Has “besides, if you don’t like it here, there’s the transfer portal” become an established part of the college athletics recruiting lexicon?
I thought I’d get used to it — then again, baseball’s interleague play, multiple playoff teams, and the designated hitter in the National League remains unfathomable — but it’s just another reminder that I’m an old person.
When I was a young chessplayer, we got as much as 2.5 hours to make 40 moves. I’m in a Menlo Park chess club tournament with a time control of game-in-45-minutes-plus-5-second-delay, and it leaves me muttering at the board that this is going to take some getting used to. The club director, a long-time friend who is also an old man, commiserates. Mark will fill in in case of an odd number of players, but he doesn’t pair himself as a matter of course. “I need the time”, he said.
Kids these days play entire games of chess in 30 seconds, because playing a game of chess in one minute wasn’t thrilling enough for them.
I’m still shocked by giant iron birds in the sky, I yell at clouds, and holy shit, I’m boggled at 1000+ young women per season jumping to new schools. When I was their age, choosing a college was the biggest decision we ever had to face — athletes always had to consider that if it didn’t work out and they wanted to move, it meant sitting out for a year.
Maybe Caitlin Clark’s example of sticking at Iowa for four years will be followed like her heads-up ball handling, and her outstanding grade point average.
There goes Daniela Falcon Hernandez — following Lani White — but perhaps I only imagined seeing #11 on the Utah bench, because I never thought she really existed. Alyssa Blanck looked like the end of the end of the bench, but even Blanck entered a few games, while Hernandez never did.
I’m rather shocked that Aaronette Vonleh thought she needed to get out of Colorado. After four significant graduation losses plus Vonleh’s transfer, the Buffaloes are left with Frida Formann as their lone returning starter. If I wanted to be cynical, I’d suggest that Vonleh saw Sherrod, Miller, Nolan, and Whittaker depart, and figured Colorado’s championship window had closed. She’s one of my favorite players, and I’d prefer not to think that way.
I pondered for a minute how Vonleh would fit at Utah. I think Utah’s coaching staff won’t be overly committed to the offensive model that worked so well with Alissa Pili, and will redesign the playbook according to whichever 12 bodies are in place come August. That’s not a long stretch of the imagination, though, and whether the Utes landed Vonleh or Raegan Beers, they’ll be a force in the Big 12. Er, I think. I don’t even know who the league champions are in the Big 12 (and it’s not research I’m keen on doing, you understand).
The team is traveling to Minnesota around the winter holidays, right? The Johnson and Kneepkens families will appreciate a visit, and maybe we have to bring food and clothing to Pili, because who knows what kind of trouble she’ll get into out in the more-real world.