How are you going to keep Jeremy Pruitt down on the no practice facility farm once he’s seen the FSU practice facility?

I like to think I’m a pretty jaded guy.  Even so, this sure made me blink.

The Georgia football team didn’t hold a full practice on Tuesday, thanks to the weather, and Jeremy Pruitt wasn’t happy about it. He wasn’t happy that it had to happen, and he said he wasn’t happy that he knew rival schools would be using it against the Bulldogs on the recruiting trail.

So Georgia’s first-year defensive coordinator, who has been reluctant to meet with the media, did so on Tuesday. Pruitt said he wanted recruits to know that UGA is in the process of getting an indoor practice facility, and that “this team is the last one” that would have to deal without having one.

“I’ve been on the other side when you recruit against Georgia, and when you don’t practice you don’t get better, so that hurts player development,” Pruitt said. “The reason I came up here (to meet the media) is because we’re fixing to take care of that. And this is gonna be the last football team at Georgia that’s gonna have days where they don’t get better because of not having an indoor facility. Because I know our folks upstairs are gonna get it done.”

Blink?  Okay, maybe more like that floored me.  I know Pruitt’s been here less than a year, but, still, when’s the last time you heard any Georgia coach get that passive-aggressive with the athletic administration about something that has a price tag?

Not that things are going to get done on Pruitt’s timetable, I’m afraid.

UGA’s athletic board in September approved $400,000 to design and determine a location for an indoor practice facility and was to get a report  from athletic director Greg McGarity in February.

“They got it done in seven months at Florida State,” said Pruitt, defensive coordinator for the 2013 season there. “The first day I took the job on Jan. 7, they broke ground and it was done the first day of practice.”

That’s not expected to happen at Georgia by next season.

McGarity said Tuesday night that the school recently selected an architect.

“That’s the first part of the process,” he said. “It’s just impossible for it to be done next year. We’re not sure how long it’s going to take. We don’t know where it’s going. We don’t know how long it will take. …All we know is we’re moving forward as quickly as possible.”

Er.  Um.  Reserve fund.  Er.  Um.

I wonder how long that’s gonna work.

Pruitt said a rival team’s recruiting pitch against Georgia would have the lack of an indoor facility as a main talking point. That’s because it said something larger about UGA’s commitment to football.

“I know our competitors are not gonna say anything bad about the coaching staff here. They’re not gonna say anything bad about the people here, because it’s a great place,” Pruitt said. “But what they’re gonna say – and that they’ve always said is – how important is football to Georgia if they don’t have an indoor practice facility? Well they won’t be able to say that anymore.”

It was pointed out to Pruitt that until this year he had been one of those rival coaches recruiting against Georgia. Had he used it in recruiting?

“I wondered that,” he said. “I mean what are you gonna say about coach (Mark) Richt? He’s one of the finest men out there. A good football coach, check his track record. Coach (Mike) Bobo, what he’s done here. It’s hard to say anything.”

Pruitt was asked if, in general, the football program gets what it needs from the administration.

“Well I’ve not been here long enough to know that,” Pruitt said, hired this past January. “But I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t think that.”

So, rival teams don’t negatively recruit against Mark Richt.  They save that for the Georgia Way.  Oh, boy.

Somehow I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this.

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“But no, I have confidence in these guys.”

When is a comment like that not a kiss of death?  When the guys involved work for a football program that lost money last season, still gave out raises to coaches like candy and signed multi-year guaranteed contracts with them.

Johnson’s contract runs through June 30, 2017. His $850,000 salary must be paid for in full for the remainder of the contract if he is fired, which would total more than $2 million.

That, my friends, buys a lot of confidence.  Mike Bobo felt confident Saturday night.

A full-throated defense of Agent Muschamp

Shorter Kurt Roper:  Boom did not handcuff the Gators’ struggling offense.  At least, other than hiring a series of inept offensive coordinators, he didn’t.

Mason, in the zone

Before the season, remember how some here questioned whether Hutson Mason could perform in the red zone, where he lacked the presumed arm strength to make the tough throws in small windows necessary to succeed?

Nicely called, you.

“Todd will honor exactly what was he expected to do.”

‘Cause if he doesn’t, Georgia gets stuck with the infractions bill.

I hope he pays the three grand back from the money he gets signing his first promotional deal.

Mumme Poll, Week 12

Here you go.

Rank	Team	Votes
1	Oregon	55
1	Alabama	55
1	Florida State	55
4	Mississippi State	54
5	Baylor	53
6	TCU	52
7	Ohio State	42
8	Georgia	36
9	Mississippi	24
10	Michigan State	6
11	Wisconsin	4
12	Arizona State	2
13	Marshall	1
13	UCLA	1

Mississippi State gets ever so slightly dinged for its road loss. Wonder if the selection committee will see things the same way.  Still, that’s a very tight race we’ve got for the fourth semi-finals slot.

Ohio State survives its loss to Virginia Tech, but Duke doesn’t.

Envy and jealousy: unsettling it on the field edition

Leave it to Charlie Pierce to sum up everything that offends me about college football’s latest postseason structure, not to mention what’s coming down the turnpike sooner than I’d like:

First of all, absent a tectonic shift in the way college sports do their business — which would include a fathomless fault into which the NCAA would have to fall, never to rise again — any playoff system is just another gimmick by which the wrong people make the most money.² … I do not believe that what the country really needed was one more gargantuan television event that makes the parasitical power structure of college sports even richer, that provides yet another boon to the national gaming-industrial complex, and that allows people who wouldn’t know Wallace Wade from Wally Cleaver to pretend that they care about college football.

Already, the new system has been embraced so enthusiastically by all the institutions of the tottering plutocracy of college sports that it has deformed the regular season. There is no way for the new system to make sense of the SEC West, for example, which is so fat with talent that it virtually has blotted out the rest of the country — so much so that it is entirely possible that a backlash elsewhere may force a lesser team into the field just so people won’t think the whole system is in the tank for a league that does, after all, have its own television network, with CBS Sports (virtually) serving as another one. It will not be long before we hear calls for an expanded playoff system because the current one is unfair to “the kids” who play in leagues less beloved by television executives. And it will become a genuine tournament, which means it will get bigger, louder, and all of its faults will become worse.

All that’s missing there is a reference to brackets.  Maybe that will come one day when he writes something about the new 16-team playoffs.

“Everyone just played sound football and played their keys right.”

What I love so much about this article is the almost nonchalant way members of Georgia’s defense describe their collective effort against Auburn.  Here’s a sample from Lorenzo Carter:

“It’s a confidence boost I guess to see it in the game,” Carter said. “We’ve been practicing hard, stopping the run in practice, but it’s always great to see it against somebody else other than your team.”

You guess, hunh?

C’mon, mane.  I watched you guys play in Jacksonville.

 

Remember when the Coaches Poll mattered?

Briles on voting Texas No. 5 and OU No. 1 in 2008: "I didn't vote on that poll. I passed it on to somebody in the office."

— David Ubben (@davidubben) November 17, 2014

What Art Briles admitted to isn’t particularly surprising.  Although it does make you wonder sometimes how much snickering goes on behind Grant Teaff’s back.

Logic is fine, but money is better.

So, who said this?

“… The reality is that commercialism and its attendant pressures have been a part of college sports from the beginning.”

If you guessed one of the economists who testified on behalf of the plaintiffs during the O’Bannon trial, you guessed wrong.  It’s actually a quote from the NCAA’s O’Bannon appeals brief.  There’s something almost admirable about the NCAA’s nerve in the defense it raises – amateurism is a necessary component to its successful business model and has been that way ever since it lost its last big antitrust fight thirty years ago.

When it comes to amateurism, the NCAA and its members have always been more about making money than making sense, so on a certain level, it’s really not worth being too surprised about the apparent lack of logical consistency there.  Besides, when you’re defending a business model that lets coaches and administrators make millions while fretting over the possibility that you might have to pay players something on the order of $30,000 over the course of their collegiate careers, logic isn’t really a major concern.

Still, I have to admit I’m sort of looking forward to the day when Mark Emmert faces a congressional committee concerned with college athletics’ non-profit status and has somebody throw that line back in his face.