A perfect compliance storm

Add Title IX to an era of increasing female enrollment, shrinking budgets and enlarged football rosters and what do you get?

Why, creative bookkeeping, of course.

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UPDATE:  Brian Cook gets medieval all over the NYT’s ass.

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The table is set. Can the big Dawg eat?

I don’t think it’s any big secret that I find preseason polls to be a complete waste.  That goes doubly for pre-preseason polls, like this one from ESPN’s “College Football Live”.

Still, if that either reflects or shapes public opinion on how the early season rankings go, it’s evidence that if you’re Mark Richt and your goal is to make your team nationally relevant again, it’s hard to come up with a better schedule than Georgia’s 2011 one.  Richt’s team comes out of the gate facing the number five and number eight (yeah, South Carolina at eight is a major stretch) teams on that list and play both without leaving the state.  Win those two and the Dawgs should find themselves sitting top twelve or so nationally.  The next part of the schedule is manageable, leading into a bye week before the Cocktail Party.  After that, it’s three straight home games and the finale at Tech.

In short, it’s a national championship schedule.  The question is whether the team can live up to the schedule.

Musical palate cleanser: Guitar Hero

I haven’t done one of these in a while, but yesterday’s Zombies reference seems to have struck a chord (see what I did there?) with some of you, so here goes.

Jeff Beck is sort of the forgotten guitar god of the sixties.  That’s a shame, because he hasn’t lost a step, as you’re about to hear.  Beck’s been out on tour with his “Rock and Roll Party” show honoring the late, great Les Paul.  It’s a mix of Paul’s music and rockabilly and it’s damned good.  Good enough that you get to sample three clips.

Start with this version of “Sitting On Top Of The World”, sung by Imelda May.  And listen to Beck when he kicks in at about the 0:45 mark.

Then listen to what the two of them do with this remake of “(Remember) Walking In The Sand”.

Finally, Beck and Brian Setzer take on some Eddie Cochran.

Tasty, tasty stuff.

When you’ve lost Tony Barnhart, you’ve lost America.

Mr. Conventional Wisdom has a message for the Big Ten:  shut the hell up.

As of this moment all of my friends from the Big Ten are on notice. And you know who you are. You are the ones who call and write constantly about the (expletive) Southeastern Conference and claim with such confidence that the only reason the SEC has been so successful (five straight national championships and counting) is that its schools are ethically challenged and have their priorities misplaced.

You are the ones who talk about the Big Ten schools in hushed, reverent tones and use terms such as “greater academic mission.” Your schools are not football factories like ours in the great, unwashed South. Your schools would never cut ethical corners like we do down here, where you believe our motto is: “If you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t trying.” You look down your collective noses at us.

Give me a freaking break.

I don’t want to hear any more lectures on ethics or morals or accountability from that part of the world — not if Jim Tressel returns as Ohio State’s football coach this season.

Also, this.

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb at this point by predicting that Tressel is toast.

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UPDATE:  Michael Elkon senses an ulterior motive on Barnhart’s part.

… I also suspect that Barnhart’s column has a whiff of a preemptive strike.  There isn’t so much smoke coming from the Plains as a plume of radioactive waste.  (Happy 25th anniversary, Chernobyl!)  If prior history is any guide, Auburn will go down and take everyone they can with them.  Every little morsel of dirt that they can find on their in-state rivals will come out.  What Mike Slive had successfully avoided for most of his tenure, but is now confronting is a repeat of the 80s and 90s where SEC teams turned one another in in a never-ending spiral of allegations.  With media interest in the SEC at an all-time high, the prospect of multiple scandals looms as a possibility.  Barnhart knows this, which is why playing the “you’re dirty, too!” card, early and loudly, makes sense.

Sometimes, Gator ethics remind me of jumbo shrimp.

Now this sounds like the Florida Way we’ve all come to know and love over the years:

… My inner moral code says two-game suspensions for Martin and Johnson, and then six games for Jenkins (half the season).

BUT, I wouldn’t do that with Jenkins for a simple reason: he’s good. Look, college football is a dirty, twisted sport with a bass-ackward financial scheme, rampant misconduct by players and administrators and a laughable “postseason.” In this case, I’m inclined to treat it like the circus it really is. Suspend Jenkins for four games (that’s FAU, UAB, Tennessee and Kentucky) and bring him back in time to face Alabama, LSU, Auburn and Georgia, when the season really heats up. Hit him with plenty of conditioning, community service and the promise that one more slip-up means he’s a goner, but I wouldn’t kick him off the team or suspend him for half the year because he might bolt for the supplemental draft. Publicly, I would only say that Jenkins is suspended, but not for how long. Everyone would just have to wait week-by-week to see if Jenkins would play, thereby slowly diminishing the story.

Plenty of you will think that’s too lenient, and in the real world, I’d agree. But this sport is a joke, and if I’m the coach, I want to be the one laughing with my shutdown corner ready for the toughest part of the schedule…

Well, except for that “inner moral code” part, maybe.

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UPDATE:  Give credit where credit is due.

Senior cornerback Janoris Jenkins is no longer part of the Florida football program.

Jenkins was dismissed from the team during a meeting Tuesday morning with first-year Gators head coach Will Muschamp. Jenkins could face more legal issues following his latest arrest early Saturday morning in Gainesville.

“After meeting with Janoris Jenkins today, we both felt it was in his best interest to move ahead to the next stage of his career,” Muschamp said.

We should have known it would take a Georgia man to do the right thing at Florida.

A jury of their peers

At least the panel conducting the Fiesta Bowl investigation won’t have to waste any time on introductions.  I wonder who’s paying for lunch.

All of which isn’t to say that the Fiesta Bowl folks aren’t in full-blown scramble mode.