Recruiting in South “Afghanistan”

Mindful of Tommy’s maxim about Miami – “The Hurricanes don’t occupy anything remotely resembling moral high ground, but they are useful.” – I found this recruiting article in SI.com worth noting.

The author makes a good point about how fierce the battle for recruits in south Florida is likely to be.  Besides a (hopefully) resurgent Miami, the Gators will have to duke it out down there with FSU (don’t forget that Holliday once worked for Amato) and the Butch Davis-led North Carolina Tarheels.

Whatever works.  Anything that slows the Gator recruiting juggernaut down is a good thing for Georgia.

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Hoisted on his own petard.

When Jim Delany penned this…

I love speed and the SEC has great speed, especially on the defensive line, but there are appropriate balances when mixing academics and athletics. Each school, as well as each conference, simply must do what fits their mission regardless of what a recruiting service recommends. I wish we had six teams among the top 10 recruiting classes every year, but winning our way requires some discipline and restraint with the recruitment process. Not every athlete fits athletically, academically or socially at every university. Fortunately, we have been able to balance our athletic and academic mission so that we can compete successfully and keep faith with our academic standards.

… did you wonder what folks who actually played Big 10 football thought about it?

Here’s what Stanford head coach and former Michigan quarterback Jim Harbaugh had to say about his alma mater:

“…Other schools which have good academic reputations have ways to get borderline athletes in and keep them in.”Harbaugh includes his alma mater, Michigan, in that indictment.

“Michigan is a good school and I got a good education there,” he said, “but the athletic department has ways to get borderline guys in and, when they’re in, they steer them to courses in sports communications. They’re adulated when they’re playing, but when they get out, the people who adulated them won’t hire them.”

Alert the media! Or Dennis Dodd, at least.

(h/t The Wizard of Odds)

Envy and jealousy: Arkansas soap opera

Via College Football Resource comes this gem from ESPN’s Bruce Feldman about the winter (and now spring) of the Nuttster’s discontent:

It’s like the “Dukes of Hazzard” meets “Friday Night Lights”, only stranger because the program seems to be caught up in the web of the watchdog blogosphere age.

Succinct and perfect.

Pork Rind Jimmy – what you get when you mix redneckery,  misguided passion for a college football program and 21st century technological empowerment…