Even more oops…

The AJC has the story on Blaes.

Here’s what Coach Garner says about it:

“To bring kids in January, you have to have the number of kids graduate,” Georgia recruiting coordinator Rodney Garner said. “If a guy graduates, then you can replace him. But if guy doesn’t make the required grades to get his degree, then you can’t replace him.”

Evidently one player that Georgia was including in its count of available scholarships won’t graduate in time to free up a mid-year slot, and Blaes became the odd man out.

That’s fine, in and of itself. My only question is what did the staff tell the kid and the school when they recruited him. If they let him know about this situation, then well and good. If not, then some criticism seems warranted.

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It seemed like a good idea at the time.

To break into an apartment and try to steal an Xbox 360 game player, that is.

Which is what University of Wisconsin sophomore cornerback Jack Ikegwuonu was arrested for, along with his brother. He was suspended by his school for the Capital One Bowl, but has since been reinstated. [Side note: it’s not like the media in Orlando won’t have much to write about for this game, is it?]

Now that he gets to go, here’s the punchline – all of the players participating in the Capital One Bowl receive an Xbox 360 as a part of their bowl experience…

(h/t Razorbloggers)

More oops…

I was going to post this as an update to my previous post, but MaconDawg’s response to Kian’s initial post is good enough to deserve its own spot.

In particular, he notes:

… Blaes has, reportedly, not been cleared to play at Georgia yet. Irvin, Wynn, Havercamp and Vance have. I’m willing to wager that with the three GMC guys, this is partially because there are a lot of transfers to UGA from GMC, so the process moves faster. If Blaes has not been cleared by admissions yet, the fault lies either with a) Coffeyville for not getting the proper paperwork to Athens in time, b) the admissions office at UGA for dawdling over the paperwork, or c) Blaes for not sheperding through the paperwork from point A to point B. Note that none of these entities goes by the name “Mark Richt” or “Rodney Garner”. The coaches, by the way, have made clear in the past that they cannot sign a guy who has not been cleared by admissions. If Blaes hasn’t been cleared, then I doubt he’s been lied to.

Right now it’s hard to say who’s at fault. It could be Blaes, Coffeyville or Georgia. Or some combination of the three.

Oops.

As a Dawg fan, you hope there’s a perfectly good explanation for this, but Georgia apparently delayed its offer to Coffeyville CC offensive guard Joe Blaes:

“Georgia had to take my scholarship away,” Blaes told UGASports.com. “They said I could come in later in the summer, but they didn’t have any spots left as a mid year guy. I just found out a day or two ago.”

The article notes that Blaes was in the process of packing to move to Athens and had previously cancelled a trip to Mississippi after committing to Georgia. Yecch.

To be fair, the school isn’t walking away from the kid. He does has an offer to sign in February and enroll for the summer. Still, it doesn’t sound good. And unfortunately for the coaches, they can’t comment on current recruits, so we only get to hear one side of this story.

I hope there is another side, because if this was nothing more than the result of either a math error on how many winter commits Georgia could take or a cold decision that there were better options to accept, I would expect some burned bridges at Blaes’ school and for this to be used as a weapon on the recruiting trail by some of Georgia’s rivals. Not only that, I always want the staff to deal with recruits the right way.

I will be curious to see how this turns out.