Latest news with #DickVermeil
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Can UCLA's Kwazi Gilmer win the Biletnikoff Award? He's going to give it a go
Kwazi Gilmer, yearning to do something no other UCLA wide receiver has managed, unveiled a new play after practice Wednesday. Call it the go-for-it route. 'I want to go win the Biletnikoff,' Gilmer announced, 'so I'm coming for all the receivers out there.' Those are bold words for someone from a program whose closest association with the award that goes to the nation's top college receiver might have been former Bruins coach Dick Vermeil once delivering the keynote speech at the presentation banquet. No UCLA player has won the award that dates to 1994. Neither Gilmer nor any of his teammates made the award's 47-player preseason watch list, which is based on past performance. Players can be added during the season as their performance dictates. Gilmer's debut college season featured spectacular spurts, the freshman making 31 catches for 345 yards and two touchdowns. Emerging from a deep and experienced group of wide receivers, he started the final five games and increasingly became a go-to guy, snagging a season-high six catches for 54 yards in the finale against Fresno State. Making a serious run at the Biletnikoff would likely require the 6-foot-2, 180-pound sophomore to triple his production from 2024. Last season, Colorado's Travis Hunter won the award after logging 92 catches for 1,152 yards and 14 touchdowns. Gilmer said his skill, hands and overall technique have improved from a year ago. There's no debating that his swagger has increased exponentially. 'My freshman year, I just wanted to get my foot in the water,' Gilmer said. 'Now that I got it, it's over.' His candidacy was enhanced by the summer arrival of Nico Iamaleava from Tennessee, providing a prolific quarterback in search of a top option. Gilmer and the other receivers worked on timing and routes during player-run practices several times a week before the start of training camp late last month. Other wide receivers expected to play a significant role include California transfer Mikey Matthews, Titus Mokiao-Atimalala, Ezavier Staples and Rico Flores Jr. once Flores returns from a torn anterior cruciate ligament sometime this fall. 'We're trying to go win a natty,' Gilmer said of the players' mindset to win a national title, 'so let's get in as much work as we can.' Gilmer became an immediate favorite target of his new quarterback in training camp practices, repeatedly grabbing touchdown passes during the short viewing window open to reporters. The zip on Iamaleava's passes has proved a good match for the speedy wide receiver. 'It's probably one of the fastest balls I've ever seen from a quarterback,' Gilmer said. 'Right when you break, the thing's right there.' More help could come from a user-friendly offense. Gilmer described new offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri's scheme as a better fit for the Bruins than predecessor Eric Bieniemy's. 'Tino, you know, he's been with Nick Saban, all of them [college coaches], so he knows what to do in college,' Gilmer said, 'and I feel like E.B. knows what to do in the NFL." Sunseri's scheme also doesn't use plays that require codebreaking. Read more: No man of mystery, UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava dazzles at training camp 'E.B.'s was like 17 words,' Gilmer said, 'to now, we're in signals. It's very fast. … Now it's, we're not in the huddle really, and it's just see the play, do it.' Will it lead to a special season? Can Gilmer achieve what decorated predecessors Craig Bragg, Danny Farmer, Jordan Payton and J.J. Stokes could not? He's certainly going for it. 'We're gonna see,' Gilmer said, 'how the season goes.' A line redrawn If the last week of practice is any indication, UCLA will have four new starters on its offensive line. The biggest surprise might be Oluwafunto Akinshilo replacing Sam Yoon at center after Akinshilo's impressive spring at the position carried over to training camp following a 2024 season in which he did not play. 'He's just doing a good job,' coach DeShaun Foster said of the redshirt junior, 'with the opportunity that he's had.' The other first-stringers in recent practices have included Courtland Ford at left tackle, Eugene Brooks at left guard, Julian Armella at right guard and Garrett DiGiorgio at right tackle. DiGiorgio is the only player in the group who started last season. This could challenge for the biggest starting offensive line in school history given that the five players average 6-5½ and 326 pounds. Foster confirmed that veteran interior offensive lineman Tai Marks, a former Mater Dei High standout, had signed with the team and was expected to arrive Thursday. Reportedly set to participate in training camp with Hawaii, Marks will instead join the Bruins after having spent three seasons at Tulsa and two at Colorado State. Etc. Foster said safety Key Lawrence should return soon from a minor right leg injury that has sidelined him the last three practices. Scooter Jackson, a transfer from Utah Tech, has played extensively in Lawrence's absence. … The tight ends have been the position group that's progressed the furthest in training camp, Foster said, largely based on the arrival of Pittsburgh transfer Jake Renda and the return of Hudson Habermehl from injury. … Kicker Mateen Bhaghani said he's made a successful transition to new holder Will Karoll. 'It'll only take a couple of times going out there and then we'll be dialed in,' said Bhaghani, who made 20 of 24 field goals last season. 'You know, to really just get that spot, like lean the ball how I want, but other than that it's not super difficult.' Sign up for UCLA sports for big game takeaways, recruiting buzz and more UCLA sports insights. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Daily Mail
25-06-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mail
CHELSEA CONFIDENTIAL: Enzo Maresca plans for Club World Cup knockout stage revealed, why Blues may end Alejandro Garnacho interest and the nod to Love Island in US camp
Back in 1976, the Philadelphia Eagles ' head coach Dick Vermeil asked the team's supporters to come show him what've got in an open tryout. Vince Papale turned up, the local lad showing so much heart that the bartender and substitute teacher became an NFL rookie at 30 years old. Anyway, after seeing the goals conceded by ES Tunis goalkeeper Bechir Ben Said here at the home of the Eagles, you imagine a few fans might be tempted to send their grandmothers for an audition to go in goal. After all, she could've saved that shot from Tyrique George at the end of Tuesday's sweaty group game at the Lincoln Financial Field, and she probably wouldn't have lacked as much mobility when Liam Delap scored his first goal for Chelsea, either.
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
For Super Bowl broadcasters, game 'boards' are an indispensable booth secret
The story of Super Bowl LIX is in the cards. And by cards, think of a large sheet of heavy-stock paper loaded with information — player names, numbers, statistics and sometimes annotated trivia — always within reach of the broadcasters calling the game. They're called 'boards' and they're usually created from scratch by the play-by-play announcers and color analysts in the days leading up to a game, a meticulously organized study sheet that provides a commentator with detailed information in a pinch. Fox is broadcasting Sunday's game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, and although the network will offer every conceivable camera angle, not one of the more than 100 million viewers will get a clear glimpse of the boards used in the booth by Kevin Burkhardt and Tom Brady. Exactly what those boards look like is unclear because Fox did not make Sunday's game announcers available to The Times. But it's likely that their boards are similar to those of other Super Bowl announcers, who rely on the sheets as more safety net than script. 'None of it is read,' said legendary CBS play-by-play man Jim Nantz, who has worked seven Super Bowls, including the most recent one in New Orleans when Baltimore beat San Francisco. 'You don't read your broadcast. They're little reminders. 'During a commercial, I'll go back and look just to see if there's anything that might steer me toward a story line should this next series of plays lead me there — oh yeah, I want to get this in.' Like his game calls, Nantz is steeped in nostalgia. So at his home in Pebble Beach he keeps the boards from every football and basketball game he has ever called, all neatly organized even though some might have ring-shaped coffee stains or maybe a smudge of ketchup from his halftime hot dog. He has called 502 NFL games, including last month's AFC championship between Kansas City and Buffalo. 'It's like having every term paper, every piece of homework that you accumulate from first through 12th grade and in college,' he said. 'I have them all in order, their own stack based on each year. They look fresh and crisp, mint condition like I'd just put them together a few hours earlier.' Read more: Dick Vermeil, who coached Eagles and Chiefs, says Super Bowl LIX will be one for ages Some boards are neater than others. Troy Aikman's handwriting, for instance, is so precise it almost looks like calligraphy. And Dick Vermeil's boards? They were suitable for framing. 'If there was a Michelangelo of boards, it was Dick,' said Fred Gaudelli, longtime producer of "Sunday Night Football." 'They were like works of art.' Vermeil's boards were as colorful as a Bourbon Street king cake. First, they featured the team colors — so the Eagles would be in green — then last season's stats were in red, this season's stats were in black, and blue for career stats. Academic stats were written in purple, and injury status was in pink. Filling out a board would take him an entire day. Whereas Nantz built every board from scratch at the start of a week, Vermeil would use small pieces of white tape to cover outdated stats, and write on that to update them. What's more, he would have one smaller board for every team in the league — say one for the Eagles, one for the Chiefs — then conjoin those two halves when those teams were playing each other. It was all about efficiency for him. 'I think there are a lot of people still using them, because I gave them out to anybody who ever asked for them,' Vermeil said. 'I had them printed off at about 100 at a time.' Joe Buck's first Super Bowl board was written in blue — as in, blue language. He wrote a cruder version of 'Forget it' all over his first one just to remind himself not to get too serious and that it was only a game, even if the whole country was tuned in. 'I started to get a little cleaner with my personal reminders just because I would end up inevitably just giving the board to somebody,' said Buck, now play-by-play man for "Monday Night Football." 'If it's to some school auction, I don't want '[forget] it' written on there.' NBC's Mike Tirico doesn't use paper for his boards anymore, but instead relies on a digital tablet that allows him to scroll to any information he needs. He has a backup tablet, too, just in case one goes dark. But back when he was using paper, he would type the information and go to a nearby copying store to have his boards printed on card stock. If he was working in an open-air press box and there was a threat of rain, he would take the extra step of having the boards laminated. Once, his ornate spreadsheet sparked the curiosity of a person asked to print it. 'He looked at me and said, `Are you some sort of a high-end gambler or something?'' asked the guy working the copier. 'I said, `Nah, I'm just a nerd. I like to follow the game closely.' After they saw me five or six times they kind of figured out I must have had something to do with the broadcast.' Nobody is more experienced at calling ballgames than Al Michaels — Do you believe in sphericals? — but he doesn't construct his own boards. He relies on 'Malibu' Kelly Hayes, who has been his spotter for every football game since 1978. (A spotter uses a different board than the announcer and acts as another set of eyes, standing next to the person on air and, on a given play, tapping names to identify, say, the intended receiver, a defender who knocked the ball away and the defensive end pressuring the quarterback.) 'I have access to other forms of information that will come to me either by talking to our research team, I can go back and forth with them in the middle of a game, and also I have other printed material I can get to if I need to,' said Michaels, a fixture for four decades on variously Sunday, Monday and Thursday nights. 'So on the board it's essentials. Where a guy went to school. What year he is in the league. Height and weight, and maybe a certain highlight in his career. You can't put too much on there, because for the most part, for Kelly, it's pointing out who made the tackle, who created a fumble, the guys who are coming in and out of the game. ... We've kind of thinned it out to the essentials. There's not a lot of time to look at it and read a lot of the information that's on there.' Curt Menefee, Fox studio host, had a rudimentary method in his early days as an NFL Europe play-by-play announcer. Read more: Tom Brady played in 10 Super Bowls. The road to first one as a broadcaster has been challenging 'I showed up in Amsterdam, and I literally had a brown paper bag that I had torn in half and opened up and just kind of wrote names and numbers on that,' he said. '[Color analyst] Brian Baldinger said, `You know that's not how it works, right?' It was a process, but I started off from scratch.' Former NFL running back Daryl Johnston, a Fox color analyst, knows how to put a good board together. But once… fumble! 'I was doing a Giants game and we were staying at the W in Hoboken,' he said. 'We went down for breakfast and I put my board off to the left side and left it. Got up, paid the bill, went out, got in the car and drove all the way out to the stadium. I had to have a runner go all the way back, crossing my fingers that it was there. 'I've left them at home one time and had to have my wife FedEx it.' For some, that's the stuff of nightmares. 'I guard my boards very carefully,' Nantz said. 'It's like, my phone, my wallet, my Rolex watch and my football boards. They're under full protection. And not necessarily in that order.' Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
For Super Bowl broadcasters, game 'boards' are an indispensable booth secret
The story of Super Bowl LIX is in the cards. And by cards, think of a large sheet of heavy-stock paper loaded with information — player names, numbers, statistics and sometimes annotated trivia — always within reach of the broadcasters calling the game. They're called 'boards' and they're usually created from scratch by the play-by-play announcers and color analysts in the days leading up to a game, a meticulously organized study sheet that provides a commentator with detailed information in a pinch. Fox is broadcasting Sunday's game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, and although the network will offer every conceivable camera angle, not one of the more than 100 million viewers will get a clear glimpse of the boards used in the booth by Kevin Burkhardt and Tom Brady. Exactly what those boards look like is unclear because Fox did not make Sunday's game announcers available to The Times. But it's likely that their boards are similar to those of other Super Bowl announcers, who rely on the sheets as more safety net than script. 'None of it is read,' said legendary CBS play-by-play man Jim Nantz, who has worked seven Super Bowls, including the most recent one in New Orleans when Baltimore beat San Francisco. 'You don't read your broadcast. They're little reminders. 'During a commercial, I'll go back and look just to see if there's anything that might steer me toward a story line should this next series of plays lead me there — oh yeah, I want to get this in.' Like his game calls, Nantz is steeped in nostalgia. So at his home in Pebble Beach he keeps the boards from every football and basketball game he has ever called, all neatly organized even though some might have ring-shaped coffee stains or maybe a smudge of ketchup from his halftime hot dog. He has called 502 NFL games, including last month's AFC championship between Kansas City and Buffalo. 'It's like having every term paper, every piece of homework that you accumulate from first through 12th grade and in college,' he said. 'I have them all in order, their own stack based on each year. They look fresh and crisp, mint condition like I'd just put them together a few hours earlier.' Read more: Dick Vermeil, who coached Eagles and Chiefs, says Super Bowl LIX will be one for ages Some boards are neater than others. Troy Aikman's handwriting, for instance, is so precise it almost looks like calligraphy. And Dick Vermeil's boards? They were suitable for framing. 'If there was a Michelangelo of boards, it was Dick,' said Fred Gaudelli, longtime producer of "Sunday Night Football." 'They were like works of art.' Vermeil's boards were as colorful as a Bourbon Street king cake. First, they featured the team colors — so the Eagles would be in green — then last season's stats were in red, this season's stats were in black, and blue for career stats. Academic stats were written in purple, and injury status was in pink. Filling out a board would take him an entire day. Whereas Nantz built every board from scratch at the start of a week, Vermeil would use small pieces of white tape to cover outdated stats, and write on that to update them. What's more, he would have one smaller board for every team in the league — say one for the Eagles, one for the Chiefs — then conjoin those two halves when those teams were playing each other. It was all about efficiency for him. 'I think there are a lot of people still using them, because I gave them out to anybody who ever asked for them,' Vermeil said. 'I had them printed off at about 100 at a time.' Joe Buck's first Super Bowl board was written in blue — as in, blue language. He wrote a cruder version of 'Forget it' all over his first one just to remind himself not to get too serious and that it was only a game, even if the whole country was tuned in. 'I started to get a little cleaner with my personal reminders just because I would end up inevitably just giving the board to somebody,' said Buck, now play-by-play man for "Monday Night Football." 'If it's to some school auction, I don't want '[forget] it' written on there.' NBC's Mike Tirico doesn't use paper for his boards anymore, but instead relies on a digital tablet that allows him to scroll to any information he needs. He has a backup tablet, too, just in case one goes dark. But back when he was using paper, he would type the information and go to a nearby copying store to have his boards printed on card stock. If he was working in an open-air press box and there was a threat of rain, he would take the extra step of having the boards laminated. Once, his ornate spreadsheet sparked the curiosity of a person asked to print it. 'He looked at me and said, `Are you some sort of a high-end gambler or something?'' asked the guy working the copier. 'I said, `Nah, I'm just a nerd. I like to follow the game closely.' After they saw me five or six times they kind of figured out I must have had something to do with the broadcast.' Nobody is more experienced at calling ballgames than Al Michaels — Do you believe in sphericals? — but he doesn't construct his own boards. He relies on 'Malibu' Kelly Hayes, who has been his spotter for every football game since 1978. (A spotter uses a different board than the announcer and acts as another set of eyes, standing next to the person on air and, on a given play, tapping names to identify, say, the intended receiver, a defender who knocked the ball away and the defensive end pressuring the quarterback.) 'I have access to other forms of information that will come to me either by talking to our research team, I can go back and forth with them in the middle of a game, and also I have other printed material I can get to if I need to,' said Michaels, a fixture for four decades on variously Sunday, Monday and Thursday nights. 'So on the board it's essentials. Where a guy went to school. What year he is in the league. Height and weight, and maybe a certain highlight in his career. You can't put too much on there, because for the most part, for Kelly, it's pointing out who made the tackle, who created a fumble, the guys who are coming in and out of the game. ... We've kind of thinned it out to the essentials. There's not a lot of time to look at it and read a lot of the information that's on there.' Curt Menefee, Fox studio host, had a rudimentary method in his early days as an NFL Europe play-by-play announcer. Read more: Tom Brady played in 10 Super Bowls. The road to first one as a broadcaster has been challenging 'I showed up in Amsterdam, and I literally had a brown paper bag that I had torn in half and opened up and just kind of wrote names and numbers on that,' he said. '[Color analyst] Brian Baldinger said, `You know that's not how it works, right?' It was a process, but I started off from scratch.' Former NFL running back Daryl Johnston, a Fox color analyst, knows how to put a good board together. But once… fumble! 'I was doing a Giants game and we were staying at the W in Hoboken,' he said. 'We went down for breakfast and I put my board off to the left side and left it. Got up, paid the bill, went out, got in the car and drove all the way out to the stadium. I had to have a runner go all the way back, crossing my fingers that it was there. 'I've left them at home one time and had to have my wife FedEx it.' For some, that's the stuff of nightmares. 'I guard my boards very carefully,' Nantz said. 'It's like, my phone, my wallet, my Rolex watch and my football boards. They're under full protection. And not necessarily in that order.' Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Dick Vermeil, who coached Eagles and Chiefs, says Super Bowl LIX will be one for ages
Dick Vermeil loves being Switzerland. He's got good friends with the Philadelphia Eagles and good friends with the Kansas City Chiefs — he represented both franchises — but the Hall of Fame coach now revels that now he can 'embrace neutrality.' The Chiefs and Eagles are headed to Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, and, as was the case when the teams squared off on the NFL's biggest stage two years ago, he can be the innocent bystander. 'I have compassion for both teams because I know people in both organizations,' said Vermeil, 88, who coached the Eagles from 1976 though '82, and the Chiefs from 2001 through '05. He won a Super Bowl as coach of the St. Louis Rams. 'I know [Chiefs coach] Andy Reid better than I know [Eagles coach] Nick Sirianni. But you sit and watch the game and let the game determine itself. Because as you watch, you're not making a difference in anything you do. Read more: Super Bowl LIX: Start time, teams, how to watch and halftime show 'Very few fans can enjoy the game regardless of who wins. I can. I can be happy for either side — and very sad for the loser.' The Chiefs put themselves in position for an unprecedented Super Bowl three-peat Sunday night by beating the visiting Buffalo Bills 32-29. Earlier in the day, the Eagles delighted their home crowd by walloping the Washington Commanders 55-23. 'I thought the Chiefs game would be a toss-up, and it was,' Vermeil said. 'I thought the Eagles would win, but I did not believe they would blow them out.' Vermeil, who lives on a 100-acre ranch 45 minutes west of Philadelphia, watched the game from the calm of his daughter's home in Key West, Fla. He saw news accounts of the massive throng of Eagles fans filling every inch of Broad Street in Philadelphia and was happy to be where he was. 'I saw that and said to myself, 'I'm glad I'm not there right now,'' he said with a laugh. 'I can understand the city's emotion, but that many people on the street … had to be a million people down there, seemed like. I had four grandkids down there.' Read more: Saquon Barkley and Eagles dominate Commanders to advance to Super Bowl LIX Whereas Chiefs games almost have a college atmosphere, the Philadelphia experience can be a little grittier for fans. 'Both fan bases are very passionate,' Vermeil said. 'The Philadelphia fan is a little more intense, OK? But they both are so deeply involved with their teams, and of course the Eagles go way back to the start of the league. 'It's not unusual to be talking to someone who got the tickets from their grandfather who got the tickets from his grandfather. They go generations back. So the loyalty. And as you watch the TV camera pan the crowd you'll see 8-year-old kids jumping up and down as if they've been involved with the team for 50 years. It's in their blood.' Vermeil was an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Rams early in this career, then was head coach at UCLA for two seasons before taking over as head coach of the Eagles in 1976. Four years later, Philadelphia made it to Super Bowl XV before losing to the Oakland Raiders. Read more: Chiefs oust Bills again and will face Eagles with shot for first Super Bowl three-peat Late in his coaching career, Vermeil took over in Kansas City and improved from 6-10 in his first season to 13-3 in his third, when the Chiefs won the AFC West and hosted a playoff game, losing to the Indianapolis Colts. He sees the Feb. 9 game between the Chiefs and Eagles potentially as a matchup for the ages. 'Any time you take a running back as skilled as [Saquon Barkley] is and combine him with the best offensive line in football, you're going to create big plays,' he said of the Eagles star. 'And I would never bet against Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes.' He's happy to simply sit back and watch. Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
