Jeff Ulbrich’s unfinished business

Give Dan Jeff Ulbrich credit for some degree of chutzpah – despite fudging the truth about his employment track before Roquan Smith signed his NLI, he’s trying to sell Smith on going to UCLA.  Now, I mean.

The two still communicate and Ulbrich, though onto his new job in the NFL, continues to unofficially recruit Smith to UCLA.

Hey, at least he’s not misleading Smith about who his position coach will be.

We’ll see you when we see you.

If there’s gonna be an early signing period for recruits, Andy Staples argues there should be something else that’s made early:  official visits.

Earlier official visits haven’t happened because college coaches don’t want them to happen. At the moment, the only period a college coach can take a vacation is the summer, and coaches believe this would eliminate that opportunity because they’d be hosting official visitors. Never mind that coaches are adults who could simply say, “I’m taking a vacation this week” and schedule visits around it. They would prefer time off be regulated, as that makes their lives easier.

Earlier official visits would allow low-income prospects to make more informed decisions. It would help geographically isolated schools like Nebraska expose their programs to recruits who can’t afford unofficial visits. It would also help choke out the cottage industry of shady dudes loading high schoolers into vans and driving them to multiple unofficial visits over the summer — and maybe the envelopes full of cash that appear under the hotel room doors of said shady dudes in exchange for their time and trouble.

Despite all of these potential benefits, official visits still can’t start until a prospect’s senior year. But remember, it’s all about the kids.

Of course it is, bless their hearts.

The irony here is that earlier official visits would provide more of an opportunity to sell the school to kids – you know, the thing the NCAA says the recruiting process is all about.

 

“It’s going to be easier to officiate.”

The NCAA rules committee met and has proposed a few changes.  This one may have the biggest immediate impact:

The ineligible downfield rule was shifted from three yards to one yard past the line of scrimmage. National officiating coordinator Rogers Redding said defenses were beginning to read run more frequently because offensive linemen were 3 yards downfield and then the quarterback would pass. “It’s going to be easier to officiate,” he said.

Yeah, well, nice for you, Rogers, but it’s going to be harder for coaches like Malzahn to run those packaged plays with the pass/run option built in that Marshall used to such devastating effect.

And as for ease of officiating, I seem to remember an SEC crew blowing a fake punt by Georgia last season with a bad ineligible downfield call.  Instead of making things easier on your guys, how ’bout focusing on making things more accurate?

Who needs quarterbacks?

I guess I wasn’t paying attention, but if you think Georgia is skating on thin ice this season with its quarterback situation, check out how Florida’s looks.

Bigger is better.

You will be shocked, shocked to learn, given the sizes of each postseason pool, that advanced stats suggest from 2005-2014, the BCS did a better job of matching the best teams in the championship game than the NFL did.

The SEC’s 2015 non-conference scheduling

All you need to know about the difficulty of this year’s non-conference scheduling for SEC teams is that Georgia comes out fifth on this rankings list, with this note:

What gives Georgia’s schedule an edge over Alabama’s is it plays its Power-Five opponent in a true road game and its remaining foes are just a hair more difficult.

Just to remind you, in 2015, Georgia plays UL Monroe, FCS Southern, Georgia Southern and Georgia Tech (road).  Not exactly a murderers’ row there.

You know it’s bad when Florida – Florida! – legitimately faces the second-toughest OOC slate.

Romance vs. being in the arena

Roquan Smith:  “People say choose the school because of the schools, but coaches shape the school.”

Mack Brown:  “Everybody says the young man goes to the school and not the coach, but that always doesn’t happen…”

The NCAA to both:  STFU.

Eliminating the middleman

Well, this is an interesting move.

Rutgers coach Kyle Flood is on the verge of shaking up his recruiting operations staff with the expected hiring of a business consultant who is a financial supporter of the football program, three people with knowledge of the decision told NJ Advance Media on Wednesday.

Jeff Towers, who, according to his LinkedIn profile, is an “executive with 30 years of experience leading robust marketing, communications and fundraising programs in some of the largest nonprofit organizations in America,” is expected to be appointed as the Rutgers football recruiting coordinator, the three people told NJ Advance Media on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about athletic department personnel.

Towers doesn’t appear to have any football experience but, according to LinkedIn, he is said to have managed “his own consulting agency assisting nonprofit organizations in strategic planning, board development, marketing, communications and fundraising.”

Bringing a booster in to run your recruiting operations… I mean, what could go wrong with that?

On the other hand, there are probably coaches all over the country who will react to the news by smacking their foreheads and asking themselves, “why didn’t I think of that?”.