Hatters Are Going Live on Friday

Stetson University's athletics programs will be on full display on Friday morning when Skip Diegel and the WSBB AM 1230 morning show originates from the new Stetson Athletics Training Facility in DeLand.

WSBB is based in New Smyrna Beach and is becoming a great partner with Hatters Athletics. They have been running regular interviews over the past several weeks with members of the Stetson staff, including head football coach Roger Hughes, Director of Athletics Jeff Altier and University President Dr. Wendy Libby.

Even if you aren't able to hear WSBB's over the air broadcast, you can listen to the station online through their web site, myam1230.com. People with smart phones can also listen that way, if you go HERE and load the app on your phone.

The show will be on the air live starting at 7 a.m. and will run until 9 a.m. Members of the Stetson football team will be making their way out for an 8:30 a.m. practice throughout the morning.

Some of the guests you can expect to hear from on Friday include both Altier and Hughes, along with men's soccer coach Logan Fleck, new women's lacrosse coach Nicole Moore, volleyball coach Tim Loesch, men's basketball coach Casey Alexander and women's basketball coach Lynn Bria.

In addition, the guest lineup will include DeLand Mayor Bob Apgar, Volusia County Chair Frank Bruno, Volusia County Information Director Dave Byron, Volusia County Council District 1 Representative Andy Kelly, DeLand City Manager Michael Pleus and the Director of Main Street DeLand, Jack Becker.

If there is a quiet moment, I might even be able to sneak in for a couple of minutes.

Be sure to tune in on Friday morning.

Hughes Having a Busy Week

In addition to getting the Stetson football program off the ground, Hatters head coach Roger Hughes has had a busy week with media requests. Several outlets were on hand for the football scrimmage on Wednesday and most of the Orlando television outlets have been to town to talk Stetson football, in addition to a visit from the Orlando Sentinel and the always outstanding coverage from the Daytona Beach News Journal and the West Volusia Beacon.

Hughes will continue with his media blitz tonight when he makes an appearance on 740 AM "The Game" in Orlando for a visit with long-time central Florida sports personality Tracy Dent. That appearance is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. You can listen HERE.

On Saturday morning Hughes will visit with another central Florida sports legend, Sam Cook, on the ES3 Playbook Radio program on WRSO 810. You can listen to that appearance at 10:15 a.m. HERE.

I'll step in for Coach Hughes on Sunday morning to appear on "The Sideline" with Kevin Baldinger, also on WRSO 810.

Coach Hughes will be back on the air in Orlando on Monday when he visits with Dave Baumann on ESPN Radio 1080 AM. That appearance will be at 9:05 a.m. to open the Monday show and can be heard HERE.

It's Time to Play the Game!

As hard as it is to believe, summer is officially over. I know, the calendar shows another month, but summer ends when the college games begin. With the Stetson women's soccer team set to kickoff the 2012 season on Friday night at FIU, summer is over.

The first regular season home event of the year will be on Sunday when the Hatters host Georgia Southern in women's soccer. That game is set for a 1 p.m. start. If you want to get an early start, the Stetson men's soccer squad will play an exhibition game against Florida Southern tomorrow night at 6 p.m.

Home events are thin for the first week of the athletic year, but will crank into full action a week from tomorrow when the Stetson volleyball team hosts the Stetson Classic. That event will include 10 matches over two days with teams from Central Arkansas, Hampton, Florida Atlantic and Wofford joining the Hatters in a round-robin tournament.

If you missed yesterday's football scrimmage, you will have chances to see the Hatters scrimmage at least four more times this fall. The next scrimmage is set for Saturday, September 1, with other scrimmages set for October 6, October 20 and November 3. I would guess there will be at least two more scrimmages mixed in.

Media Training Today

This morning I had an opportunity to meet with the entire Stetson football team to provide some media training tips and advice. The guys appeared to pay attention and some even took notes.

Over the last few years I have sort of become known for my media training sessions. We hit on almost every possible scenario and cover things such as social media responsibility, the differences in dealing with TV and print media, and just general tips on how to handle interview situations.

I showed the new Hatters pretty much the same demonstration I used last year at Troy, including some of the tweets that were way off color. The laughs came at pretty much the right times, so my delivery must have been OK.

I got to tell the guys some stories from my career in athletics, including some guys I worked with who became true professionals in dealing with the media. Those guys include Chad Pennington, Byron Leftwich, DeMarcus Ware and Jerrel Jernigan.

I'd like to think that I helped all of those guys, and many others, prepare for what they face now as NFL players, but I also I helped the many hundreds of others who did not go on to play professionally.

After having practice cancelled by rain and lightening last night, I know the players and coaches are anxious to get back onto the field tonight. After our session, the players were to spend much of the afternoon getting fitted for shoulder pads.

It will still be shorts for the guys tonight at 7 p.m.

Here is a link to the story that WKMG in Orlando did on the return of Stetson football. CLICK HERE

WFTV and WESH have also both been to practice, but I haven't seen their reports posted online yet.

You can keep up with all news coverage of the Hatters through the official athletics web site, GoHatters.com. Just look under the Inside Athletics tab on the front page and look for Hatters News Links.

Football Comes to Hatterland

It has been quite a while since I last penned a blog, but I promise I will do a better job of blogging in the coming year.

Here is a quick recap of what has been going on since I last blogged back in January.

Basketball season, baseball season, golf season, tennis season, softball season, sand volleyball season, hosted the A-Sun Baseball Tournament, had a heart attack, got my wife and all our belongings moved from Alabama to DeLand, went to the CoSIDA Convention in St. Louis, hired two new members to my staff, had lots of meetings (that continues) and started football practice.

I won't bore you with all the specifics, but I do really appreciate the outpouring of support and concern I received after my "little" heart attack. Was certainly not the way I expected to spend Memorial Day.

Fast forward to last night's debut of the Stetson Football team. I have been involved in college athletics for 19 years, all working with football, but this was the most excited I have seen a school for the first day of practice.

There is always some anticipation from players and coaches to get to work. There is also the anticipation of seeing what the new crop of recruits looks like on the field. That anticipation was multiplied 10 fold last night because the entire team was made up of a fresh crop of recruits.

It was interesting to watch. There is always some uneasiness among new players and coaches for the first day of camp. Everyone has to know where to go, when to go there, and what to do once they get there. While there was certainly some of that last night, there was so much excitement in the air that no one noticed. Besides, no one other than the coaches knew what was supposed to happen anyway.

One thing I have learned over the years is that no two head coaches are the same.

When I was in college at Alabama, Ray Perkins and Bill Curry both spent time as head coach. No two people could possibly be more different in their approach to coaching.

At Southern Miss, I worked with Jeff Bower, who had his own style, as did Bob Pruett at Marshall and, most recently, Larry Blakeney at Troy. Roger Hughes is certainly no different. His coaching style comes from a completely different background than any of the other coaches I have worked with.

Like I said, no two styles are the same. There is also no way to evaluate if one style is better than another because there is no one right way to do things.

Tuesday evening's practice for the Hatters was also different from most others I have attended in the buzz among members of the community who were in attendance. The Libby's, the first family of Stetson University, were there. They mayor and many civic leaders were in attendance. There were parents, brothers, sisters, girl friends. There was also a good bit of media coverage.

Many of the people there had never before attended a college football practice, and none had ever done so in DeLand. The excitement about the Hatters football program was easy to sense.

The other thing about the start of football practice at Stetson is the fact that the new Athletics Training Facility is almost complete. There are still a lot of final details to be finished, but the players were able to use their locker room.

The entire building should be ready for occupancy in the next couple of weeks, and that will be a big milestone for not just football, but the Stetson soccer and lacrosse programs, which will share the facility.

I am sure the crowd that gathers for practice will slowly dwindle as camp moves forward, but I hope the excitement over the return of football to Stetson continues to grow.

After all, we only have 389 days before toe meets leather for the first game.

Watch the Stetson Hatters YouTube Channel for videos from practice as well as special features throughout the year. Also, I'll be posting photos from practice on our Stetson Athletics Facebook page.

Please feel free to load your own photos and videos so that we can share the complete experience with all Stetson fans across the world.

Stuck, In the Airport in Nashville

Sounds like a line in a country song, which I guess is appropriate for the location. Our Southwest Airlines flight to Orlando has been delayed, apparently indefinitely, by mechanical problems. The plane is on the ground in St. Louis and they have no idea when, or if, it will make it to Nashville.

The mechanical problem is joined by severe weather in the Nashville area. Thunderstorms are rumbling outside as I write this, and they temperature is supposed to plummet when the rain passes through.

At this point, we have no idea when we might get back to Florida.

It has been a while since I last blogged and I need to make it a point of emphasis to put thoughts to computer screen on a more regular basis. I just get so wrapped up in the day-to-day that I forget to take a step back and look at the big picture.

I have spent the last four nights at the Aloft Hotel in Franklin, TN, with the Stetson men's basketball team. If you follow me on Twitter (@rhazel_SID) or are friends on Facebook, then you probably already know my thoughts on the hotel.

In a word, it was weird!

It is a nice hotel, but different. It has a very European feel. It is the only hotel room I have ever been in, and there have been many, that did not have drawers to put clothes and other items in. Not one single drawer in the room.

Like I said, weird.

This trip has been a long and disappointing one for the Hatters. Stetson's men went into the weekend looking for a share of the Atlantic Sun Conference lead. That was lost on Saturday in the second half at Belmont when the Bruins got hot offensively and the Hatters couldn't keep up.

That night was also disappointing because the Stetson women's team saw their 10-game win streak come to an end in an upset loss.

I tweeted during the games that I was disappointed because I didn't see any of the Nashville "stars" at the game. I just didn't look in the right place. I saw Vince Gill and his wife Amy Grant after the game, but I didn't see Mark Miller from Sawyer Brown or Larry Stewart from Restless Heart, who were also at the game.

I am a big Restless Heart fan and would have liked to have met Stewart, but I am sure there will be another chance somewhere down the road. At some point I'll write about seeing Restless Heart with Lone Star and Blackhawk in an outdoor concert in Arizona several years ago. It was July and, when the concert started at 11 p.m. local time it was 104 degrees.

Anyway, the Stetson men had a chance last night to earn a split on this always tough road trip, and the Hatters battled their guts out only to have their hearts broken in overtime.

Junior Adam Pegg had a career night with 28 points, two of which came at the end of regulation to force overtime with the entire Lipscomb student body screaming in his face from the baseline.

In overtime, the Hatters took a two point lead late in on a three-pointer by Aaron Graham, but, with one second left on the clock, Lipscomb hit an unlikely three-pointer of their own from a player who had hit just 2-of-6 from three all year. The 104-103 loss was Stetson's second loss in overtime this year.

Since I last wrote a blog (has it really been more than a month?) I have watched this Stetson basketball team make steady improvement. It may not be this year, but coach Casey Alexander will have his squad in the thick of the A-Sun title chance sooner rather than later.

While basketball season marches on, it is just over a month before the baseball season is scheduled to start, and softball will crank up even sooner. It is during the season overlap periods when media relations staff members become sleep deprived.

I met last week with the Stetson baseball staff to talk about the coming season and, needless to say, they are optimistic about their chances of having a good year. The Hatters return the bulk of the team from last year, including 42 of the 43 pitching wins, and are receiving plenty of pre-season recognition nationally.

Some of the lesser known polls have already come out with Stetson in the rankings. The Baseball America and National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association polls will be coming in a matter of days and those, along with the USA Today Coaches Poll, make up the "major" polls.

I expect the Hatters to be ranked somewhere in the 20-25 range in all three polls when they hit the street.

Since I last blogged I had a chance to enjoy some time back in Alabama with my wife and dogs for Christmas. Joan has been very busy back home. In addition to her job as ticket manager at Troy University, as well as packing our home for the eventual move to Florida, she is also busy promoting her recent novel, which is called "The Last Guardian".

Her book sales have been going well and she is on the verge of cracking the top 1,000 in terms of sales on Amazon.com. She has a website and blog of her own which tells about her book and characters. Visit www.joanhazel.com to get information on both.

Once she gets settled in DeLand, I am sure she will find a place to have a couple of book signings.

I have been a writer my entire adult life, but I don't have a patience or talent to write a novel. I wish I did. I am so proud of her for her achievement. I know many people who have read her book (yes I have read it as well) who are anxiously awaiting the next installment in what is planned to be a four-part series.

I'll wrap up with a plug for this Friday night's game at the Edmunds Center. In addition to being a big game for the Hatters against in-state foe Florida Gulf Coast, the evening will feature to debut of the new Stetson Athletics mascot.

Every fan in attendance will receive a commemorative bandana as a keepsake from the debut, which will take place at halftime.

I am one of the few people who has actually seen the mascot and I am sure fans will agree that is will be a great ambassador for Stetson Athletics into the future. It certainly represents much of Stetson's history as well as the history of the area.

Friday's game will be a television game as well. CSS, which is a cable sports channel based in Atlanta, will carry the game. I have seen other CSS programing on the Brighthouse Sports channel in the past, so I would guess the game will be available there, but I have not been able to confirm that.

Matt Stewart, who is one of the main sports personalities at CSS, will handle play-by-play for the game with former Auburn coach Sonny Smith on color. It will be Sonny's second trip to DeLand this year. He was also in town for the game against Jacksonville a week or so ago.

The Stetson women will play at the Edmunds Center on Saturday afternoon against Florida Gulf Coast in a showdown between the top two teams in the Atlantic Sun. Expect a high-scoring game that day because FGCU shoots more three-pointers than any other team in women's college basketball.

Well, I guess that is it for me from rainy Nashville. It is pouring down rain outside and there is no plane in sight or expected soon.

Send me a message on Twitter (@rhazel_sid) or on Facebook and let me know what kinds of things you'd like to read about and I'll do my best to provide you some interesting stories from the road.

I'll just try to do it more often.

Making my regular 30-year trip to Indiana

Just like clockwork, every 30 years or so (I guess 28 years to be exact) I make a trip to Bloomington, Indiana.

I guess that really doesn't count as regular, but here I am, with a basketball game against the Hoosiers on the docket for this afternoon. The Hatters and Hoosiers will square off at 4:30 p.m. today at legendary Assembly Hall.

My previous trips to Indiana University were in the summers of 1982 and 1983. I was active in Junior Achievement in high school and the annual summer get-together for kids from around the country was held on the IU campus.

That was really the first time I was ever exposed to a large number of people from diverse backgrounds, religions and ethnicity. Those were some truly eye-opening days for me.

That time here at Indiana was the heyday of the Bob Knight era of Hoosiers basketball. In fact, during the summer of 1983, Coach Knight was preparing to be the head coach of the 1984 U.S. Olympic team and was holding tryouts at Assembly Hall for the big collegiate stars of the day.

I remember getting an opportunity to go into Assembly Hall in the summer of 1983 and seeing the tape on the floor to mark the international lanes used during Olympic play.

During my years in college athletics, I have had an opportunity to visit a lot of colleges, including several in the Big Ten Conference. With the exception of the many Saturday's I spent in Tuscaloosa for Alabama football, Indiana was one of the first major college campuses I ever visited.

Quite an Impressive Building

I am sure much has changed here since that first visit in 1982. Assembly Hall, however, does not look much different. Of course there are the modern trappings that include a gargantuan video/scoreboard that hangs over center court that replaces the old school end boards the building used to have, but the inside of the arena doesn't look much different than I remember.

What is new is the Cook Practice Facility that is right next to Assembly Hall. This palace to basketball was opened in 2010 and is a perfect illustration of why hoops is king in the Hoosier state.

The building is shared by Indiana's men's and women's programs. Both teams coaches have offices that, from the outside, appear to be as good as any you could imagine. There is a huge entry atrium that is a tribute to Hoosiers hoops with images, trophies, and other relics of the many past successes of Indiana basketball.

When you venture further into the building you find not one, but two full sized practice facilities, one for each team. There is a common strength facility and training facility, but both programs have their own meeting and video rooms, player and staff lounges, and any other area a modern college basketball facility might need.

Just to put the facility into terms that my friends in DeLand, as well as the folks in Troy, Huntington, Hattiesburg and other spots I have called home, can understand. The Cook Facility is larger than the Edmunds Center. It is larger by far than Sartain Hall, and even larger than the new Trojan Arena will be. It is probably similar in size to the Henderson Center and is certainly larger than Reed Green Coliseum.

And, it is just for practice, and just for basketball.

Wow!

Hoosiers Hosting 1987 Reunion

In addition to the game today, the Hoosiers are hosting the 1987 national championship team for a reunion. Of the 15 members of Indiana's last national title team, 12 will be on hand. The only disappointing part of what should be a great tribute is that the man who led the Hoosiers to that title, Bob Knight, will not be here.

I imagine there are still some bad feelings on Coach Knight's part over the way his tenure at Indiana ended more than a decade ago, but it is too bad for the members of that team who will come together today that he will not be here to take part in the reunion.

You can see that the administration here at IU, none of who were involved in Knight's departure, is doing what it can to reach out and reconnect with the most famous and successful coach in the program's history. Hopefully, at some point, Coach Knight will let go of the hard feelings he has and return to Bloomington to be embraced by the Hoosier fans who still care very deeply for him.

Hatters Entering Into a Break

For the Hatters, this will be the last game for a while. Stetson will go on a 13-day break from games to focus on finals. The Hatters will return to action for two games -- against USC Upstate (Dec. 17) and Charleston Southern (Dec. 21) before taking another week-long break for Christmas.

Stetson fans who want to see the game today can do so, online, through the Big Ten Network. Here is a link to the event. Be aware that there will be a subscription fee to view the game. If you have the Big Ten Network on your cable or satellite package, the game is scheduled to be televised on Monday night at 7 p.m.

Hatter Hoedown Next on the Slate

This week in DeLand will be final preparations for the inaugural Hatter Hoedown at the Edmunds Center. The event is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 10, with a morning golf tournament and an evening concert.

The headliners for the day is country super group Sawyer Brown, but Mark Miller and the boys will have some special guests on hand with them.

For the golf tournament in the morning, some of the confirmed celebrities include former MLB stars John Kruk and Rick Stucliffe and former NBA stars Kyle Macy (Kentucky) and Jim Farmer (Alabama). There will likely be others involved, but those are the confirmed participants.

The concert will also include a couple of well-known guest stars. Mac McAnally, who is a member of the Coral Reefer Band, will be on hand as well as (shhhhh!, it is a secret!) country superstar Toby Keith. Both will also be on hand at Victoria Hills for the golf tournament.

There are still spots available for individual players and teams in the golf tournament, and tickets remain available for the concert. Tickets are on sale at the Edmunds Center Box Office, (386) 822-8110, or purchase online at www.gohatters.com.

For more information on the celebrity golf tournament, contact Director of Athletic Development Michael Tucker at (386) 822-8839 or mwtucker@stetson.edu.

Visiting Orlando and the Amway Center

It has been quite a few years since I have spent any time in the city of Orlando. I have passed through a couple of times going somewhere else, but haven't really spent time in the city since 1999.

This evening I am at the brand new Amway Center, home of the NBA's Orlando Magic. The building holds 20,000 for a Magic game (whenever that may be) but will probably see no more than 6,000 tomorrow night when the Hatters face No. 9 Florida.

Part of the reason for the expected small crowd is that it will be on a Monday night, in a city with 10,000 other things available to do, and will be televised by Sun Sports.

The crowd will also be limited, believe it or not, by the Orlando Magic. You see, even though the Amway Center is a city owned facility, the Magic control virtually every aspect of operation and every avenue of profit.

None of the hundreds of suites in this facility are available for use tomorrow night. Those all belong to the Magic and are leased to their customers for use at any event held in the facility. That probably trims the available capacity of the facility in half.

Want to use the scoreboard for a game, you have to rent it, and the people who run it, from the Magic. Along with the scoreboard, which is an all-computer controlled board, are the ribbon boards circling the inside of the facility. The Magic take 50% of any ads you want to run, while the city takes another 25%.

Want to do any of the hundreds of other things that go into hosting an event, you have to rent those from the Magic as well.

Add to that the fact that no one who uses the building has the right to sell sponsorships to companies in direct competition with Magic sponsors, and all Magic sponsors get included in anything that is done, and your chance to make a dime, is severely hampered.

Without a doubt, this is a beautiful facility, but it will likely never host an NCAA Regional Tournament, or any conference tournament or event. You'll probably never see a WWE event in the building, not will you likely see many concerts or other events.

That is truly a shame, but that is the deal the city of Orlando cut with the Magic to keep the NBA in town. If the lockout had continued and cancelled the entire season, there is a good chance that tomorrow's Steson-Florida game would have not only been the only basketball game in the building this year, it likely would have been the only event of any kind.

That is truly a shame.

It's a whole new ball game for the Hatters

Today the Stetson men's basketball team left the friendly confines of the Edmunds Center for their first road trip of the year.

Big deal you might say. College teams go on the road all the time.

True enough. Travel is a major part of being involved with college athletics. I have seen more hotel rooms over the years than I can even think about.

What makes this trip different, at least for me, is that everything is new. It is not only new for me, it is also new for members of the Stetson coaching staff and several members of the Hatters team.

The first trip of any season is usually the strangest because no one has yet settled into a routine. This trip is different because no one knows what the routine will be.

For instance, the first thing we all had to figure out was where to sit on the bus.

Seems like a small thing, but the Hatters have a coaching staff that is working together under Casey Alexander for the first time, and he is a first time head coach. The seating arrangements worked themselves out pretty quickly, as they usually do, with coaches and staff in the front, players in the back.

The trip north to Tallahassee was relatively short, but we went a different way than I would have expected. We traveled north on Interstate 95 to I-10 and then west to the state capital. My first few trips back and forth from Troy, Ala., to DeLand has been down I-75.

Anyway, we got in a movie on the ride ("Wedding Crashers") and made pretty good time.

Once we got to the hotel, Casey pulled all of the players together to go over some simple ground rules. Most of the things he told them were things you would never normally think of, but this is new for everyone.

"It is amazing the small things about travel that you don’t think about until you are doing it for the first time with a new group," Alexander said. "You have to talk about how to take care of the bus, and take care of the hotel, and how to behave when you eat. Those are things you tend to take for granted, but they are all important because they tend to tell people what you want your program to look like."

So, after the short meeting, we ventured out for dinner at the Olive Garden across from our Courtyard by Marriott hotel. The players all handled dinner fine and all is well.

While I knocked out a preview of tomorrow night's game, as well as editing a recap of the Crew teams' adventure to Augusta over the weekend, the team was getting together to watch some film of tomorrow night's foe, Florida A&M.

Tomorrow will be breakfast, another scouting session and a shoot around in the morning before the teams spends the afternoon relaxing before the game.

On Tuesday, the focus will turn to the second game of the road trip, Florida State.