Jordan Jenkins: “Whether anybody likes it or not, we’re coming with a swagger.”
Also, how ’bout this stat?
The Bulldogs have had a player finish first or second in the SEC in sacks all three years that Todd Grantham has been the defensive coordinator.
Keep the streak alive, fellas.
Filed under Georgia Football
Most importantly, all indications are no Bulldogs ran into trouble during the vacation. At least athletic director Greg McGarity said had not heard about any discipline issues as of Monday night. This time last year Georgia had four players run afoul of team policies during the spring break. That led to missed playing time in the fall.
Hey, it may be just a start. But it’s still a welcome one.
Filed under Georgia Football
Sidle on up and grab you a plate.
Why do I have the feeling the O’Bannon suit will cost the NCAA a lot more than that?
Details of the settlement can be found here.
Filed under It's Just Bidness, The NCAA
I think it’s going to be easy to root for James DeLoach this year.
“I can’t really explain it. I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like on G-Day,” DeLoach said. “Now I’ve just got to keep working hard and maintain the position.”
Anybody who feels starry-eyed over G-Day gets my support. And there’s good reason to think that DeLoach will be given every chance to capitalize on his opportunity: he’s big.
“DeLoach really looks good. He’s really in tremendous condition, he’s a great athlete,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “It’s going to be interesting to see how he can do. We are not as big up front, but we’re pretty quick and athletic. It’s going to be interesting to see how we’ll hold up against a smashmouth team and all that kind of thing as the season goes on. But we’ve still got some guys that can really run.”
Georgia had one of the nation’s biggest defensive fronts last season, particularly when 359-pound John Jenkins and 355-pound Kwame Geathers were on the field at the same time. Richt is correct that his 2013 defensive front won’t have anyone quite that massive, but it’s not like 340-pound nose guard Chris Mayes or fellow defensive linemen Jonathan Taylor (335), John Atkins (305) and Garrison Smith (297) are small people.
And then, if Jordan Jenkins (257) and DeLoach (265) are on either edge at the outside linebacker spots, you’re still looking at a sizable front that also boasts impressive athleticism.
There may be more ways for Grantham to try to skin that defend the power running game cat than we thought. And there’s your first thing to keep an eye on at G-Day.
Filed under Georgia Football
After noting Florida’s offensively challenged 2012 season, Paul Myerberg goes on to point out a potential Achilles heel for this year’s edition of the Gator offense:
What if Driskel (fingers crossed) goes down? With Jacoby Brissett off to N.C. State, the Gators are a little concerned about depth at the quarterback position. Neither of UF’s options for the backup spot, junior Tyler Murphy and redshirt freshman Skyler Mornhinweg, have attempted a pass in their respective careers. Driskel is a runner (408 yards), which gives Florida an added dimension on offense but opens the junior up to extra punishment – he missed one game last fall, against Jacksonville State, due to an ankle injury.
A little concerned? Florida was eighth nationally in turnover margin in 2012, at +15. More significantly, in the two games it played with a net negative turnover margin, it lost both. If Driskel went down and Florida had to turn its offense over to somebody who’d never thrown a collegiate pass in anger before, Boom’s team would probably have to set a record in that category to compensate.
Filed under Gators, Gators...
Andy Staples catches Big Jim’s brief from the O’Bannon case:
“… it has been my longstanding belief that The Big Ten’s schools would forgo the revenues in those circumstances and instead take steps to downsize the scope, breadth and activity of their athletic programs,” Delany wrote. “Several alternatives to a ‘pay for play’ model exist, such as the Division III model, which does not offer any athletics-based grants-in-aid, and, among others, a need-based financial model. These alternatives would, in my view, be more consistent with The Big Ten’s philosophy that the educational and lifetime economic benefits associated with a university education are the appropriate quid pro quo for its student athletes.”
To Andy’s eternal credit, he follows up with Delany, who plays the part of reluctant warrior.
“It’s not that we want to go Division III or go to need-based aid,” Delany said. “It’s simply that in the plaintiff’s hypothetical — and if a court decided that Title IX is out and players must be paid — I don’t think we’d participate in that. I think we’d choose another option. … If that’s the law of the land, if you have to do that, I don’t think we would.”
Pardon me if I laugh at this point. The list of major principles that Delany has brazenly pushed, only to abandon conveniently, is pretty easy to recall: four-team playoff over my dead body; Rose Bowl über alles; Penn State and “moral authority”. That’s just the recent stuff off the top of my head.
Now we’re supposed to believe that the man who’s behaved more like the head of network programming than a conference commissioner of late and who’s thrown ridiculous sums of money at Maryland in order to gain access to a big television market is suddenly going to chuck all that to avoid sharing with student-athletes if that becomes the law of the land? Puh-leeze. It’s just a damned shame Delany can’t talk down to a federal judge the way he can to Karl Benson.
By the way, how much does the commissioner of the Pioneer League get paid these days?
And by the way once more, does anybody detect a similarity between that first quote about the Big Ten’s philosophy and what will always be my favorite Delany pearl?
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UPDATE: I digs me some of Brian Cook’s righteous indignation.
Stupid or deceitful? I think the latter given Jim Delany’s extremely malleable opinion on playoffs, but then again he is the man who gave us “Leaders and Legends” and wrote an open letter about how the SEC is poopy pants in 2007, thus dooming us to ALL THE SEC since. We may never know.
This is an organization that feels a university education is a sufficient quid pro quo for work that earns various people seven-figure salaries to play glorified secretary, and then fights lawsuits that would open up those university educations to more people because that might impinge on those seven figure salaries.
And this, of course, is a man who has spent the last twenty years thinking about nothing but money. He created a television network for money. He added Nebraska for money. He split Michigan and Ohio State in the vague hope of getting more money if they played twice. He added Rutgers and Maryland for money despite the fact that 11 of the 12 fanbases in the Big Ten would rather boil themselves in oil than play those teams in anything. Once he is presented with the idea he might have to share some of his money, he threatens to take the whole damn thing out of the system, into another system that will be exposed to the same legal precedent that prevents you from outrageously sharecropping athletes. The answer is probably “both.”
Translated into the original Holtzian, the man is a penith.
Filed under Big Ten Football
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