Lede of the day

This has absolutely nothing to do with college football – at least I fervently hope it doesn’t – but I can’t let an opener like this pass without mention.

Floridians are going to have to start pulling up their pants and stop having sex with animals soon.

I don’t know about you, but my mental picture of the dude with the goat includes a mullet and a ratty looking Gators shirt.

‘What else can I say?’

There’s so much assholery in the story of Ryan Mallett’s move from Michigan to Arkansas that you have to categorize it.

First, there’s Lloyd Carr’s.

“At the Capital One Bowl, we were trying to smooth things out, and we talked to Coach Carr,” Jim Mallett, Ryan’s dad, said. “I asked him, ‘Coach, next to my dad, you’re the classiest person I’ve ever been around. What would you do if Ryan was your son? He said, ‘If I was in that situation, with a different offense, he needs to leave.’ ”

Nothing like stabbing the new guy in the back – before he’s even on the clock as the new head coach.  Not even a “lemme see what I can find out about him first”.

And Carr’s the classy one.

The punchline is that RichRod goes and vindicates Carr’s assholery by being a bigger asshole.

… And when Rodriguez knew Mallett was considering it, he didn’t even ask him to meet, the Malletts said. Instead, it was Ryan who set it up.

“Ryan’s the one who called (Rich Rod),” Jim Mallett continued. “He said, “Can I talk about the offense?’ And then he told me, ‘Daddy, (Rodriguez) never looked me in the eye.’ He never visited with the family, he didn’t talk to us. I never met the man. But hey, it wasn’t a fit. Let’s move on.”

Way to man up there, Rich.  At this point, if I’m Mallett, I’d be wondering if I could trust any coach.  Enter Bobby Petrino.

“Bobby Petrino was the polar opposite of Lloyd Carr, who is the warmest, sweetest man,” Debbie Mallett said. “Petrino was all business. That was a turn-off for me. I was used to Coach Carr. I knew Ryan wanted to be there, but I was opposed to Coach Petrino. So, I said, “Get me Brian Brohm’s parents’ phone number (because he played for Petrino at Louisville). So, I explained who I was and said, ‘If you had to do it over again, would you want your son to play for Bobby Petrino?’ (Brohn’s parent) said, ‘Hell, yeah. If you got soft ears, you’ll hear some ugly words. But we were actually pissed he wasn’t staying Atlanta (so Brohn could play for him).’ I said, ‘What else can I say?’ After the season, I wrote (Petrino) a note and said, ‘If any parent wants my phone number, feel free to give it to them.’ “

In other words, sure, he’s an asshole, but at least he’s an asshole who can develop a pocket passer.  Competent asshole, ftw!

Burn down the plantation.

Tell me this wouldn’t be fun to watch.

https://twitter.com/#!/mortreport/status/66484568932356096

And before you say the NFL would never draft a player straight out of high school, you can’t see a team like the Patriots taking a late round flyer on an A.J. Green?  Or Al Davis doing something crazy? I sure could.

More realistically, what about college sophomores who would have proven themselves?  That’s a no-brainer.

He tasks me.

Reading this latest set of quotes from Jim Delany,

… Delany has few worries about negotiating bigger paydays in the future because it appears that new money for college sports won’t dry up any time soon.

Besides ABC, CBS and ESPN, more bidders such as Fox and NBC Comcast are hot for the good-quality yet relatively-lower-cost programming that sports provide.

“That’s the competition for college football today,’’ Delany said. “It has grown in popularity over the past 15 years, in particular the regular-season games. They all matter nationally.’’

Having games that matter for four full months through the season is a function of the Bowl Championship Series being in place, said Delany, a longtime proponent of that system.

“The BCS is successful and controversial,’’ he said. “We couldn’t have envisioned it would have this much impact on the regular season.’’

The BCS isn’t the sole reason football TV rights fees are climbing. Delany said increased competition and technology are key factors, too.

“I will tell you, though, that we have a wonderful postseason tournament in basketball, but we have a regular season which is modest,’’ he said. “In college football, we have 13 or 14 weekends that are pretty compelling.’’

… I’m starting to get this whole Wrath of Khan vibe from him and Orrin Hatch.

Hope floats at fullback.

One more quote from Richt about the Figgins move:

… Another thing it does is it allows us to hide some of our intentions as far as how we line up in any given personnel group. Bruce has taken to it well, and I think it is going to expand his playing time.

G-Day was a pretty vanilla experience for stategery, but I saw a little of what Richt refers to there, including one play where Figgins emerged from the backfield with the right side of the defense cleaned out entirely and nobody within ten yards of him (Murray went left on the play and completed a pass to Orson Charles).

Me, I’m thinking wheel route.  Coach, do unto others as others have done unto you.

That Orrin Hatch is so cute.

Mommy, that man just said a new word:

“My understanding is they are going to go forward and this is the first step. Look, 87% of the BCS money goes to the privileged conferences. That amounts to billions of dollars. Only about 12% goes to the non-privileged conferences. It is very unfair and violative of the anti-trust laws. You saw what happened out of the Fiesta Bowl. Some of these people treat the BCS as their own theifdom where they can rip all the money out of it that they want to and it’s billions of dollars.  [Emphasis added.] I think the Justice Department is totally responsible in going into this and looking at it, and I don’t see how they can’t conclude anything but that this is violative of the antitrust laws. We do need to go to a playoff system that really would work like all the other sports that we have, and frankly, by doing that, it would be more fair and more balanced. The unprivileged conferences would be treated more fairly and in the end I think we would have a better system.”

Nice Fiesta Bowl touch there, Senator.  If playoffs are a cure for self-serving behavior, maybe we ought to put Congress in one.

A couple of things to unpack from that paragraph.  First of all, billions of dollars?  Billions with a “b”?  Either Orrin can’t add, or, more ominously, he’s thinking about this.  My money’s on the latter.

Second – again – it’s all about the money.  Fairness?  Hatch does not think that word means what the fans think it means.  I’m not seeing even lip service given to “settling things on the field”.  Hatch could care less what a playoff looks like, as long as the SEC starts taking financial care of the WAC.

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UPDATE:  By the way, contra Hatch, a DOJ conclusion that an antitrust law violation exists isn’t any more dispositive than Mark Shurtleff’s conclusion.  They’re prosecutors who will still need to get the courts to agree with them.  And if you’re looking for a few reasons why that may not be as much of a slam dunk as Hatch suggests, here are some.

Those budget cuts must be a bear.

What, the Department of Justice can’t afford overnight delivery?

I bet Bill Hancock uses Fed Ex to send his important letters.

Coaches stay; players play.

So how much of Georgia’s recruiting and subsequent player development success is attributable to Mark Richt’s longevity?  This follow-up post at Black Heart Gold Pants suggests a fair amount.

The first question left unaddressed is how much impact the recent hot seat talk has on the program’s stability and, thus, recruiting.  The success of the Dream Team approach with the 2011 class would suggest not much, but the scuttlebutt on the 2012 class indicates there are more than a few high-profile recruits who are waiting to see how this season unwinds in Athens.

The second question, the part we won’t know about for a while, is what effect the staff changes will have on player development.  There’s more NFL background on the defensive side of the ball than before with Grantham and Olivadotti, so it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.

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UPDATE:  On a quasi-related front, check out this quote from Richt on the move of Bruce Figgins to fullback.

… We also have some pretty good tight ends, so we figured if we moved Bruce to fullback and trained him there, it would make him more valuable to our team and to the NFL down the road. A lot of NFL teams will take their tight end and teach him fullback-type things because of the size of the roster…