Quick notes from the teleconference

Via David Hale’s Twitter feed:

• Georgia is going to a 3-4 defense, by which Grantham “means two outside LBs, 2 inside LBs and 3 D linemen in base.”
• Outside backers will be “edge setters, aggressive, they’ll be coming.” Inside backers “downhill guys to the ball.”
• Grantham will coach linebackers.
• He hasn’t met Garner yet (but TG’s position coaching decision certainly seems to indicate that there’s a place for RG under the defensive regime).  But he’s looking forward to meeting RG.
• Nothing yet decided on the staff.

Greatest Athletic Director of Our Era

What is it with you and head coaching candidates, Mike Hamilton?  Your last hire of a young man with a career losing record who’s the son of a famous coach worked out so well you decided to try it again?

Seriously, as Groo points out, Hamilton’s got nobody to blame for his situation but himself, thanks to that revolutionary new concept he sold himself on in laying out those ridiculous contracts for Junior’s assistants.  It all came back to bite him in the ass.

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UPDATE: Not quite so fast – maybe.  Sumlin’s an intriguing option.

The abandonment of a narrative

Well, it didn’t take very long for Mssrs. Bradley and Schultz to change their tune.

From Schultz (in a piece partially entitled “Richt’s fourth choice”, mind you), comes this keen observation:

Coaching hires never should be about winning the press conference. They’re about winning games.

And his colleague chimes in with this thought (after devoting a paragraph comparing the time frames surrounding the Groh and Grantham hires, of course):

But process isn’t our concern today. Product is.

How nice for that part of the Dawgnation that managed not to go off the deep end throughout the hiring process to have its sanity validated!  Don’t you feel better now?

Seriously, the continued focus on the process über alles – hopefully, abandoned for good now – has taken silly to a new level.  For all the bandwidth spilled, for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, Tech and Georgia find themselves in the exact same place today, with new defensive coordinators each school can trot out to recruits before signing day and who can begin installing their new systems in time for spring practice.  (And, in any case, both are in a helluva lot better place than Tennessee is right now, no?)

So quit paying attention to the nonsense, Georgia fans.  If you’ve got to read something about the situation now, how about this quote from Grantham’s soon-to-be former boss?

“It’s been great to have Todd,” Phillips said. “He’s contributed a tremendous amount to the defense. He’s grossly overqualified to be a defensive line coach. I knew that he’d be a coordinator pretty quick or even a head coach. He has all those qualities. We appreciate all he’s done.”

Hell hath no fury…

like an assistant coach crapped on.

In the previous 48 hours, Lane Kiffin had left Tennessee for USC, escaped an angry mob in Knoxville and stumbled through a withering inquisition in Los Angeles, and still Thompson hadn’t heard from him.

But even he couldn’t feel as bad as another of the assistants led to Tennessee and left behind. Thompson said Kiffin didn’t tell David Reaves he was leaving, either.

And Reaves is Kiffin’s brother-in-law.

“He saw it on TV,” Thompson said.

So what would Thompson say to Kiffin given the opportunity?

“I would tell him, ‘Congratulations, but I’m looking forward to the day that we play.’

“I don’t care where I’m at. I’m always going to be looking for the day we play Lane Kiffin.”

Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall at the next Reaves family get together?  Should be some fun times…

Somehow, I doubt Nick Saban’s ever done this.

Don’t you wonder if some of these driven head coaches, like Saban or Meyer, ever get tempted once in a while to kick back on the job and let their hair down?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you former San Diego State head coach Tom Craft.

… San Diego State strength and conditioning coach David Ohton had claimed that school football coaches retaliated against him after he reported in a university audit that they were getting drunk the nights before games. Ohton said head coach Tom Craft had gotten “seriously drunk” the night before a game against Idaho, and the team lost, despite being heavily favored to win. A few weeks later, Ohton said some of the team’s coaches went to a strip club the night before a game, and the team again lost to a lower-ranked team.

Read the rest of the story.  It sounds like they had a helluva work environment at dear old SDSU.

The moment when playoff proponents jumped the shark

Honestly, I thought the ultimate anti-BCS column would come from John Feinstein, but instead it belongs to his WaPo colleague, Sally Jenkins, who boldly takes the Lane Kiffin situation to a place no one had gone before.

… Kiffin is merely a product of the soured professional environment in which he came up. The BCS culture itself is fundamentally dishonest, a cartel of six major conferences and Notre Dame, ungoverned by the NCAA, that seeks to hoard $1 billion in bowl profits. How can we expect the competitors to be ethical? Or sensible?

That’s it – the BCS made Junior do it.

Maybe it’s time to abandon the debate.  How do you even begin to respond to an argument like that?  More to the point, why would you?

(h/t Team Speed Kills)

So how wild a ride has this last week been?

Footballcoachscoop.com looks like it’s suffered a site meltdown.  Please give generously.

You’ll really be missed, fellas.

Friday morning buffet

It’s been a long week, hasn’t it?

• More and more, it’s looking like… David Cutcliffe to Tennessee.
• When Doug Gillett did this three years or so ago, the results were classic.  Make sure you vote your nominations early and often.
• I don’t guess that BCS boycott thing’s kicked in yet.
• Another possible round of playoff expansion, in baseball.
• The NCAA’s getting a lot of Ed Orgeron questions.
• The Secretary of Education wants to see the NCAA do something about rogue coaches.
• Georgia’s getting better odds to win the MNC in 2010 than Georgia Tech is.  Even without a defensive coordinator.
• You’ve gotta feel a little for HeismanPundit – his beloved school has hired a guy he despises and all he can do is watch.  And seethe.

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UPDATE: Damn, Vol fans – when Cutcliffe turns you down, you’ve got troubles in River City.

More and more, it’s looking like…

God help me, I know better than to accept this as gospel, but Tom Dienhart is reporting that Todd Grantham is signed, sealed and delivered as Georgia’s new defensive coordinator.

Tim Tucker notes that as of early this morning, there’s been no press conference scheduled.   And nobody’s told Marc Weiszer anything, either.  So perhaps we should hold off on uncorking the champagne just yet.

I guess I’ll believe it when I hear Mark Bradley ask Grantham at the presser how it feels to be Georgia’s fifth choice.

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UPDATE: It’s official.

“I’m excited the search is over, we have our man, and look forward to what Todd will bring to our defense, our team, and our University,” said Richt. “I think it is particularly valuable that he has a wealth of experience on the defensive side of the ball at both the NFL and collegiate levels.  Now we look forward to moving ahead with the home stretch of recruiting, finishing out the defensive staff, and getting ready for spring practice.”

Of course, that’s not the biggest story.