The tidbits just keep on coming.
- Hutson Mason checks at number five in the Ledger-Enquirer’s SEC quarterback power rankings.
- And Todd Gurley is a lofty second on this list of the top 100 players in college football.
- Clemson’s defensive coordinator on recruiting in the South: “If you’re not always recruiting, somebody else is. “
- Over at the Big 12, Bob Bowlsby is pondering ways to modernize the recruiting process.
- Nick Saban thinks the selection committee should pick all the bowl pairings.
- Damn you, selection committee, for making me agree with a Kevin Scarbinsky column.
- Patrick Garbin has some thoughts about Georgia’s current attempt to straighten out its special teams.
- Steve Shaw, ladies and gentlemen. He’ll be here all week; try the veal.
- Not surprisingly, Jimbo Fisher disagrees with his SEC counterparts on when to schedule an early signing day.
Get The Picture 
This selection committee is what you get when you allow viewership to trump the right thing to do. The WWL wants material for its talking heads to drone on about and where they can have a show to unveil the ranking. I hate it and I’m sure the members now are thinking, “I agreed to do this to spend every week in Grapevine, Texas?”
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Penn Wagers would penalize Shaw for that comment. 15 yards.
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I know they have to do it as part of their job, but I don’t envy anyone doing QB rankings for the SEC this year.
Also, really interesting research by Garbin. I think that’s something we all kinda knew in the back of our minds, but I had not seen it fleshed out in black and white like that.
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Steve Shaw has entered Lewis Grizzard territory. “Damn Steve, I don’t believe I’d have told that!”.
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If his statement were true, I’d laugh and say he was spot on. But they don’t even penalize the bad ones anymore. So many egregious holds get totally ignored.
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I thought Shaw was the best referee in the SEC, if not the country. UNTIL, that is, the game in 2002 vs. South Carolina.
Carolina was driving late for the winning TD, and were on our 20-30 yard line or so. On a big down, they go back to pass, and Pollack has again beaten his man. They hadn’t been able to block him all day, and they had tried everybody they had, at least four or five different guys, to no avail. Pollack was almost single-handedly shutting them down.
The game is on the line. On this play, Pollack has beaten his man to the outside, is completely past him, and is converging on the QB. So the Carolina man, behind Pollack, reaches out and puts his forearm/arm around Pollack’s neck, and latches on. And Pollack is dragging the guy with him to the QB. Doesn’t get there in time, of course, dragging almost 300 pounds behind him.
But there is NO CALL. And the whole thing happened right in front of Steve Shaw. The replay shows him eyeballing the play. But NO CALL. It’s as if Shaw had decided there’d be no more holdings calls on guys trying to block Pollack, that that wouldn’t decide the game.
And if you recall, without the RB’s fumble in front of the goal line a minute later, we lose that game, and probably the SEC Title and Sugar Bowl with it.
~~~
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That’s it. Now I hate him.
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Good story, I don’t doubt it at all. I understand how difficult it can be to see all the action on the internal part of the LOS but the flagrant, take downs on the rushing DE, or blitzing backer seems to be ignored more and more these days. Not so much at the time when Pollack was playing, but in the last 5 years I see it several times a game. I can understand how they are slacking off the menial holds in the middle of the line but the glaring open field grabs need to be enforced, and consistently called.
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Yeah, I suspect it had been decided at some point in the game (I suspect halftime) that holding Pollack wouldn’t decide the game, because they would be calling them virtually every play.
Remember, this is when Pollack was just coming out. Nobody really knew about him. I had picked him as the breakout player of the year in an OP on the forum where I resided at the time, based on his play at DT the previous year. It wasn’t the same as what we saw in 2002, but he nevertheless jumped out at me on the film. But most Georgia people didn’t know who he was.
So Carolina didn’t know who he was either. And that’s why they played so many guys trying to block him, because they had no prepared scheme or plan to deal with him. So he was unblockable the whole game, and if every hold had been called, the game – with the weather delay – would undoubtedly have set an all-time record for length.
And South Carolina had nothing to lose. They had to try and hold him somehow, and hope they could get away with most of them. But as it turned out, there finally came a point where they were getting away with them all.
My problem with it, is this decision (to totally ignore the holds on Pollack) could easily have decided the game, in favor of South Carolina. And almost did. There is something terribly wrong with that.
If there’s going to be an injustice enabled by the officials toward a team – in this case Georgia – then they certainly shouldn’t decide the game in favor of their opponent. And that is what Shaw & Crew came within a whisker of doing.
~~~
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Shaw is the SEC’s nominee for the Peter Principle Award. He should have stayed on the field in his zebra outfit. Damned good ref, terrible leader. I had hopes he would raise SEC officiating from the cellar but he excuses their mistakes every time he speaks out.
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This year, Georgia is addressing special teams problems which have been an issue since 2006.
Better late than never, I say.
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The article gets to the heart of the matter and basically says what many on this blog have been saying for years: it’s a COACHING problem. Whose fault is that? As much as anything else CMR’s failure to even acknowledge the problem, much less address it, is what has caused me to lose confidence in the guy. That and the 2010 Auburn game.
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Steve Shaw, rather jokingly or not, verbally exercising his ability to determine good or bad is telling for someone who is supposed to be practicing the religion that is the NCAA rule book.
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I stand with Lamont Sanford. Down There VVVVVVV
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A little surprise at #65 on the Top 100 Players list as well. Not sure I agree with it but nice for another Dog to be recognized.
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Garbin’s history is, as always, invaluable–still so otherworldly to me for UGA to have such lousy ST play. I hope he shared it with CMR. In fact, I’d like to know how many ST TDs, blocked punts, blocked kicks, etc, UGA had on the plus side from 70 to ’05 vs. last 8 years.
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I think the Shaw did right by himself with this quote. His first draft was much more honest:
“There are 2 types of O-Lineman Good holders and Bad holders. We penalize the Bad holders. We can easily tell the difference between the two, because the good holders are only ever on the team we want to win–this is how we define impartiality in SEC officiating.”
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“There is too much post-season shared revenue at stake for the SEC office to not have a say in the outcome of its games. Our bonuses are based on it. This is why our interpretation of the holding and targeting rules are so important. All SEC programs benefit financially from it.”
“Roll Tide.”
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From CBSSports…
2015 (Senior’s) TOP NFL DRAFT PROSPECTS: QUARTERBACK (UPDATED 5/30/2014)
quote:
#1…Bryce Petty…. Baylor rSr… 6-2… 230
#2…Sean Mannion….. Oregon State rSr… 6-4… 220
#3…Taylor Kelly….. Arizona State rSr… 6-1… 204
#4…Andrew Manley….. Eastern Illinois rSr… 6-3… 225
#5…Chuckie Keeton(Injured)….. Utah State Sr… 6-1… 200
#6…Hutson Mason… QB…. Georgia rSr… 6-2… 202
Bo Wallace…11th…
Dylan Thompson…17th…
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/draft/prospectrankings/2015/QB 😉
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