If you’re wondering how many recruiting slots Georgia has to fill…

that number just got bigger.

Georgia quarterback-turned-wide receiver Logan Gray plans to transfer to another school for his final season of football eligibility after graduating from UGA in May.

According to UGA, Gray told coach Mark Richt that he wants to play his senior season at a school closer to his Columbia, Mo., home while pursuing a master’s degree. Gray will complete his bachelor’s degree in speech communication at Georgia this semester.

It’s looking a little thin at the receiver spot this season.

Advertisement

Bernie Machen explains grayshirting… ineptly.

Bernie Machen’s quotes about oversigning in USA Today were just a mild warm up for his screed in SI.com, where he refers to some of his peers in terms such as “reprehensible” and “disgusting”.

Then, there’s this:

What needs to happen in intercollegiate athletics is that universities must accept the moral responsibility to stop and prevent “grayshirting” and its associated actions.

Uh, physician, heal thyself.

… One also assumes he’s referring to only offering a grayshirt after signing day has passed. UF offered one to QB Jacoby Brisset last October, and it also discussed one (but didn’t end up going that route) for TE Michael McFarland last January shortly before NSD 2010.

I think Year2 is right in that Machen does a poor job of defining the practice.

Imagine the feeling if the student finds out, literally a few months before enrolling, that the institution is backing out of the contract. It is too late in the summer to go back to one’s second choice. The student is told he will have to wait until next year. Sorry, but no acceptance, no scholarship. That’s it.

In Division I college football this practice is known as “grayshirting”…

Actually, that’s known as screwing a kid over.

If you’re going to wax indignant over something, the least you can do is understand what you’re objecting to and describe it accurately.  Machen fails miserably at that – unless he truly believes all grayshirting should be banned.  Maybe Corch can enlighten him.

“I wish they had balanced it out a little.”

Seriously, what does it take to get Gary Patterson fuming?  The man has the patience of a saint.

If the seat’s hotter than the recruiting class…

Amazing how the Mark Richt narrative has changed in less than a month, from coach on life support to bad ass recruiting marvel.

ESPN calls him a top five recruiting head coach.  Fox Sports South marvels.

… The main reason Georgia is on the cusp of having a world-class signing day is Richt. In the college recruiting wars, a high school kid’s family must feel comfortable with the man who will be their son’s primary adult influence for the next four years. Richt wins that battle more often than not.

He might not have had a winning record, and there have been assistant coaching turnovers (strength and conditioning and offense line for now), but as long as Richt remains in Athens, the Bulldogs will attract a quality crop of athletes.

Relationships trump records. And Mark Richt is a master at building personal bonds.

All of which leads me to wonder – if things don’t turn around in Athens and Greg McGarity reluctantly concludes that the program has to move in another direction, how easy will it be to replace that part of Richt’s game?  Most would agree that the program has underperformed as of late (although Matt Hinton is kind enough to deny Georgia “underachiever” status), but implicit in that conclusion is the understanding that Richt has recruited quite well.

If like I am, you’re a believer in the Jimmies-and-Joes approach to having a successful football program, that’s a tricky situation for McGarity.  On the one hand, the likely candidates from the local theater whom he would consider are being bested by Richt on the recruiting front.  But if McGarity chooses to go outside the South for a replacement, then he would likely be picking someone whose first order of business would be to rebuild the relationships which Richt has maintained and maintained well for a decade now.  Either way, it’s a step back, at least in the short run.

That’s not to say it’s an impossible task.  But it sure wouldn’t be an easy one.

Working the angles on oversigning

Part of the difficulty I have with the oversigning debate is that even those who are hawks on the subject don’t necessarily agree on the terms.

Greg McGarity, for example, is focused on the 85-scholarship rule.

McGarity also said that Georgia football will not allow oversigning — a practice that some programs participate in and is garnering more attention by both media and regulating bodies. “We will not sign more than 85 scholarship football players,” he noted.

Florida president Bernie Machen, however, objects to his peers failing to honor the spirit of the SEC’s 28-signee restriction.

“Every (SEC) president sat at the table when we had that discussion,” says Machen, referring to the 28-player rule. “For some reason, some of them are not stepping up and stopping it. Imagine what would happen if in the general student body admission process, the same thing happened. If you admit a student in early February then you tell them in early July that we’re not going to have a spot for you. The public wouldn’t stand for it, and I don’t believe, if we put enough sunshine on this, the public will allow this to happen, in intercollegiate athletics.”

Now, I like his “we’re not going to have a spot for you” standard.  It’s easy to observe and it highlights the truly egregious aspect of oversigning.  But I think McGarity’s focus does more to honor that than the SEC’s 28-player rule does.  Especially when you see the SEC taking the lead on ways to avoid tripping over that annual limit.

… In essence, if a school fails to use the full initial counter limit in a recruiting class and graduates a few players early, they can maximize the number of players they can bring in.  Oversigning though, is not the term one uses when talking about 2010-78.

“It’s actually tied to not oversigning,” Sankey said. “You would have to have someone on your 85-man limit leave for graduation. I think we all agree that’s a positive. And then you have to have room in your current initial counters to bring someone new in. You’re not, in any way, disenfranchising someone.”

Indeed, the new rule should provide a competitive advantage to schools that graduate players early. Many would consider this a good thing. It could also mean some players are pushed to graduate early in order to get them out and bring new players in. Given the time constraints already placed on some student-athletes, it could be something schools use to push their athletes academically to their detriment and the school’s benefit.

Once this kicks in, I can see Alabama setting the conference standard in player graduation rates.

Let’s eat.

It kind of blows my mind that in this day and age a major college athletic program would completely disregard the role nutrition plays in seeing to it that its student athletes are able to perform at an optimum level, but that’s where Greg McGarity says Georgia is at.

Well, we don’t have a nutritionist right now. We had an evaluation last week. There was really no training table in effect. And there were some eye-opening experiences where you say where is the training table, and it’s not there. So we just concluded a two-day consult with someone in nutrition that I respect very highly that came in and gave us a physical on our nutrition program for all our sports. And there are a lot of missing pieces there, so there’s no question that that’s going to be a huge emphasis for us as we move forward. It’s a lot of work in getting that done from a staffing perspective and from a training table perspective, but those are just the little things that mount up into big things…

Obviously, this wasn’t important to Damon Evans.  You have to wonder if any of the coaches complained about the oversight.  If McGarity succeeds, expect to hear a lot more about lower body fat percentages… and maybe to see some better looking physiques on the lines.

“We have to be balanced.”

Apparently, hiring someone on the payroll of a major college football program as an analyst passes as a journalistic feature and not a bug at the WWL.

Although you’d think after reading all the logic chopping and phony comparisons (to Holtz!), it would have just been simpler for everyone concerned to look us in the eye and proclaim, “hey, we really don’t give a shit what you think”.