Walk the walk.

There’s good news for Red Raider fans today.

While Tommy Tuberville plans on doing away with the offensive scheme that led to the tradition of Texas Tech being one of the top scoring teams in the country over the past few years (five top ten finishes in scoring offense in the last six years), he’ll replace it with this totally original new tradition.

Settling it at the bank

Michael Elkon shares a little more of that NCAA “settling it on the field” bounty with us:

Moreover, the same commercial pressure that is pushing the NCAA to further expand an already gaudy tournament also causes the NCAA to put teams like Duke and Pitt is difficult situations. It cannot be a coincidence that Baylor and Texas A&M are both in the South bracket when the NCAA needs to sell thousands of tickets for a regional at Reliant Stadium. Duke ends up being penalized by the NCAA’s need to maximize revenue…

Two further points here.

1. No, that’s not the same as what the bowls do.  Bowls, with the exception of the BCS title game, are exhibition events.  Glorified, sure, but exhibitions nonetheless.  Asses in the seats are their raison d‘etre. That’s not the case with a playoff, which at its heart, as so many assure me, is supposed to be primarily about determining a national champion.
2. Always, always, always, the D-1 football playoff discussion will always come back to this very same economic fairness vs. competition debate – and the money will always win out in the end.  The NCAA is no more immune from that than any other organization, because that’s what its member schools care about the most.  More than the players.  More than the fans.  And that, more than anything else, is why I view expansion as inevitable if the BCS adopts a flawed model for a playoff to start with.  Hell, it’s probably inevitable no matter what, but at least I can delude myself for a while under certain conditions.

**********************************************************************

UPDATE: And this is what happens when your postseason stops factoring in fan travel.

Grasping at spring practice straws

Given that it’s only the second day of spring practice – following a spring break gap after Day One, to boot – it’s obviously silly to read much of anything into whatever the media was able to observe during its 15-20 stint yesterday.

Then again, this is a Georgia football blog, amirite?  If I don’t at least try to read any tea leaves, what good am I?

So, here are two niblets that caught my eye.

First, it seems that sanity hasn’t completely returned to Georgia’s special teams with Fabris’ departure.

… If Gray doesn’t win the starting QB job, he likely will continue his special-teams role of fielding deep punts, Richt indicated. “In the fall, I think he will either be the guy [at quarterback] or he will be a very strong candidate to do what he did last year on the punt team,” Richt said.

Why?  Is it really the case that there isn’t a single other player on the roster with both sure hands and an ability to actually return a punt?  Or in the alternative, somebody other than your backup quarterback who can waive his arm over his head and cleanly field a punt?  Hell, I’d rather see them deploy eleven guys on the line, go for the block and take their chances with how the ball bounces than go through another year of that passive nonsense.  It’s almost enough in and of itself to make me wish that Gray wins the starting quarterback job.

On the less crazy side of things, I loves hearing about fundamentals.

Defensive backs worked on backpeddling, and breaking once the football is thrown.

Breaking on the ball – what a novel concept.  Seeing at G-Day what steps the defense is taking to get back to the level we’re all hoping for should be fun.

Wot he said.

Ben Kingsley reacts to Andy Staples’ observation that ” (u)ntil the Big Ten expands to 12 (or more) teams, the SEC probably will remain the most powerful force in the college football universe…” with this pithy retort:

Rutgers would make that big a difference on the football field?

Wednesday morning buffet

Grab your plate and get your day started…

• I missed this when it was initially posted, but Ivan Maisel shares something Texas AD DeLoss Dodds has to say about slowing down the conference expansion talk:  “Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds believes all the nerves on edge because of expansion could be calmed if the NCAA passed legislation removing the minimum of 12 members needed to stage a conference championship game. Then there would be no need to add members in order to jumpstart revenue…” Okay, but then what would be the point of playing a round robin schedule in the Big East or Pac-10?
• This isn’t about football, but I’m not pleased that Kentucky was able to out-recruit Georgia for this student-athlete.  A school with our obvious resources should never lose out on a player like Fetch.
• Spencer Hall is rather colorfully upset with Turner Gill’s decision to ban cursing at Kansas’ practices.
• Bobby Bowden’s tower stood empty on FSU’s first day of spring practice.
• The header on Mike Hugenin’s preview of South Carolina says it all.
• Don’t miss this look back at one of my favorite Dawgs of all time, Jake Scott.  I think of him every time I walk up to Stegeman.
• And cocknfire posts the mother of all did-Urban Meyer-do-Tim Tebow-right examinations.