GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING, College Crosse Nation! Thanks for making us a part of your day! Here’s everything you need to know for October 24, 2018.

College Crosse News

Major League Lacrosse is confident in its product despite the recent announcement of the PLL starting in 2019.

Major League Lacrosse issued a statement Tuesday morning assuring fans and stakeholders of the league’s financial health and espousing its 18-year history as evidence of its entrenchment in the lacrosse community. The statement presumably comes in response to Monday’s widely followed launch of the Premier Lacrosse League, though the PLL is not named specifically.

MLL lauded its owners “whose combined assets are in excess of $9 billion,” emphasized the value of partnerships such as New Balance/Warrior and Coca Cola, praised the corporate pedigree of its senior leadership and underscored the progress the league has made in recent months by expanding the salary cap and active rosters, adjusting the season schedule and brokering a multi-year deal with ESPN that will bring Lax Sports Network’s MLL programming to ESPN+. This year’s all-star and championship games were televised live on ESPN networks.

All is not well in the NLL: NLL season in harm’s way as players, owners debate CBA.

Meanwhile, the National Lacrosse League has made strides this off-season, including spearheading the Vancouver Canucks taking over the struggling Vancouver Stealth and moving the club from the Langley Events Centre to Rogers Arena. But now the start of the regular season in December is in jeopardy, with the league’s players and owners battling over their collective bargaining agreement.

Lacrosse gets in its own way with regularity.

Wagner welcomed new head coach Bill McCutcheon yesterday.

LOOK AT THE GAWD: Coach Petro got in on the Corners For Cancer challenge in this great video from Homewood Field. BOSS still has some heat on his shot.

Paul Rabil spoke with Entrepreneur.com about why he decided to go all-in on the PLL.

“This is the most challenging thing I’ve ever experienced,” says Paul Rabil. Lacrosse’s most visible athlete, and the first one to reap more than $1 million in endorsements, didn’t set out to create a direct competitor to the existing pro league, Major League Lacrosse (MLL). But that’s exactly what he and his brother Mike -- along with a cadre of sports and media investors -- are doing with Premier League Lacrosse (PLL), with an inaugural season kicking off next summer. “Starting our own league was not our first choice,” he admits. “Unifying the game by creating an elevated professional lacrosse league was our top objective. But as any entrepreneur knows, getting to your ultimate goal will often involve alternate or unforeseen paths. You have to be opportunistic.”

This got me a little hyped up.

Penn State hopes to use the difficulties from last year to fuel their bounce back season in 2019.

Lacrosse is often a game of runs. Back-and-forth contests with multiple lead changes can happen on a regular basis. How teams react to them decides many close games. Who comes out on top in those nail biters often comes down to several factors.

A year ago, Penn State was lacking in the areas that often decide back-and-forth thrillers.

In 2017 they won a majority of them, in the spring of 2018 a few slipped away and it cost the Nittany Lions a postseason berth. During their fall practices that included a scrimmage against Virginia that ended 13-13, the Nittany Lions tried to address some of those problems.

“I have to look at myself and say ‘What did we do coming down to the end, schematically.’ So that’s one factor,” coach Jeff Tambroni said. “Individually and then as a staff we need to look at ourselves and ask what we could have done better, and I am directly responsible for that so I think that’d probably be more me.”

Nice highlight video of Penn’s scrimmage with Syracuse from this past weekend.

Former lacrosse player and Instagram super influencer Quinn Slocum talks about how he built his brand.

“I was a kid who just loved lacrosse. I made sports edits on Vine… and I was making these edits, and I found someone through Instagram who was like ‘Hey, I need edits done for my sports page. Can you do them?’ And I said ‘Heck yeah.’” From there, Slocum started a variety of social media pages, the first of which was dedicated to pictures of famous athletes’ houses. Building the brand wasn’t easy; sometimes the houses in the pictures didn’t actually belong to the athletes in question. “I think people called me out every time like ‘That’s not his house!’” Slocum says. “So I didn’t know… there was like a 50 percent chance it was. So I could be posting some random rich guy’s house. That was the fun of it.”

It’s a beautiful day in Easton, PA.

From high school rivals to college teammates/friends.

When Alisa “A.J.” Silverstein found out there Mary Hopkins — her lacrosse coach during her playing career at West Orange High — would be taking over the women’s club program at UCF, she was pretty excited to tell her teammates about what to expect from their new coach. “I told them to be ready to have fun — (Hopkins) always knows how to bring fun to practice,” Silverstein said. At the time, Silverstein — currently a junior — was a rising sophomore. Hopkins, who lives in Ocoee and had been at West Orange High for two decades, is now in her second year at the helm for the Knights.

It was an exciting reunion, to be sure, but others — such as Olympia High alumnae Kim Goic, Casey Zimmerman and Brittney and Ashley Matthews — were understandably a little skeptical. “At first (the Olympia alumni) were kind of hesitant — we were like ‘she’s from West Orange,’” recalled Goic, who is also a junior. “But then we really liked her — she’s an awesome coach and she’s helped us improve.”

My NBC 5 did a segment on Plattsburgh Men’s lacrosse players shaving their heads for charity.

Plattsburgh State Men’s Lacrosse gave back on Sunday by helping the St. Baldrick’s Foundation. The guys set a goal to raise $5,000 but more than doubled it. The team also wanted to unify with the very patients they are helping, and shaved their heads. Hear from the guys here as they raise awareness for children’s cancer.

What’s Up, PhilaJersey?

Far Hills Race 2018 was a bit of a mess.

Thirty-eight revelers partying at the Far Hills Race Meeting this weekend were arrested as authorities cracked down on underage drinking and other drunken behavior. The nearly 100-year-old steeplechase race has in recent years become known for its tailgating, an odd mix of college party-style rowdiness complete with keg stands and a posher brand where attendees have black-tie bartenders and fine cheese platters.

The number of arrests in down from 2017, but about the same as the years before. Many were for underage drinking and public urination, and all of the arrestees were in their teens or 20s. Noting that arrests were down, Far Hills Police Chief Michael C. DeCarolis said Tuesday that he attributed the “success of the event to the coordination of law enforcement efforts and continued support of the Race Committee.

World/National News

Smart glasses making a comeback: These $1,000 smart glasses tell you the weather, read text messages and connect to Alexa.

Google and Intel made smart glasses — Google Glass and Vaunt — but neither product took off with consumers. Now, a start-up called North, formally Thalmic Labs, is introducing a pair of smart glasses that it thinks will appeal to the masses because the design looks so similar to normal glasses.

The $1,000 glasses are called Focals, and the company said they will ship later this year. Focals connect to your phone via Bluetooth and have a small projector that beams data into the wearer’s eyes. They can tell the wearer the weather or time, read text messages and even order an Uber. The glasses are also connected to Alexa, so if you can ask them for directions or information, a small speaker will tell you the answers.

Your GIF/Video for October 24, 2018

Hat/Tip to Skyler for Tweeting this out. Indeed, things did escalate quickly in this video.

That’s it for today!! I’ll see you out there!! Make sure you follow us on social media!

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Managing Editors: Safe Fekadu, Chris Jastrzembski, Ryan McDonnell