Fully rehabilitated

Blink fast, or you might miss it.

It's official: Jameis Winston's suspension from the #FSU baseball team is over. He has completed his 20 hours of community service.

— Natalie Pierre (@Natalie_Pierre) May 4, 2014

Shit, in Athens it can take longer than that to get bonded out of jail.

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The receiver game: wait and see.

Speaking of receivers, here’s how Seth Emerson describes the post-spring pecking order in Athens:

– Mitchell, Bennett and Conley are the top tier.
– Scott-Wesley makes it four in the top tier when he’s healthy, which he and Mitchell are expected to be. But Scott-Wesley is also facing a one-game suspension.
– Reggie Davis is the next in line, and is the fifth and probably final receiver right now virtually guaranteed to be part of the rotation.
– Towns, Rumph and Erdman have played before, and are the most likely to earn the last spot or two in the rotation.
– Tibbs and LeMay should have been in that mix, but didn’t use the spring to make that big jump. Johnson did, and now the walk-on will be a factor this preseason.
– The freshmen will get a chance as well this summer. McKenzie, a small but dynamic speedster, and Rico Johnson, who is a year older after spending this past year in prep school, are the most likely to sneak in.

Lots of names and lots of uncertainty there, mainly because of health questions.  Based on what I saw at G-Day, Davis looked like he’d made the biggest leap from last year and seems poised to be a real contributor.  Johnson may be the next McGowan, who knows?  But so much is up in the air until Mitchell and Scott-Wesley can show what they’re capable of this summer.  As Bobo says, “Davis played sparingly last year but we’re gonna need him to step up. Bennett, Conley, Mitchell, and Justin was just kinda coming into his own. But those are really the four guys that have produced in games. So we need more than four.”

If those two are truly healthy, they will need more than four.  But not that many.

Speed kills getting receivers up to speed.

Bill Belichick (h/t Chris Brown) has noticed another trend the HUNH hath wrought.  College receivers aren’t as NFL-ready as they used to be.  That’s because you can have the play fast, or you can have the play detailed.  But you can’t have both:

“I’d say there’s a lot of teams and a lot of players we’ve talked to in the last couple of years where … I don’t want to say it’s common, but certainly more common,” said Patriots coach Bill Belichick. “Run a go, run an in, run an out, you know. Run a bubble screen. Whatever it is. It’s given independently to a number of players. Maybe four, five, six or seven different components of a play. Yeah. I’d say that’s a little different than the traditional call a play, we all have an assignment, we all go out and run the play. I think that’s becoming more and more common in college football.”

It’s become a challenge for NFL teams to get those receivers up to speed as rookies.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Belichick said. “Because they haven’t done it. I’m not saying they can’t do it. It’s just that in some cases, they haven’t done it. You’re teaching a player a concept. We call a play within that play, 11 people know what to do. In a lot of cases, that’s not what they’re doing now (in college).

“Conceptually, though, it’s a definite difference between hearing one thing and running a play and hearing another thing and running a play and just hearing your assignment and not getting the concept of the play. It’s just different. When you’re trying to run plays as fast as you can run them without a huddle (in college), as soon as the play is over, run to the line and run the next play, it’s obviously faster to just give the guy an assignment rather than run the whole play and try and communicate the whole play and get everybody to do it. Teams that are running those types of offenses in college have obviously developed a system that facilitates a faster tempo. And that’s part of it. It’s something we are having to, I don’t want to say adapt to, but it’s different than some of the traditional play calling we’re familiar with.”

At some point, wouldn’t you figure this becomes factored into how five-star receivers get recruited by colleges still running pro-style offenses?

A J.J. Green in time…

Given how reluctant the coaches have been to give the nod to start to any of the defensive players, how much significance should we give this comment from Coach Sherrer?

Kevin Sherrer, who coaches the star position and Sam outside linebackers, said the 5-foot-9, 187-pound Green is “probably the frontrunner” for the starting spot at star coming out the spring.

Testy, testy

The O’Bannon plaintiffs are ready to go to trial.  The NCAA, understandably, is in no such hurry.  And it’s gotten some support from an unlikely source…

On Friday night, lawyers for Keller — a former Nebraska and Arizona State quarterback — filed a motion that said that if the claims are not separated at trial, they want to delay the trial. The NCAA has previously sought that as well. The Keller plaintiffs are attempting to protect their claims against the NCAA from overlapping litigation.

The Keller plaintiffs said they can be ready for trial in six months once U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken lifts a stay that has prevented discovery from being accumulated. If Wilken decides the antitrust case won’t impact the right-of-publicity trial, the Keller plaintiffs said they have no position on the NCAA’s request to delay the trial.

The videogame-related claims are “not ripe for trial” because discovery is not completed, the Keller plaintiffs wrote. They said the O’Bannon plaintiffs cannot “adequately represent” the interests of the Keller plaintiffs because the two classes have “divergent interests.”

… and from more likely sources.

Also Friday, eight media companies — CBS, Fox, Turner, ABC, NBC Universal, A&E, NPR and Discovery — filed a brief supporting the NCAA in its attempt to appeal a First Amendment issue for the trial. The companies, along with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, are jointly trying to file the brief to persuade Wilken to let the NCAA appeal a First Amendment issue to the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals.

Wilken ruled on April 11 that the First Amendment does not guarantee media organizations unlimited rights to broadcast entire college football and basketball games — a defense used by the NCAA. She concluded that the question of whether athletes hold any ownership rights in their athletic performances depends on whether the athletes validly transferred their rights of publicity to another party, such as a school, conference or broadcaster.

All of this sounds like it’s going to Donald Remy’s head.  He’s getting a little more feisty.

In a statement released Saturday, NCAA chief legal officer Donald Remy said, “All interested parties other than Mr. Hausfeld and his O’Bannon clients agree: the antitrust case scheduled for trial on June 9 should not go forward with videogame-related claims that are now at risk of being tried two or three times. The unanimity of opinion, including not just defendants but also all non-O’Bannon plaintiffs, demonstrates that granting the motion to sever would avoid prejudice and massive, unnecessary duplication of effort. Mr. Hausfeld and his clients are alone in their opposition to the motion, and their amped up rhetoric should be dismissed for what it is: a smokescreen to distract from the merits and promote their PR agenda.”

Speaking of amped up rhetoric, maybe Remy would like to turn his attention to Jim Brown.  He’s inviting it:  “I wanted to say it as harsh as I could, because I want them to come at me in any way they want to…”  Then again, if there’s a 77-year old man I wouldn’t want to mess with, it’s Jim Brown.

You know what they say about first impressions.

Alabama athletics director Bill Battle, on his reaction to Saban hiring Junior:

My first reaction, because I didn’t know Lane, wasn’t very positive. I talked to Coach Saban about it. He asked me if I had ever met him and I said no. He said, “Why don’t you meet him?” He had him in for a visit, I spent about an hour with him and I was very impressed. I followed up and talked to several different people. I called (athletics director) Pat Haden at Southern California. I talked to David Blackbird, who’s the AD at UT-Chattanooga. David was the compliance officer for football at Tennessee when Lane was there. They both told me that they thought he would be a great fit here, and I got really comfortable with it.

So the last guy who fired the Laner and the guy who had to keep up with his regular brushes with secondary violations at Tennessee told you he’d be a great fit at Alabama?  Maybe you should consider the source, man.