The art of the (negative) sale

You know, it’s not hard to grasp how most negative recruiting gets presented.  It’s not too tough to figure out how to go after Mark Richt’s hot seat (although I guess SOD owns that now).  I get how to throw the sins of roster management in Nick Saban’s direction.  Explaining how Paul Johnson’s offense would be the death of any high school quarterback’s NFL dreams would be a breeze.

But here’s one I have a hard time trying to figure out.

… What we have seen in the past year is the power players now have that comes from the pressure put upon schools and coaches who block transfer options. Thanks to the Twitterverse, it didn’t take all that long for PR messes to entangle Maryland’s Randy Edsall, Tennessee’s Derek Dooley or Wisconsin basketball coach Bo Ryan, and eventually, after being called out, each school backed off and allowed their former players more options.

Coaches are realizing or at least they should how thorny these situations can become. You can bet other coaches are using these situations against them in recruiting too.

Now I don’t doubt that other coaches want to throw this kind of stuff out there on the recruiting trail.  But exactly how do they go about doing it?  I mean, I don’t think a coach wants to look a recruit in the eye and say “if it doesn’t work out with us, rest assured we won’t behave like Coach X”.   Who wants to admit to the possibility of an unhappy ending?  And barring some issue like family health, what recruit is going to say to a coach that if he comes, it’ll be with the intent to keep one foot out the door?

Any ideas on how this gets pitched?  Or, does a coach settle for a simple “Yeah, Randy Edsall is a dick” and hope the recruit and his family can fill in the blanks?

If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.

This is a brave thing for a South Carolina writer to say:

A coincidence that Spurrier had his first run-in with the NCAA law just as South Carolina was rising to SEC-elite status?

Outside garnet-colored households, the answer is “no.”

Inside the friendly confines, Gamecock Nation emotion managers better be careful.

I expect somebody will try to make the same point at SEC Media Days.  I’ll be curious to hear if we get the cocky Spurrier in response.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right…

This is great – not only is Jim Delany having to battle it out with his peers over how the new football postseason will be shaped, but it turns out he doesn’t even have his own constituency on board with what he’s negotiating.

Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman and Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon have been vehemently and publicly anti-playoff. Brandon told ESPN.com there’s no fair way to select four teams. Perlman told SI.com last month he sees no benefits to a playoff, but he also told Omaha.com in December that officials could “convince” him otherwise.

This could be merely a “wheels within wheels” negotiating ploy, admittedly (“Guys, I’d love to abandon semi-final games on campus, but I don’t have the votes back home for that.”), but I have a hard time believing that Delany likes having a public perception that he’s not totally in control.

Needless to say, there’s a lot of work left to do between now and June 20, when the conference commissioners meet again to hammer things out.