Mark Bradley’s take on the Georgia Bulldogs = Not Hot.

Noted recruiting guru and all around sage about what goes on in Athens, Georgia Mark Bradley can’t get out of own his way fast enough with regards to Georgia’s 2011 recruiting class.

My favorite retake:

Then – “Even in lesser seasons on the field, Georgia under Mark Richt has always been able to point to its recruiting. Now, with lesser seasons running together, the program that controlled its state controls it no more. The buzz about this program has been downgraded to a murmur, and the murmur concerns the future of its head coach. Which  grows more tenuous by the moment.”

Now – “We say again: With Richt, recruiting has never been the overriding concern.”

Man, his neck’s gotta hurt from the whiplash.

On a related front, he’s probably a little disappointed Georgia hasn’t raced out to a lead in this year’s Fulmer Cup standings.

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When your reputation precedes you…

Here’s what an unnamed pro football scout had to say about Cam and Cecil Newton’s decision for Cam to put on a workout open to the media (h/t MrSEC.com):

“The Newtons would be best to realize they aren’t in college anymore. Regardless of how good he looks for [the media], there isn’t going to be a bidding war for him. We’re not recruiting him. They could wind up turning more people against them than for them with this [workout].”

“Bidding war”?  “Recruiting”?  Gee, where could he have gotten an impression like that?

“Most people in Lubbock support my position.”

Craig James is one seriously deluded dude.  (h/t SPORTSbyBROOKS)

Is Michigan the new Georgia, Georgia the new Michigan, or is it nothing to worry about?

I didn’t find Kristi Dosh’s revenue comparison between the SEC and the Big Ten as compelling as her first story on the SEC – for one thing, as she notes, it’s hard to compare apples and oranges here because there’s no direct SEC analogue to the Big Ten Network – but one fact she cited caught my eye.

… A look at Ohio State’s expenses should explain why they’re perennial contenders for BCS bowls.  They are spending almost $10 million more than the next biggest spender in the Big Ten (Wisconsin).  They’re also spending almost double what their rival, Michigan, is spending, which could perhaps explain the results on the field.  [Emphasis added.]

Does that remind you of a couple of other institutions?

… If you do the math, Georgia is only putting 25.8% of their football revenue back into the program. Meanwhile, the 2009 National Champion, Alabama, was putting 43.3% back into their program…

Is this a correlation that really doesn’t mean much, or are we seeing evidence that “you get what you pay for” has some relevance in big time college football?

State of the art

Via Dawg Post, assistant AD Josh Brooks takes you on a tour of the new Butts-Mehre facilities.  What they’re able to do with computers now is particularly impressive.

Nice digs, fellas.

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UPDATE: More on the new video system here.

Nutt cutting time, and other recruiting tales of woe

Sad story for an Ole Miss recruit:

… Collins Moore of Bob Jones is an example of another side of recruiting, where schools say they have accepted more commitments than scholarships they have to give. What follows is pure spin control: We still love you as a player, but just not until next January.

Moore heard those words last weekend. What awful timing. He committed to Ole Miss in August over enviable choices such as Kentucky and LSU. Of course, they no longer have room. He’s scrambling for a Plan B, but will likely wear a grayshirt now.

Of course, if he’d have picked LSU then, there’s no telling that Les wouldn’t have run into math problems of his own later on.

But here’s the other side of that coin.  Georgia Tech just lost its fourth recruit in less than two weeks (by the way, nice timing with this puff piece, Mark Bradley) when defensive end Trey Flowers switched his verbal commitment to Arkansas.  In doing so, he sounds like he made as cold and calculated a decision as the Nuttster did.

“Yes, I’m excited about Arkansas, but I do feel kind of bad how it ended with Georgia Tech. I probably rushed with my decision to commit [to Georgia Tech] last week. But I did it because I wanted to protect myself with a big-time scholarship. Then a better situation came along for me with Arkansas and I had to take it.”

The more this stuff goes on, the more I’m convinced that Andy Staples has the best solution.

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UPDATE: I’m not the only one who saw the linkage between Moore and Flowers.

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UPDATE #2: Speaking of Miles, he’s got math issues, too.  Some of it’s a case of last year’s chickens coming home to roost.

… Twenty three is exactly where LSU’s recruiting class stands with the commitment Friday of St. Paul’s defensive tackle Mickey Johnson. Actually, he was No. 22, but LSU must also count Cameron Fordham, a grayshirted offensive lineman signed in 2010, against this year’s class.

But also note that there’s some painful notoriety he’s dealing with.

… But there is a fine line to be walked for the Tigers, numerically and politically. Coach Les Miles is still stinging from the bad publicity — he’d probably call it being singled out — by that ESPN Outside the Lines piece on former Tiger quarterback Chris Garrett.

The subject was grayshirting, which is something most schools do. Except most schools don’t get their grayshirts aired like they were dirty laundry.

Then, there’s also the question of whether the NCAA would consider any LSU signees over 23 as a slap in the face when it hasn’t even accepted LSU’s self-imposed penalties yet.

Still, there may be some wiggle room.

So, if LSU is going to take anyone over 23, they had better be worth it. Still, it’s worth it for Miles to take the chance. You can’t turn down top-notch talent now because of some potential backlash. Could it possibly be worse than losing a game because you were missing that one key recruit?

There is one particular recruit who LSU could cut ties with to make room for someone else: Redemptorist running back Jeremy Hill.

Hill was arrested earlier this month on a charge of oral sexual battery with a 14-year-old female student at RHS. Despite that, LSU is still apparently willing to accept his letter of intent Wednesday.

If that ain’t your quintessential 2011 recruiting dilemma in a nutshell (see how I did that?), I don’t know what is.

“We’re more facilitators than we are puppet masters.”

You want to know why coaching salaries continue to rise?  Jimmy Sexton will tell you.

Q: There has been a sharp increase in coaching salaries in the last 10 years. Did you see that coming?

A: Not really. People say, “How did you not see it coming?” I remember in the mid- to late-90s, the top salary was in the $1.2 to $1.3, $1.4 (million) range in college football. Now it’s three to four times that. I don’t know if I ever saw it coming like that. What you’ve got to look at … is that it coincides with the way the revenues expand. I’ve always said this over and over again — businesses won’t pay more than they can afford to pay, or they don’t stay in business very long. College sports, pro sports, they’re big businesses nowadays. They’re not going to pay more to a coach than they can afford to pay.

People say, “These salaries are out of whack.” Well, are they out of whack? Then why to they keep paying them? I think you’ve got to look at it that way. At some point if they get to be too much, they’ll stop paying them, but I don’t see an end in sight to it right now.

And you wonder why college presidents get their asses kicked by agents?  One side sees this as business; the other wants to see it as an extension of academia.  One side embraces the power of the market place; the other wrings their hands and rails against the laws of supply and demand.  It’s not exactly a fair fight.