You can change the coaches, you can change the quarterbacks, you can change the schemes and it won’t matter one bit. Georgia Tech football will remain just a tick north of mediocre.
Some programs aren’t built to be conference and national contenders but have found a groove at or just outside the Top 25 that has produced regular bowl appearances and just enough victories to keep coaches in place for a long time.
That last part is music to my ears. Long may the genius run.
Filed under Georgia Tech Football
It looks like Bert’s done a pretty crappy sales job with the 10-second substitution proposal.
Man, and it used to be that a “do it for the children” pitch made for a slam dunk. I wonder if he’s still as certain as he was that the rule will pass March 6.
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UPDATE: More details here.
Filed under Strategery And Mechanics, The NCAA
Here’s a classic “one of these is unlike the others” moment for ya’.
Filed under It's Just Bidness
I do like this aside:
The bigger concerns surround post-game drunk driving and the possibility for high levels of intoxication, especially at football games, where some sections of the stadium are known for having a consistently high level of intoxicated fans who are disruptive and have to leave the game, some times because they need medical attention.
If they’re intoxicated when they get there…
Filed under It's Just Bidness
I can’t think of a better rebuttal to those anti-gay bills being considered in certain portions of the country than this.
Former television college football analyst Craig James is complaining to the state that his firing by Fox Sports Southwest was an act of religious discrimination.
In a statement issued Tuesday by the Plano, Texas-based Liberty Institute, James alleges a national Fox Sports spokesman told The Dallas Morning News that James was terminated from Fox Sports Southwest for religious beliefs against same-sex marriage.
I didn’t know that being a consummate asshole was a religious preference.
Filed under Political Wankery, The Honorable Craig James
Evidently, Dee Ford polished his smack talking skills under the watchful eye of Brian VanGorder.
At least he got something out of that season.
Filed under Auburn's Cast of Thousands
I’ve touched on this before, but the idea that the SEC’s loss of so much experienced talent at the quarterback position going into this season may lead to a defensive renaissance needs to be put in context. And that context ain’t that pretty.
The last couple of seasons only continued a trend toward more explosive offense and away from the suffocating defense that was the SEC’s trademark for many years. Just a few seasons ago, nearly every SEC defense ranked among the nation’s top half in terms of yards allowed. That’s no longer the case, as about half of the league’s defenses trended toward the bottom in 2013 — with Arkansas (76th), Missouri (81st), Tennessee (83rd), Auburn (86th), Kentucky (91st) and Texas A&M (109th) all ranking 75th or worse nationally in total defense.
Some of those teams generally sucked, sure, but you’ve also got your two division winners in that group. (And no Todd Grantham. But I digress.) How much of that development can you attribute to great quarterbacking and how much to a broader issue of defensive quality?
Ching thinks that it’s not your father’s SEC anymore and the offenses will still run ahead of the defenses.
Getting rid of some great quarterbacks will certainly help improve those numbers, but this is no longer the smashmouth, pound-the-run league that it once was. It’s not as simple to defend what today’s offenses throw at you as it was during the I-formation days of yore, and several SEC defenses have a long way to go before anyone would consider them competent at containing such attacks.
You have Gus Malzahn’s ground-based spread at Auburn, which led the nation with 328.3 rushing yards per game and nearly carried the Tigers to a BCS crown. There’s Missouri’s version that featured one of the league’s top rushing attacks and some dangerous (and huge) weapons at wideout. Kevin Sumlin’s spread at Texas A&M obviously benefited from having Manziel as the triggerman, but the Aggies are still going to post big numbers even without Johnny Football.
And you’ve still got versatile offensive schemes such as those at Ole Miss, South Carolina and Georgia — all of which will start senior quarterbacks — that will almost certainly continue to produce on the ground and through the air. Wild cards LSU, Florida and Mississippi State also have the potential to be impressive on offense depending on how their quarterbacks and young skill players develop.
It’s the wide array of offensive schemes that are the big challenge to conference defenses now. To succeed over the course of a season, you’ve got to be able to go from handling the HUNH you see from Auburn, Ole Miss and TAMU (all different in philosophy) to the pro style stuff that’s Alabama’s, LSU’s and Georgia’s bread and butter and anything in between. That calls for having enough quality personnel to be versatile. Yeah, teams in the conference recruit very well, but well enough?
Filed under SEC Football, Strategery And Mechanics
Interesting bit in this Dennis Dodd piece about the NCAA’s quest to herd its member cats into some sort of cohesive position on dealing with the problem of concussions:
CBSSports.com spoke to Georgia receiver Chris Conley, a member of the NCAA Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. Conley said Georgia practices in full pads once a week during the season unless the Dawgs are preparing for a triple-option opponent or “a team that is known for being physical.”
I’d love to know which teams qualify for that extra full pads practice.
Filed under Georgia Football, The Body Is A Temple
And I, for one, can’t wait to hear his “do as I say, not as I did” response to this.
Filed under Fall and Rise of Bobby Petrino
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