“Hair today, gone tomorrow”

Nick Saban: hire these guys stat.  The media will never ask you about coonasses again.

Greatest. Press. Conference. Ever.

Much ado about nothing.

David Ching just nails this whole overblown “coonass” episode involving Nick Saban with this post.

Still, as with anything involving ‘Bama football over the past two months, it sure has been entertaining.

I’m Georgia. You don’t know me.

As you can probably tell, I’m a sucker for articles that go back and look at past recruiting classes to see how they’ve panned out. I think it’s a valuable lesson to learn, especially as we watch any number of Georgia fans hyperventilating in the past week or so over the “failures” in recruiting the class of ’07.

So, I’m looking at this piece on CBS SportsLine that analyzes how the top ranked classes for 2003 have turned out, and I notice this blurb about #9 Georgia:

The Bulldogs landed 25 recruits with RB Kregg Lumpkin and DB Paul Oliver leading the way. Lumpkin has had a solid career, but was never considered one of the top running backs of the SEC. Same goes for Oliver — a solid defensive back, but nothing outstanding. Georgia did have some stars that have already started making waves in the NFL: TE Leonard Pope and LB Odell Thurman. Other key players were DB Thomas Flowers, LB Jarvis Jackson, OT Ken Shackleford and RB Danny Ware. Grade: B-

to which my immediate reaction is WTF? Oliver is a solid defensive back, but nothing outstanding, while Thomas Flowers, who didn’t even play in ’06, is a key player?

Here’s the final list of the 2003 Georgia commitments, per Rivals. Off there, I count some complete busts, like Cook, Graydon, Lee, McKinzey and Gainous, a couple of stars like Pope and Oliver and a lot of steady contributors. Darst’s overall grade seems a tad low, but since I can’t figure out his reasoning in the first place, I guess that doesn’t matter much.

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Exploitation, part two

SMQ‘s second post exploring the issue of exploitation of college football players is up and is well worth your time.

Especially interesting is a chart he posts which contains some admittedly crude data about revenue in and expenditures out as it relates to these schools and kids, which he calls his “Exploitation Index”. (Check out those SEC numbers in particular.) It’s good stuff.

I perceive three classes of college players that we’re talking about here:

• Those that play college ball, or at least maintain a position on the team, but don’t go on to play in the NFL. This is by far the largest group of the three, as something like 98% of all college players don’t make it to the next level. We’ll call these the “Tra Battle” student athletes.
• Those that play college ball and are just good enough to be a marginal pro prospect – a low draft round pick, or a free agent who manages to win a spot with an NFL team. Call ’em the “Verron Haynes” kids.
• The superstars, a la Reggie Bush, or on a somewhat lesser level, David Pollack. These guys are can’t miss types who watch the schools sell jerseys and posters promoting their jersey numbers but don’t see a dime from the sale of these materials while in college.

Skip SMQ‘s math for a minute. What does your gut say about which group of these kids is being exploited in college? Certainly not the Tra Battles, and most likely not the Verron Hayneses, either. That leaves a very small group – think about how small, really – of college athletes who get screwed out of the dollars.

In light of that, again, doesn’t it make a lot more sense to give the Bushes and the Pollacks the opportunity to leave for a professional career when they want to tap into what the market says they’re worth, rather than trying to come up with some formula to pay them and their student athlete peers in college?

Gangsta Gator fan

There are some stories that need little elaboration to be enjoyed.

This is one of them.

I just wish he’d been wearing jean shorts.