BREAKING: 87% of all NU Graduates now professional football players in Finland

Because I'm a journalism student, and therefore, someone who is trained and specializes in finding and reporting the information which I decide you, the readers, need to know, I mentioned in the the cornerbacks post that David Oredugba is playing professionally in Finland. Just Oredugba alone made Finland the world's largest importer of ex-NU defenders. (They had previously been in a 195-way tie for last.)

This important information dinked and dunked around the internets, and eventually, somehow word who got to LTP, who brought us this post with the news that Deante Battle, who was a starting cornerback round Evanston way for 3 years, is also playing in Finland. 

Because I'm a journalism student, and therefore, adept at finding information which I discern will interest my readers, I'm here to break yet another story: Demetrius Eaton, the ex-NU linebacker, is a teammate of Battle's on the Kouvola Indians. 

Dear rest of the world: you've been scooped. Deal with it.

As you probably were able to tell by my borderline obsessive coverage of Kyle Rowley's exploits for the T and T national basketball team, I've got a bit of a thing for fledgling American sports in countries that aren't America. So here's my really long post about Finnish American football, plus, I found the evidence that all this is actually true that I was looking for in my last post. No help from all of you, though, so nobody wins the prizes I promised. Unfortunately, figuring things out with this has been a little difficult, considering Finnish is a language most closely related to Hungarian, and therefore, is like the bottom 5 least decipherable things possible. 

So: David Oredugba is, as noted, a cornerback for the Helsinki Roosters, the 14-time winners of the American Football Association of Finland. Because everything in Finland makes sense, this league is abbreviated as the SABJ. In the last post, I was dying for evidence that this is true, and here it is: an interview Oredugba did with some guy with a thick Finnish accent, just after playing his first game. 

So, yeah: good to see our ex-fourth-string cornerbacks are enjoying themselves. Also, sweet high-top fade. If I knew he was rockin that thing under his helmet at NU, I would've had a new favorite player.

Meanwhile, onto Battle and Eaton: unlike Oredugba, these guys don't seem to be living the good life. Battle and Eaton, as noted, are signed with the Kouvola Indians. Unlike Oredugba's team, the Indians aren't in the Finnish American football big leagues. They're in the I-Divisioona, which, because everything in Finland makes sense, is the second level of Finnish American football, the AAA of Finland's thriving gridiron scene. To add insult to injury, while Helsinki is a capital city and has over 500,000 inhabitants, Kouvola's wikipedia page describes it thusly: "Kouvola has a reputation of being a dull and uninteresting place." So pity Deante and Demetrius a little.

When it comes to football, the two are doing pretty well as far as I can tell. I would assume this is because these are ex-Big Ten players, and they're playing in the second-best league in Finland, a league where Stefan Demos could probably pass for a right tackle. Both are playing both ways, and have various articles written about them in Finnish newspapers.  Of course, I don't know what these articles say, because Finnish ain't my strong suit, but the inordinate amount of times each name pops up both in these newspaper articles and on team websites makes me assume they're doing well, unless the authors are sadistic and love ragging on people excessively.

Deante has even gone so far as to post a highlight reel of himself on youtube, playing in Finland, which I'm thrilled about, because it provides my much needed visual evidence that there's Finnish dudes playing football. 

I like Deante's choice of Young Dro as highlight reel music, and really like the clips of him absolutely levelling various hapless Finns who have probably never been tackled by an actual football player before, then standing up and yelling various things at their possibly lifeless bodies. 

However, judging from this thing he wrote (on a site that only appears to feature ex-NU athletes - anybody know the deal with that? Gotta be NU-grad founded or something), Deante doesn't seem to be enjoying himself too much in Finland. That's among the more depressing things I've ever read, so, Deante, cheer up. 

Because they're Americans playing American football in Finland, there are numerous photos of Deante and Demetrius doing dramatic things. Demetrius is #3, Deante is #2:

Is he looking at the kid in the grey's badonk?

My favorite part of this photo is the startled ref.

Anyway, that's that. However, I'm still hungry for more information, as this whole Finnish football thing raises more questions than answers: how well are these guys actually doing, outside of photos? Who put them in touch with random Finnish football teams? Do they ever have little NU reunions in Finland? Considering I haven't seen one image with fans in the background, how do these guys get paid? Is Finland scouting NU games, and if not, how come the ranks of Finland's football finest are populated by so many NU grads? And most importantly, why in the name of all that is holy are they playing professional football in Finland?

Anybody with answers to any of these questions: come forth. First person to get me in touch with an actual Finnish football player, NU grad or not, wins my undying love. 

1LDTFS, Post 9: Cornerbacks.

Sorry for the four or so day posting break - me and some of the boys went camping, no internet access out in the woods. Hopefully, the new poll on the right makes up for my time away. (Seriously, folks, give Wet Paper Bag his due.)

Days Left Til Football: 38. (Please, nobody actually do the math to figure this out. I'm probably so far off at this point - I keep subtracting from the last time I did this post, but I'm probably losing like 4 days each time I do that.)

Yeah, that's pass interference. 

Who did it last year?: The purple-clad fella above is Sherrick McManis, who started every game last year and did a downright fantastic job. McManis was in his third year starting games at cornerback, his second year full-time, and he's improved every year. He was originally joined by Justan Vaughn, who jumped some people on the depth chart to earn the starting job, but after the Syracuse and Duke games, Vaughn suffered a season-ending injury, and in came Jordan Mabin, who was pretty much as good as McManis, and earned hisself a Freshman All-American honor. 

In the tradition of naming graduated players who sorta contributed in these posts, NU loses David Oredugba, who played a decent amount of corner when we needed three or four on the field, and will forever go down in NU history as the guy whose poor hands led to Brendan Smith's game-winning pick six against Minnesota. Because I'm a journalism student, and I therefore specialize in reporting to you, the reader, the most important and relevant information I can find, I am here to tell you the following information: Oredugba is now gainfully employed playing football for the Helsinki Roosters in Finland.  For all of you who were wondering about ex-NU occasional nickelback David Oredugba's post-collegiate football whereabouts,  you're welcome, and donations are accepted in the form of cash, checks, or credit cards sent to my dorm room. Here are some money quotes from an interview with David from the Roosters' website.

"I understand that during the summer Helsinki is a great place to
be, because of the nice weather, festivals, midnight sunsets. While in
Finland I hope to forge many lifelong friendships."

" I hope to do whatever it takes for the Roosters to win the Maple Title."

The Purple Drank: providing the information you need since June 2009.

Who's Got Next?: McManis and Mabin ensured their starters roles with great performances last year, and with Vaughn back from injury, we've basically got three cornerbacks who we'd be pleased with in a starting role. If needs be, Mike Bolden seems to be the most likely candidate to play in a dime set, although we'd probably end up putting in safety Bryan Peters and having Brad Phillips playing a nickelback role with Vaughn also in the game. 

Is that an improvement? Oh yeah. Essentially, the difference from last year to this year is that we know we have two lock-down corners in McManis and Mabin, plus, our third CB - a pretty necessary position - changes from Oredugba to Vaughn. Don't tell the Helsinki Roosters, but Vaughn was higher than Oredugba on the roster last year, so that's a good thing. Our secondary should be pretty sweet this year, and by now, you've probably noticed that all of the defensive posts since DT have been really complimentary, and the DT one was pretty complimentary too. Long story short, we're going to have a nice defense this year.

And, yes, consider the hunt on for any further evidence related to David Oredugba's Finnish American football career. First person to find anything wins a prize.

Summer Nationalism Wrap-Up

So the international basketball/football season is officially over at Northwestern with John Shurna's New Zealand trip ending with gold, so, let's analyze what all this flag-bearing means for NU, player by player. 

John Shurna: Covered this decently yesterday, but hey. It's good to see that he's capable of being a contributing member on a gold-medal team where everybody involved is of a fairly high skill level. It's a little difficult to interpret how his numbers relate to his development as a player - first off, small sample sizes and mixed competition. Second off, he was playing power forward - hence the high rebounding and blocks numbers, whereas at NU, he'll be a three. Third off, the US team was all about the three ball - Shurna shot 18 threes and 17 twos, and that's less of a reflection of Shurna transforming into a jacker than it is a reflection of USA's strategy - four players shot more threes than twos, an additional three shot over 45% of their shots from downtown, Seth Curry shot 48 threes and 15 twos.  So what I'll say is this: Shurna played a jumpshooting big man throughout the tournament, and did a pretty good job. "Jumpshooting big man" is a very close approximation of what Shurna will be doing at NU, although he will technically be the third tallest player on the court most of the time. Therefore, we should just be damn pleased that he did a pretty good job overseas representing his country, and he probably got some pretty decent coaching while there, and he'll probably be a better player for it, plus it looks good for him and for NU. So there. I essentially said nothing in this paragraph.

Kyle Rowley: Let's start easy: Kyle Rowley will get better with time, and a few weeks of practice on a team on which he was the youngest player was a really good way to start. Of course, the down side of this is that as the least senior member of the team - in fact, at 19, he's four years younger than anybody else on the team - and that seniority might have gotten him shafted in terms of playing time. And, if I must say so, these reports from latinbasket are actually somewhat complementary, which is sorta to be expected from guys whose job is it to write exclusively about Trinidad and Tobago basketball, but still good to see. 

Now, here's the problem. At NU, Kyle starts at center, ahead of Luka Mirkovic, a pretty talented center with really good rebounding skills and touch extending beyond the three-point line. In the T&T, Kyle was on the bench behind Julius Ashby, who plays for Tokyo Apache, a confusingly named Japanese basketball team, and Miguel Williams, a 31 year old player for the Petro Jazz of the Trinidadian league. 

That doesn't work.

Unless we want to start considering our team worse than the national team of Trinidad and Tobago, which I personally don't, something's gotta change. 

The fact that the Trinidadian national team doesn't trust him to play in games which have a competitive level below that of Division I, much less Big Ten basketball, is not a good sign for his game now. Now, I have faith that his game will improve with time, but the wrong way to handle his development is by thrusting him into the starting lineup in one of the biggest seasons in Northwestern basketball history.

John Plasencia and Brian Smith: These guys won't play this year, but a few weeks of good coaching and a taste of winning didn't hurt anybody. Also, it looks like Plasencia's got some serious receiving skill - then again, it's really difficult to take anything out of a tournament in which the USA was so thoroughly better than their opponents. And that Plasencia is the GTEOATU19, but that's a given. 

So, that's that. Because I'm really really good at finding perfect endings to blog posts, here's a dude playing the national anthem of the USA on steel drum, followed by a kid playing the Trinidad and Tobago national anthem on steel drum wearing a Santa hat. 

John Plasencia named World's Best Tight End

OK, not actually true. Technically, Plasencia is just the World's Greatest Tight End in the World under the age of 19 after being named to the IFAF Junior World Cup all-tournament team, but, hey, we'll take it. 

A short but incomplete list of things John Plasencia is: A mountain, a tall tree, a swift wind sweeping the country

Plasencia, henceforth known as the GTEOATU19 (Greatest Tight End Of All Time Under the age of 19), had a 26-yard touchdown grab in the USA's 41-3 gold medal game romp over Canada, cementing his place in history. He finished the tournament with the one touchdown and five receptions for 68 yards, and played in all three of USA's victories in which they outscored their opponents by a total score of 174-3. 

Disconcertingly, his touchdown had echoes of his two-point conversion in the 78-0 victory against France in that it was a bit of a running up of the score, as it was the final touchdown, and the team was already ahead 34-3. But who can blame him? When you're the world's greatest, you need to let the opponent know it. If some punk New Zealandish cornerback thinks they can stick with Plasencia, he has every right to catch a touchdown, high-step into the endzone, and tell them to go shove a kiwi down their throat. The bird or the fruit, doesn't matter. (And yes, for those of you wondering: the New Zealand junior football team did the haka. Way, way less intimidating than when the rugby team does it, but more intimidating than the basketball, baseball, and hockey versions various NZ sports teams use.) 

Plasencia won't arrive on campus until september, and won't even be playing tight end, he'll be a superback, but he's already a legend on the Purple Drank. I advise Pat Fitzgerald redshirt him freshman year - if Plasencia just spent two weeks steamrolling major nations like France, Mexico, and Canada, imagine what he'll do to puny little states like Michigan and Indiana? I shudder, and congratulate the future Wildcat on his performance.

Nationalism Week rolls on!

A short post for a day on which I'm one of about 30 people in the United States working, we'll catch up on our nation-representing athletes.

First off, something I hadn't mentioned yet: some of our FIVE TIME champion Women's Lacrosse players were involved in the Lacrosse World Cup: Alums Kristen Kjellman, Sarah Albrecht, and Lindsey Munday played for the US, who won, and senior Hannah Nielsen contributed to a second-place Australian team. So, let's get six.

Now, to the guys I've written about. 

The first thing I wrote about, the IFAF Junior World Championship, the international American Football tournament in which future Cats John Plasencia and Brian Smith are participating, is going as you'd expect. USA beat France 78-0, and Mexico 55-0. Plasencia has three receptions for 32 yards, not too shabby, and there's no stats for Smith because he's a lineman, but, apparently, he's starting. In somewhat disturbing news, Plasencia caught a two-point conversion to make the score 24-0 against France, even though they were up 23. Against France. In an American football tournament. Really? 23-0 wouldn't have been good enough, USA Coach, you had to go for two? Really? You had to go for two? I'm pretty sure there's no direct translation for "two-point conversion" into french, and you had to go and make sure that you guys didn't only win by 77? Really? At least leave Plasencia out of it. Anyway, Northwestern football: expect victory. 

John Shurna got his grown man on with an 11-point, 10-board double-double against Iran in a 106-55 victory, including 5 offensive boards, prompting FIBA to write this about him:

"After a tense opening that saw the USA lead by just two, 14-12, with less than three minutes remaining in the first period, 203cm power forward John Shurna made the running for the USA, scoring seven points as his team went on a 16-1 run to finish the quarter in control, 30-13."

Yeah! That just sounded cool. Unfortunately, through no fault of his own, Shurna has gotten no better at making photographers take good pictures of him.

The only photographic evidence of John Shurna recording a double-double for Team USA.

Last, but not least, Trinidad and Tobago has to be the feel-good story of the summer in the Caribbean basketball world. Despite my gloom-and-doom predictions last week, the team is 3-0 so far in the CBC championship, but Kyle Rowley has had little to do with their success. In their victory over Jamaica, he played two minutes and had no stats besides a turnover. He got 8 minutes, presumably garbage time, in a 90-63 romp over Barbados, and actually performed really well: 7 points and 5 rebounds. (Per 40 minutes: 35 points and 25 rebounds.) And against the Bahamas, he didn't get off the bench. Obviously, this isn't good for NU, but we should be happy for the T&T. And we should forget how bad I am at predicting Carribean basketball games. 

USA! USA!

Woooooo!

So, there's a reason for the flags. This summer, starting tomorrow, three of our boys in purple will be representing the red, white, and blue: football pre-froshes John Plasencia and Brian Smith will be on the USA team at the very first Junior World Championship, and John Shurna will be a member of the USA contingent heading to the U-19 Championships in New Zealand. I'm excited about this, because I'm a sucker for nationalistic sporting events. (YEAH CLINT DEMPSEY!)

Today, I'll post about football. In the name of saving up things I can write about as long as possible, Ill discuss Shurna when his tournament starts. But Plasencia, Smith, and 43 other kids who have never smelled a dorm hallway before will kick off their tournament Saturday in Canton, Ohio, against France. 

First off, let's welcome Plasencia and Smith. Plasencia is a superback (quoth Fitz: a super person who does super things), and Smith is an offensive lineman. Both, as previously noted, are incoming freshman, both will most likely redshirt, and both probably won't start a game at Northwestern for at least three years. But for some reason or another, they've been selected as part of the US Junior National team. 

But what does that mean? Are these the best players in the United States? What's the history of this tournament?

The answers: I have no idea, nope, and there is none. 

Since this is the first rendition of the tournament, there's no historical context for me to tell you what sort of a harbinger playing in a competition like this is for how good the players are, how they got selected, why they got selected, or any other amount of questions. What I can tell you, because I read the press release, is that 45 players attending 33 colleges next year were selected to play in Canton, and that, according to NUsports.com, Plasencia and Smith aren't the cream of the crop - rather, Plasencia is the 86th best tight end in his class according to Superprep and Smith is the 70th best tackle. 

But enough with the parade raining. It's damn impressive that these kids were selected, and it can't hurt that they get a few weeks of extra training, practice, and game experience, which they'll probably get, considering there's only 45 guys on the team. Not to mention that I doubt whatever mysterious entity involved with putting this team together probably wasn't searching for scrubs: they must have seen something about these two dudes out of the thousands of D-1 tight ends and o-linemen that they liked. (Although, considering the preponderance of Big Ten guys, geography and the logistics of holding a tournament in Ohio might have had something to do with it, especially considering that Smith is actually from Ohio.) I wouldn't be surprised if they were intentionally not picking top-flight players so that opposing teams had a chance, figuring closer games, and maybe a USA team losing a game or two would allow for the sport to grow on an international level.

A way to make sense of all of this might be a brief primer on the history of international American football competitions, which, surprisingly, exist.(figure out which adjective modifies what there.) The wikipedia tells me that the IFAF (International Federation of American Football) has been held three times, with Japan winning twice and the US winning in 2007, the first time they sent a team.

You'd be surprised to find that they didn't completely dominate. After winning their group stage games against South Korea and Germany 77-0 and 33-7, respectively, the team had a serious battle against Japan, winning a 23-20 double overtime game. 

I doubt there will be close games like that in this competition. As far as I can tell, the USA team there was a Frankenstein-ish hodgepodge of inactive ex-collegiate football players with an intense series of regulations on who could be picked: no players who had ever been professional, multiple players had to be selected from D-I, D-II, and D-III, and none were allowed to have been active players at the collegiate level for 12 months prior to the tournament. They played against international teams that, despite lacking the football pedigree and infrastructure that the United States has, had probably been playing together and practicing for longer: after all, it was their one time to shine, while for the USA players, it was just one last fling and attempt at capturing glory after finishing their mildly successful careers and getting an education out of it. 

Here, in the first Junior World Championships, the USA squad makes more sense and is probably going to be more cohesive as a result. There's no draconian restrictions on who could be picked: it's just 45 guys who the USA Football people liked, and they're not rusty, since they just finished with high school and are moving on towards college, not completely finished with their careers. And their competition is probably the same level of skill as in the last tournament: that is to say, bad. 

Let's be real: they're playing France in the first round. France. I'd like to mock the french as weak and cowardly, primarily because of four years of B-minus speckled high school french, but despite never having been mugged in nearly 20 years of living in New York, I managed to get mugged, and, rather violently so, in five days of being in France, so, they officially earned the right to not be called snivelling cowards. Instead, I will talk about how unlikely it is that they are good at football. 

I will paraphrase from the biography of their starting quarterback, Maxime Sprauel, I repeat, whose name is Maxime Sprauel, which is a french name, even though the sport is called American football. (And no: LaDanian is not a french name, if you were wondering.) Maxime plays for the Thornon les Bains Black Panthers (good choice of team name, folks, probably considerably less controversial in France), and recently led the French junior team to a third place finish at the European Junior American Football championships. Other teams in the tournament include Japan,(I guess they were good in those other weird international tournaments I just wrote about), Canada (makes sense, CFL and all), Mexico (okay, getting weird now, although I guess they border us), Germany (NFL Europe, maybe?), New Zealand (really? I mean, this is getting silly), and Sweden (hahahahahahaha). So, yeah, the competition isn't great. Maybe a well-established team like Canada or Japan will give Plasencia, Smith n crew a run for their money, but odds are the two will come to Evanston with some hardware in pocket.

The games, obviously, are not on television, although they will stream from the USA football website. (In other news: I will not be watching.) If anybody does watch, first off, please, leave your house, go get some fresh air, do something else with your life. Second, tell us how the Wildcats involved do. Even though probably, they'll be doing nothing more important than blocking, and it will be really difficult to judge how good they actually are, considering they'll be going up against frenchies. 

If I can find anything out about how the tourney goes, I'll give you a report when the tourney is over. Until then, wish them luck, but for now, just know that the bottom line is that it's great for the program that two of our guys have this cool experience. Next week, I'll discuss Shurna's US experience before his tournament kicks off on July 2nd. 

Oh, and if you're still reading (highly unlikely,) peep the poll on the right side! Make it look like I got readers!