Envy and jealousy walks a crooked path.

I was going to cite this post as another reason Georgia’s secondary may not have to do as much heavy lifting this season as we fear, but then I got to this paragraph…

The Gamecocks have some of the best wide receivers you’ll ever see in practice. Of course that’s mostly because they’re playing against a mixture of inexperience and hot garbage at the cornerback position after hotshot recruits Wesley Green and Chris Lammons forgot that they had to meet some basic standards to enroll at South Carolina. I know! I’m just as shocked as you are! To be perfectly fair, there’s probably a pair of admissions waivers with “Green” and “Lammons” written on them underneath a pile of Coors Light cans on Steve Spurrier’s desk in the football offices, but it’s the summer and it’s five o’clock somewhere so why don’t y’all piss on off until August because the HBC is trying to keep a buzz and play a few holes.

… and promptly forgot what I was gonna write.

Man, I can’t touch that.

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Question for Kirk Herbstreit

Do we count this person…

According to an incident report released to the AJC on Monday, UGA Police were dispatched to Rooker Hall in the East Campus Village area of campus in reference to a burglary that occurred in Busbee Hall early Saturday morning. Two female residents who are also UGA athletes reported they were awakened about 7:30 a.m. Saturday when an unknown black male entered their unlocked residence without permission and stole a wallet containing credit cards and an iPhone5 cell phone.

Williamson said an investigation of the incident and previous night’s activities led to the identification of the suspect. By the time the police contacted UGA football administrators, the suspect had already left campus to return to Florida.

… as a future Auburn player if he’s merely a football recruit who was attending a prospect camp and not actually enrolled at Georgia?

Alex, I’ll take “College Football Trends Unlikely To Continue” for $200.

Ready for the 4-team College Football Playoff this season? SEC teams have been for years. #ESPNSEC pic.twitter.com/gBTihE15jK

— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) July 21, 2014

Of course, if I’m wrong about it, they can always remedy the situation by expanding the pool to eight teams.

You know, if it weren’t for the injuries, I bet he’d be first.

Presented without comment.

RB Todd Gurley has been great in two years for @UGAAthletics. #ESPNSEC pic.twitter.com/TFaaravkBN

— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) July 21, 2014

The return of the decided schematic advantage

After all these years, it turns out that it’s been Tom Brady holding back Charlie Weis.  Who knew?

Type “Mark Richt lost control” into Google and you will get roughly 29,000 results.

Here’s something I never thought I’d see appear in print:

Saban and Richt want the same thing when it comes to keeping players on the right track and on the right side of the law. But for at least one day and one offseason, the coach we expected to play the role of disciplinarian was not the one who showed up to take the stage.

Aight.

Who’s running this place, anyway?

Another Media Days, another conference commissioner proclaiming his powerlessness to deal with a problem.

"Enforcement is broken," Bowlsby says. "An understatement to say cheating pays." No infractions comm meeting in over a year. Wow.

— kbohls (@kbohls) July 21, 2014

And whose fault is that, dude?

“If they’re selling our jerseys and playing with us on video games and things of that nature, we should receive something for it.”

ESPN survey of the top 300 high school football recruits in the nation reveals that 60% of them favor a players union and over 86% believe players should receive a stipend.

Hutson Mason and the year of the running back

I’ve touched on it before and it’s been noted elsewhere that with the departure of so many talented quarterbacks from the SEC, the conference is likely to see many teams rely more on their running games.  But it’s worth keeping in mind that even during last season’s Year of the Quarterback, it’s not exactly as if the SEC was a pass-happy league.

SEC teams ran the ball on 57.3 percent of their plays from scrimmage last season. That marked the highest percentage from any of college football’s “Power 5” conferences, edging the Big Ten’s 56.8 percent.

Pac-12 teams ran least, keeping it on the ground only 51.9 percent of the time. SEC champion Auburn ran the ball 71.9 percent of the time. SEC teams ran the ball more than 55 percent of the time in each of the past six seasons.

So, it may be the contrarian in me, but I have this feeling that if we’re looking at a heavier dose of the run from some offenses, those that can still throw the ball with some effectiveness are going to have an advantage taking what defenses will be geared to try to stop.

And that leads me to something I heard Mark Richt say on Sports Center about an hour ago (here’s to the rewards of home recuperation).  Talking about Mason’s chances this year, Richt made a point about it not being simply that his quarterback had been patient and liked being at Georgia.  He stressed that Mason’s a fifth-year senior who’s benefitted from being in the same program, with the same position coach, the same offensive coordinator and the same offensive system the entire time.  There’s something to that, and outside of South Carolina’s Thompson, I’m not sure there’s another starting quarterback in the conference this season who could make the same claim.  Throw in Mason’s surrounding cast, and you may really have something other conference offenses will have a hard time matching.

It’s not really player compensation if it keeps him playing for us.

Cedric Ogbuehi, Texas A&M’s extremely talented offensive tackle, could have gone pro, but elected to come back to school for his senior year.  One reason for that is TAMU agreed to throw upwards of sixty grand into the pot to cover the premium for a loss-of-value insurance policy.

Now, while I find that admirable, I also think it’s pretty obvious that’s nothing the school is going to do every day.  For one thing, the source of funds is limited.

Texas A&M, though, had researched a newer NCAA rule that offered them some flexibility, where the school itself could actually pay the difference out of the Student Assistance Fund, which each school has at its disposal to cover things such as the cost of post-eligibility financial aid, or if a student-athlete can’t afford to travel home in cases of emergency, or if they need a suit to wear to university functions or events like SEC Media Days.

It’s not an unlimited pool, and the NCAA creates its yearly limit for all schools so each has to budget where its money goes for that year. According to the SEC office, last year each of its members allotted $350,000 for the fund.

For another, and more obviously, it’s only the top-notch talent that justifies such an outlay.  (And if you do the math, that’s some outlay – almost 20% of the fund.)

But here’s what I find interesting to consider.  All that talk we heard during the debate about how allowing players to benefit from the market value of their names and likenesses would be bad for team cohesion because some would fetch greater compensation for those than others – how does TAMU stepping in for Ogbuehi like that pose any less of a problem for team unity?  I’m guessing that Coach Sumlin, A&M O-line coach B.J. Anderson, Aggie associate AD for football Justin Moore and veteran director of football operations Gary Reynolds, all of whom visited Ogbuehi and his family to make the insurance pitch, aren’t particularly concerned.