Emotions still high, Missouri refocuses
Missouri head coach Gary Pinkel said Wednesday that he had asked his coaching staff to stay in close touch with the team in a tense week that included a player plan to boycott and the arrest of a student following online threats against black students and faculty.
The Tigers play BYU in Kansas City on Saturday, one week after they threatened to stay on the sideline without changes at the campus. The boycott threat vanished Monday when the university president resigned.
Still, it was anything but normal at Missouri, and the campus was empty Wednesday as classes were canceled in some cases amid news that a white college student at another campus, in Rolla, had been arrested on suspicion of posting the online threats.
Pinkel said he asked his staff to stay in close contact with the players through texts and calls.
Missouri (4-5) brings a fourgame losing streak into Saturday’s game at Arrowhead Stadium against the Cougars (7-2). Barrett to start: J.T. Barrett is back at quarterback for secondranked Ohio State after a onegame suspension for a DUI arrest. Head coach Urban Meyer had said Barrett would regain the starting job over Cardale Jones if he practiced well.
“He’s looked sharp,” Meyer said. “J.T.’s a unique guy, a guy who’s an extreme competitor. He’s a very focused guy.”
The Buckeyes (9-0, 5-0 Big Ten; No. 3 CFP) are at Illinois on Saturday. They are trying to extend the nation’s longest winning streak to 23 games. Beamer farewell tour: For Frank Beamer, this is the beginning of the end. It seems appropriate to start his brief farewell tour on a Thursday night in Atlanta.
Beamer used these nontraditional games to help draw attention to Virginia Tech as he built the Hokies into a powerhouse.
“That’s what this program is all about,” Beamer said. “It gave us our identity here that we were a total program and a football team that played hard and played well most of the time.”
In recent seasons, Virginia Tech (4-5, 2-3 ACC) hasn’t won nearly enough. Since 2011, when the Hokies last played in the ACC championship game, they are 14-15 in league games and 26-22 overall. Beamer announced last week that this season, his 29th in Blacksburg, will be his last. About the only thing left to play for is the nation’s longest active streak of bowl appearances, at 22.
Georgia Tech is tied for the nation’s second-longest streak of bowl appearances with 18 in a row. The Yellow Jackets (3-6, 1-5) need to close the season with a three-game winning streak to ensure postseason eligibility. Elon player dies: A football player at Elon University in North Carolina died after falling from a 10-story dormitory on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, about 25 miles southeast.
Junior wide receiver Demitri Allison died Wednesday afternoon. Allison had left Elon on Tuesday and teammates and relatives asked police to find him “because they were concerned for his well-being and emotional state,” wrote Smith Jackson in a statement. Jackson is vice president for student life and dean of students at Elon.
Allison played in all nine of Elon’s games this season, catching 12 passes for 123 yards.