“I’m trying to make it my business that they have him ready from day one.”

Jeebus, talk about thug love.  Tell me you’re not digging you some Jarvis Jones.  (Although Theus probably isn’t right now.)

*************************************************************************************

UPDATE:  Still not feeling it?  You will after reading this.

“But as far as now, you know, we’re in training session for camp, and that’s what I’m focused on, making myself and my teammates better. The next move, man, it’s gonna be down the road, which I don’t know what it is yet. I’m just trying to take it in stride: Carpe diem, and seize the moment that I have right now. And that’s getting better.”

Jones was then asked if he had heard from people surprised that he hadn’t left after last season.

“You get some people that are like: I would’ve taken the money, or I would’ve did this,” he said. “It ain’t all about the money. A lot of guys could’ve left and made money. But they sacrificed their careers to come back here to get better. Become legends of the university.”

I think carpe diem is Latin for GATA.

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Shall we play a game?

I’ve got plenty to do already here at the blog during football season, so I’ve never had much of a desire to host a football pool.  Too much work tabulating.  However, since I’ve had an offer from another site to do all the heavy lifting in terms of scoring the picks and posting the standings, I thought I would see if there was much interest in the readership here in participating in a pool.

So, let me know in the comments if you’d want to do this.  My thought would be to have a ten-game slate with tiebreaker, prioritizing Georgia, the SEC and national games of interest.  The pool can be structured as a straight pick ’em, against the spread or confidence-weighted.  If you tell me you’re interested in playing in the comments, please let me know which format you’d prefer.

And before anybody asks, no prizes are in the offing.  This would just be for pride and glory (or at least as much glory as somebody posting pseudonymously can claim.)

Thug love is all around me, and so the feeling grows.

Maybe not the best choice of words here, Coach.

“You ask them, it’s all about love. It’s called thug love. It’s hard-core love. But it’s all love. It’s 100 percent love. If you ask everyone it’s love. But it’s hard love.”

Tuesday morning buffet

Indulge yourselves.

• Patrick Garbin explores the topic of Georgia’s returning experience this season.
• David Ching talks to Richt and Grantham about what happens on defense after some of that experience leaves.
• Michael Elkon wonders if 2012 Southern Cal should take 2008 Georgia as a precautionary tale.
• From College Football by the Numbers, a chart of yards per play by down.
• Bill Connelly, on luck and turnovers.
• Ladies and gentlemen, these are your 2012 ESPN college football commentator assignments.  Uncle Ron, I still miss you.
• And Elkon Doug Gillett tries to divine what Georgia’s high preseason ranking may tell us about what’s in store for 2012.

“The leverage changed”: TV and college football

This Andy Staples piece on how the relationship between television and college football has developed since the courts tossed out the NCAA’s control of broadcast rights is a must read.  He does a brilliant job of showing how the schools have slowly come to realize the power they have in the marketplace and how ESPN anticipated where the market was headed sooner than its competitors did and used that awareness to build its broadcast empire.

But it’s his where-things-are-going conclusion that should really make you think:

Money and technology remain the wild cards. The NFL rakes in such huge sums because it is a single seller. It is the only entity selling elite professional football. There are five sellers (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC) of elite college football. That holds prices down somewhat. Will those leagues someday merge and sell their media rights as a single entity for an even more astronomical sum? They did it as the BCS for postseason games, and they’ll do it again with the playoff. If they ever chose to pool regular-season rights, they’d be the CFA all over again. The Pac-12’s Scott sees significant barriers to that, but with college sports still undervalued relative to their earning potential, anything is possible. [Emphasis added.]  “It would be no small undertaking,” Scott said. “But I’ve said for some time that I do see — over time — you’ll see further consolidation of conferences or more consolidation for how rights are sold. As there is more sophistication in the college space, you realize that value for schools is left on the table because of fragmentation. I think markets tend to correct.”

Anybody who doesn’t see D-1 football being radically restructured in the next decade or so is being naive.  There’s simply too much money not to.

The two faces of Corch

Really interesting interview at 11 Warriors with Urban Meyer, which goes into some detail about how his offense evolved.  Sample:

In 1999, Dan Mullen was my GA at Notre Dame. John L. Smith was the coach at Louisville and Scott Linehan was the offensive coordinator. I started watching them on film and said I want to go study them. He said sure go ahead. We ended up staying four days and had to go buy a toothbrush. I was so enamored with the style of play. That was spread the field and be extremely aggressive. The biggest issue was how to handle pressures. The tighter the formation, the more pressures. It’s really a numbers game. It was a different philosophy I had never really…after that, both Dan and I really attacked it. I started getting phone calls about being a head coach and thought about what I would do offensively.

Linehan, Gregg Brandon, Dan Mullen, Greg Studrawa at LSU. We all sat in that old nasty meeting room in Bowling Green, Ohio. Every time it rained, water would drip down on the table. Doyt Perry Stadium. We sat there for the month of February to the month of March and sat there for 10 hours. From huddle to snap count, there was no other model. Northwestern was doing some of it and Rich Rodriguez was doing some it, but we developed our own. That was one of the greatest experiences I had, because there’s no model. Imagine trying to build something and there’s no book to go build it. We really enjoyed that. I had some great coaches.

Meyer may not be your favorite human being, but there’s no denying he’s got a sharp football mind.  Well, unless you’re (the no longer threatened with banishment to Seat 37F) Shane Matthews.

Matthews believes poor talent evaluation and development are at the heart of the Gators’ problems.  “We ain’t put anybody in the league the last couple years so that shows you how we were recruiting…they missed big time…we had a track team… track teams don’t play on Sunday…you can be able to run like a track team, but you better be able to play football.”

Urban Meyer often said he wanted the fastest team in college football, Matthews obviously thinks he took that emphasis too far.

Funny, I don’t remember too many people at the time complaining about the classes Florida was pulling in.  And Matthews is full of crap if he really believes this:

“This coaching staff at Florida is the best we’ve had at that school – hands down.  It’s gonna take time because we just don’t have the athletes that the other big boys in the conference do.”

Corch had Strong and Mullen.  Spurrier had Stoops and, well, Spurrier.

The problem with the way Meyer’s term in Gainesville finished was that his heart wasn’t in it anymore.  It remains to be seen whether he’s got his passion back in Columbus.  But pretending he was a bum while calling Muschamp a combination of Spurrier and Saban – let’s just say Matthews is overselling the change.

Trivia question of the day

There have been only two quarterbacks in the Richt era who have played as true freshmen.  Matt Stafford is one.  Can you name the other?

Name that caption: the summer goatee

“I love the scruffiness,” Murray said. “You know, when he’s out there yelling and screaming, it definitely adds more to it, the facial hair.”

Guys, that photo is a fastball down the middle.  I expect to see some of you turn on that sucker.