Tuesday Rock Chalk Roundup — 7.19.16
By Evan Riggs
Rock Chalk Roundup: Why David Beaty took Montell Cozart to Big 12 Media Day, behind the scenes with Joe Dineen and the most important game in KU Football history.
Jesse Newell of the KC Star: “The potential awkwardness of the situation is still difficult to avoid. Yes, Cozart was voted as a team captain a year ago, but his presence at media days will look out of place in a few months if he doesn’t win the starting job this fall over Ryan Willis, who started the last eight games last season before a wrist injury in the spring, and Carter Stanley. Beaty, though, says that wasn’t on his mind when he told Cozart he was going to make the trip to Dallas.“Montell is here because he earned it, period,” Beaty said. “He’s one of the hardest workers we have on this team.” Beaty insists the quarterback competition hasn’t ended. On Monday, he said he is going to rely on seeing a “clear divider” in early fall practices that will tell him which quarterback is best for the Jayhawks in their first game against Rhode Island.”
Behind the Scenes at Big 12 Media Days with Joe Dineen
Matt Tait of the Lawrence Journal World: “Joined by senior safety Fish Smithson and junior quarterback Montell Cozart, the KU quartet spoke proudly about the state of Kansas football for seven hours Monday. The fact that they could do that on the heels of a winless season in 2015 showed their mental make-up. And although huge win totals may not reside in the immediate future, Monday’s activity showed that the first step in the rebuilding process is behind them.”
Full transcript of David Beaty at day one of Big 12 Media Day: “You know, I think from our standpoint, last year, my biggest ache was for our fans, our coaches and our players because they deserve more, they really do. The Jayhawk Nation deserves better than what we were able to give ’em and what they’ve gotten in the recent past but it pains me for that but we were doing foundation work and it’s hard, but it’s necessary. We could have probably cut some corners and maybe taken a few guys that might have got us one or two. But at the end of the day it wouldn’t have been worth it because our foundation is so important and we wanted to make sure it was something that was going to be long-lasting. As a result, our deal now is we gotta win games. That’s why we’re here so we have to win football games and we are completely and totaled focused on the most important game in the history of our program, which is the next one, Rhode Island. I don’t know who we play next, I don’t care, we are focused on Rhode Island and that’s the most important game that we have every played in our lives. We are focused on that and after that it will go to the next one.”
Tully Corcoran of The Big Lead wrote a great piece on Gary Bedore: “If you know Gary, you know that I am underselling it when I say nobody cared more about getting Kansas basketball information to his readers than Gary did. Nobody took more precautions to avoid getting scooped. Nobody was more diligent about asking questions or more sure that everything there was to know made it into the paper. These are the goals of a daily newspaper, but not necessarily the goals of every newspaper reporter. A lot of us think we’re going to be Tom Wolfe. Gary never took a day off, even when he was on vacation. As a beat writer who competed with him for four years, this is easily his most aggravating and admirable quality.”
There’s now more incentive to be the number one overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
If you’re starving for basketball, you can relive the Team USA/Kansas Jayhawk’s highlights from last summer’s World University Games.