Sacrilege! Heresy!

Glenn Guilbeau, you are not welcome at my G-Day tailgate this Saturday.

“If no one had spring football, everyone would be even, and it would not be missed.”?  It’s a damned long stretch from April to September, brother.  You think nobody will notice if you make it even longer?

“We ought to be kept abreast of it at all times, and we ought to prepare for it in case we lose.”

Pat Haden’s admission to Stewart Mandel that the NCAA could lose the O’Bannon case is getting the buzz right now, but what’s really striking about Mandel’s piece is that nobody on the schools’ side seems familiar with the lawsuit.  Even Haden admits he hasn’t followed the case closely.  Given what’s at stake, it’s a little hard to understand attitudes like this:

“There’s conversation [about the case], but it’s in the courts. We have no control over it,” Texas AD DeLoss Dodds said recently. “I don’t hear people saying, ‘Here’s what were going to do if it happens.’ … I’ve got more immediate things to worry about.”

And remember that Dodds was one of the folks to file a statement opposing the recent class certification warning of an impending apocalypse if the O’Bannon plaintiffs had their way.  So he’s worried, but he’s not.  Mr. Sincerity may think needling Texas A&M fans in the here and now is more important than dealing with the potential loss of half of an athletic department’s revenue (and in Texas’ case, that’s a lot of moolah) and we may find that sort of snark amusing, but, seriously, if not Dodds, shouldn’t some of the NCAA membership be having serious discussion with counsel behind the scenes to find out how much of this talk is just for public consumption?

“This case has always been wrong — wrong on the facts and wrong on the law,” NCAA executive vice president and chief legal officer Donald Remy said in a statement last month. “We look forward to its eventual resolution in the courts.”

This case has already gotten more expensive to settle than it would have been if the NCAA had been willing to cut a deal for what the plaintiffs originally requested.  You’d think somebody would start paying closer attention.

An early look at the defensive two-deep

On Saturday, I wrote this about how the two-deep on defense would sort out over the coming months:

I’ve got no idea how this plays out, of course, and neither does anybody else. But how personnel get sorted out on the defensive side of the ball between now and September bears watching.

Yesterday, Seth Emerson decided to give that a shot based what he’s seen at practice so far, and what he’s heard from players.  Here’s his current educated guess:

DE: Garrison Smith … John Taylor
NT: Mike Thornton …. Chris Mayes
DE: Ray Drew OR Sterling Bailey
OLB: Jordan Jenkins … Chase Vasser
ILB: Amarlo Herrera … Ryne Rankin
ILB: Ramik Wilson …. Reggie Carter
Star: Josh Harvey-Clemons … Damian Swann
CB: Damian Swann … Devin Bowman
CB: Sheldon Dawson … Reggie Wilkerson
FS: Tray Matthews … Connor Norman
SS: Corey Moore OR Connor Norman

First thing you’ll probably notice is that Emerson isn’t laying out a 3-4 alignment, but rather a 3-3-5.  That’s based on the assumption that we’ll see that more than anything in the season opener against Clemson and at home against South Carolina.  When Georgia plays in its base defense,

Take out the star spot, and insert OLB, which right now would be James DeLoach and then Josh Dawson. – Move Harvey-Clemons to first-team strong safety. Matthews remains the starting free safety.

Second thing is Tray Matthews getting the nod to start at one of the safety positions.  But he’s not the only true freshman on Emerson’s list.

Third thing is that Grantham is going to have some green back-ups at second string inside linebacker.  It’s a good thing that’s a position of strength in this year’s recruiting class.

Obviously, there’s still a long way to go.  There are some JUCO kids coming in the summer whom I expect to get a fair crack at making the two deep, especially in the secondary.  Still, it’s interesting that enough impressions have been made to go this far.

Your thoughts?

Trouble in mind

Clearly, Michael Carvell is on to something here, as he shines a spotlight on what he calls “a big mess that’s only going to get bigger” – the scourge of 17-year old kids exercising the last bit of leverage most of them will ever have in their careers by changing their minds during the recruiting process about where they want to spend the next few years of their lives.

Yes, this is a troubling trend.  We must do something.

I’ve got it!  How ’bout we devote no further media attention to a recruit who revokes his verbal commitment and changes colleges before he signs a binding letter of intent?  That’ll teach those attention-seeking kids.

Not only that, but it’ll give Carvell a chance to devote some bandwidth to the less troubling matters of coaches changing schools and schools changing conferences for perceived better opportunities.  Sure, those aren’t the big messes (unless you’re a kid who established a good relationship with a coach who’s left or a fan who’s being deprived of a historical rivalry) that Carvell’s concern-trolling about, but if he can get coaches to open up about the cold choices they make about their careers the way he’s gotten them to speak about the kids making similar choices, maybe we’ll learn something.

Until then…