This is from Florida’s offensive line coach.
Now I know where Corrine Brown got her command of the English language from.
Go Gata! Sheesh.
Dominate that bad boy in the comments.
(h/t Andy Staples)
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UPDATE: Twitter, as you can imagine, is having a field day with this.
Filed under Gators, Gators..., Name That Caption
Spring practice in Gainesville is off and running.
… Driskel, still in the early process of learning the new offense, also had some shaky moments, right along with the other quarterbacks. He telegraphed a pass during seven-on-seven and would have thrown a pick six had true freshman cornerback Jalen Tabor not dropped the ball. Behind Driskel, sophomore Skyler Mornhinweg appeared to move ahead of true freshman Will Grier into the No. 2 spot, at least for the day. He was the first one in after Driskel took his reps in drills. Mornhinweg seems to be making good decisions with where to go with the ball, and his passes seem to have much more zip than they did last fall. His experience over Grier, it appears, is becoming a factor. Grier had another solid day. Once again, he was at his best throwing the ball on the short and intermediate routes. Although Driskel, Mornhinweg and Grier are the only scholarship quarterbacks on the roster, there are four walk-ons at the position who are not getting much in the way of reps. Of the four, Jacob Guy seems to be the most natural passer.
By the way, Andreu describes that as part of “another solid practice” for Driskel. Hell, who knows? It might have been, depending on where the bar was set.
Filed under Gators, Gators...
If you’re interested, they’re auctioning off two sideline passes for this year’s G-Day game.
Filed under Georgia Football
If you caught Meet The Press yesterday, you were privileged to see Mark Emmert live down to expectations. Emmert continues to pretend there is some concrete difference between the $2,000 stipend the he would like to see the big conferences hand out and pay for play in general. Charlie Pierce shreds that distinction into tiny pieces.
The star of the proceedings was Mark Emmert, who makes six figures as the head of the NCAA and who works in a $35 million headquarters in Indianapolis, all of which was paid for primarily by the proceeds of unpaid labor. But, I paraphrase.
EMMERT: Well, the gap needs to be closed around the context of being a student at a university. So if we provide the N.C.A.A. members, universities and colleges, provide a young man or a young woman with all the expenses they have, legitimate expenses as a student athlete, including this so-called stipend, right, that extra amount of money.
The “stipend” is the last redoubt of the buffet-grazers who rake in the cash. Unfortunately, once you institute a “stipend” for athletes, that’s the ballgame. You are doing pay-for-play no matter what you choose to call it. And you won’t be able to argue that a $200 a month stipend is all right, but a $2000 stipend is wrong. Not if you want to make sense, anyway.
Like pregnancy, there is no “little bit” to payment. There is no slippery slope here. Instead, you simply step off a cliff.
But I can’t say that Emmert was the individual most detached from reality on the show. That honor would go to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who evidently believes that athletic directors can sit down and reason with the likes of Jimmy Sexton to usher in a better age for all men.
Universities need to tie bonus pay of their coaches and athletics directors more prominently to their college athletes’ academic performance, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said today on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“The incentive structures for coaches, the incentive structures for ADs have to be changed so much more of their compensation is based not upon wins or losses but around academic performance and graduation,” Duncan said. “And university presidents and boards have been very complacent and soft in this issue, and you have to really look at the leadership of universities here.”
The university presidents and boards have followed the wishes of their constituents to the letter. That’s how you wind up with circumstances such as Bruce Pearl being hired at Auburn at $2 million+/year four months in advance of a show cause order being vacated.
Nobody’s paying Nick Saban ungodly sums of money to boost academic performance and graduation rates a decimal point beyond what it takes to keep his players eligible and his program out of APR limbo. And barring government action – fortunately, that wasn’t a shoe Duncan was prepared to drop yesterday – that ain’t gonna change. At least not until the day when ESPN is paying big bucks for the broadcast rights to psychology class.
Filed under Political Wankery, The NCAA
If seeing how much of an effect Pruitt’s simplification of the defense has had is the first thing I’ll be looking for at G-Day, Seth Emerson hits on the second one.
There hasn’t been a real and important quarterback competition for four years on the Georgia football team. Not for starter. Not even for backup.
Now there is one, for the first time since Aaron Murray beat out fellow freshman Zach Mettenberger in the spring of 2010.
It really is going to be a strange feeling watching Bauta and Ramsey go at it. Then again, I’m looking forward to all the expertise that’s bound to be on display in message boards and blog comment threads about how G-Day once again revealed who should be the starter. Unleash the hounds!
Filed under Georgia Football
Allen Kenney is a wee bit irritated with Disney’s… er, um… support for its new broadcast partner.
Whatever the case, it struck me as weird to see an ESPN-owned venture unabashedly cheerleading for an entity that its news division claims to cover objectively. (It’s not just one random tweet either – a look down the account’s timeline reads like a pep rally.) Imagine the NFL Countdown Twitter feed openly pulling for one team in the Super Bowl.
The idea that ESPN is in bed with the people and organizations that it covers isn’t exactly earth-shattering. The Worldwide Leader should have changed its tagline to “conflicts of interest” years ago. But if the Embrace Debaters in Bristol really don’t have any objection to acting as propaganda machines for everyone on Team Disney, get ready for the level of toxicity in college football media to kick into overdrive.
That sound you hear is Edward R. Murrow spinning in his grave.
Lighten up, Francis. The SEC Network has its very own 21st century version of Edward R. Murrow. His name is Paul Finebaum. How much more objective could it get than that?
And if you think that Twitter feed is obnoxious, let me just say that you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Filed under ESPN Is The Devil
Auburn has bumped its salary pool for its nine assistant football coaches by nearly $1 million. Four assistants will make at least a half million dollars a year and no assistant will be paid less than $325,000, and yet…
The Tigers inched closer to Alabama’s figures ($4.463 million) with the latest raises, though the Tide have yet to release updated figures following the season and the arrival of assistant Lane Kiffin.
Nussmeier’s base salary last year was $680,000. Junior should be well north of that number.
Maybe Auburn can catch up with another SEC title.
Filed under Auburn's Cast of Thousands, Nick Saban Rules
SI: But even with injuries, Florida should have made a bowl game, right? It seems inconceivable that the Gators went 4-8.
AH: It seems inconceivable — and yet it happened.
Kinda like the history of the Florida program pre-1990.
Filed under Gators, Gators...
… but it can hone a sense of sarcasm pretty well.
Filed under The NCAA
Get The Picture 