Has a lot happened? Depends on what you mean. If you want to know about Appalachian State University sports, then kinda. What about my life? Well, duh, I moved to a different state without telling much of anyone to take a new job and new responsibilities. I got someone who directly reports to me now!

But in the end, I didn’t write because I didn’t want to. But now I want to.

So yeah, let’s rapid fire some topics I wanted to write in more detail but haven’t taken the time to.

Why did App State Baseball fall off a cliff in the final month?

They played a number of good teams in a row, started hitting less, pitching fell off a cliff and then never gained their confidence back.

At 21-17, the team was hitting .298, which is a good and was one of the top averages in the Sun Belt. At 23-31 to end the season, that average was .268.

Team ERA was 6.82 at the same 21-17 record, then was 7.14 at the end of the season. Worst in the Sun Belt. Not the first time pitching has been worst in the Belt.

After losing that Sunday to JMU, the Apps played eight straight against NCAA Tournament teams (ETSU, Southern Miss x3, Wake, Coastal x3). All losses. Then when South Alabama and Georgia State came around, teams the Mountaineers would have beaten a month prior, there was no juice.

Almost missing the conference tournament at home to a Georgia State team that only qualified with a sweep and then getting two-hit by a Texas State bullpen guy was an ignominious end to a horrid stretch run.

To rectify things, Kermit Smith is hiring yet another pitching coach. Even an ERA in the 5’s would mean so much more.

Kermit’s contract has two more seasons, but given how ruthless Athletic Director Doug Gillin has become, 2026 seems like a must-return-to-form season.

How many football players are on the App State football team?

I got 102 right now.

The post-Spring Practice purge saw 25 players, including one of the winter transfers, head out.

That means from the 2024 roster, only 56 are currently on the team.

I got 14 new portal players coming in, two of those being JuCo.

Of course, this could be outdated already. Hey, it’s hard keeping track.

We’ll see who shows up in late July for camp.

When is the 2024 part of the Clark series coming out?

Maybe July.

What does the House Settlement mean for App State?

It means people who whine about The Ever-Changing Landscape of College Athletics will continue to whine while administrators will plead for donations to cover the costs going up yet again, all while academia is under threat of budget cuts due to populist nonsense. And the SEC will likely win the next 20 baseball national championships. And student athletes will get paid by the schools themselves.

Remember that fact about how the Sun Belt was the only D1 conference outside of the Power 4 to have more than one team in a national championship in 2024-25? (Marshall in men’s soccer, Coastal in baseball). That says a lot, doesn’t it?

That collectivism of power into large academic/athletic powerhouses will continue as the effects of lower birthrates during the Subprime Mortgage Crisis of 2007-2009 hit smaller schools hard in the next few years. And the whole war on higher education by certain political circles. Any post-secondary institution with an enrollment under 5,000, especially private schools with an endowment less than nine figures, could be in trouble.

Short Queen Norris even alluded to “potential tough financial times “ahead for App State in one of her recent weekly newsletters. Sounds like Peacock did in the late 2000s.

How you doing?

I’m getting through. Becoming a boss has been a challenge and something I know I can improve on. Coming up on 90 days since I moved into my current place and just past 90 days in the new job (I stayed in a hotel the first week).

Part of the non-snarky reason I haven’t blogged as much recently is I don’t want to take away from my real-life job that makes me real-life money. If I have to choose at certain points between this hobby and that life, that life wins out 100% of the time.

I did go to Boonerang for the first time ever this past weekend. It was fine. Next time I’ll bring my own chair and refreshments. I don’t understand why King Street remained open to traffic during the festival, especially on Saturday. Actually, I can harbor a guess, but it seemed like a bad idea in practice.

The Boone Chamber’s efforts to eliminate every shoulder season is going well. Does it make up for a lack of stadium concert this summer? Ask Doug Gillin. He’s the one who called out the Schaeffer Center for poor ticket sales last year.

Oh yeah, there’s another post that I really want to do in the near future: Doug Gillin’s Decade at App State. Not until I finish the Clark series first.