G-Day highlights clip

In case you weren’t there, or don’t have CSS access, here you go:

How you like me now, Selena Roberts?

After swearing on a stack of bibles that he was innocent, noting that he had turned down multiple plea deals, Mike McNeil pleads guilty to armed robbery charges.  That’s how you build credibility as you accuse all sorts of folks of bad dealings.

Selena’s an Auburn grad.  Maybe her big piece is some sort of reverse jujitsu move to make her school look better as her story falls apart.  It’s as good an explanation for the mess as any.

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UPDATE:  Roberts says it’s all good.

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Monday morning buffet

You might as well fill up… we’ve got almost five months before we get some live football again.

• John Adams on the current state of Tennessee football:  “An offense seemingly bereft of playmakers struggled. While the defense looked both faster and more physical than last season’s bunch, that’s not necessarily a glowing recommendation in that the 2012 defense was the worst in school history.”  Ouch.
• Phil Steele predicts the SEC will place five teams in the AP’s preseason top ten, six in the top twelve.
• Anybody remember Josh Jarboe?
• Seth Emerson reviews the unresolved questions coming out of Georgia’s spring.  Let’s just say they pale in comparison to UT’s issues.
• And David Paschall looks at what’s up in the air with the Dawg offensive line.
• Grantham sounded satisfied that the Red team’s second G-Day try at a two-minute drill ended less successfully than did the first try.  (Of course, some of that can be chalked up to Murray quarterbacking the first one and LeMay handling the second one.)
• “James DeLoach is a guy that, when you’re talking about newcomers, has done a nice job…”
• Rivals buys into the “de-commitment is a problem” meme, blames it on great recruiters who confuse the recruits.  Just wonderin’ – how much less product would Rivals have to sell if some kids didn’t de-commit?
• If you’re interested, here’s a virtual look at the new College Football Hall of Fame, currently under construction.

The scheduling problem that refuses to die

Missouri’s AD, after observing that the SEC is pretty satisfied with a 14-school conference – at least for the moment, anyway – goes on to mention that “… there remains debate about whether the league could go from an eight-conference game format to nine.”

Likely translation:  the networks (CBS in particular) still haven’t been impressed enough by the sheer genius of Mike Slive to pony up the kind of money the conference thinks it deserves from this round of expansion, but are willing to talk turkey if there’s more product.

My prediction is that if there’s more TV money for a school in a ninth conference game than in a seventh home game against a non-conference cupcake opponent, then we’ll get that added SEC game.  The coaches won’t be happy, but money talks louder.  Besides, they’ll be mollified with some sort of assurance that the selection committee will take into account how tough the conference is.

One man’s meat is another man’s poison.

The NCAA enforcement staff’s response to Miami’s move to dismiss the charges against it in the Nevin Shapiro mess is in.  It’s not impressed.

Portions of the contents of the enforcement department’s 42-page response to the NCAA infractions committee were relayed to CBSSports.com. That response followed Miami’s motion to the infractions committee to drop the case on March 29. Enforcement’s response is signed by interim director Jon Duncan.

The first sentence of the enforcement response reads: “From the enforcement’s staff perspective the motion to dismiss by the institution and involved individuals are attempts to deflect attention from the significant allegations that remain in the case.”

Is Shapiro’s “self-corroboration” (as Miami describes it) an attention deflector or a significant allegation?  Guess it depends on which side of the fence you’re standing.  Which is kind of the essence of the problem here, no?