Mike Slive, just sayin’.

This sort of dropped in the hopper out of the blue today.

Slive: If issues like cost of attendance don't occur "it may be appropriate to talk about some alterantive or division." Not his desire.

— Jon Solomon (@JonSolomon35) April 29, 2013

Sounds like somebody’s growing tired of the NCAA sitting on its hands about player compensation.  If Emmert can’t address the problem, is Slive ready to find somebody else who would?  Stay tuned.

Credibility problem

It’s not that Dennis Dodd makes taking Bill Hancock at less than his word look easy.  It’s that it is easy.

So near, and yet so far.

Former Georgia QB David Greene on Aaron Murray breaking his passing records: "I wish we had five more yards on those passing records."

— Seth Emerson (@SethWEmerson) April 29, 2013

Me, too.

Dawg porn for the recruiting trail

Jeez, somebody get this guy on tape, fast:

Here’s what Bengals defensive backs coach Mark Carrier told reporters after Cincinnati took Shawn Williams in the third round: “One thing you like about this kid is he played in a NFL-style defense with Todd Grantham, the defensive coordinator down there at Georgia and he barked out a lot of signals, they give you a lot of different looks and obviously had a lot of guys in this draft and one I think I like and fits right in with our room is that he’s not afraid to stick his face in the fire. That’s a big deal for me and a big deal for our room. You come play for us, you better be ready to go hit somebody.”

They ought to hand that out to every defensive recruit they’re chasing.

Destroying the divisions to save the schedules

I know most of the attention that’s gone the Big Ten’s way over its new divisional realignment has come in the form of mockery over abandoning Delany’s stupid “Legends” and “Leaders” nomenclature, but the real story for me as how that league has managed in a fairly short period to blow up some of its traditional rivalries, while preserving others.  It’s a real case study.

To catch you up, the Big Ten announced it’s going to a nine-game conference schedule in a couple of years.  In the meantime, the new conference schedule calls for two cross-divisional games, both of which will be scheduled on a rotating basis.  When the league goes to nine games in 2016, the cross-division schedule will increase to three, but all the games will continue to be scheduled on rotation, except for one rivalry game, between Indiana and Purdue, that will be protected.

The conference managed to protect some longstanding rivalries on an annual basis, like Wisconsin/Minnesota and Michigan/Ohio State, by putting those schools in the same division – so much for trying to grease the skids for that special matchup in the conference championship – but the oldest trophy rivalry is gone, and so are a few others.  (But, hey, welcome back one!)

I’m not saying there are any big lessons to be learned here.  There’s no way to please everyone as you go from a round-robin arrangement to a cross-divisional one.  And Delany has chosen the particularly messy course of division re-jiggering with this last round, as opposed to what the SEC did.  But it could have been worse.

Which has me wondering – could the SEC do something similar that would work?

You’d have to put the two Mississippi schools in the same division, maybe along with Arkansas, TAMU and Missouri, none of which have any historical rivalries with SEC teams, but do at least have geographic cohesiveness and some historical common ties.  The reason you’d have to do that on one side is because you’d have to put Alabama in the same division with its two oldest rivals, Auburn and Tennessee, which in turn would require Georgia’s presence for Auburn and then Florida would have to be a part of it for the Cocktail Party.  Vanderbilt would go along with Tennessee and that puts you at six teams.

That leaves Kentucky, LSU and South Carolina left to sort out in the mix.  I’ll leave you to take that where each needs to go, but the bottom line is that by moving the two Alabama schools eastwards, the conference could save a bunch of rivalry games and still get the benefit of rotating the cross-divisional ones.  It sure makes staying with an eight-game conference schedule more palatable.

The talent gap in Georgia closes.

Really, isn’t that the best way to make lemonade out of the lemons otherwise known as Georgia Tech’s NFL draftee numbers… er, number?  I mean, the Dawgs have eight kids selected, the Jackets have no picks, so wouldn’t that mean the 2013 rosters are more balanced?  Amirite?

Heck, even Mark Bradley won’t swallow that one.  Tech is getting killed in recruiting and there’s not enough genius in the Genius to make up for that.  Attitude in a head coach will only take you so far – shoot, James Franklin’s got that, but the reason there isn’t an AD who wouldn’t take Franklin over Johnson at this point is because Franklin can recruit kids and hire competent defensive coaches.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for that certain combination of schadenfreude and sour grapes that marks the Tech fan, StingTalk, as always, is your go-to destination.