Welcome to the summertime edition of Flipping The Field, that most important rendition of the column that tells us we can also flip that most important page of the calendar, the one that gets us into July. What makes July so important? Its the last lone sheet of paper on the family refrigerator that separates us from August and the start of the 2016 college football season.Before we get started, I want to make a promise to you. Henceforth I do solemnly swear not to write anything in this space today concerning satellite camps. I enjoy the debate over the usefulness of satellite camps almost as much as I enjoy conversations about the greatness of Batman v Superman. Whenever someone wants to start talking about satellite camps, I get the same feeling that I do when my dentist insists on asking questions about North Carolinas?Elijah Hood while I have half-dozen instruments crammed into my mouth.In other words, I dont care for it. In fact, from here on out, every time I mention satellite camps, I am going to poke myself with a sewing needle.I think satellite camps (ouch!) are the most manufactured college football controversy since the ACC was going to be broken up and absorbed into the Big East. Remember that? No? Well then, how about the We have to stop these up-tempo offenses before someone dies! screams from Tuscaloosa -- while the Crimson Tide were in process of installing a few dozen pages of up-tempo plays and preparing to hire Lane Kiffin?You see, I remember those supposed earth-altering issues because I had to ask about them. Just as this year I will be forced to ask about satellite camps. (Ouch!) I have spent the majority of my adult Julys attending the final pre-fall rites of passage known as college football media days.They are awesome because we are talking football. But they can also get old quickly because theres only so much football to talk about before the actual football starts seven-ish weeks from now.This years gauntlet starts Monday in Hoover, Alabama, with the SECs four-day marathon, and it continues through the end of the month, from the Pac-12 (July 14-15) to the Big 12 (July 18-19) to the ACC (July 21-22) to the Big Ten (July 25-26). The Group of 5 conferences will be sprinkled in between all the way into early August.There will be smart questions asked that we already know will not be answered, such as: Coach Miles, are you really over all of that from last November? You cant be, right?There will be dumb questions that we already know will draw a roll of the eyes and then will be answered politely yet half-mockingly, such as: Coach Freeze, do you think Alabama will be good this year?There will be bizarre questions, asked to complete some sort of weird feature that a reporter is working on that no one else will see for another month, such as: Coach Holgorsen, when you come to Fort Worth for games, where do you buy your cowboy boots?And there will be those questions that we dont want to ask, but we have to ask because they are the topic du jour, and if we dont ask then well be knocked for not asking them, such as: So, Coach Fisher, do you regret not doing any satellite camps? (Ouch!)Media days have changed a lot over the years, but they also havent, says Duke coach David Cutcliffe, who will attend his ninth ACC Kickoff, always a casually chill affair.This came after seven years at Ole Miss and seven trips to the then-ballooning SEC media days.The number of media members has increased significantly, and the types of media outlets have changed even more, Cutcliffe said. It used to be a few guys with notebooks scribbling, and now its a table piled up with GoPros and smartphones, and theres blogs and new cable channels every year. With all of that theres a pretty wide variety of questions. But we do still end up answering the same handful of questions over and over again.I feel your pain, Coach Cut. However, there are five questions that absolutely, positively have to be asked over the next month, repetitive or not. Im not saying well get answers. Honestly, we rarely ever do. But we should fire them off anyway.1. Commissioner Bowlsby, can we see your cellphone records?No, I dont think Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby is up to anything sneaky -- well, except for the whole We arent expanding any time soon thing. But wouldnt it be fun to sift through his phone bill and see how many calls hes had to field from the area codes of 801/385 (Provo, Utah), 513 (Cincinnati) and 832 (Houston) -- or another we havent even thought of?2. Coach Shaw, will Christian McCaffrey get 500 touches this fall?Actually, I already asked him this one when I visited Stanford during spring practice while reporting this story.?Shaw just grinned, and despite acknowledging that he had no idea who his quarterback might be, admitted, It is pretty fun to figure as many ways to get the ball into his hands as possible. One year ago McCaffrey had 437 touches -- rushing, receiving, returning and throwing three passes (two for touchdowns). The Cardinal have no lack of talent around and behind McCaffrey at running back, but dont underestimate the power of a slow-cooked grudge. Shaw has never been shy about his bitterness over his No. 5s finishing No. 2 in the Heisman Trophy voting despite setting an NCAA record for all-purpose yards (3,864).3. Coach Saban, are you really going to start Cam Robinson against USC?Yeah, yeah, the charges of possession of a stolen firearm and marijuana were dropped, but that didnt stop the school from sending its preseason all-everything left tackle to drug counseling and firearm-safety classes. Will Saban send a larger message by making his largest lineman sit out what might be Week 1s largest game?4. Coach Swinney, you came within minutes of winning a national title, your quarterback nearly won the Heisman and your longtime frustrated fan base is strutting its stuff like its 1981 all over again. How do you keep this train onward, upward and still on the rails?The always-outspoken Clemson head coach went uncharacteristically quiet nearly as soon spring practice ended. That wasnt an accident. The 46-year-old is beginning to toe the line between being the face of the program and becoming bigger than the program itself. He doesnt want that to happen. Thats a balance hell have to find throughout the entire program, from his well-paid staff to his well-decorated roster. Its one thing to ascend the mountain when its about making history. Its another thing to keep climbing when the peak is right in front of you.5. Coach Meyer, after having a dozen players drafted by the NFL, are you totally digging that everyone seems to be talking about every other big programs College Football Playoff changes except for yours? Because, well, look at him. He kind of looks like he is, doesnt he?6. Coach Harbaugh, after all of that, was it worth it to hold all those satellite camps?Ouch! OK, enough of this pain. Im kind of starting to like it.?Were going streaking!?Another annual tradition of media days is for fans of non-SEC schools to complain about the attention that those SEC schools receive. So, knowing thats unavoidable, allow me to go ahead and pour kerosene onto the flames. Our pals at ESPN Stats & Info have already sent along a stack of statistics that youre likely to hear trumpeted out of Hoover this week. The SEC has produced eight of the past 10 national champions, five of the past nine Heisman Trophy winners and the most first-round NFL draft picks in six of past eight years (72 first-round picks in that span; no other conference has more than 39).Rebuild? No. Reload? Yes: And just in case those same gripers dont understand why there is cause for so much preseason optimism for SEC teams, consider this. The conference has five former 1,000-yard rushers returning in Leonard Fournette (LSU), Jalen Hurd (Tennessee), Nick Chubb and Sony Michel (Georgia) and Ralph Webb (Vanderbilt). Add that to a 3,000-yard passer --?Chad Kelly of Ole Miss -- and five players who totaled at least 10 sacks last year --?Myles Garrett of Texas A&M, Jonathan Allen and Tim Williams of Alabama, Marquis Haynes of Ole Miss and Tennessees Derek Barnett?-- and, well, you get the idea, right? Thats a lot of talent coming back for more after being part of the first nine-win bowl season for any conference.The Tommy West coachs news conference of the week: July 1 was a big day for the folks at Under Armour. OK, so it wasnt a news conference. And the guy is no longer a coach. But who doesnt love Barry Alvarez putting on his best Nature Boy strut? Also on July 1, mere hours after winning the College World Series, Coastal Carolinas long-signed contract with UA kicked in. Talk about timing! There wasnt enough time to give the suddenly big-time Chanticleers a big-time launch, but up at Wisconsins Camp Randall Stadium, the Badgers new apparel deal blasted off via the WWE hype manual.The guys you should know about but probably dont: If you arent following the Minnesota Golden Gophers special-teams guys on Twitter (@MinnSpecialists), youre doing it wrong. I have watched their Dude Perfect-ish trick kicks from June maybe 50 times. And their latest post is the perfect encapsulation of how we all feel right about now: The season cant get here fast enough.The media days you should be psyched for but probably arent: American Athletic Conference. The final round of media days will be the AACs Rhode Island clambake over the first two days of August. Is the conference expected to have a trio of potential playoff busters again this year? No. But it wasnt last year, either. At any rate, Houston coach Tom Herman will be there, and that makes it worth keeping an eye on. You remember Coach Herman, right?The news you are psyched for and should be, but you might need to pump the brakes on: When it was announced last week that Michigan and Notre Dame will renew their rivalry in 2018-19, there was much cheering heard throughout the Midwest, not to mention everywhere else in the college football world. But will it expand past those two years? Most certainly hope so. (Well, except Arkansas, which just had a contract with Michigan shredded.) But finding a place to put that piece of the scheduling puzzle might be tough. The Wolverines already have some giant names lined up all the way through the late 2020s, foes such as Virginia Tech, UCLA, Washington, Texas and Oklahoma. And Notre Dame certainly doesnt have the calendar flexibility that it once did thanks to its ACC arrangement. In the end, I guess we should just be happy to get what we can from a game that was played nearly every year from 1978 to 2014. But its OK to want more of what we grew up with, right? Are you listening, Texas and Texas A&M?Extra point: On Thursday at 7 p.m. ET the University of Tennessee will host a Celebration of Life ceremony for Pat Summitt at Thompson-Boling Arena, a facility that was built atop her shoulders. You can watch on the ESPN2 or SEC Network or join me on ESPN Radio as we listen to and tell stories about Coach Summitt. There have been so many amazing recollections since the legendary coach passed away on June 28, many told from some unexpected sources, a testament to her transcendence of the sport she loved. Ive told a few of my own from my time there as a student, which just happened to coincide with perhaps the greatest stretch of success the Lady Vols basketball program ever experienced. I was always struck by the close relationship that Summitt had with the other on-campus coaching legend, then-football coach Johnny Majors. I cant begin to recall all of the times I heard Majors gush over Summitts approach to the job. He once told me how he used to love to go sit in on her practices. On the day she died, Greg Auman of the Tampa Bay Times wrote about that respect after talking with Monday Night Football analyst Jon Gruden, who worked at Tennessee as a graduate assistant coach in the mid-1980s.Said Gruden to Auman: Johnny Majors told us GAs: Look, if youre not the best teacher on campus, I dont want you on our staff. ... Then hed say, If you want to see the best teacher on campus, just go across the street. When I first got there, I didnt know who he was talking about. It was Pat Summitt. ... So we went and watched the Lady Vols at practice. Now I was once a ball boy for Bobby Knight at Indiana. I thought Bobby Knight was in a class by himself. But when you talk about a person, a teacher that had that kind of knowledge, respect, enthusiasm and fire, that was Pat Summitt. Womens basketball is where it is today because of her and what she accomplished with that program. She made a real impression on me and certainly so many others. My prayers are with her family today. Cheap Jerseys Authentic . Halladay signed a one-day contract with the Toronto Blue Jays on Monday that allowed the veteran right-hander to retire as a member of team with which he broke into the majors and spent the bulk of his distinguished 16-year career. Cheap NFL Jerseys Free Shipping . What general manager Dave Nonis called "short and productive" negotiations ended with Kessel signing a US$64-million, eight-year contract on Tuesday. http://www.cheapjerseysfromchina.info/ . Listen to the game live on TSN Radio 1050 at 7pm et. The Raptors traded Rudy Gay, Quincy Acy and Aaron Gray to the Sacramento Kings on Monday, in exchange for Greivis Vasquez, John Salmons, Patrick Patterson and Chuck Hayes. Discount Jerseys . Bradwell was scheduled to become a free agent Tuesday. Born and raised in Toronto, Bradwell is entering his sixth CFL season, with all six played for his hometown Argonauts. Wholesale NFL Jerseys . Howard Ganz, an MLB lawyer, said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos that Rodriguezs claims do not come "remotely close" to what is needed to overturn an arbitration decision in federal court. So the Rajkot Test, the Indian teams first, wary embrace of regular DRS has passed without what the police refer to as untoward incidents. Cheteshwar Pujara will offer us his thoughts about DRS at a later date, no doubt - about his very smart referral in the first innings, which got him past a dream home Test century.We must realise that Rajkot, of course, has not quite marked the beginning of a beautiful friendship: the DRS is on trial all through the series against England. We can only hope that by the time it is done, this prickly relationship will be free of the old hang-ups, and that the Indian team will join the rest of the cricket world in using the DRS as standard practice.Virat Kohlis men belong to a generation younger to that of the DRS-scarred class of 2008. To be fair, even that lot would probably have given the DRS a shot outside of ICC events at some point had the system not found itself trapped in front with an identity crisis: What am I? What have I become? A broadcasters add-on? A regulatory requirement? A political tool for the powerful in a sulk?In 2016, things are clearer. The DRS is a regulatory requirement that is a few steps closer to being under the ICCs full control. The eventual intention is for it to be consistently applied in the international game. For the first time, Zimbabwe too used a version of the DRS in a home Test versus Sri Lanka last week. It was DRS lite - with ball-tracking, sans stump mic - but no one was complaining.Indias reservations over the DRS have been quelled for the moment due to several factors. Like improvements in the quality of the replay footage used by the Hawk-Eye tool - from 75 frames per second in 2011, we now have 340, which provides more data to predict the path of the ball.Also, there has been the addition of Ultra Edge technology, which was introduced at the start of the year in the South Africa v England series. This combined sound-based edge detection with simultaneous camera frames to help pick up finer edges, added a new component to the information available to the umpires. Taken together, these made for a sustained push for the argument in favour of the DRS.What added an extra layer of persuasion was the decision to take the DRS out of the cricket broadcasting environment and into a neutral laboratory. Anil Kumble, the head of the ICCs cricket committee, and Geoff Allardice, the ICCs general manager, leaned on science to ask questions of the technology tools at hand and to set up new parameters for DRS technologies of the future.Kumble, captain of India in that 2008 DRS-disaster series, tackled the project not as a cricketer who had a bone to pick with technology. It was studied as a mechanical-engineering problem that required a mechanical-engineering approach as a solution. Good thing Kumble, currently the India coach, has a degree in the subject.The exercise began in September 2014 with a set of meetings between Kumble, Allardice and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers in Boston. Sanjay Sarma, MIT professor of Mechanical Engineering says, Accuracy is a key question that any engineering task asks about measurement technologies. How precise is it? How repeatable is it? Has this been characterised? Anil Kumble and Geoff Allardice came to us with these questions.A cricket fan, Sarma had his own mixed feelings about the DRS. On the one hand, I do believe in reviews, in technology, and in the visual benefits of DRS. On the other hand, I didnt know if and how DRS was being calibrated.The DRS had more than an identity crisis; rather, it came with a built-in structural flaw. Given that analogies about parachutes and safety equipment have been used in the context of the DRS in the past, here is another. Lets compare it to a house constructed without a blueprint and assembled on the go with a variety of materials added on randomly. Going to MIT and getting DRS technologies tested independently was like asking an architect to check if the doors in a house already built would always shut correctly and that the roof wouldnt possibly collapse. What MIT did was invent the equipment that would answer those questions and also give the ICC clear technology parameters for the use of DRS in future. The September 2014 meetings marked the beginnings of a year-long project, which involved Sarmaa, Dr Jaco Pretorius of South Africa, and Stephen Ho, an American research scientist at MIT.dddddddddddd While Sarma and Pretorius were from cricket-playing nations, Ho, like the students involved as consultants in the research, had no knowledge of the sport. Sarma says, They all found the sport quaint, but over time have started playing gully cricket in our lab retreats and in the hall at MIT.Two US engineering firms, Mide and Bell-Everman, constructed the equipment, the Swinging Arm that tests the Real Time Snicko/Ultra Edge, and the Frame, which studies the ball-tracker. Two sets of tests were conducted using these tools, the first in a closed environment, like at Loughborough University last year and the other in a real match environment. Ultra Edge for example was tested behind the scenes with no public notice during the September 2015 England v Australia ODI at Lords.RTS and HotSpot, which are owned by BBG Sports, one of two cricket technology providers along with Hawk Eye, went through their offline testing at a suburban ground in Melbourne in April 2016. This was two months after being observed at work during the New Zealand v Australia Test in Christchurch. HawkEye was put to the offline MIT-ICC tests in April 2016 in Winchester, UK and then observed a month later during the England v Sri Lanka Test in Durham. The only other ball tracking technology available to cricket, Virtual Eye of New Zealand will be tested in February 2017 towards the end of the southern-hemisphere season.The equipment used to test the DRS now sits locked up in crates that are in the ICCs possession in Dubai. The MIT team, Sarma says, has recommended that the tools used in the DRS are characterised/ qualified periodically, i.e. tested to check if the parameters arrived at earlier still hold true. During the course of the project, the impact of physical conditions on the DRS tools, like wind on the speed of sound, for example, was also studied but found to be small in relative terms, or easily tackled.The ICC now owns a proper blueprint with which to build and add to their DRS house. The chief executives meetings in February will possibly involve discussion about what could be the next series of issues to be tackled on the way to a consistently applied DRS, with mandatory tools like the ball tracker and sound-based edge-detection systems. Cost would definitely be one: a five-year-old estimate says a basic DRS system costs US$5000 per day; that figure would be higher today, with far more sophisticated technologies involved. Apart from the monies, the fact that the DRS package will be owned and controlled by the ICC raises even more questions.If the ICC does take full control of the DRS from broadcasters, it has to decide in which matches the system is to be used. All formats? All formats across mens and womens cricket? How can the logistics involved be brought in sync with the current cricket calendar? Given that in every match that features the DRS, the ICC appoints its own DRS-trained third umpire along with the two on-field umpires, how many more ICC-approved third umpires would need to be DRS-trained and sent out to work matches? That is in the future and outside the ambit of the systems most reluctant followers.For the Indian team, though, there is one element of the DRS that will prove challenging, but which cannot be fixed by machines or scientific tests. It is to do with how the technology is used by the players in the middle, and here the Indians will have to catch up quick.In Rajkot, Pujara experienced all sides. After his inspired first-innings referral, in the second he walked off glumly, leg-before to one from Adil Rashid that pitched outside leg. At the other end, M Vijay had respectfully turned his back to the departure, without alerting his partner to the possibility of a review. It was, no doubt, an instinctive response, born of a DRS-free Test match habit. It led Sachin Tendulkar to say that the third umpire needs to intervene in such instances. Lets not get into that now or we will be here for another eight years.Yes, the umpires decision must be respected, but in the Indian Test teams new world, sometimes, the old rules dont apply. Cheap Throwback Baseball Detroit Tigers Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Colorado Rockies Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Houston Astros Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Kansas City Royals Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Los Angeles Angels Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Los Angeles Dodgers Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Miami Marlins Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Milwaukee Brewers Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Minnesota Twins Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball New York Mets Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball New York Yankees Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Oakland Athletics Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Philadelphia Phillies Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Pittsburgh Pirates Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball San Diego Padres Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball San Francisco Giants Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Seattle Mariners Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball St. Louis Cardinals Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Tampa Bay Rays Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Texas Rangers Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Toronto Blue Jays Jerseys Cheap Throwback Baseball Washington Nationals Jerseys ' ' '