As observations go, this one’s pretty cool.

Per Gentry Estes,

Georgia lost perhaps the best tailback in the college football in Gurley and actually has perhaps the best tailback in the country now to replace him in Chubb. That’s astonishingly rare.

Awesome, too.  Just don’t let Chubb near a Sharpie, eh?

So, how much pressure is there on Schottenheimer?

Ed Aschoff thinks that if Georgia’s new offensive coordinator doesn’t manage to live up to the lofty standards of his predecessor (and, boy, how that tune has changed) this season, the fan base is gonna go all unleash the hounds on his ass.

The pieces are in place for Schottenheimer to make a smooth transition, but there will be very little leeway from a fan base thirsty for a championship and still trying to feel out its new coordinator.

So, how ’bout it, Dawgnation?  Will you be ready to tear him a new one, if Georgia’s offense falls from the ranks of the elite to the merely above-average?

Speaking only for myself, as long as Georgia gets back to Atlanta and wins the damned thing for once, I really don’t care how Richt accomplishes that.  We’ve been due for a season when the defense carries the offense for a while, anyway.

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“To me, it makes no sense to have four playoff spots and then have five conferences.”

I’m a fan of Gary Patterson, both as a coach and as a generally decent guy.  But even he’s guilty of occasional bouts of self-interest, I suppose.

Even though TCU was left out of the inaugural College Football Playoff this season, Gary Patterson isn’t one of those people clamoring to see it go from four teams to eight teams.

Nope, he’d like to see it go to six teams.

In doing so, Patterson said the top two teams would get byes, and if the other leagues agreed to do away with their conference championship games, the current playoff schedule could stay intact, and there would be a representative from all Power 5 conferences, along with a true at-large team.

Er, um… wait a minute.  Isn’t the Big 12 the only one of the P5 conferences without a playoff?  Why insist on the other four changing?

Patterson’s rationale is the SEC is the only conference for which the championship game has been a big hit.

Oh.  Spoken like a man who’s been a head coach at the mid-major level most of his career.  And was the odd man out at CFP’s first dance.

Don’t get me wrong here.  I actually prefer the Big 12’s round robin format for producing a conference champ.  But the postseason is all about a money chase and the guys who created what we’ve got aren’t going down Patterson’s road.  If – ah, shit, when – the CFP expands, it’ll go straight to eight, because that pays better.

Have patience, Gary.  You’ll get there soon enough.

A matter of timing

Seth Emerson notes that what Roquan Smith is doing in bypassing the LOI is already being done by others, just earlier.

Once Smith enrolls at Georgia, presumably sometime this summer, the normal NCAA transfer rules apply. His situation is actually similar to players who enroll early, as they sometimes never sign a letter-of-intent, but once they enroll for the spring semester are fully committed to the school and NCAA rules apply.

Smith’s situation is different in that he has become a rare case of a summer enrollee not signing a letter-of-intent. But as more prospects become aware of the option, and the fact it gives them an out if the situation at their school changes, Smith almost certainly will not be the last major recruit to follow this path.

The difference, I would say, is a matter of attitude.  Early enrollees know where they want to be and evidently feel strongly enough about the school that they’re willing to assume the risk of coaching changes before signing day.

Advice from Georgia’s new player relations coordinator for offense

“If your former coach comes to you with a sure-fire pitch to invest more than a half-million of your hard-earned dollars in something of his, just trust me… RUN!”

A really futile and stupid gesture

The Pac-12 presidents have a bug up their collective butts about the NBA’s eligibility rule.  Evidently, they’ve had all they can take on one-and-done and are ready to do something about it.  Something dumb.

The item was No. 7 on a 10-point list for NCAA reform ideas that Pac-12 presidents and chancellors sent their Power Five colleagues last May.

7. Address the “one and done” phenomenon in men’s basketball. If the National Basketball Association and its Players Association are unable to agree on raising the age limit for players, consider restoring the freshman ineligibility rule in men’s basketball.

Several conference commissioners say it’s time to consider making freshmen — or at least some of them — ineligible, again, for the first time since the NCAA rule changed in 1972.

Let’s get past the immediate consequence of such a move – John Calipari’s business model would be completely blown up, as no very highly rated high school senior will likely enroll in college again – and look at the tangled web being weaved as these wise men try to come up with justifications that sound more noble than “we don’t like being used by the NBA”.

The opposition to freshman ineligibility would be heated — and some conference commissioners strongly oppose it already. Others believe now is the time to consider it again given court cases that could allow players to be paid, congressional scrutiny into college sports and a unionization attempt to make Northwestern football players designated as employees. A new lawsuit against the NCAA and North Carolina attacks the heart of the NCAA’s stated mission: Are enough high-profile college athletes truly being educated?

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said there is “almost a uniform acknowledgment that there’s kids in college that don’t have any interest in an education and don’t have the proper education to take advantage of an education.” Bowlsby said freshman ineligibility would have a “profoundly positive effect” on football and men’s basketball by easing the transition from high school without the distractions of competition.

“I think there’s a growing interest in a robust debate, and I think we ought to drag it to the ground and consider it any way we can,” Bowlsby said. “I think it is the one change that could make an absolutely dramatic difference in college athletics.”

Oh, so now you want to talk about educating them, those “… kids in college that don’t have any interest in an education and don’t have the proper education to take advantage of an education”?  (By the way, since we’re being all brainy and academic here, shouldn’t it be “who” instead of “that”?)  How exactly does a year without sports light that fire?  (Please note that I’m not talking about a kid needing time to acclimate himself to the college life; that’s a different story and one where I can concede not playing freshman season can have an impact.)  But if a kid doesn’t care and doesn’t have the academic background coming in, how can you fix all that just by denying him sports for a season?

Keep in mind, I mention this here because while the impetus comes from the NBA rule, the rationale for the move could apply to any collegiate sport, including our favorite.

Another thing about Bowlsby’s comment here worth noting is that we’re now heading into the new era of raised NCAA high school academic standards, where kids have to have a certain amount of core curriculum studies, along with better grades and test scores, to be eligible for college athletics.  Is Bowlsby dismissing that before it’s even been tested?

And let’s not forget, as Solomon points out, there’s already something a school can do for a kid who comes in academically unprepared.

Players who meet the old academic standards — but not the new ones — can receive an academic redshirt. It’s a new version of the old partial qualifier with one important exception — the player does not lose a year of eligibility. Academic redshirts can receive a scholarship and practice with their teams but cannot compete. If they pass nine credit hours in their first semester, they can compete the next season as a redshirt freshman.

So let’s face it.  This is largely bullshit.  Although, in typical thinking from the idiots running the sport, putting limits on the kids instead of punishing institutions that are guilty of academic fraud, or putting the screws to schools who try to sound serious but are simply addressing academics with a mere wink and a nod (“Bobby Petrino gets $500,000 for getting five points above the minimum APR.”) makes more sense.  Because you don’t have to work as hard to make yourself feel better.  With the NCAA, a little hypocrisy is good for the soul.

Reading the tea leaves on the Ball departure

Radi Nabulsi points out something about the timing of Tony Ball’s exit that I hadn’t considered.

Ball was named the running backs coach at Georgia on Feb. 14, 2006. After three seasons of coaching the tailbacks, he took over instructing the wide receivers at Georgia. He is leaving one day before his ninth anniversary. Ball had previously indicated he wanted to stay at least one more year at Georgia in order to receive better retirement benefits from the University.

When you’re in your mid-fifties, that is not a minor consideration.  And yet, he jumped.  So he must have really wanted out of Athens for some reason, right? Well…

Last month Virginia Tech boosters reached out to Ball to see if he would be interested in their open wide receivers coach position. He politely declined.

Maybe this is as simple as Les Miles making Ball an offer he couldn’t refuse. Maybe it’s something else.  I’ve got no idea.  But I’ll sure be curious to see the terms of his new contract.  Not to mention to see who his replacement is. Between the two, perhaps some of the blanks will get filled in.

Craig James, free to be Craig James.

No longer a broadcaster, no longer running for office, the man is letting his inner batshit self have at it.

When speaking to yet another caller who said Obama “will declare a state of emergency, he will do a third term if that’s what it takes to complete the conversion of this country,” James said the third-term conspiracy is “a concern of mine” and pledged to “pass a note along to Tony Perkins,” the president of the FRC, “on how we could escape that.”

“That would be horrible,” James said of third Obama term. “It’s not like we’d have Ronald Reagan staying in office for another year or so while we’re in a state of emergency. It’s not like we’d have someone who really cares about you and me. We’re talking about someone who is there in that office as the leader of the free world, the United States of America, who doesn’t get it. That’s the concern. It fires me up, the thought that the guy can stick around in that office beyond a year and three-quarters. He’s got to be gone. We will follow up on that.”

Thank Gawd he’s on the mother.

Seriously, how could nobody at the WWL catch on to this?  There’s no way he was keeping that kind of nonsense to himself off the air.  Wouldn’t you be at least a little worried he’d let some crazy slip out during a game?