I'm down in Las Vegas for the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament and day 1 was incredibly brutal for me. My 8th seeded UNLV Runnin Rebels were knocked out by the #9 Northern Iowa Panthers on a deeeeeep three with 4 seconds left. It was quite the stomach punch after a great day of exciting basketball. I've moved past it, but it still stings. Now it's all just about winning money. We'll see what happens today after one of the most exciting first round Thursdays in a long time.
Of course, 49ers fans have had their own bit of excitement. I was sitting at a poker table Wednesday night drinking a beer when I caught the McCloughan news on the bottom line. We had plenty of discussion in a couple FanPosts and then in smileyman's post yesterday. As we try and figure all this out, we have to consider the man taking over in some aspect for McCloughan: Trent Baalke. Here's his bio from 49ers.com:
Trent Baalke enters his sixth season with the 49ers and his third as the team’s director of player personnel after being appointed to the position in February of 2008. In his 13th NFL season, Baalke oversees both the college and pro personnel departments.
Prior to being named director of player personnel, Baalke served as the Western region scout for the 49ers for three years. He joined San Francisco after spending four years on the Washington Redskins scouting staff, his last (2004) as the club’s college scouting coordinator. From 2001 to 2003, Baalke served as Washington’s national scout, traveling throughout the country in search of rising talent.
Before joining the Redskins, Baalke spent three seasons (1998-2000) as a scout with the New York Jets.
He previously held the position as the athletic director at Shanley (Fargo, ND) High School. Before his stint at Shanley, Baalke was the defensive line/strength and conditioning coach at South Dakota State (1990-95), where he helped promote former Pro Bowl guard Adam Timmerman and current NFL kicker Adam Vinatieri to NFL scouts.
Baalke cut his coaching teeth as a graduate assistant and defensive line coach in 1989 for North Dakota State.
I would imagine the team has to be fairly prepared at this point for the draft. Yes there are still Pro Days to be had, but a month before the draft, do you really think the team didn't already have a decent portion of their draft board figured out? Does anybody see any change in strategy with McCloughan now on some kind of "extended leave of absence" ?
On a somewhat unrelated note, we had a timing snafu (my fault) and Drew K had a great new feature post get passed at the top fairly quickly yesterday afternoon. If you missed it, check it out soon.