A formal multi-year scholarship policy is on the way.
“I think it’s good legislation,” McGarity said. “Mark Richt adheres to it anyway. The bottom line is when he signs a kid, he has him around unless they leave on their own accord or they tend to violate team rules. Anybody that conducts their program in the right way, when they sign a young man or young woman to a scholarship, they want to see it through.”
How long can Spurrier and Saban hold out?
Get The Picture 
Glad we did this, like the article says it is basically Richts policy anyway. Hopefully Saban will hold off on it and it will bite him on a few recruits. I can’t imagine he would do it without being forced to.
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“How long can Spurrier and Saban hold out?” You will remove their power when you pry it from their cold dead fingers.
Seriously, I cannot see the ‘One Year Scholarship’, or in Bama’s case the ‘Revocable Without Advance Notice Scholarship’ being an impediment to recruiting. The market favors the big schools and the recruits are too naive.
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Agreed. I really don’t think it will make much difference especially with the top recruits that the upper echelon schools recruit. Those kids want to play big time college football with the best programs and coaches. They aren’t going to have multi-year scholarships high on the priority list.
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These 4 year scholarships is more important for athletes who gets injured, or does not pan out, and in other sports. In FB, Baskeball, and Baseball it is actually less significant as athletes can be 1, 2, or 3 and out when opportunity presents.
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Saban will offer 4 year scholarships because he will have to do so in order to compete in recruiting–then he will creatively find ways to continue doing exactly what he has been doing. He will run off players that don’t pan out–have players transfer, put players on medical scholarship when they aren’t really medically disqualified from playing, etc. And the SEC and NCAA will do NOTHING about it.
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I agree. All he has to do is say somebody violated team rules and then boot em.
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Sounds like an adult attitude to me. The scholarship is a contract. It won’t be broken by the University of Georgia.
It is also clear about the “do bad…be gone” clause.
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“How long can Spurrier and Saban hold out?”
Until they start losing consistently to multi-year scholly teams.
Giving a kid one of 85 athletic GIAs and telling him, “It doesn’t matter how you play. As long as you’re working hard, you’re good,” makes no sense to me at all. It’s a quid pro quo, a contract, and those are two-way deals. Performance HAS to be a factor at some point, or it’s just an obligation, not a contract.
At some point, the NCAA has to allow schools to take care of student athletes by keeping them on campus and on scholarship even if they’re not good enough to stay on the roster. If we’re going to blow up college football to make more money, then some of it should go here – because this is the biggest “money” problem of all, IMO.
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I don’t agree with the quid pro quo but the overall thrust is correct. If the NCAA cares about student athletes, then they’ll require schools to provide 4 years of education to a kid. I’m sure they can find some wiggle room allowing coaches to dismiss kids that can’t or won’t compete, while allowing the kids to remain on campus and continue their education. Clearly the Nick Saban “he decided to transfer” model is an insult to the professed ethos of the NCAA.
FWIW, Ivy League schools deal with this all the time. Though they don’t offer athletic scholarships, the admissions standards are bent a bit to accommodate athletes. However, once on campus, these kids have no obligation to a team. My cousin got into Cornell with an assist from the Rowing coach. After her freshman year, however, she never set foot in a boat.
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Whatever solution they implement has to recognize the 3 pieces of the puzzle: competitive pressures, roster caps, and educational mission. Two items on that list (competition versus education) are always pitted against each other in these debates, which ignores the single item (85 cap) that PUTS them into tension.
Georgia can afford financially to educate Richt’s recruiting misses. So could Alabama for Saban. I’d rather do that than wait 10 years and see if cultural shifts put enough pressure on Saban, Miles, Franklin, Spurrier, and everyone else to “rehabilitate” their ethics on roster management. If anything, I think we’re moving in the wrong direction on that front.
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Saban will just invent outs for players when he wants them gone like he invents injuries for medical redshirts. He will site a missed curfew or class as “failure to abide by team rules” for underperforming players and poof, they will dissapear.
This will not stop him from subverting the intent of every rule available IMO.
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The rep he develops will accompany their exits as well. Have more faith in bright lights shining on cheaters.
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I hope you are right but that hasn’t been the case so far. Saban has been doing borderline unethical sh!t for the whole time he has been at Bama and has still gotten top 5 classes every year. The recruits and their parents simply think that it won’t happen to them.
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The word “anyway” bothers me. Like McGarity doesn’t support it as well? It’s Richt’s baby and if we suffer anything negative, blame Richt, but not the rest of us? However, if he implies “King Richt” with that word, hell, I’m all for it.
Where is King Richt’s contract, you aholes?
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It occurs to me, after thinking about a former running back at Georgia, that the key here is how long would we be obligated to see the kid actually graduate. There is some evidence four years, considering the demands of football (and hopefully an extended season, is not enough.
So, does actually graduate from college need to come into the conversation?
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Good point.
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I think it will help in the long run. I don’t think high school coaches will appreciate it when a player they coached gets cut from an Alabama or South Carolina. The fact that UGA does not cut players will influence where they want their future players to go.
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This changes nothing. This approach has been CMR’s modus opperandi for a decade, and except for the dream team, CMR has had problems capitalizing on our huge in-state advantage when recruiting. saban and sos HAVE to come to Georgia to recruit – their states don’t provide sufficient talent to field a top 10 competitor. CMR has all the in-state talent he needs. Going out-of-state is a luxury for UGA. For the most part, our recruiting problems are self-inflicted, like not signing the limit when we have plenty of scholly openings. We have a huge advantage over most competitors, which we don’t expolit.
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Exploit.
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Exactly WCD. Limiting the number of scholarships is how the NCAA punishes the bad actors (if the NCAA ever catches them in the first place). We punish ourselves by voluntarily doing that very thing when we didn’t even do anything wrong. How stupid is that? BTW, Kiffin’s way to deal with the scholarship limitations imposed on USC by the NCAA was pure genius: Appeal the penalty to delay the enforcement, oversign like mad that year, then redshirt everybody in that class–they’ll be the ones who will be the backbone of the team for 3 years. When the sanctions are over he’ll oversign again to replenish any shortfall of players. Nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Whereas all the while UGA operates at a permanent deficit in number of players.
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I assume this is obvious, WCD, but just in case: This is how it is, this is how it will be. Unfortunately, there is no disclaimer in the student handbook.
Once again, all together now….”We ain’t Bama, We will never BE Bama, and if we just PLAY like Bama once in a while, we will be happy.
WE are Georgia, and it is what it is.
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SJ3, I disagree. We are better than Bama. We have a better state with a better pool of talent to draw from and have a better school with better educational opportunities. Our program is actually more profitable than Bama’s and we have more money available. All things being equal why would anyone chose Bama over UGA? If the UGA team is not as good as Bama’s team year in and year out it is because our staff is doing something wrong and that needs to be corrected. Being satisfied to “PLAY like Bama once in a while” is not satisfactory–it’s capitulation.
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We do not, have never had, other than a brief moment in the early 80’s, had the institutional will to be anything other than what we are: A good team, once in a great while a great team.
It has little to do with what we could be, and nothing to do with our coaching staff doing things wrong.
Is Georgia a better university in every way than Bama…of course it is, but unless, and until the university is willing to make the changes Bama made in the fifties in the way the university views athletics, as long as you are a Georgia fan you won’t be happy if you don’t understand this.
Again, it are what it are.
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SJ3 we are actually saying the same thing. When I said “staff” I did not mean only the coaches. “Administration” is also not really the right word. It is the whole University of Georgia mindset that forces our team to put up with conditions that hold the program back. I don’t want to get on a soapbox but a good example is the WLOCP game in JAX. Can you ever imagine Bama getting into a similar situation where they had to play their main Division rival on what is essentially that team’s home turf every year? The only comparable example I can think of would be Bama playing LSU in the Superdome every year. The Tide fans wouldn’t stand for it because they want their team to win above all things and they understand what an advantage that would give to their main Division rival (i.e. the Tide would lose a home game very year and give what is effectively an extra home game to LSU). My friends in Alabama cannot believe that UGA has allowed itself to be put in that situation with the Gators. Bottom line: We are not willing to do what it takes to be the top program in the SEC. That is where Bama has it all over us. “Roster management” is another issue. They get about 125 players through their program in a 4 year period and run off about 40. We don’t even use all our scholarships on real recruits and end up with about 70 or so recruited players going though our program in 4 years. And we think we are superior to Bama because of that. Who’s being smart and who’s being stupid here? Really? But if we ever woke up Bama would never be able to touch us.
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Quick Senator–close this thread and get it off the blog before anybody sees this post and starts actually THINKING.
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Yep, I thought we sort of agreed, it is much deeper than anybody really understands, it is part of the institutional culture.
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All of which could be changed overnight if someone with balls (Cojones perhaps?) took control of the school and crammed change down everyone’s throat as a condition of taking the job or staying. I think it has to be at minimum a HC of the stature of a Paul Bryant to pull it off. CMR could have pulled it off if it was presented by him as “my way or the highway” after the ’02 season. Alas, he did not do so and now that window has passed as the “halo” has worn off. There are too many people who still want him gone even after last season. They would in unison shout “Be Gone!”
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P.S. I noticed that the Senator did exactly what I said above–closed this thread and got it off the blog before anyone could see it and start thinking about what we were saying.
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Actually Dooley was on the road to changing the culture in the early 80’s, then Fred Davidson allowed Jan Kemp to go to court and it was all over but the finger pointing….and here we are.
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