Grab a plate and dig in.
- What do you get if you marry college athletics revenue to player win shares? A lot of underpaid basketball players.
- Brice Ramsey feels more comfortable this year.
- Georgia Tech’s assistant athletic director for communications and public relations thinks Twitter could be great for driving revenue and donations. Any port in a storm, brother.
- Speaking of Twitter, in hindsight, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
- The receivers are too good for this, but there are times when I can’t help but wonder if Georgia should just load up blockers on the line and pound the crap out of other teams this season with the running game.
- Andy Staples has a good piece on how coaches who don’t land five-stars after five-stars have to project futures for the recruits they do get.
- And while I think the recruiting services do a decent job evaluating talent overall, it always amuses me when they don’t see kids like Todd Gurley and Amari Cooper coming.
- And here’s the latest “we’re from the government and we’re here to help” department. Hey, it’s bipartisan!
Get The Picture 
#AsktheGenius #WhatTimeCanYouBeHere #FourHotdogsAndACoke
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Recruiting is a strange beast all the way around.
I guess, in theory, these guys should have been five stars, top of their class recruits, but they were four star players. It’s not like they were totally overlooked, so I will give the recruiting “gurus” a pass this time.
(On the other hand, Cooper was lightly recruited, if I recall, and probably didn’t get his fourth star until his Bama commit.)
(Which brings up another point: there’s no doubt in my mind that some of these players have their overall ratings boosted by who has recruited and/or offered them.)
Have a good day,
BD
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That article was a little hard to take. Isn’t it convenient that Shurburtt’s two poster children for missed evaluations were four star guys? He chose to publicize their misses on two guys that they didn’t miss by much. Surely, he could have chosen some guys where they really whiffed to make his point.
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“Which brings up another point: there’s no doubt in my mind that some of these players have their overall ratings boosted by who has recruited and/or offered them”
Absolutely. Which brings up yet ANOTHER point: If you want to get a more objective opinion for how good a recruit is, just look at how many legit programs have offered him.
I also think that Rivals gives a slight boost to commits to schools that have a lot of subscribers, but that’s another discussion entirely..
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Agree totally…and then some schools don’t offer until they see that other school have offered. 🙂
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“Speaking of Twitter, in hindsight, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”
Not only that, #AskJameis was a terrible time for Jameis and our thoughts and prayers go out to him and Publix workers everywhere with special thanks to the Tallahassee Police Department SVU and Willie Meggs
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I don’t know what the recruiting services expect of themselves, both Gurley and Cooper were highly rated recruits. They are a victim of trying to quantify specifics to something that is simply subjective. It is no different when a pre-season (or mid-season) poll has some team rated #11 and they end up rated #1 at season’s end. There are simply too many factors that can change with a 17 year old’s development, or a team who has yet to have summer camp (injuries, suspensions, academics, family issues, other team’s development, etc.)
I think “tier ranking” is a better approach with a recognition that individuals and players can more one tier up or down based on what plays out. Gurley and Cooper would have both been included in the Group 1 Tier of players coming out of HS and whether Keith Marshall or Gurley ended up having the better career would be a surprise at all. And it wouldn’t be a total shocker if Marshall has a better NFL career than Gurley depending on what comes next. Divide recruits and team rankings into three tiers, that is all that is needed. When you think of people you meet, you just say they are good folks, you don’t rank them by all the people you know.
I agree that Auburn would not have been ranked in the top tier, or maybe the second tier going into last season so they ending up being a complete surprise but that is the exception, and we all know some sort of divine intervention occurred in the UGA game. But most years it is pretty easy to guess who the “playas” are, just a matter of the exact order and that is why the need for specificity is what screws things up. We will never know who was, or is, the best; we just know who the top group includes.
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Problem with all the recruiting services, now and in the past, is that on-the-field stats and measurements, plus college interest produce stars.
Recruiting services have no interest in rating character or “development potential”
For the most part the recruiting services exist to serve the lunatic fringe of the football fan base. While I don’t doubt the services are of some assistance to some college recruiters, the need to “rank” recruits is market driven and meaningless once the ball is snapped.
Probably the most unfortunate side effect of all this drivel is the unbelievable pressure it puts on kids to perform up to Jamie Newberg’s expectations, and the unrealistic expectations a high rank gives to that segment of a school’s fan base which is interested in these things.
The idea Georgia recruited, say….Matt Stafford or Aaron Murray or Todd Gurley because of what Jamie Newberg (as an example) said about them is so far removed from reality it is ludicrous.
Recruiting services have become as institutionalized as pop music charts and have about the same relationship to the quality of what they measure…none.
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“NCAA has hired new lobbyists and is considering whether to seek an antitrust exemption to help with ongoing and future litigation.”
NEW lobbyists?
With the NCAA’s track record at consideration of anything the idea this lobbying effort will produce anything but confusion is almost certain.
Am I wrong to suspect the only thing that, ultimately, will keep the NCAA afloat is an anti-trust exemption?
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NCAA Pays Lobbyists in Hopes of Never Paying Athletes
http://lobbyblog.com/ncaa-pays-lobbyists-in-hopes-of-never-paying-athletes
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP, does it for the children
“The firm will lobbying on issues related to the ‘welfare of student-athletes,’ according to the lobbying registration….
BHFS D.C. managing partner Marc Lampkin and lobbyist Al Mottur will take a lead on the NCAA client work, while Brooks Brunson and Elizabeth Gore will also work on the account.
Lampkin is a veteran GOP strategist with close ties to House Republican leadership, while Mottur is a veteran of Capitol Hill and the Federal Communications Commission.
The NCAA also has long had in-house lobbying operation but has no outside firms in recent years. It spent $180,000 on lobbying in 2013.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/ncaa-hire-lobbyist-national-collegiate-athletic-association-107830.html
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Please send this to the judge, thank you very much.
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$180K in lobbying expenses isn’t lobbying, it is spitting in the ocean. Not surprised the NCAA doesn’t know how to do that well either.
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Brownstein et al will do little more for the NCAA than provide an expensive Baghdad Bob impersonation.
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Yes but they will be easily identifiable and well-attired Bagdad Bobs seeking to separate money from the NCAA as lobbying fees because the one thing the NCAA has a lot of is money
“You know you’re getting close to the spectacular white office building at 101 Constitution Avenue when you start seeing lobbyists buzzing around like bees near a hive. With a little practice, the lobbyists are easy to distinguish from lesser drones: They are the ones who look like caricatures of prosperous men, dressed in a way that is no doubt meant to suggest ‘affluent businessman’ but in which no proper businessman in Chicago or Kansas City would ever, in fact, dress himself. In most of the United States, male office-wear tends toward the drab; the lobbyist, by contrast, fancies himself Beau Brummell. He appears to choose each element of his ensemble for its conspicuous priciness, but to give no thought to the whole. You can spot him in the field by his perfectly fitted thousand-dollar suits, usually in blue; his strangely dainty shoes; his shirts, which are often the kind that come in pink or blue with white collars and cuffs, the latter of which display cufflinks of the large and shiny variety; his vivid, shimmering ties, these days preferably in orange or lavender; his perfect haircut; the tiny flag attesting to his perfect patriotism on his perfect lapel; his perfect tan.”
http://www.pierretristam.com/Bobst/library/wf-402.htm
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I don’t think our offensive line is good enough to just pound the ball when they know what’s coming, even with the talent of our running backs. Hutson and the wideouts have to be big this year to keep the runners going.
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“[J]ust load up blockers on the line and pound the crap out of other teams” I’ll take Dooley ball for $800 Alex! We drank a lot of bourbon and spent a lot of time on the tracks watching just exactly that. With guys like Herschel and Gurley in the backfield the results can be sublime.
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+1.
I’d love to do that. LOVE to do it, especially to teams like Auburn. But I don’t think we have the front to do it.
That said, I do hope to be good at running the ball, and hope to be very physical. I just don’t think we can line up and pound our SEC opponents. But boy would I love to be wrong about that.
~~~
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I don’t know about Cooper because I don’t follow the recruiting of other teams all that much but with Gurley….he was rated a 3 star virtually the whole recruiting cycle and was not upgraded to a 4 star until the very end. Given his size, speed and what he did in HS as a football player and track athlete I think those guys just can’t believe they did not have him as a 5 star. Some guys were even talking about him being a better safety or LB prospect. I do remember reading an article quoting his HS coach as saying if Todd was not a 5 star back then he would be afraid to see what one looked liked because Todd was the best he had ever seen.
The ask Jameis thing was just pure gold. Some of my favorites were…
Jameis…does eating crab legs make you scrong?
Jameis…who protects you more the FSU OL or the Talley PD?
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Yes–Thank you Senator for posting the #askjameis link. I hadn’t seen it and I am crying. I haven’t been more entertained by Twitter since the crab legs incident.
My favorites:
“Which sentence do you think you’ll complete first, one in English, or one for a crime you’ve committed?”
“Were the 4 hardest years of your life 5th grade?”
“When is the Rosetta Stone “How To Understand Jameis” coming out?”
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Senator, I think your idea about running a smashmouth O is a good one. The question mark is the O-line but as a former guard I can attest that O-line play is as much mental as physical. If the O-linemen are told that the team is going to consistently run the ball, they will make the commitment to whip the guy in front of them consistently. Plus, when the O is successfully running the ball, the other team’s D has to cheat up to stop it and the receivers get open making the passing game easier, so the receivers will get their yards, too.
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The first 3 & out late in the 2nd Q when the Dawgs are up by 8 or more points and the Richt “foot off the gas peddle” and Bobo playcalling meme’s will be out in full force.
…I’d probably be agreeing.
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By the way, GT is giving, that is FREE, extra tickets to the Wofford game. Don’t even have to get the 4 hot dogs and cokes.
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To its current season ticket holders I meant to add.
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current season ticket holder, you meant.
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You get the 4 cokes and hotdogs – those are free too. Plus, cpj will cuss out any player you point at, and their OL will take out the knees of anyone you don’t like.
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Both of them?
h/t Mudcats Impala…
August 4, 2014 at 11:53 AM
Meanwhile… Saturday on the Flats….
http://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/lt/lt_cache/thumbnail/615/img/photos/20
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oops, at first it was thought that they both asked for refunds but when all season ticket holders were asked to raise their hands….
still h/t the Chevy
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LOL. Good one.
~~~
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