Stafford vs. Tebow

Pretty good summary can be found here.  No mention of circumcisions, though.

To date, this is a fair description of the debate:

… On paper, Tebow has had the more decorated college career thus far. The only sophomore to ever win a Heisman Trophy, the single-season SEC touchdown record, the nation’s No. 2-ranked QB in passing efficiency last season and a key member of the 2006 BCS champion Gators squad — Tebow is quite arguably the most accomplished college football player two years into a career … ever.

But Georgia fans will point to wins, losses and the big-game performances. And to be certain, Stafford’s Bulldogs had a better season than Tebow’s Gators in 2007, the first year both young men started at quarterback from start to finish.

Two seasons into his NCAA career, the Georgia QB is 17-4 as a starter, with eight of those 17 wins coming over Top 25 teams. Tebow’s career record as a starter, meanwhile, is “just” 9-4. Stafford is 2-0 as a starter in postseason bowl games; Tebow is 0-1. Head to head as starters, Stafford gets the nod, as he threw for 3 touchdowns in last season’s 42-30 whitewashing of the Tebow-led Gators in Jacksonville.

As a Dawg fan, I know which I prefer.

Ryan Mallett may have been ahead of his time.

If Matt Hayes is right about this, then the APR will have been good for something:

It looks as though the NCAA finally will look into the possibility of immediate eligibility after a transfer for players affected by coaching turnover. Although any legislation must clear significant hurdles, there is momentum for such an idea after the recent release of the Academic Progress Rates showed a direct correlation between declining scores and coaching changes. . . .

It’s a sensible idea, but where is this momentum coming from?  The schools?  Aren’t they the ones who propagate the myth that the kid commits to the institution, not the coach?

And outside of Bobby Petrino, for whom this would be like his own personal Marshall Plan, you wonder how the coaches will react to this proposal.

No, you don’t have to live like a refugee.

Meet Ryan Perrilloux, pied piper.

Perrilloux also said that he had been in contact with two other high-profile players who were interested in transferring to JSU: UTEP wide receiver Fred Rouse and Clemson running back Ramon “Ray Ray” McElrathbey.

What, no Kenny O’Neal?

(h/t The Wizard of Odds)

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UPDATE: No hard feelings, at least not in public.

Money talks, gentlemen.

Umm… ACC coaches?  About that nine conference games schedule you guys just shot down?  Don’t get too comfortable.

3. The nine-game conference schedule will come up again: The coaches shot down the idea and this time the athletics director went along. But in two years the ACC will have to renegotiate its television packages and, like all conferences, it will be looking for a raise. The TV boys have told all the conferences that if they want more money they need a better inventory of games over the entire schedule. The coaches will remain adamantly against it but next time around it may not matter.

“We were against adding a 12th regular season game and you see how that turned out,” one coach said to me.

Good point.

Bad news for South Carolina

The NCAA takes a preemptive step towards keeping South Carolina from its bowl destiny.

4. NCAA puts bowls on notice: The NCAA sent out an interesting letter to all the bowls last week. The letter essentially said that while the NCAA has certified 34 bowls for next season, that certification does not guarantee that a team will be available for any bowl. It is a pre-emptive move by the NCAA to ward off litigation in case there aren’t enough teams with at least six wins to fill the bowls. Some of the bowl execs I talked to want to know: “If you were worried about having enough teams, why did you certify two more bowls?”

This could get nasty. Right now a bowl cannot take a team unless it has a 6-6 record or better. This December a bowl could be in a situation where it has to petition the NCAA for a waiver to take a 5-7 team. If that happens the NCAA will get hammered in the court of public opinion. And it should.

Personally, I’m a little conflicted on this. I don’t really care who gets to play in the Podunk Bowl. It’s an exhibition game, fer Crissakes. But keeping Spurrier & Co. out of the postseason does have its merits.

Wait a minute – what am I thinking? How much mileage would I get out of South Carolina (or Georgia Tech, for that matter) being the first first SEC school with a losing record to play in a bowl game?

Sign me up.

Today’s random bits

Nothing here worth a post in and of itself, but maybe worth a look at least:

• TSN’s Matt Hayes lists his top five SEC players at each position. I’m a little surprised he doesn’t list a Georgia player at linebacker, but he does have a good line about Moreno: “I watched the Florida and Auburn games again over the last month, and Moreno’s freshman season looks more impressive with each replay.”
• Will the last team from Conference USA to leave for the Big East turn out the lights, please?
• The reason traffic is so bad in metro Atlanta? Too many damned college football assistant coaches driving around.
• Urban Meyer: It’ll be the NCAA’s fault if I offer another kid like Jamar Hornsby.
• I give the Zooker credit. I can think of several head coaches who would never admit to having had an embarrassing moment. Here’s Zook’s:
  

  Q. Your most embarrassing moment?
  A. At the Georgia-Florida game in Jacksonville, Fla., on national television, with all the cameras focused on me, I ran across the field to the visitor’s sideline instead of the home team’s sideline.

End of an era

ACC ends relationship with Humanitarian Bowl, effective 2009. Yellow Jacket fans everywhere mourn.

They’ll always have Boise.

(photo courtesy Idaho Statesman)

You can tell the ACC is choked up about the decision.  Just listen to the commish:

“We will be leaving the Humanitarian Bowl in Boise,” Swofford said. “They provided some excellent experiences for our teams. I think if you talk with our teams they’ve enjoyed being there. It’s a little different kind of bowl experience than a lot of places but our schools, coaches and athletic directors have wanted to move that particular game back more in our geographic footprint…”

Translation:  “Our coaches would rather play a ninth conference game than suffer through freezing their ass off in late December on some god-forsaken blue field in Idaho.  And they don’t like being sponsored by a truck stop, either.”

Touching, really.