MATTHEW BROWN: Lessons on Mercer, Blazers, GCU

Published 4:08 pm Friday, December 20, 2024

Did you know that Georgia men’s basketball recently played a school with an enrollment of more than 100,000?

Now, about 3/4 of that enrollment is online, but that is how many students say they are a part of Grand Canyon University out of Phoenix. If the only time you heard of Grand Canyon was through television commercials, it might make you think it was just an online college. Then you saw Grand Canyon’s name on Top 25 Division I basketball polls and in the field of 68. Wait what?

As it turns out, Grand Canyon College goes all the way back to 1949, a few years before the Internet. The basketball program also goes back that far. As a whole athletic program, these Antelopes went from NAIA status to NCAA Division II in 1990 and reached D-I status in the Western Athletic Conference in 2017.

Remember the WAC? BYU’s conference for its 1983 national title season? Yep, still around, but no longer in the football business.

Grand Canyon claimed eight NAIA national titles in men’s basketball, baseball and women’s tennis, and then an NCAA men’s soccer and men’s track and field title in D-II.

Great poll question:

Who is most likely to play out the following contract signed last week?

1. Juan Soto, 15 years to play baseball for the New York Mets

2. Max Fried, 8 years to pitch for the New York Yankees

3. 72-year-old Bill Belichick, five years to be head football coach at North Carolina

And Belichick replaced a coach one year older than he.

I just wonder how long it took him to actually go visit a major recruit, if he has by the time this prints.

The story I got about former Florida head coach Ron Zook is, when he accepted that job while defensive coordinator for the New Orleans Saints, he did not go straight to Gainesville to set up an office or meet new co-workers. No, he immediately went to Americus High School to recruit tight end Leonard Pope.

And for the record, I still don’t think the Atlanta Falcons made a mistake by not hiring Belichick. Restating my arguments, he’s not a long-term solution and you are probably getting the guy from the results of his last few seasons in New England, not the multi-time Super Bowl winner.

But good luck to the Tar Heels anyway. And the Falcons.

It makes me wonder how Florida State was able to even field a team for that Orange Bowl.

First we had the news of a UNLV starting quarterback who walked away from the Runnin’ Rebels after three games over an NIL misunderstanding.

Now, an entire team – Sun Belt champion and future UGA opener Marshall – walked away from a bowl bid because more than 30 players entered the transfer portal. Why? Because their head coach left the West Virginia school for Southern Mississippi over a contract dispute.

Shameful how the only time Mercer University football gets any widespread attention is during “Cupcake Week” playing Alabama.

Let’s hear it for the Bears getting a nationally televised game in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision playoffs. They went to what’s kind of the hub of FCS football, the badlands between the Northwest and the Midwest and north of the Rockies, where the Dakota States have won 11 of the last 13 titles.

It was a record-setting campaign over in Macon with 11 wins going into that quarterfinal contest. The only other Mercer regular-season loss besides the game at Tuscaloosa was against Samford in the same subdivision.

I needed some reminders (or lessons on recent events in Mercer football), like how this year was not the first time for the Bears in the playoffs. It is the second year in a row to not only make the playoffs, to not only host a first-round game, and to not only win a first round game (Gardner-Webb last year, Rhode Island this year at Five Star Stadium), but to also fall in the second round.

Yep, even the only mentions of Five Star Stadium in these pages are references to GIAA championship games for high school.

Mercer also accomplished these two-year feats with two different head coaches. Drew Cronic left last December to become offensive coordinator at Navy. This year’s head coach is Mike Jacobs, who played offensive line at Ohio State and had a super winning percentage in the 80s range at two Division II colleges.

It’s hard to follow a lot of programs in a football season, be it Georgia Tech, Georgia Southern or Mercer. Valdosta State was the only No. 1 seed in the Division II playoffs to make the semifinals and will meet Ferris State for it all on Saturday in Texas. The Blazers bid for their fifth national title since 2004 in their seventh overall finals appearance since 2002. VSU did all of this with five different head coaches, a D-II record.

I actually attended a VSU playoff game at Bazemore-Hyder Stadium, the 2018 semifinals, and it was a good game, 30-24 Blazers win over Notre Dame College of Ohio. NDC head coach: Mike Jacobs.

It’s been a pleasure as part of the job to cover the Georgia Military College program and be a part of that NJCAA playoff atmosphere despite the final score.

But what we know best about the Mercer Bears is that they have played Alabama three times since 2017, Auburn twice with No. 3 coming in 2025, Ole Miss last year and Georgia Tech in 2016 in a game I thought should have been in Macon since it would mean more to that fan base.

Speaking of non-conference games involving the Southeastern Conference, the bigger standouts for me in 2025 are Texas-Ohio State and LSU-Clemson. Notre Dame not only plays Texas A&M again, but also Arkansas. Florida State’s road back to the top starts with … Alabama.

The Big Ten, it looks like, is somewhat following my advice. Oregon is not playing Ohio State again next season, but will go to Penn State and take on Indiana. That’s two teams the Ducks did not face all the way to the No. 1 CFP ranking. Penn State does play Ohio State again plus the Hoosiers.

A note about Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets did not play any of the new ACC members this season and aren’t slated to until going to Stanford in 2026.