Friday morning buffet

Nourishment to wrap up the working week:

• Less than eight months into his job, the NCAA enforcement director has decided he’s had enough.
• Bruce Feldman lists his ten schools with the easiest 2012 nonconference schedules.  Yep, Georgia makes an appearance.
• The best thing I can say about the composition of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee is that Michael Adams doesn’t serve on it.
• For all that have complained about the Pac-12′s strength of schedule numbers, Bill Connelly’s got his breakdown of the conference for you right here.
• Some great double talk from Grant Teaff:  “This isn’t something that we have happily done,” said Teaff, referring to the poll being part of the BCS formula the previous 14 years. “We’ve done it because the commissioners wanted us to and the coaches wanted to be part of the selection process and that’s the only reason we’ve done it. There’s no other reason.”   So they’ve wanted it, but they’re not happy about it?  They can’t kill the Coaches Poll fast enough.
• Expect to hear more of this talk as the new postseason regime settles in.
• Bryan McClendon on this year’s group of running backs:  “Probably as far as pure talent-base, probably the most talented that I’ve had in my room ever.”
• Randy Edsall defending himself is everything you’d expect it to be.
• “Jeff Sagarin won’t care,” said Jerry Palm, CBSSports.com BCS analyst. “He doesn’t need the BCS, the BCS needs him.”

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The more you get to know about Randy Edsall, the more you like him.

Just kidding.

… And Maryland decided O’Brien can’t play for Vanderbilt. Why not Vanderbilt? Franklin is there.

Edsall’s job security depends on his own performance. But if Franklin somehow wins big at Vanderbilt, it would make Maryland’s athletic director and president look awful. In the classic style of modern-day university administrators, Loh and Anderson are letting Edsall take all the bullets. But the fact is, the university president and athletic director can step in at any time and grant O’Brien his unlimited release. It is the right thing to do. And they haven’t done it.

Now, this is where it gets really rich:

Maryland’s new offensive coordinator is Mike Locksley. He was the head coach at New Mexico before getting fired last fall.

Last month, a New Mexico player named Zach Dancel decided to transfer.

Guess where he is going.

Yep. Maryland.

To play for his old coach.

“Of course there are a couple guys at New Mexico who are interested, who have their release,” Dancel told The Washington Post last month. “I’m sure they’re considering it. A lot of guys are good players and they’re going to have other options. … I’ve been in contact with a couple of them about Maryland. Locks is going to get players in there and Maryland is going to be up and coming and could potentially be a good team in the next year or two.”

Dancel was a starter at New Mexico. And he wasn’t kidding when he said other players may join him. The Albuquerque Journal reported that New Mexico running back Crusoe Gongbay, who led the team in rushing last season as a true freshman, has left the program. Gongbay is a Maryland native, and it would surprise nobody if he joined his old coach at Maryland.

Evidently, Maryland thinks it’s perfectly fine for players to transfer into its program to play for a former coach, but terribly wrong for players to transfer out of its program to play for a former coach. There is no principle here. Just “educators” covering their butts.

Don’t forget Loh and Anderson are the geniuses behind Maryland’s move last year to eliminate eight sports programs.  Why did they do that?

Loh said the current business model in college sports, where schools rely on two revenue-producing sports (football and men’s basketball) as well as lucrative television contracts associated with those sports, is “inequitable and unsustainable.” Loh pledged to continue to work with the ACC, NCAA and other national organizations to address what he called the escalating financial arms race in college sports.

Barry Gossett, a co-chair of the commission and a member of the Board of Regents of the University System of Maryland, said that without success in football and men’s basketball, “we’re not going to have a great deal of income to work with.”

Anderson said the struggles of the football team — it has a 2-9 record — and attendance issues late in the season played no role in the number of teams that were targeted to be cut. Anderson also said that the team’s attendance and revenue was up from last year.

It’s about the money, but it’s not.  This is the president of a school in a conference with a big money TV contract bitching about inequity?

These clowns deserve each other.  Unfortunately for Danny O’Brien.

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UPDATE:  Edsall caves.

Maryland is lifting restrictions and telling departing quarterback Danny O’Brien, offensive lineman Max Garcia and linebacker Mario Rowson that they are free after all to transfer to Vanderbilt if they wish, according to a source.

Head coach Randy Edsall is meeting with the players this morning and informing them of the decision.

That doesn’t mean he’s not a dick anymore.  It just means that he’s a sensitive one.

By the way, I hope this doesn’t screw up Georgia’s chances for Garcia.

Friday morning buffet

There’s always something tasty in the world of college football.

• Paul Myerberg notes that there may be one weekend that proves to be the exception to the adage that you don’t plan a wedding in the South on a fall weekend:  “… Nov. 17, when the [SEC] will feature more than twice as many games against F.C.S. competition, seven, as it does actual conference games, three.”
• For those who thought Tommy Tuberville would be a step up from Mike Leach in the recruiting department, it turns out that Texas Tech brought in seven JUCO early enrollees with its most recent class.
• Something to keep an eye on, playoff fans:  pay options begin to creep back into viewing March Madness.
• And Texas asks for patience with the Longhorn Network.
• Sally Jenkins’ Captain Queeg analogy for Randy Edsall is pretty awesome.  (Although I wish she could have worked the strawberries in there, somehow.)
• Will Dorial Green-Beckham be a bigger challenge for Georgia now?
• This comes as absolutely no surprise to me:  “When he secured a coveted spot on an all-star game roster reportedly assembled by “the (2006) U.S. Army All-American Bowl Selection Team made up of Tom Lemming of CSTV and representatives of Scout.com“, Adam James had no Division I scholarship offers and 14 receptions in 10 games as a tight end playing in the state’s second-lowest (2A) Texas high school football classification.”

Randy Edsall, only Mike Locksley can save you now.

(AP photo)

No, Danny O’Brien isn’t transferring from Maryland because of the uniform.  Although I wouldn’t blame him if he were.  It’s more a case of him being yet another player at that school who doesn’t want to play for the head coach.

It’s not just that Randy Edsall is a dick.  It’s that he’s an insecure dick.

According to The Washington Post, however, O’Brien isn’t the only former player prevented from transferring into Vanderbilt. Offensive lineman Max Garcia and linebacker Mario Rowson, who have also declared their intent to leave the program, were subject to the same 16 schools on O’Brien’s no-transfer list: the entire A.C.C., West Virginia, Temple and the Commodores.

Including Vanderbilt on this list reflects terribly on Edsall, who can realistically cite no other reason to prevent former players from transferring to the program other than his own fear that, should a former player succeed in the SEC, his tenure will continue to pale in comparison to work Franklin is doing in Nashville.

Congrats, Randy.  It’s not easy these days to make James Franklin a sympathetic figure, but you’ve succeeded.

Maryland could have replaced Friedgen with either Franklin – who, after all, was the coach in waiting – or Mike Leach, but instead cast its fate with a man who’s responsible for a train wreck:  “This is Maryland today. Players are bolting in droves: 24 since Edsall arrived, 12 since the end of the last season.”  The way things have been headed, it’s likely that this hire is going to wind up being epically bad.

And with this latest move, Myerberg’s right about Edsall creating a new standard by which he’ll be measured.

… Worse yet, Edsall has created an environment where Maryland is competing with the Commodores — where the Terrapins are using the Commodores, whether out of fear or otherwise, as their built-in barometer. This isn’t where the program should be entering Edsall’s second season. Maryland should be weighing itself against Clemson, Florida State and the rest of the A.C.C., not a perceived rival located hundreds of miles and a conference away.

If I’m Franklin, I’m going public asking for a game between the two.  Might as well make as much hay out of the situation as possible.  If Maryland turns you down, you’ve got a helluva line to use on the recruiting trail.

(And speaking of recruiting, if I’m Mark Richt, I’m checking out Max Garcia about now.)

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UPDATE:  Way to jump on it, Mark Richt!

“I’m definitely excited about Georgia being interested in me, and my mother is really happy about it as well,” Garcia told the AJC. “I’ve always considered Georgia since high school. It just never really worked out the first time around. They liked me out of high school. They just wanted me to go to a summer camp, and I was never able to make it up there.”

What if UGA offered? “I’d definitely consider committing. Being so close to home, it would be a great opportunity for me. I’m also going to open it up to other schools, if they’re interested. I want to try to find the best situation for me – as far as being close to home, with what I want to study and how much offensive line depth there is.”

Yawn.

This is what I don’t get about the art of being an athletic director.  You get rid of a guy after realizing that the program has plateaued and the fan base has grown financially apathetic… and you replace him with basically the same kind of coach?

… Edsall ran a Connecticut program progressing from the F.C.S. to the F.B.S., from Independent status to the Big East; Friedgen didn’t inherit a powerhouse, but one could say that Friedgen had it easier at Maryland than Edsall did with the Huskies.

Of course, Edsall didn’t have to play in the A.C.C., which helps the bottom line. Yes, Maryland was more talented, but Connecticut played the likes of Rhode Island, Colgate and Northeastern over Edsall’s first handful of seasons. The bottom line: over a dozen years at Connecticut, Edsall posted a 74-40 mark; Friedgen went 75-50 over 10 years with Maryland.

Each went to one B.C.S. bowl — Edsall to this past weekend’s Fiesta Bowl, Friedgen to the 2002 Orange Bowl. This is how things work: much like it pays to suffer a loss in September than in December, Maryland looked at what happened yesterday, not nearly a decade ago.

Well, maybe Maryland didn’t take a close enough look: can you say that Connecticut’s 2010 season, B.C.S. bowl or no, was more impressive than what Friedgen’s team achieved this past season? Nine wins for Maryland — in the A.C.C. — and eight for the Huskies — in the Big East.

I have a blogger’s rooting interest in Mike Leach being a head coach again, but taking that out of the equation, how is this move supposed to inspire the Maryland fan base?

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UPDATE: Edsall told his (former) UConn players about his departure by conference call… a day after he made Jordan Todman get up and tell his teammates in person that he was leaving early for the NFL draft.  Real class, there.