A name and a frame

I’m going to dispense with the usual mockery about offering a kid who just turned fifteen (even if he is already 6-foot-3 and 292 pounds), because how could you not want somebody named Brodarious Hamm as your nose guard of the future?

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Friday morning buffet

You’ve just about made it through another working week.  Reward yourself by indulging in a few of these tasty morsels:

• Jeremy Hill’s lawyer thinks “them’s fightin’ words!” will make for a good defense in a criminal assault case.
• Will Friend thinks offensive line chemistry is overrated.
• The SEC has a new plan for lesser bowls:  the conference will pick the participants and will force lower ticket guarantees.
• The NCAA puts the kibosh on hash tags on football fields.
• If the general rule of thumb is that two starting quarterbacks are one too many, then Gus Malzahn has a problem.
• This year has seen a record number of early enrollees.
• When it comes to openers and bye weeks, Mark Richt’s teams have been above average.
• Pat Dye:  SEC! SEC! SEC!

Wednesday morning buffet

The buffet is sticking with the college game this morning, thank you very much.

• Mark Richt says SEC head coaches are in favor of an early signing period, explains why.
• Hey, here’s something refreshing – an article about Johnny Manziel that actually sticks to football talk.
• To answer this question, probably not.
• Mike Slive would prefer if you didn’t ask him about Auburn right now.
• Here’s another SEC quarterback rankings list, if your you’re interested.
• Does Georgia need for its offensive line to be dominant?  Its head coach doesn’t think so.  (That worked out in 2003, admittedly.)
• Is the Pac-12 considering going to an eight-game conference schedule?
• Texas A&M is about to make Kyle Field into one big ass stadium.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Mindful of Tommy Perkins’ Afghanistan analogy, let me just say this about Kentucky’s serious recruiting outreach into Ohio:  go ‘Cats, go!  Anything that makes Corch have to devote even an ounce more of his energy and attention to defending the home front and not coming down south to raid is a plus in my book.

Thursday morning buffet

Come and get it.

• Bill Snyder says college football “was in a bad place”, then goes on to claim that the sport can self-correct.  That makes him half-right.
• “Recruiting is still all about relationships.”  Some relationships make me want to fwow up, I guess.
• The 2012 Charting Project takes a look at fourth down plays.
• Vandalism at Williams-Brice!
• Today’s wait, what? moment comes from Auburn WR Sammie Coates, who claims “… we’ve got the best wide receivers group, I think, around.”
• Sammie, here’s what a good receiving corps looks like.
• Mike Leach says the conferences are all the same, except for one thing about the SEC.
• Mark Sanford uses football as an excuse to trespass on his ex-wife’s property.
• For an undefeated team, Ohio State was kind of meh in conference play last season.  (Of course, you could say the entire conference was kind of meh in conference play last season.)

Tuesday morning buffet

The line is open, so grab a plate.

• SEC Network announcement is postponed in the wake of the Boston Marathon tragedy.
• I don’t know what it is about Les Miles and head coach rankings, but Athlon, it’s real simple:  any head coach with a national title and a program that’s a perennial contender in the SEC West is a better head coach than Dan Mullen, for starters.
• Another weird list.  I mean, Jeremy Hill is one of the top ten players to watch in the SEC?  Good player and all, but still…
• Texas State’s move to FBS football has its costs.
• Georgia Tech decides it needs to go shopping for recruits out of state, while Vanderbilt keeps adding on Georgia kids.  I guess James Franklin agrees with the Genius: “I certainly think there’s people in Georgia that can meet the academics.”
• Year2 looks at how technology is running ahead of NCAA recruiting rules.  No surprise there.
• He also maps SEC historical series here and SEC East historical series here, if you’re interested.
• Possible opening day note:  Clemson loses its starting TE to ACL tear suffered in spring game.

Another grayshirt story

I know it doesn’t involve a high-profile recruit and the kid is totally on board with the move, but I have to say I’m a bit surprised Tide Nation isn’t all over this:

… the football team picked up a grayshirt commitment from Naples (FL) Barron Collier defensive lineman Brady Pallante. As a grayshirt commit, Pallante will pay his way through school during the 2014-15 scholastic year—during which time he cannot participate in team activities—before joining the team on full scholarship for the 2015 season. If it makes it easier, just consider him the first commitment for the 2015 class, and one who’ll get a head start on the academic side of things.

It’s all on the up and up, so I don’t have a problem with it.  But then again, I’m not a fanatic on the subject.

Monday morning buffet

You might as well fill up… we’ve got almost five months before we get some live football again.

• John Adams on the current state of Tennessee football:  “An offense seemingly bereft of playmakers struggled. While the defense looked both faster and more physical than last season’s bunch, that’s not necessarily a glowing recommendation in that the 2012 defense was the worst in school history.”  Ouch.
• Phil Steele predicts the SEC will place five teams in the AP’s preseason top ten, six in the top twelve.
• Anybody remember Josh Jarboe?
• Seth Emerson reviews the unresolved questions coming out of Georgia’s spring.  Let’s just say they pale in comparison to UT’s issues.
• And David Paschall looks at what’s up in the air with the Dawg offensive line.
• Grantham sounded satisfied that the Red team’s second G-Day try at a two-minute drill ended less successfully than did the first try.  (Of course, some of that can be chalked up to Murray quarterbacking the first one and LeMay handling the second one.)
• “James DeLoach is a guy that, when you’re talking about newcomers, has done a nice job…”
• Rivals buys into the “de-commitment is a problem” meme, blames it on great recruiters who confuse the recruits.  Just wonderin’ – how much less product would Rivals have to sell if some kids didn’t de-commit?
• If you’re interested, here’s a virtual look at the new College Football Hall of Fame, currently under construction.

Trouble in mind

Clearly, Michael Carvell is on to something here, as he shines a spotlight on what he calls “a big mess that’s only going to get bigger” – the scourge of 17-year old kids exercising the last bit of leverage most of them will ever have in their careers by changing their minds during the recruiting process about where they want to spend the next few years of their lives.

Yes, this is a troubling trend.  We must do something.

I’ve got it!  How ’bout we devote no further media attention to a recruit who revokes his verbal commitment and changes colleges before he signs a binding letter of intent?  That’ll teach those attention-seeking kids.

Not only that, but it’ll give Carvell a chance to devote some bandwidth to the less troubling matters of coaches changing schools and schools changing conferences for perceived better opportunities.  Sure, those aren’t the big messes (unless you’re a kid who established a good relationship with a coach who’s left or a fan who’s being deprived of a historical rivalry) that Carvell’s concern-trolling about, but if he can get coaches to open up about the cold choices they make about their careers the way he’s gotten them to speak about the kids making similar choices, maybe we’ll learn something.

Until then…

Friday morning buffet

The tidbits, the tidbits!

• So how’s that whole Dream Team thing working out?
• Malik Ramik Wilson progresses at inside linebacker.
• Of all the lists I’ve seen, this is certainly one of them.
• Mike Gundy almost left Oklahoma State for Tennessee because of non-conference scheduling.
• Tony Barnhart wants you to know something:  “The SEC West is the toughest division in the toughest college football conference in America. This is not debatable.”  They don’t call him Mr. Conventional Wisdom for nothing, folks.
• Florida State’s DeMarcus Walker claims Alabama jammed him up with the NCAA.  Is there anything to that?  John Infante says the Tide had the means, but there’s no way to know about the motive.
• Todd Gurley was banged up at the end of last season… not that you could have known from his production on the field.
• Jeez, this is a creepy story.