I’m sure Johnny Football had absolutely nothing to do with the astounding profit Texas A&M turned in 2012. (To put that number in perspective, it’s over half of what the rest of the conference put together made.)
Daily Archives: April 9, 2014
This ought to be good.
Ask, and ye shall receive, Coach. This gets my vote.
On the off-chance that your play isn’t selected, perhaps you might want to share it with us here.
Filed under Georgia Football
Thou shalt have no other football gods before me.
I wonder if they use this on the recruiting trail.
Added Thomas, “That’s what my dad calls Coach Saban — the ‘god of college football.’
You gotta admit it’s a step up from being called Satan.
Filed under Nick Saban Rules
Random, tasty G-Day bits
First off, Richt tells us the game format on Saturday will be the same as what we saw last year.
The annual G-Day spring intra-squad game will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday in Sanford Stadium. After Tuesday’s practice, Richt outlined the parameters for the game:
The Red team will consist of the No. 1 offense and the No. 2 defense, while the Black team will have the No. 1 defense and the No. 2 offense. Offensive coordinator Mike Bobo will coach the Red team, and defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt will coach the Black team.
The game will consist of four 12-minute quarters.
“We’ll try to get everybody some reps,” Richt said. “Some guys may start on one side and switch jerseys in the second half.”
The kicking games will work this way, he said: “We will not kick off; we’ll set the ball on the 25 to start drives. Every punt will result in a 35-yard change of field position. If a punt would land inside the 10, then we’ll just bring it out to the 20. We will kick extra points and field goals, but (the defense) will not rush them.”
Also, Chris Conley gets what we’re doing there.
“We approach it just like it’s a game. We don’t really approach it like a practice,” Conley said. “There are people in the stands, you want to show out.”
Yeah, man.
One thing I want to see showing out is Brice Ramsey’s arm strength.
Bobo has told Ramsey that he has the strongest arm since Matthew Stafford.
“He’s told me that I’ve got a good arm, and it’s about the strongest one he’s seen since Stafford,” Ramsey said. “But he tells me every day that a strong arm’s nothing without the mental aspect of football.”
I was looking forward to seeing Ramsey’s high school teammate, J.J. Green, doing a little hitting on Saturday, but he showed up at the last practice hobbling with an ankle injury. Is he out Saturday? Richt thinks Green will play.
Anyone got something else to add? Have at it in the comments.
Filed under Georgia Football
No, and it’s not even close.
This year’s Alabama’s offense, which hasn’t even settled on a starting quarterback yet, is almost as good as an offense that featured not one but two Heisman Trophy winners? Wut?
Even Junior hasn’t made a claim like that.
Filed under Whoa, oh, Alabama
You may say he’s a dreamer.
An early signing day proposal that “… gives football coaches a bit of a break from the worry that their top prospects will not be poached. It does so with the caveat that if circumstances change, the prospect will be free to choose a different institution. It offers an incentive to prospects to resist signing in the early period, and to wait until April to pick a university.”?
Seriously, there’s no way schools and coaches would give kids that kind of flexibility. Too bad, that.
Comments Off on You may say he’s a dreamer.
Filed under Recruiting
Is Tramel Terry Trippin’?
Chip Towers strongly suggests that’s the case.
Don’t be surprised if Tramel Terry ends up moving back to offense by August. Right now nobody’s saying that’s going to happen. But Terry’s recent comments about his progress on the defensive side of the ball hinted that it’s not going great and he didn’t seem very happy.
The redshirt freshman athlete from Goose Creek was moved from receiver to defensive back during bowl practices in December and has been working at safety throughout Georgia’s spring practices.
… Terry’s move to defense came at the behest of former Georgia defensive coordinator Todd Grantham.
“Every practice Coach Grantham would come up to me and say this is where you’re money’s at, this is where you can make it,” Terry recalled. “I looked at the DBs and I’m like, ‘I’m a defensive guy,’ like my body size and all that. I just trusted them. They put me on the defense for the bowl game and I was out there making plays. It was more relaxed. … They were just kind of putting me out there and telling me what to do. Now it’s more like learning. Sometimes I’m hesitant on what I’m doing I’ve just got to keep learning from the coaches and make sure I know everything and I’ll be fine.”
Terry scoffed at the prospect of possibly being utilized on both sides of the ball or as a kick returner, as was once discussed.
“I feel like my hands are full right now,” Terry said. “We’ve got plenty of guys who are capable of doing it. I guess they just want me to be on the field at safety and focus on that. … I’ve just got to become a defensive player.”
And Mike Bobo’s not exactly pushing back hard against the possibility.
Moving safety Tramel Terry back to receiver or somebody else on defense could be discussed.
“That’s something,” Bobo said, “we’ll evaluate probably after spring and let everybody get a fair shot.”
Urgh. I hope we’re not reading stories two or three years from now about how Terry was never been able to find a position at Georgia from which he could contribute.
Filed under Georgia Football
Talk is cheap, chapter two
Larry Scott wants you to know he’s not a bad fellow. Or at least he doesn’t think he’s a bad fellow.
… And let me be clear — I am not defending the status quo. The Pac-12 Conference, of which I have been commissioner since 2009, along with other conferences around the country, have been pressing for NCAA reform that would reflect the evolving needs of student-athletes, allowing for increased academic support, improved student-athlete health care, and enhanced athletic scholarships up to the full cost of attendance. I am confident reform is coming within the NCAA in the next few months, and soon universities will be allowed to provide this additional support for student-athletes.
Keep pressing, Larry. Soon will come any day now. Patience, student-athletes. These things take time. After all, who could have seen the evolving need for improved student-athlete health care coming? Well, other than Walter Byers and every other suit who’s followed his example since… which, now that I think about it, would include you, Larry.
You really want to do something about that union threat? John Infante suggests it wouldn’t be that hard.
The response to the NLRB decision from Scott and other leaders in college athletics has been that reform is necessary, inevitable, and on the horizon, but unions are the wrong way to go about it. All student-athletes have to do is wait, just a few of months according to Scott.
One problem: the leaders of collegiate athletics are running out of time. The NCAA and college athletics will not and maybe cannot fix themselves overnight or all at once. It will be a process of first not getting any worse, then getting better over time. But to have the time to do that, the NCAA and its members need to earn back a sliver of trust that they will follow through.
To do that, they should not wait months or weeks. Larry Scott could get the athletic directors and presidents of the Pac–12 on the phone tomorrow and have them vote to guarantee everything the union is asking for that is allowed under NCAA rules. The conference could make it a requirement that institutions provide these benefits and assurances. They could even agree to provide cost-of-attendance scholarships and outside income opportunities as soon as the NCAA allows them.
The most effective argument against unions is to demonstrate they are unnecessary by providing the protections and improvements a union would fight for without the fight. At the moment, institutions and conferences acting on their own can one-up the union by extending these guarantees to all athletes, including walk-ons and sports other than football.
You’re supposed to be a cutting edge guy, Larry. Maybe it’s time to prove that in some other way than building a television network.
Filed under Look For The Union Label, Pac-12 Football
Talk is cheap, chapter one
Our union of professional football players stands firmly behind anyone who demands to be heard as a team. Every NFL player — past, present, and future — owes a debt of gratitude to our founders: Frank Gifford, Don Shula, Sam Huff and Norm Van Brocklin, who, in 1956, decided that they wanted to negotiate as a team with NFL owners over cleaner clothes, better work rules, better treatment of injuries and better health care. Our collective bargaining agreement today includes better pensions and benefits, safer practices, and injury protections because they fought for and won the ability to bargain and fight as one team.
If the NFLPA really wants to make a difference, it might start by no longer enabling the NFL’s end run around antitrust law by agreeing through collective bargaining to prohibit anyone from playing professional football until he’s more than three years removed from high school. Although venting a little righteous indignation the NCAA’s way doesn’t threaten any union member’s job, so there’s that.
Filed under Look For The Union Label
Name that caption, nerds look better in red and black edition
(photo via Jeanette Kazmierczak/Infinite Productions)
My favorite thing about the making of Chris Conley’s movie has to be this:
Conley reached out to a couple of Star Wars costume clubs, the Georgia Garrison of the 501st Legion and the Georgia Garrison of the Mandalorian Mercs, hoping they’d send one or two people in movie-accurate costumes.
They call Star Wars costume clubs “Garrisons”? Wait a minute… there are organized Star Wars costume clubs? I guess we know what Georgia Tech grads do in their spare time. But I digress.
Back to the matter at hand – give me a caption in the comments, folks.
Filed under Name That Caption
Get The Picture 