A sign the Apocalypse is nearly upon us

The Wiz reports that Notre Dame gets better odds of winning the national championship this season than Georgia.

A couple of (hopefully final) recruiting tidbits

Michael Carvell has a nice follow up with Orson Charles about his final decision to sign with Georgia.  Aside from showing that the kid seems to have a good head on his shoulders, the other noteworthy item from the post is this observation from Charles about Pete Carroll:

“He was mad. He just thought I would have a better chance of playing on a winning team and for a national championship if I signed with USC. He also was upset that he went to a lot of trouble with [heralded quarterback prospect Matt Barkley] to get the No. 7 jersey. [Carroll] kept me on the phone for awhile.”

I bet he did.  It sounds like he had to get a lot off his chest.  Sign with us because we went to a lot of trouble to promise you your jersey number?

Meanwhile, Dennis Dodd decides to dip his toes back into the Bryce Brown waters.  The whole thing has a slightly unsavory tang to it, starting with this quote from Brian Butler…

“My goal,” Butler added, “is to be a millionaire before they (players) are.”

Dude, some advice:  when the NCAA is investigating you, there are probably better things to discuss publicly than growing the size of your bank account.

Then there’s this.

A best guess is that Bryce has narrowed his choices to Oregon and Tennessee. Based on conversations I’ve had, the kid is very interested in how he will be promoted. Oregon has at its disposal the Nike marketing machine…

Exactly how does Nike plan on promoting an amateur athlete, pray tell?  This kid is an accident waiting to happen.

At least no coach has promised him a jersey number, though.

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It’s déjà vu all over again.

Oklahoma State:  great offensive players, questions on defense.

When have we heard this before?  Oh, yeah.

I, for one, welcome our new Gator overlords.

I hate to say it, but I’m about ready to give up.  Florida’s got all eleven starters on the defensive side of the ball coming back, along with the GPOOE™.   The Gators’ schedule this season is, shall we say, less than challenging.

But there’s more.  Everything’s coming up roses for these guys.

• Carl Johnson looks to have dodged a bullet.  “Insufficient evidence” means it’s more than likely he’ll be suiting up in the orange and blue this fall.  How nice for him.
• Seemingly out of the blue, the SEC granted a medical redshirt to senior kicker Jonathan Phillips.  As the article notes, that means Florida returns its three key special teams performers as well in 2009.
• It doesn’t sound like motivation will be too much of a problem this year, either.  Thanks, Junior.

I need a drink.

Kiffin watch: pumping gas and taking names

The hardest thing about Junior-blogging is keeping up.  The guy spews up so much post-worthy material that at times it’s quite difficult to catch everything.

This is my way of apologizing to you, dear readers.  In discussing the lastest from the Laner – the “pumping gas for the rest of your miserable life” sales pitch to a South Carolina signee – I missed a hanging curve ball.  I like to think I’m better than that, but, as I said, it’s tough sometimes.

Anyway, just to refresh everyone’s memory, here’s what Junior said in the heat of battle:

According to Jeffrey and Wilson, Kiffin told Jeffrey that if he chose the Gamecocks, he would end up pumping gas for the rest of his life like all the other players from that state who had gone to South Carolina.

I’d say that was a primo example of negative recruiting.  Except that Junior’s on record as saying he never, ever indulges in that kind of behavior.

“The biggest shock to me is how much negative recruiting there is in this conference,” Kiffin said. “We don’t do that. There are so many great programs, I would think they would want to sell their own teams. I’m shocked at how concerned other programs are with us, being that we’re a new staff and we didn’t have a very successful year last year.”

He said that on January 24th.  Now some of you might conclude from this that Junior is a hypocritical butthead who says what he thinks will get him through the next five minutes of his life.  And I can see how you might think that.  Me, I think he’s simply a quick learner.

I give lawvol credit for having a sense of humor about this.  I get the feeling he’s gonna need it for a while.  Junior is the best thing to happen to college football blogging, at least from my selfish perspective, since Reggie Ball.  And trust me, that’s high praise indeed.