Man, this is cold.
Arkansas has granted scholarship releases to two more players from its football program in offensive lineman Cam Feldt and linebacker Austin Moss, Razorbacks coach Bobby Petrino said Thursday through a team spokesperson.
The players are the fourth and fifth to be released this week as coaches perform annual scholarship evaluations. Wide receiver Lance Ray, kicker Eddie Camara and tight end Ryan Calender have also been granted releases from the program.
“Granted scholarship releases”. That’s nice; it almost sounds like they’re being given something.
Do you think Petrino delivered the news to the five kids through a team spokesperson? Maybe he just left them a note in their lockers.
Get The Picture 
To have the Nerve to phrase it that way is simply immoral. Makes me both sad and mad, what an A&&.
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Millions of people across the rest of the country (some serious CFB fans, others just scanning the news, etc.) see this stuff, constantly, and say, “Same old SEC.”
Not “same old Arkansas” or “same old Alabama” etc. Same old SEC.
Same old Georgia-Arkansas-Alabama-Mississippi-etc.
As people who care about the reputation and academic standing of the University of Georgia, we can protest about how unfair or wrong that is, but it changes nothing about the reality of the situation. Our brand and reputation get chipped away at with every new Wall Street Journal, Outside the Lines, and other report on what “the SEC” is doing.
Tethered in millions of minds a little bit more to 1950, a little bit farther from 2011.
The answer isn’t to try to tell each and every one of these millions of people why we’re different. It’s to either fix the problem or be done with these regressive institutions who are so greatly exploiting our indifference right now.
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The only way to fix the SEC is to kick out the cheaters, which I have been advocating for a long time. We all know who they are. But if we wait much longer on this oversigning thing the list of cheaters will grow to the point that the cheaters outnumber the honest programs, USCe being the latest to cross over to the dark side.
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There’s no cheating to it. All perfectly within the rules of this wonderful sport of ours.
A first step to ending the problem would be implementing the Big 10’s rules against oversigning, which require transparency with other schools and the conference office should teams request to be oversigned to any extent. When you have that kind of system, the garbage about players expected to transfer, possible grayshirts, etc. doesn’t fly.
This won’t end the problem as Saban et al. will just make their roster purges before Signing Day, but it’s a step towards draining the huge swamp they have to work in now.
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Just clean language for “cuts” or another way to say you are of no value to the team and your financial ability to continue your education with us isn’t my problem.
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Yep.
And the response from the knuckle-dragging wing of the SEC and Deep South:
“It’s a business.”
“Hey, that’s life.”
“They knew what they were getting into.”
“Who cares?”
“It’s legal.”
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This is the other side of oversigning. The side the Sabans and Petrinos of the world don’t want anyone to think about. We cannot let scumbags like Petrino use this device to get ahead of honest coaches and programs. This practice has to be outlawed.
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And that was my whole point about how disappointing it was to see Richt defending a small level of oversigning.
We can sit here and argue that his oversigning is better and more honest than theirs, and sure, we’re probably right. But the Sabans and Petrinos take such defenses and use it to defend what they do. “Hey, we’re upfront with our recruits just like Richt is.”
We say they aren’t, they say they are, and every outsider watching just rolls his eyes and says, “Same old SEC.”
The answer is the approach Florida is taking. Done with it. Period.
Why? Because even though they could similarly sit and defend their limited oversigning and grayshirting in the past, and have a similarly good argument to what we have, they realize that is a futile effort that only serves to much more greatly empower these scumbags to whom oversigning is a lifeline; something they will fight to till the bitter end.
Step back, announce we’re done with it, sacrifice a tiny bit, and draw a huge fonking line between ourselves and them, placing them very clearly on the side of the line that is very surely going to be a losing battle.
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Why don’t you just ask Richt to commit hari-kari while you’re at it? Think. If everybody else in the SEC ends up oversigning and UGA does not engage in that practice where do you think the UGA football team will be in relation to the other SEC programs? At the bottom, that’s where. There is a reason that the punishment for violating NCAA rules (when the damn NCAA does something to punish violators, that is) is the loss of scholarships. Not oversigning when every other school does (if it comes to that) amounts to the same thing–limiting yourself to a number of players below that which the other schools have. Maybe you live in an ivory tower and can afford altruistic gestures but the rest of us live in the real world. I said this in jest in a previous post but it is a real world analogy: Are you in favor of unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United States, too? Either get this oversigning practice outlawed or UGA needs to start doing it , too–bigtime. I don’t like it but when somebody has a gun pointed at you, you have an absolute right to pull out your gun and shoot. If you don’t that is the same thing as committing suicide in my book.
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I’ll tell you where you end up: back in the post Jan Kemp “we’re not going to sign kids who qualify under conference standards, or NCAA standards. We’re raising our standards beyond that.”
Yeah, that late 80s era of UGA football was certainly a golden era.
Just make everyone play by the same set of rules. If that means playing whack-a-mole with the Petrinos, Nutts, etc. every time they find a new loophole to exploit, so be it. Just make everyone adhere to the same standard. Here, the Big 10, Pac 10, where ever.
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+1. Very insightful.
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Hate to say it, but this is the first time I completely agree with you on something here. If you could just use this type of tone going forward and not resort to the namecalling and belittling of other posters you might actually convert some of us over.
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Hey, that makes everything better!
I’ve been granted the right to pay taxes, again.
My wife granted me the privilege to stop looking at porn when she’s home.
With any luck, gas stations will grant me $4 gas for another week!
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Now that Corch Meyers is gone, Bobby Petrino has ascended to the top of my most-hated-coach list. If there’s proof of the non-existence of God, it’s that man. He is an abortion that never happened, and I wish him only the worst in all that he does. May God have mercy on his family.
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Hey Turd, let it out. Don’t hold back there buddy.
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Boom thanks you and BP.
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Next they’ll be sending in George Clooney.
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I got that reference
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I think I would very much enjoy “granting” Bobby Petrino a swift kick in the taint.
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What was their total in the oversigning cup?
Where are the high school coaches throughout all this? Ban a couple of colleges from the high schools and things will change. Faster than the NCAA or SEC can do anything.
Maybe they (the high school coaches) all want to move up more than they want to protect their kids. Heck, they’re just a gravy train to be used and thrown away.
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Petrino has had four recruiting classes since he arrived in Fayetteville. He’s signed 111 players, an average of about three over the limit each year.
Of course, he’s a piker compared to his predecessor. Houston Nutt has signed 120 recruits since he got to Ole Miss, so it’s no wonder he’s also shedding players right and left at the moment.
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Right. Try being the high school football coach in Arkansas who won’t let Petrino meet with your player in order to give him a free ride to the school the kid has grown up dreaming of playing for.
Good luck with that.
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This particular practice with no reciprocity for the student athlete disturbs me. The coach can cut an underperforming player at the end of each year, with no penalty.However, the player is penalized if he wants to go somewhere else. We need a more level playing field imo.
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I think it’s even worse than that, Mike. The kids who were cut can transfer but still have to sit out a year if they want to play at a D-IA school.
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Indeed
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Even worse than that is if they have redshirted it will cost them a year of eligibility while they sit out their year after transferring.
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The bottom line is that if you are high school coach, player, or player’s parent and you let them play for a known liar, then you get what you get.
I just can’t understand why so many kids’ parents would let them play for those guys.
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The bottom line is that there are thousands of recruits every year who grew up in conditions in which they, at 17, have absolutely no idea who is a liar and who isn’t. Many of them effectively have 0 parents.
Respectable universities and organizations acknowledge this reality.
And then there’s the SEC West and South Carolina.
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And the kids who have heard about this think it will never happen to them–but it does.
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Yep.
17-year-old small town superstar?
Heck, Alabama could be oversigning by 50 every year and it wouldn’t matter. Why would superstar kid (whose really just another 3- or 4-star among many outside of the world he knows) think he would have to worry about being one of those cuts? He’s a legend. Ask everyone he knows.
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Every kid still has a coach…several of them. And a principal. Some grown up should show them a picture of Petrino and say, “This is a what a liar looks like.”
I worked recruting weekends for 4 years at UGA and saw only a handful of kids make official visits alone, and those were mostly kids from very far away who just wanted to take a trip to Georgia for kicks.
Almost every one of these kids has an adult in their life. It’s amazing to me that these adults can’t tell what a liar looks like…or just don’t care.
And I don’t have the energy to fight with Texas_Dawg today. You care about this way more than I do. I care. Just not as much as you.
And I really don’t care what the nation thinks about the SEC and how that hurts our reputation and whatever. It doesn’t seem to hurt Vandy. Mark Richt can trail his own path of honesty and I believe he’ll win with it — on and off the field.
And, honestly, I don’t think most college football fans have a clue about this stuff. It’s a hot-button issue with insider fans, but I’d guess 3/4 of the fanbases aren’t even tuned into it.
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And they’re still just kids who will make really stupid decisions, especially when persuaded to do so by serious professionals paid millions of dollars to get them to do so.
I get why you and Richt want to defend your past recruiting practices as ethical, and maybe you have a good argument. The problem is that by pursuing this line you very greatly enable the Sabans and Petrinos of the SEC.
As this Alabama fan put it in response Richt’s recent comments:
When you’ve reached the point of saying that your grayshirting and oversigning is better than their grayshirting and oversigning, you’ve already lost, and they roll right on with the massive oversigning that is so critical to them.
Such a patently bad approach for UGA to take. Saban & Co. laugh all the way to the bank with that one.
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Roster cuts?
I guess he learned a little bit more in the NFL than we gave him credit for.
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Like when to cut and run. No that wasn’t the NFL, 13 games worth of experience can’t teach you to be an asshole, he had to bring that with him.
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“S-E-C! S-E-C!”
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/MDWM
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Definitely the right response to that chant.
These schools aren’t our friends. They are royally shafting UGA as hard and often as they can.
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I definitely agree with you about that. I care about Georgia not the SEC. Screw the SEC.
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“They are royally shafting UGA as hard and often as they can.”
We are not alone. According to this, everybody gets royally shafted hard and often in Alabama
http://www.leftinalabama.com/diary/8195/how-to-speak-republican-alabama-style
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The Republican “hand job” on Alabama. Nifty.
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Man, reading this kinda stuff makes me wanna doodoo my pants…
Too soon?
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Wait till gameday Nate!!!
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“So go do that doodoo that you do so well”
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It seems to me we have two schools of thought. 1 It is ok to sign a kid that we don’t have a scholly for as long as the kid knows about it up front and comes on anyway. 2. The Petrino way sign as many good players as you can and then cut the current roster to make room for the new guys. The first is only a step below being an invited walk-on. The second is pro football and should be stopped. The NCAA and the SEC have to drop the one year waiting period for kids who are let go by their schools for other than academics or behavior issues. This would slow down the coaches since they might actually get to see the guy play his heart out to beat the former coach.
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There’s a 3rd school of thought:
Don’t do any of it since there is almost zero upside to the limited version of it while a colossal downside: greatly aiding the people engaged in #2 by significantly weakening your position against their practices.
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Kids/adults do not have a right to play or make a roster. Period. You’re not winning that argument in this country.
They do have a right to an education. But that’s more $$$, so no one wants to make that argument.
They also have a right to expect some long-term medical help, given the beatings they take. Today’s SEC games resemble NFL games thirty years ago. and we all know how those former NFL players are doing with their health. But no one will take on that one, either.
As long as this remains about Georgia’s football fortunes rather than the welfare of the kids, it remains the world’s smallest violin.
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Today’s SEC games resemble NFL games the next day.
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