(In case you can’t tell, I’m having a lot of fun with a certain meme today. But I digress.)
Mark Richt isn’t worried about having less scholarship players on the roster than any school this side of Pennsylvania. And he’s right about this.
“I think just watching our special teams work, the amount of depth we have right at this moment, I think we’re fine,” Richt said. “Because again, the bottom line is you can only bring 70 guys on the trip. And the reality is most every year, two, three or four of those cats are walk-ons anyway. So you might have 65 scholarship guys traveling that are ready to play football in an SEC game.”
But – and as “buts” go, it’s a ginormous one – there’s a caveat.
The key is avoiding injuries, as Richt went on to say.
“If you’ve got a lot of injuries you’ve got issues, of course, but we’ve been pretty fortunate in that area going into this camp,” Richt said. “We’ve had a few things. I don’t think we’ve had anything that might end anybody’s season. We’ve had some things that might keep a guy out awhile. You know, concussions, pulled muscles, things like that. But it’s been pretty good.”
Better hope your luck holds out, Coach.
Get The Picture 
Please don’t jinx us senator…
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Too late
http://leatherhelmetblog.com/2012-articles/august/ol-hunter-long-breaks-foot.html
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DAMN!!
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I blame Blurtarsky.
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Ha!
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Bad deal for Long, obviously, but in truth that cat was not going to sniff the field this season. Unless, of course, Andrews hits the deck (and here I will knock on my desk).
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Just remember, Senator: big TEAM, little meme.
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You’re limited to the number of players that can travel to away games? I want to say that I knew that, but I didn’t realize it was at 70. Wow.
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Apparently Hunter Long broke his foot this morning. Out 6-8 weeks. Not a huge blow, but still…
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Where are you getting that?
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Official release from UGA.
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“cats” LOL
With the goatee and hipster speak, I expect him to come to practice in a beret one day.
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I was just getting ready to comment on that “cats” word he used.
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True dat — to supplement Evil Richt we now have Cool Jazz Richt. I like the changeup and recall CMR has employed jazz cat language in past seasons. Miles Davis & Coltrane would doubtless abide.
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Good time to be a walk on at UGA.
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Go for it Doug. I’m sure Jarvis would appreciate some more fresh tackling meat.
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Forget injuries, there are many reasons why you should carry more players on the squad. You increase competition at positions, you improve the quality of your scout team, etc. Just think, we could have 15 extra scholarship players on our team right now. Isn’t there a strong chance at least a couple of them would have panned out to be solid contributors? I’m sure Richt knows this and is trying to downplay the situation he’s in, however, he comes across as an idiot when he says “I think we’re fine.” This isn’t fine. There’s a reason scholarship reduction is the go to punishment for NCAA violations. There’s a reason everyone oversigns so that if they have natural attrition, they still have a full capacity of scholarship players on hand.
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There is also another reason behind it. You get more people through your program that way. Some stick, some don’t. But more looks equals a better likelihood of a better roster. If your program has 100 kids going through it over 4 years (25 x 4) and another program has 120 kids going through it over 4 years (30 x 4), which team is likely to have the most good players? (Particularly the way Saban does it–effectively cutting those that don’t make the grade and replacing them with those that do.) We do the opposite–80 or so looks over 4 years (20 x 4). Then you have attrition. That’s how you end up with a roster 15 smaller than the rules allow.
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While I do not agree with Saban’s method, I do struggle to understand why kids can not be cut from college teams. Kids across America tryout for teams and get cut every day from elementary school thru high school. But once in college you keep your spot for 4/5 years as long as you don’t screw up. Why is that?
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Pretty simple: you don’t lose your scholarship (ie: get kicked out of) to elementary/high school when you get cut.
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Try again. Middle school teams cut kids. High school teams cut kids. NFL teams cut players. Yet you have to keep a kid on a major D-1 team that does not develop? I do not understand this.
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NFL = professional league. And like I said above, just because a high school/middle school kid gets cut, it doesn’t mean they have to leave school.
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Neither does a college kid. Who said anything about kicking the kids out of school. They simply can’t play ball. The cost then becomes their burden. A college educationis not a right.
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True, but the fact that they put their bodies on the line for a school should count for something. Your idea would hurt most the kids that don’t have a prayer of making an NFL roster, even if they give everything they’ve got for the team.
Compare it to an academic scholarship: you don’t have to be in a certain high percentage of student GPAs to keep a scholarship. In most cases, you just have to maintain a B average. An athlete’s dedication to practice, film study, and his or her other assorted duties are the equivalent.
If you don’t agree with this, I would hope that you would at least allow some arrangement for players like Trinton Sturdivant.
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Again, I do not agree with the way Saban runs his program. However, I am amazed that big time D-1 football is the only form of competitive sports where kids are not cut. The kids bust their tail. No arguement on that. However, if a kid on an academic ride is not cutting the mustard his scholarship is gone. Why not football? He can stay in school if he can pay for it like everyone else. And yes there should be a clause or qualifier for injuries such as Sturdivant.
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“…you just have to maintain a B average” to keep your academic (Hope) scholarship. Yeah. And if you don’t you lose it. What Skeptic Dawg is saying is that football ought to be the same way–If you don’t measure up, you lose your scholarship. I do not agree with the way Saban does it either because he carries it too far, but SD certainly has a point.
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There is a decent chance that a few contributors would emerge from 15 extra scholarship players. However, the contributors tend to stick around. We’ve had a fair number of kids transfer out in search of playing time. If we had no transfers out, giving us extra kids on the roster, we still wouldn’t be playing many, or any, of those kids.
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Richt didn’t say he liked being short of players. He simply is saying he thinks they will be OK if they avoid a lot of injuries. Read it again.
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Any losses are troublesome at this point for several reasons.
And sorry to post a completly unrelated link: But DAMN this should happen on every charter flight our military has to “Over There”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2185945/Runway-clear-clothes–Vietnamese-passenger-airliner-fined-hosting-mid-air-beauty-pageant-scantily-clad-Hawaiian-dancers.html
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Might be fine for this year, but we aren’t developing players for next year. Young guys learning the system & hitting the weights hard.
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Bingo. And don’t forget virtually all the defensive starters and a few backups are leaving after this year.
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Plus, this shortage of players is not across the board evenly for the whole team. There always seems to be a critical shortage at one or 2 positions. Last year it was at RB. That’s why we were running 165 lb RBs into the line on short yardage situations in the SECCG and in the bowl. This year it is at OL.
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Wow, Senator, you are in a charitable mood today. I certainly don’t agree with what Richt said in the first excerpt. I don’t believe Saban routinely includes several walkons in his travel squads. And even if he did, the 65 scholarship players would have had to beat out 20 other guys for the priviledge. Richt’s 65? Well… that’s about all he has.
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Well, he knows what he’s got right now better than you or I do, so I give him the benefit of the doubt… for now.
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That “concussion” comment worries me. We ALL know who that is. On a side note, every good dawg needs to be pulling for Akeem Dent. Hate to see long term consequences from his first ever PRE-SEASON game.
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Our luck with FalconDawgs. Shockley & T. Brown’s careers pretty much ended with pre-season injuries too.
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The problem with “you can only bring 70 guys” is that the fifteen who don’t make the trip are usually players you’re trying to redshirt.
We’re going to still bring 70 guys (all the scholarship players), but 15 or so of those guys will be players we want to redshirt. In effect, we’re going to try and play with only 55 players this season.
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You think there are 15 players out of a class of 17 the coaches want to redshirt? No way.
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I doubt anybody will be red-shirted this season except for Mason and that is really a farce. Mason won’t play as long as Murray’s healthy but if Murray got injured Mason will play–and be the starter.
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Hutson Mason, Faton Batua, & Jonathan Taylor are supposed to redshirt this season. Kolton Houston is ineligible. Hunter Long has a broken foot requiring surgery (on Tuesday) and will be out 6-8 weeks. Sanders Commings, Chase Vasser and possibly Alec Ogletree & Bacarri Rambo will be suspended 2-4 games to begin the season, respectively.
UGA currently has 69 recruited scholarship players & 10 former walk-ons (i.e., Bradberry, Capella, Faloughi, Frix, Hall, Harton, McGowan, Norman, Sailors, Vavlas) on scholarship. Considering aforementioned redshirts, Kolton Houston & Hunter Long’s situations, & Commings/Vasser/Ogletree/Rambo’s suspensions), UGA will have 60 recruited scholarship players and 10 former walk-ons (same as in 2011) on its early season travel squad to Missouri.
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