Jug Of News (04.30.12)

Welcome to our humble abode. Pull up a seat and grab a glass for a sip from todays Jug of News. Hit the jump for NFL draft (and signings) news, spring football frivolity, and even some belated news about a national championship. No, that is not a misprint.

First, about that national championship. It happened two weeks ago, when Ryan Patterson, a junior advertising major from Garden Plain, bested a field of 24 fishing teams to win it all. Yes, a one-man team beat a field comprised of two-men teams.  Sure, it’s fishing, but that’s still pretty amazing. He was left to compete by himself when his brother transferred to Virginia. The Wichita Eagle wrote up an interesting feature on Patterson that is well worth the read.

As for the NFL draft, none of the true K-State hopefuls (Tysyn Hartman, David Garrett, and Emmanuel Lamur) were drafted. Bryce Brown was, which, I guess, keeps the 18 year streak of at least one K-Stater being drafted alive. FanSided’s own Inside The Iggles has a nice write-up about Brown, if you’re interested in seeing their take on it. In KSU-related undrafted free agent news, Tysyn has signed with the Chiefs, while Lamur has signed with the Bengals. The last word I heard about Garrett was that he was being considered by a couple of teams.

The spring football game was on Saturday. Coach Snyder wants you to believe the final score was a 42-42 tie. The Hutchinson News nominally went along with this fiction, at least in their headline. The reality–which they actually do deal with in the body of their story–is that the first team beat the second team 77-7, with Collin Klein completing 85.5% of his passes (47-55) for 480 yards and 6 touchdowns. Even against air, it’s not easy to complete 85% of your passes, so that’s a very encouraging sign from a quarterback whose only real weakness last season was his lack of accuracy in the passing game. His throwing motion is still somewhat awkward, but is greatly improved over last year as well. Running backs Robert Rose and Angelo Pease also played well in the game, though the running back job remains John Hubert’s to lose, apparently.

In other spring game news, last year’s highly-touted junior college quarterback recruit, Justin Tuggle, has made the switch to linebacker. Rob Cassidy at GoPowerCat discusses the change, and apparently it’s going quite well thus far. Given the fact that his father is a former Pro Bowl linebacker, and that Collin Klein is quite entrenched at the quarterback position, I am really unsurprised by the switch. We also have a couple of really young quarterbacks, in Tay Bender and Daniel Sams, that are fighting it out for the second-string spot. Anyone that truly believes that Sam Johnson will see time at quarterback should Klein go down next year might well need to see a psychological professional. If, heaven forbid, that happens, either Bender or Sams will jog out to take the snaps.