The Montana Project, first update

Well, that didn’t take long.  Less than half a day passed before a volunteer stepped forward who passed muster.  (Behold the power of the Intertubes!)

I don’t want to lay out too much detail, because I want to give him the chance to introduce himself to you in his own words, but suffice to say he fits the bill nicely.   He’s a long-time resident of Montana who bleeds red and black (he shlepped to the unfortunate Colorado game and sent me the photo of him and Hairy Dawg there to prove it) and reads GTP.  I had to pinch myself when I read his e-mail; he’s almost overqualified.  So anyway, be on the lookout for an introduction.

One other thing to mention is that Travis is going to front for the cost of one of the necessary props for this exercise, a real, live Georgia football helmet.  He’s found a good one on Amazon for about $200.  I can’t set up a widget for PayPal on WordPress, so Travis will do that at his blog.  I will supply a link to that from here, and I hope that you will give a few bucks to the cause.  When the dust settles, I plan to set up a permanent Montana Project page here at GTP and list all of those who participated financially, so there’s that small shot at quasi-immortality you can grab for yourself.

Bottom line –  we’re on our way.  Stay tuned for more news on this.

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Now that you’ve got that ol’ righteous indignation stoked…

Big talk from Greg McGarity:

“If you see it, you own it,” said McGarity, who took over at his alma mater in August 2010 after serving 18 years as Jeremy Foley’s right-hand man at Florida. “No matter what it is, from a piece of paper on the ground to somebody breaking the rules. If you see it, you own it, and if it is serious you are obligated to report it up the chain of command.”

No doubt he’s sincere.  And no doubt he reflects a general consensus among his peers (at least I hope so).  But let’s face it – being concerned about a Jerry Sandusky is easy.  Nobody wants to be seen as empowering a monster.

But how about turning some of that worry about the chain of command to something a wee bit harder, eh?  Something like, oh, say, this.

There’s another college sports scandal largely going unnoticed this summer. It’s not as horrific as Penn State. What could be worse than that?

But North Carolina’s academic scandal is a big deal. And it could be bigger if it becomes attached to Roy Williams’ basketball program.

Concealing the rapes of boys presumably (hopefully!) doesn’t happen often in college sports. Yet a big reason why that duplicity occurred is similar to why large numbers of North Carolina athletes attended bogus classes.

Keep the athlete eligible or a coach/administrator employed. Keep the school’s image intact while trying to win games. Keep printing money through the college sports machine.

I think Solomon’s kidding himself if he thinks Penn State grabbed all the oxygen in the room such that we don’t hear much about what’s unfolding in Chapel Hill.  The reality is that academic scandals sprout like weeds in the college football world.  Some brief attention may get paid to one thing or another, but they all wind up fading when the weather turns cooler.

But he’s spot on about the rest.  Just as much as what we saw at Penn State, academic scandals are about letting athletic departments have too much say over school management.  (And just like at Penn State, some of what occurred at North Carolina may violate state criminal laws.)

So, what say you, Mark Emmert and your band of merry men?  Is it culture changing time again?

I’m not holding my breath.  Like I said, condemning a serial child rapist and those who enabled him isn’t hard.  Lifting the curtain to assign blame for college football’s sausage making is.  Just ask someone close to us.

Georgia president Michael Adams, a former member of the NCAA’s Executive Committee, has made some unpopular moves concerning athletics in his time at Georgia. He forced former athletics director and Hall of Fame football coach Vince Dooley to retire in 2004. He was the force behind the hiring of basketball coach Jim Harrick, who he later fired due to NCAA violations.

But Adams has shown a zero tolerance approach to coaches or employees who behave badly. When athletics director Damon Evans, Adams’ hand-picked successor to Dooley, was arrested for DUI while with a woman who was not his wife, Adams immediately fired Evans…

Don’t you love the way Barnhart finesses that academic scandal?  Sure, Harrick got fired.  But does anyone remember that the only people who paid a price for the school turning a blind eye to what Harrick Junior was doing were the basketball players who weren’t allowed to play postseason ball?  They got sacrificed on Michael Adams’ altar.  But the administrators who allowed the situation to fester suffered not a whit.  That’s the approach that makes this quote from McGarity so laughable:  “It has to start with presidential leadership. If you have a president who has his priorities in order there is less of a chance that something like this [Penn State] could happen.”

So don’t count on Sheriff Emmert riding out again to clean up our fair town.  Child rapists, beware.  The rest of you folks undermining college sports?  Keep the noise down, or they might have to issue you a citation.

Standing pat

In less than a week, Mark Richt goes from announcing the program will look into pursuing players leaving the Penn State program, to submitting a list of nineteen players of specific interest to Georgia… to walking away from the whole deal.

In a statement released by UGA at 5:08 p.m. on Friday, Richt simply stated:

“Currently, Georgia is not pursuing any of Penn State’s football players. We wish Coach O’Brien and the players the best.”

Now, sure, you can read something into the word “currently”.  I presume if a PSU player emerged who made it very clear that he wanted to jump ship for Athens, then Mark Richt would be attentive.  But for all intents and purposes, it sounds like the chase is over before it really got started.

Are you ready for some (college) football?

Well, you’d better be:  SEC players report for fall practice next week.  In fact, at Georgia and Auburn, they report on Tuesday.  Auburn gets the first practice underway on August 1.  Here’s a handy chart of all the key fall practice dates, if you’re interested (via).