Spotlight
The names you should know
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Kevin Weiberg, Pete Richardson, Tony Moss
Kevin Weiberg
Commissioner, Big 12 Conference
Why You Should Know Him: Under the leadership of Commissioner Kevin
Weiberg, the Big 12 is regarded as one of the nation’s top conferences
and has made progress in the areas of national competitive success, television
exposure, conference championships, and football bowl agreements.
Weiberg, however, inherits an arguably more challenging assignment in June when
he becomes chair of the Bowl Championship Series. Rotated among the commissioners
of the BCS conferences, Weiberg takes over for outgoing chair Mike Tranghese
of the Big East Conference.
The next few months will undoubtedly include a lot of opinion, controversy, and
debate as a number of issues face the BCS commissioners. Among them: emphasis
on the weight given to the AP media poll and the USA Today/ESPN Coaches’ poll
in the revised BCS formula to determine the overall 1 vs. 2 match-up; the controversy
of making coaches ballots public; and proposals submitted by 12 bowls to potentially
host a fifth BCS game.
If nothing else, the BCS this fall will spark daily discussions from water cooler
talk to board room debate.
What He’s Saying: “We are working on
possible changes to the BCS Standings formula that are intended to make the poll
more easily understood by
the public and media. By simplifying some components of the poll and adjusting
the weighting to place a greater weight on the subjective (human) polls we think
we will have a better product that is more commonly accepted by the public and
is also more reliable from a mathematical standpoint.”
Pete Richardson
Head Coach, Southern University
Why You Should Know Him: To play for championships, to graduate
his players, and to have a team whose members are well respected in society,
both on and off the field, is the vision of success for Southern University
head coach Pete Richardson has for his program. For the good part of 11
seasons, Richardson has attained that goal.
In terms of on-the-field success, Richardson’s teams have had four 11-win
seasons and one 12 win team-the Championship season. The Jaguars have also won
five conference titles under Richardson and his 97 wins at Southern ranks him
second in school history, trailing only the legendary A.W. Mumford.
Heavily recruited out of high school in Ohio, Richardson played both tailback
and defensive back at Dayton, graduating in 1968. A sixth round draft pick of
the Buffalo Bills, Richardson played defensive back for four years in the NFL
before an injury to his knee ended his playing career.
He then earned a Masters Degree at Dayton and ultimately became head coach at
Winston-Salem State in 1988. Richardson accepted the head coaching job at Southern
five years later. His mission is near completion: with success on the field,
he is improving his teams, academic performance yearly. This spring nearly two-thirds
of Southern’s lettermen will be receiving degrees.
What He’s Saying: “Although we’ve
had success on the field, our overall objective is to ensure that every player
graduates during his time
at Southern.”
Tony Moss
Executive Director, D l-AA Football
The Sports Network
Why You Should Know Him: Considered the premier media authority
on Division l-AA football, Tony Moss has been working at The Sports Network
in Philadelphia for four years on just that: l-AA football. As Executive
Director, he writes year-round on the sport, compiling a weekly top 25 listing,
an annual All-America team, twenty game previews of match-ups throughout
the season and game summaries of the top schools.
Additionally, Moss writes a weekly column – ‘Third and Long,’ which
profiles national stories, features, and anecdotes on l-AA football on a weekly
basis. He makes himself available for 25 to 30 radio programs each week, commenting
and analyzing weekend match-ups.
Moss, a 1998 graduate of LaSalle, got his start working for the Atlantic-10 Conference
before going to work with The Sports Network. One of the perks of the job he
feels is the quality of the people in it: “Working with all the l-AA coaches,
athletic directors and players is a pleasure,” says Moss. “Both their
availability and accessibility is tremendous and all of them are without ego
hang-ups. Coaches especially return all calls and are great to deal with.”
What He’s Saying: “The
quality of competition has improved dramatically over the years in l-AA football.
More and more l-AA players are being scouted
and drafted by NFL teams.”