Tag: teleconference

Tuesday Big 12 morning rush: Headlines from around the conference

Each morning LW will share the top stories from around the Big 12. For today’s morning rush, Twitter and Austin Monthly provide headlines.

Each morning Longhorns Wire will share the top stories from around the Big 12 Conference. For this edition of the Big 12 morning rush, Twitter and Austin Monthly provides the headlines.

Conference medical experts to join presidents and athletic directors on a conference call

According to Chuck Carlton of the Dallas Morning News, the Big 12’s medical experts are going to be joining university presidents and athletic directors on a teleconference tomorrow.

Rumors of Big Ten/SEC teams playing in Big 12 “astonishing”

Nebraska head coach Scott Frost stirred the pot Monday afternoon, saying the Cornhuskers are “committed to playing no matter what… We certainly hope it’s in the Big Ten. If it isn’t, I think we’re prepared to look for other options.”

The World According to Matthew McConaughey

If there is a person who represents the University of Texas and the football team, it is Matthew McConaughey. Dubbed ‘The Minister of Culture’, McConaughey has become a major part of Texas’ culture.

Although he credits his outfit to chance—the blind results in a game of closet roulette—it seems an unintentional reminder of simpler times. For several months, our plan was to have me shadow the recently appointed professor of practice in the Moody College of Communication around UT’s campus as he inhabited his latest role as mentor and university sage. I’d attend his Script to Screen class that he developed with director Scott Rice in 2015, a practical learning experience that he says “puts some science behind the magic and mystique of making movies.” We’d wander over to the Frank Erwin Center where he acts as Minister of Culture/M.O.C., often donning a burnt orange three-piece suit as he parades the sidelines at basketball games, exhorting fans and players like an unofficial assistant coach. Finally, he’d escort me to the six-plus acre site southeast of Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium, where the new $338 million basketball and events arena is slated to open in 2021— a project in which he’s a part-owner.

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2020 NFL Draft: NFL wary of technical issues, has ability to pause the clock

The NFL will be able to pause its selections in the 2020 NFL Draft in order to account for technical difficulties during team or trade calls

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The NFL is finishing up its preparations for the 2020 NFL Draft, having to adjust this year’s event to a virtual format in response to the novel coronavirus and travel restrictions enacted because of it.

Per a report from The Athletic’s Chris Burke, one of those changes includes an ability by the league office to pause the running clock on selections should a team experience technical difficulties. It’s easy to envision a scenario where one team’s general manager is teleconferencing with a rival executive, hammering out the details of a trade — only for the call to be dropped unexpectedly. So the NFL is doing the fair thing and making time for everyone to wrap up their business.

How could this impact the New Orleans Saints? Saints coach Sean Payton is one of the most aggressive shot-callers in the NFL, especially on draft day, having made a trade up the board in each draft he’s conducted since his first year on the job (way back in 2006). While his personal war room is set up for success, he’s probably as grateful as anyone else around the league that the NFL won’t penalize him for possible technical issues.

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Sean Payton chops it up with Jimmy Buffett, talks 2020 draft

New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton previewed his team’s approach to the 2020 NFL Draft with musician and Saints superfan Jimmy Buffett.

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The New Orleans Saints have put together an elaborate plan to conduct their part in the 2020 NFL Draft, prompting Saints coach Sean Payton to share his take on the process with one of his friends, who also happens to be a Saints superfan: musician Jimmy Buffett. Payton’s conversation with Buffett was shared from the official Saints Twitter account.

“I’m actually kind of looking forward to it,” Payton said. “Because every one of us will be in a setup like this, in front of our cameras making draft picks, and we’ll be on a separate call with our G.M. and with our scouts. And it’ll challenge us a little bit in a unique way.”

Speculation has been rife on what this “virtual draft” might result in. It’s possible that teams will be less eager to agree to trades, moving up and down the draft board, with the added technological hurdles in place. On the other hand, they’ve had so much excess time to chat with each other that executives around the league could have deals ready-made to agree to under the right circumstances. We won’t really know until draft day.

Payton continued: “I was skeptical about the draft process in the meetings that we had two weeks ago. And two weeks later I thought, ‘I kind of liked it.’ Because I didn’t have to deal with Bill, I can just put him on freakin’ mute. I got a lot less annoyed with some of my scouts when I can just put them on mute and they’re in Tennessee or California, or Pennsylvania.

“I think that just comes with getting older,” Payton joked. Having the ability to simply mute an annoyance certainly has some appeal.

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Saints war room taking Zoom-within-a-Zoom approach to virtual 2020 draft

NBC Sports’ Peter King reports that the New Orleans Saints will use multiple teleconferences to organize their 2020 NFL Draft war room.

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The NFL’s decision to force teams to conduct the 2020 draft from home has raised anxiety and issues all around the league, but some of the more tech-savvy franchises have embraced the opportunity to innovate and help their personnel work more closely together.

Peter King of NBC Sports explained how the New Orleans Saints are one such outfit relying hard on teleconference technology to organize their war room ahead of this year’s draft:

Each team will have choices, but I talked to five over the weekend about the mechanics of it. The Saints, for instance, will have two videconferences working simultaneously. One will have GM Mickey Loomis, coach Sean Payton, assistant GM/college scouting director Jeff Ireland and VP/football administration Khai Hartley; the other will have those four people plus every scout.

The four-man group will be open for free discussion while the larger group will likely mostly be muted, with Loomis or Payton having the ability to unmute, say, the scouts with the most knowledge about a particular player. Say they want to pick LSU linebacker Patrick Queen in the first round; Loomis could ask the scouts who were at LSU the most in 2019 for their thoughts

This feels like the closest thing to the plan the Saints had originally crafted for this year’s virtual event. The Saints initially planned on placing that central braintrust of Payton, Loomis, Ireland, Hartley, and a few support staffers in the Dixie Brewery warehouse (property of Saints owner Gayle Benson) with their scouts and assistant coaches on deck, ready to jump in if their opinions were needed. Payton had previously said that the team intended to use a teleconference program like Zoom, Skype, or a similar service.

However, running two streams side-by-side like this seems a little superfluous. It’s possible the core Saints decision-makers want a separate channel to allow for more-confidential discussions (like debating possible trade offers), but the broader teleconference is structured like the war room would normally be conducted. Hopefully they won’t have any technical issues, or risk crossing the streams. It would be bad.

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