This little news item is of the "In case you missed it" variety.  George Washington University basketball coach Mike Jarvis departed the Colonials for St. John's of the Big East recently (that's the old news), and he has been replaced by former Texas coach Tom Penders (that's the new news).

Although Jarvis is a good coach, and by most accounts a classy individual, his departure is a good thing for Atlantic 10 basketball.  Jarvis's coaching style (hit 'em first, ask questions later) is more suited for the Big East, and I for one won't miss the slugfests that the Tech/GW basketball games had degenerated into.

After last year's Tech/GW contest, I vowed that I would never again go to see one of those ridiculous wrestling matches, and it certainly scared off the football-minded Mrs. HokieCentral, who has never been a big basketball fan, but who likes sumo wrestling even less.

Now, I may have to change my tune.  As a HokieCentral reader told me via email over the weekend, "Penders is great for the league...his teams consistently score 85, 90 or 100 points a game...he brings in athletes and runs them up and down the court.  I would love to be sitting in that gym when he holds his first practice.  Those GW players won't know what hit them."

Indeed.  GW is a team full of players who were recruited to slug it out in the trenches, not run up and down the court like gazelles.  The Colonials will probably struggle for a few years under Penders' guidance, but once he gets his players in place in his system, look out.  It won't be boring or an affront to basketball anymore.

GW's hiring of Penders continues a new tradition (oxymoron alert!) of A-10 teams hiring big-name coaches who have been through tough times lately.  When Rhode Island needed a new coach recently, they picked up ex-UCLA coach Jim Harrick, who had won a national championship with the Bruins but had been involved in scandal that chased him out of L.A. (sorry, but I can't recall the exact nature of what the scandal was.  My head is too full of Hokie facts).

Now comes Penders to GW.  He hasn't won any national championships, but he isn't a no-name like "Bruiser Flint" was when UMass named him to their starting job two years ago.  As for the "controversy" part of the equation, as reported by The USA Today, Penders was the "target of a player revolt and involved in a controversy surrounding the release of a players' academic records to a radio station."

Be that as it may, I just hope he puts a little more fire into Tech's twice-yearly matchups with the Fightin' Colonials.  That'll make me happy.

For all the latest A-10 hoops news, check out the A-10 Hoop Report, an excellent subscription newsletter that comes the old fashioned way - on paper, in your mailbox.

While in Pennsylvania this past weekend, I saw a newspaper article that said that CBS would be broadcasting the Pittsburgh/Penn State game as part of its Big East package this year.  This means that CBS has released their 1998 college football broadcast schedules, so I went looking for it at cbs.com and cbs.sportsline.com.  Naturally, I was looking to see if the Hokies are going to be broadcast by CBS this year (I've also been peering out my window and looking for flying pigs these days, but that's another story).

No luck at either place.  The best link I could find was to the following article at cbs.sportsline.com, which gives very little detail about CBS's planned broadcasts:

CBS kicks off coverage with pair of top matchups - CBS SportsLine

As you can see, there's very little detail there about what Big East games will be shown, but I can tell you what the trend is.  Big East matchups are stinkers, ratings-wise, for CBS, so last year, they began fulfilling their Big East obligations by showing out of conference matchups with big-name teams (incidentally, they use the same trick to fulfill their Conference USA obligations).

Hence, their plans to show Pitt-Penn State this year, along with Ohio State-West Virginia and Miami-UCLA.  If I remember correctly, CBS only showed about 11 games involving Big East teams last year, and many of them were of the "PSU tramples Temple" variety.

And I believe that Tech was only shown once on CBS, against WVU (sheesh).  I think at this point that this year's Oct. 31 matchup with WVU is a CBS candidate, but other than that, the CBS slate is clear of Tech games.  No big surprise there, and look for that to continue in years to come.

If anybody out there can link me to the TV broadcast schedule or give me more info, then please do so.

(those who hate MTV's The Real World may fast forward to the next item)

It turns out that VMI student Nathan Blackburn, who is one of the new cast on MTV's latest season of The Real World, has a girlfriend that goes to Virginia Tech.   If you remember, Nathan showed up briefly on camera wearing a VT sweatshirt on the casting special that kicked off the latest season of TRW.

The reason for the sweatshirt?  Nathan's girlfried, Stephanie, is a Hokie.   The season premiere last Tuesday night contained a Virginia Tech reference, as Nathan told one of his new Seattle housemates, "She (my girlfriend) goes to Virginia Tech."

Eagle-eyed Hokies would have already noticed the VT sticker in the back window of Stephanie's car as she said goodbye to Nathan earlier in the show, on the campus of VMI.   But believe me, you had to be looking really hard and using your imagination to see that sticker, but I swear, it was there.

Later this season, Stephanie will leave Blacksburg and go visit Nathan at the house in Seattle.  Here's hoping Steph gets off the plane in a big ole, orange-and-maroon sweatshirt with a VT on it.

Or maybe not.  In last week's episode, Stephanie was missing Nathan so much that she was considering "dropping out of school" to go be with him, so maybe we don't want her to be the MTV poster child for Virginia Tech, after all.

The Real World airs every Tuesday night at 10:00 on MTV.

No, I'm not going to do anything huge, but last week's discussion about presenting "hard news" here at HokieCentral led me to ponder a slight format change.  A couple of readers emailed me and verified that yes, HokieCentral is not delivering the news like it used to.

In response to those comments, and some excellent suggestions, I'm going to experiment with providing more hard news and coming up with new ways to keep Hokie fans updated.  For one, I'm going to start providing some links to Hokie news that appears in various newspapers on the web, although this can be an iffy proposition, because newspapers are always moving their stuff around after posting it.  The Roanoke Times is actually really good about putting an article at a certain address on-line and then leaving it there, but most newspapers aren't.

Of course, the problem right now is that there isn't anything going on.   I mean, nothing.  I've resorted to talking about MTV's The Real World, for crying out loud.

Anyway, here's my first shot at providing such a service.  I scrounged the web after arriving home today, and here's what I came up with.  Look for a small format change in future editions of HokieCentral to accomodate this new service.  Let me know what you think, and keep those suggestions coming!

Changing of guard kept Hokies busy late in recruiting
(VT basketball recruiting article) - Roanoke Times, 6/14/98

Gil Feinman is perhaps Central Virginia's most fervent Va. Tech backer
(A Lynchburg Hokie fan receives a Lynchburg sports hall of fame induction) - Lynchburg News and Advance

Pitcher knows transient life of a big-leaguer
(an article about former Hokie pitcher Brad Clontz) - Newport News Daily Press

TSL News and Notes Archives