisions tentatively named Kamen, Flowers, Lavery, and Baker. I think it would be possible to fit all nine field in the dome with Einstein at one end, three along each sideline, and two at the other end, each in one corner of that end. It might be a little cramped but it would be an awesome sight to see.

Each of the eight division would have between 70 and 75 teams meaning there would be around 560 teams at Championship. In the short term that means that Michigan and MAR can have a few extra championship spots, couple that with the new regionals and you have around 125 extra open registration spots at Championship. I could delve more into open registration and how spots should be divided up but I'll save that for another blog post either this week or after Champs. As for scheduling, it would stay basically the same except that qualification matches would stop around 10:30 on Saturday so alliance can be done around 11:00 and Elimination matches can start at 12:00 giving an extra hour for the extra matches on Einstein.

Hopefully I've been able to illustrate my idea pretty well and I'll be back later with a post about the District system.

Palmetto Regional

This week The Hitchhikers, team 2059, competed at the Palmetto Regional. This is our first year doing two regionals and our first regional outside of North Carolina.

I didn't get to the event until Thursday afternoon because I had class and when I got there we were going out for our 2nd practice match of the day. I would have liked to have done more, but I guess we can save that for NC. We didn't get inspected til late on Thursday and our bridge arm wasn't fully finished but looking at our match schedule I felt good about Friday.

Friday started as Thursday ended, with us working on our bridge arm. We lost each of our first two matches, one of which was totally our fault. The other alliance didn't score any balls and we gave them enough points to win because we drew a technically foul when we contacted the opponents bridge. I wasn't to happy about it but the afternoon made up for it. We won our third match and then lost our fourth to go into lunch 1-3. Everything changed after lunch when we rattled off 4 wins in a row including our first double balance. We finished the day 15th even though we didn't get a single coopertition point which I was a little frustrated with because our alliance attempted in 5 of the 8 matches. Overall it was a great day, we got the bridge arm working, and a bunch of students were complaining that nothing needed to be done on the robot (not a bad thing).

Friday night we had a great scouting meeting with our scouters, who did a fantastic job throughout the event. It was just like a Krunch meeting and I felt really good with the list we were able to come up with.

Saturday we had three more matches and in each of them we were able to get coop points, the last two with us balancing. Unfortunately we went 1-2 and finished 15th. We were selected by the 2nd seeded alliance 2640, The Hotbotz from Reidsville, NC, after they picked 1319 who declined. With out 2nd pick we choose  281, EnTech Greenvillains from Greenville, SC.

Our first match we worked pretty well and were able to win 34 to 19. Throughout eliminations our hybrid was off and I think we only got 1 or 2 in during the 8 matches. Regardless we balanced in 7 of the 8 matches and that was instrumental in our winning. QF 3-2 was our first lose and the only problem we had during elims, the pwn for the bottom roller came out so we couldn't pick up for about half of the match. Also during this match 281 was dead because they switched there computer it wasn't working. The third match is when things started going crazy. The ball score was 6 to 5 and then both alliances balanced two robots which made the final score 26 to 25 for us. It was really nerve racking winning a deciding match by one point and I know I gave at least one webcast viewer another heart attack. The match wasn't even the craziest part. 281's shooter broke during the match and they were unsure if they could fix it. We had to call our timeout and when they couldn't fix it we had to call in a backup robot, 2815, Los Pollos Locos from Columbia, SC. During quarterfinals I was pretty calm but everything that happened between quarters and semis just blew that away. I definitely think all of that had an effect on SF 2-1 which we lost by 7. It also didn't help that 2815's radio was unplugged for most of the match. We rallied back to win the next two semis with identical 40 point scores. In finals we were up against that 8th seeded alliance and during the two matches 2815 came up huge. Their ability to quickly score twos while us and 2640 balanced helped to push to a seven point 48-41 win in finals 1. Finals 2 us as well as 2815 scored and then we balanced with 2640. As we were balancing the red alliance was also attempting a balance and just after we got our they flipped a robot and it was over. We started celebrating with 30 seconds left in the match and continued after the buzzer.

It was such an awesome site seeing us win a regional I can't even describe it. I was barely able to keep it together in the aftermath of the finals and winning is so awesome. For the rest of the members and well as the students I don't even want to think about it. For most of them this was there first event and it was also the first time 2059 had made eliminations so the rush for them must have been amazing.

I know this post is getting long but I just have a couple of notes as well as some thank yous left.

In addition to Regional Winner we also won the Spirit Award for our Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy theme as well our full adoption of our new primary color, orange. As they were reading the award once we figured out it was us I looked at our lead mentor and was like "seriously". I knew we were orange and spirited but it wasn't even something I thought we would be in the running for.

As for my coaching, with our 12-7 record I moved to 30-17-1 in four events with two wins and two missed elims. I guess when I coach its all or nothing and this time we got all of it.

A big thanks to 2640 for picking us. There we some many good robots in the field I was stunned when they called with the 2nd pick. Your auto was consistent and deadly and never had any problems on the bridge.

281, its too bad you guys couldn't make it all the way through but you were good while you were with us. I hope you guys get everything worked out for North Carolina in two week and congrats on the well deserved Chairman's.

2815, man were we lucky you guys were the top backup bot. Your two point scoring kept us in matches and was instrumental to our victory. I'm glad you guys get to go to St. Louis and that you became the first team to win back-to-back Palmetto regionals.

And finally to all of the students, you guys built a great robot and kept it working throughout the event was crucial.

Both of our other mentor came up to me after and thanked me for everything I've done for the team and that made me feel really amazing.

See everyone in two weeks at NC and then in St. Louis!!