Bummer, Gator dude.

Mmm, mmm, mmm, that orange and blue Kool-Aid must have been mighty tasty.  Josh Evans knows why his Gator mates didn’t show up for the Sugar Bowl.

“I think we had a lot of distractions,” he said. “People were feeling sorry for themselves they weren’t in the national championship. Personally, myself, I don’t feel like we all bought in as a team for that game and really gave it our all.

“We didn’t play Gator football – and you saw the result.”

That dream was over before the SECCG was played.  December must have been a helluva long month for those guys.

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A lean, mean fighting machine?

Something weird is going on with the post-spring practice weights.

Of Georgia’s 71 returning contributors and early enrolling freshmen listed below, only 22 were listed as having gained weight from the 2013 pre-spring roster to the post-spring roster.

A total of 44 players were listed as having lost weight, with some members of the offensive line recording the biggest drops in recent months.

How big?  Pretty freakin’ big:

OL John Theus — 298 — (-11)
OL Watts Dantzler — 307 — (-13) 

OL Zach DeBell — 273 — (-20)

OL Xzavier Ward — 278 — (-21)

OL Austin Long — 287 — (-37)

Now maybe this is about remaking bodies based on some new S&C philosophy and maybe we’ll see much of the lost weight regained by August.  At least I hope so, because I don’t think any team is going to survive life in the SEC with a right tackle whose weight is south of 280.

On the other hand, Gurley at 232 has the potential to be one scary dude.

Suck it up, boys.

Bret Bielema sees all those no-huddle attacks spreading (see what I did there?) across the SEC and has… wait for it… health concerns.  No, not about his defensive coordinator’s career, but about the players.  No, really.

“Not to get on the coattails of some of the other coaches, there is a lot of truth that the way offensive philosophies are driven now, there’s times where you can’t get a defensive substitution in for 8, 10, 12 play drives,” Bielema said. “That has an effect on safety of that student-athlete, especially the bigger defensive linemen, that is really real.”

Shit’s getting really real there.  His solution is a rules change that would allow a 15-second substitution period after every first down to allow defenses to make substitutions.  (Bielema, by the way, is a member of the Playing Rules Oversight Panel.)

Needless to say, some of his peers who are invested in the faster paced game are not exactly enamored with that.

“I’m not for that at all,” Freeze said. “If the offense doesn’t sub, the defense shouldn’t sub, and that’s the way the rules are.”

The article cites Saban, Spurrier and Muschamp in support of Bielema’s position.  That makes sense in light of Bill Connelly’s post on offensive pace in the 2012 season.  Take a look and you’ll find Alabama, Florida and South Carolina running in the bottom quarter of the national pack in that department and Wisconsin, Bielema’s old stomping grounds, only slightly faster.

I would love to hear Mark Richt’s take on this.  Georgia ranks 98th on Bill’s chart, but Bobo does mix in some no-huddle stuff.  And don’t forget that Richt, technically speaking, was ahead of the game with no-huddle, only to see the conference shut it down.

Anyway, I don’t see Bielema’s crusade going anywhere.  And as Spurrier points out, there’s an obvious way to deal with the problem:

“Of course, the answer is for the other team’s offense to stay on the field and get the other fast-paced team stay on the sideline,” Spurrier said.

Wednesday morning buffet

Lots of good stuff today…

• The NCAA is considering an accounting trick – counting student fees not only as subsidy, but also as revenue generated by the athletics department – to make schools’ bottom lines look better.  I’m sure students who have to take out loans to pay those mandatory fees think that’s just peachy.
• There are many reasons why this isn’t such a great idea.  But I can’t help but wonder if it would make money.  If it did, at least for some schools, and they felt they needed the additional cash flow, how long to you think it would take for them to launch?
• If the NCAA losing the O’Bannon case isn’t such a big deal, then why are people like Jim Delany predicting the apocalypse?
• And while I’m on the subject of O’Bannon, hell hath no fury like a shoe marketer scorned.
• Is it just me, or is Athlon’s coaches talk feature a lot less snarky since Tuberville left the SEC?
• The Division I-A Faculty Athletic Representatives come out against expanding the playoffs beyond four schools.  I’m sure that will make a huge difference in the long run.
• Bruce Feldman lists the ten softest non-conference schedules of 2013.  All the usual suspects are there.
• What caused the Alabama defense’s statistical drop in the second half of last season?

The art of being a jerk

Turns out Mike Gundy is even better at it than I first gave him credit for – he lifted most of the transfer restrictions on Wes Lunt, though not publicly, but did it so late in the process that Lunt had lost contact with the coaches he’d had previous relationships with so that Gundy’s apparent change of heart had no effect.  Well played, sir.

All that being said, the lesson here is that if you’re an OSU player who wants to transfer and Gundy even hints that he’s prepared to gum up the works on that, go to the media with your problem early and often.  And if you’re a coach who isn’t named Randy Edsall going up against Gundy on the recruiting trail, I think you know what to say.