Any little birdies out there willing to chirp?

I’ve heard a few rumors that Jonathan Taylor is visiting Auburn today, but nothing concrete… anybody know something definitive about that?

Not that we’ll be surprised if it’s true, or anything.  Second Chance U, to the rescue.

BREAKING: Todd Gurley isn’t injured.

Give Chris Low credit for bucking the trend.

It’s OK to call Georgia’s Todd Gurley a legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate. Just don’t call him injury-prone.

The Bulldogs’ star tailback was mesmerizing last week with his 293 all-purpose yards and four touchdowns in the 45-21 win over Clemson. The only semblance of a question about Gurley coming into the season was whether or not he could stay healthy, something he was well aware of this summer when I asked him about it.

“People are always going to have something to say if it’s negative,” Gurley said. “You could run the ball 100 times and fumble once, and they’re going to talk about the fumble. It’s football. People get hurt.

“Peyton Manning got hurt. So did Tom Brady and Adrian Peterson. Stuff happens. You just come back even stronger.”

One game into the 2014 season, Gurley has come back stronger than ever…

Hope he’s still saying that twelve games into the 2014 season.  I expect Gurley’s going to give him every chance to do so.

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Having a running game makes you smarter.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m probably reading way more into this than it deserves, but isn’t it refreshing to read a national media article that gets Mark Richt’s input on something other than player discipline/program perception?

There’s no telling what they’ll want to hear from him if Gurley goes for a buck fifty in a win in Columbia.

What we have here is failure to monitor.

My favorite part of the latest “Georgia Tech lies and cheats” story is this tidbit:

The NCAA decision made public on Thursday noted there were impermissible phone calls made by men’s basketball coaches only three days after Georgia Tech appeared before the NCAA committee for major violations in its football and men’s basketball program in April 2011.

Brian Gregory was named the new basketball coach on March 28, 2011. He replaced Paul Hewitt, who was fired on March 12, 2011.

That’s what you call hitting the ground running.

Georgia Tech had its NCAA probation extended two years.  In this day and age when NCAA rules enforcement seems particularly toothless, you’ve really got to work hard to get the book thrown at you.  Chantastic job, Jackets.

Oh, be sure not to miss the hard-hitting AJ-C coverage on the matter.

“We built our team to beat LSU and power football teams like Georgia.”

Nick Saban discusses his change of approach in building his defense in the HUNH era, and it sounds awfully familiar.

“So when we played Texas A&M, we still had too many big slow guys out there that were good players in a certain type of game.”

Alabama’s recruiting strategy has shifted to finding more athletic defensive linemen who are capable of staying on the field for extended amounts of time. He listed Jonathan Allen, Dalvin Tomlinson and D.J. Pettway as recent examples.

The desire for more athleticism at outside linebacker, which traditionally plays at defensive end when Alabama goes to nickel or dime, is also apparent. Among the examples Saban listed at that position were Xzavier Dickson, Denzel Devall, Tim Williams and freshman Rashaan Evans.

“We need a guy or two like that so when we do play the LSUs of the world, we can really pound you on the line of scrimmage and hold up, but we need a lot of those other guys and that’s changing the recruiting,” Saban said. “You have to have more athletic linebackers who can play in space. You can’t match personnel all the time. You sometimes have got to play a nickel linebacker and you wish you could put six defensive backs in but you can’t get them in the game, and if you get them in the game, you can’t get them out.”

If you think of Todd Grantham as old Saban and Jeremy Pruitt as new Saban, doesn’t that sound like what we’re watching evolve in Athens?

A pirate’s life, but a losing team

Sad to say, it may be time to admit the bloom is wearing off the Mike Leach rose.  Wazzou looked poorly coached on offense last night in losing.

It’s weird, in a way.  The Air Raid scheme Leach pioneered is still going strong (just ask Lorenzo Ward about that).  But Washington State isn’t really getting much traction.  I suspect that being the third or fourth best program in Texas gets you access to better athletes than you get a shot at as the number two program in Washington.

It’s a shame, because college football is better off with a few characters in it.  But Leach is being paid to win football games, not to be a character.

“I tell people all the time I’m fortunate to be at home.”

Bryan McClendon is the textbook example of why you shouldn’t immediately react to a Mark Richt hiring decision by being underwhelmed by it.  (I’ll leave out the overwhelmed examples for the moment.)