WAKE UP! ON ETBLITZ, THURSDAY EDITION | Mitch & Clayton meet Biff; LSU goes to the College World Series in style
EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s Wake Up!, but today it’s more like “Already Up.” Mitch is behind a bit this morning. But they’re still serving whatever you like at Cozy Coffee Station – in fact, they’ll be doing that all day at their Gilmer location, at 755 Highway 271 North, and in Kilgore, at 110 Midtown Plaza. Look ‘em up on the web here, Home | Cozy Coffee Station, or on their Facebook pages or Insta, and then go get something really, really good. And tell Oscar we said ‘hey.’
LSU plays twice, reaches CWS finals
Well, geaux Tigers, indeed.
LSU fans got to see their baseball team win a pair of games on Wednesday in the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska: the Tigers beat UCLA Wednesday morning, then beat Arkansas Wednesday night, 6-5, to earn a spot in the national championship.
LSU will take on unheralded Coastal Carolina on Saturday, a best-of-three series to decide baseball’s national champions. I wish we could have a contest to see how many of you guys could tell me Coastal Carolina’s mascot name, but we don’t have time, so here it is:
They’re the Chanticleers.
Here’s how LSU beat Arkansas Wednesday night.
Mitch & Clayton’s Excellent Journey
Now, from the headline, you probably gather that I have had a little history with colleges in Carolina, and you’d be right.
It’s almost the time of year when we begin to make our tour all over the place, listening to coaches to get ready for football season. I actually love it.
Back in 2023, Clayton Fletcher and myself were at the American Athletic Conference’s football media days in Arlington. We actually do quite a bit of that. We get to most of the media days for the conferences based in the south: the Big 12, the Southeastern Conference, Conference USA, the Sun Belt, and so on.
At any rate, we were there, sitting on the second row at Loews Arlington, listening and taking notes. Had a good little visit with UT-San Antonio coach and Gilmer legend Jeff Traylor, who saw me and I don’t know that he remembered my name – but he recognized me from my long, long tenure at “the other place.”
Traylor looked down from the podium and grinned. “What’re you doing here?,” he said. I grinned back, and nodded, as he continued, and a few people laughed. “The Kilgore Bulldogs, the Ragin’ Red. Boy, we had some battles, didn’t we?”
“We did,” I said, with a smile. “And they still are.”
“Man, they sure are,” he laughed.
So the media day went on, and there weren’t many people asking questions, to the point that it got really annoying. I don’t know how many of you know how this works, but here’s the deal: this is on live TV, usually on ESPNU. And the SEC and Big 12, the larger conferences, they’re sometimes on ESPN, or ESPN2. Silence is not something they’re big on.
If you’re not getting questions, you’re getting down from the podium.
So I developed a quick friendship with the moderator after I started asking the first question, and getting the ball rolling. Finally, between coaches, I leaned over to Clayton.
“Someone else needs to ask a freaking question,” I said, and he laughed.
“I don’t know these people,” Clayton protested.
“I know, but a lot of these reporters do. They need to ask something. I don’t even know who’s next. But I am NOT asking the first question,” I said.
So, as it turned out, Biff Poggi – not a younger guy, but we’ll call him a “seasoned veteran” of coaching – a longtime Jim Harbaugh friend, had taken the head coaching job at UNC-Charlotte. He was about to begin his first season there.
We had met Biff out in the dining area right before we got inside, and he was nice to us, very nice guy (let me again emphasize “to us”), and I didn’t anticipate what would happen inside. He was dressed in a suit, was well-spoken, and as it turned out, though, had a bit of a chip on his shoulder.
He stepped to the podium, and I stuck to my guns about not asking the first question. Biff got three questions, and I think I asked the third and the last.
Here’s how that turned out…
That was probably the shortest video clip that I will ever put on Wake Up! for you guys.
We’ll let you know how the coaching media days turn out this year. By the way, Biff no longer coaches at UNC Charlotte, just FYI. And no, he didn’t make it three seasons, sadly.
