Chock full of goodies for your reading pleasure.
- According to Khari Harding’s dad, local media sussed on to the problem with the new NCAA transfer rule before Tulsa did. Ugh.
- Five reasons why Tennessee will win the SEC East in 2015… and five reasons UT won’t.
- Here’s Athlon’s Georgia spring preview. Nothing particularly revelatory.
- The NCAA is okay with a crowdfunding project for student-athletes? Count me skeptical; it’s probably more like the NCAA hasn’t figured out a way to shut it down yet.
- Auburn’s home/road splits over the last ten years are rather eye-opening.
- Hoo, boy: “Senior linebacker Jordan Jenkins said he thought there was an underlying issue in the team’s setbacks, though. The players who served as leaders weren’t very good, in his opinion.”
- And this is why they pay Cam Cameron the big bucks, I guess.
Get The Picture 
Anyone else see potential issues with the coaches “tasking” certain players to be on a leadership committee? Shouldn’t the team leaders be anointed by the team itself as opposed to some “farcical aquatic ceremony”
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Leaders gonna lead. If it is left up to the team to choose, it would likely be all seniors (or at least upperclassmen). This is actually a rebuff to the seniority-based leadership dynamic in sports and in business. (They are the leaders because they have always been the leaders.) While not revolutionary, it is progressive in the true meaning of the word.
I think identifying a mix of players that have shown leadership potential and who bust it on the practice field, in the weight room, in the classroom, and on the Sanford turf are the ones who will command the respect of their peers… because leading your peers is much different than leading your underlings. If the council is 20-deep, made up mostly of starters on a given unit, the tiresome “last year’s leaders sucked” meme will no longer hold water.
I don’t know if this will mean more wins, but it sounds like the guys on the council are getting some good experience and training that will help them in the real world. So, there’s that.
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It does seem contrived the way the article reads, leaders emerge more than they rise to an appointment. I take it more that responsible players are being asked to be more involved in helping the younger players, reach out to those struggling, and pull someone aside and talk to them rather than sticking their head in the sand and acting as if the problems of others couldn’t impact the team. Certainly the numbers stated mean that all cannot be “the leaders”, but primary leaders will emerge from those who act responsibly. Leadership is always more evident when there is a large group assisting the actual guys who are alphas, you cannot succeed with 2-3 leaders on a squad of 100+ when it is all on their shoulders alone. A pecking order usually comes about naturally.
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Having no knowledge of the dynamic of our locker room, nor the personality of any of the players, I still feel comfortable saying that a leadership committee of 15-20 players sounds ridiculous. There’s only 85 players on scholarship for Christ’s sake and 25 of those are freshmen. But, if it gets us through Spring Break and Summer without 10 guys being suspended for the first few games, who am I to complain?
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“Ray Lewis, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant…”
Great athletes; great leaders; questionable moral character. I hope our guys pick the right two.
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How does Auburn play 75 home games and only 43 away games? I know the Florida game messes us up every other year, but wow what a difference that many home games can make.
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They have seasons where they play 8 homes games.
Tech and Florida impact our scheduling a lot.
Bama is the rival and it is in division so always play. Which opens another out of conference game for them, which is almost always a home game. and everyone year they get a home game by not playing florida at a neutral site. Hell they might have seasons where they play 9 home games. I think that florida also has those types of seasons where they never leave the state of florida.
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Am I the only one who thinks that the Crowd Funding Fan site has the potential for massive fraud? College football fans are not exactly rational people. If the UGA fans thought that we could get Chubb to stay one more year we might be willing to pay a lot of money. What happens when the fans pay a lot of money and the kid still goes Pro. I’m sure you don’t get it back. This one should be closely watched by the powers that be and I don’t mean the NCAA.
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If the coach is a motivator he can get the team to play. I know that college is a different animal because of the illogical NCAA rule that keeps the coaches from contact with the players during the summer. This is the only time I think the team leaders are critical. Appointing leaders is a joke. Leadership is earned from the ones who are being lead. Making a person an manager makes him/her in charge but does not make him/her a leader. The Army has Battle Field Commissions and these were the best leaders, because they had proved they could lead in combat before they got the authority.
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“Leadership Council”….hmmm, some places they used to call that a workers council. Wonder what the give and take between the leadership council and management is like?
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24/7’s homer article is laughable, unless you are dealing with the very bottom of the Vols’ fan base. I get it that TN might be, and should be, a little better. And I agree the TN fans are starved for a turn around as they are nearing Ray Goff territory in waiting for a team to meet expectations and are “all in” on needing to drink some Kool Aid so it why not feed the thirsty masses? But to say they will be a “popular pick to win the East” at SEC Days, or reach a conclusion that TN would be a “logical” pick says you don’t care about losing all credibility.
TN hasn’t won a game of significance in years, years. They barely made a weak bowl game even after their recruiting successes. A new OC, of dubious qualifications, inherits a returning OL that was horrible last year, a QB that in hot and cold, and average RBs. And they face a first half schedule that may be the toughest in the country (OK, Florida, Arky, UGA, and Bama). Granted their 2nd half schedule should be manageable.
I think TN will be a very popular dark horse pick in the East, but I doubt many quality analysts will choose them as #1. I can see them getting a lot runner-up votes, more 3rd place, picks, and a few 4th place ballots, but any media outside Knoxville that selects them would be surprising as it would be an admission they went to Sgt. Carter’s hypnosis class and was taken advantage of in a photographed session.
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That is a rough first half schedule for sure. 3 top 10 type of teams for sure.
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You fail to realize that they have the greatest 12-13 coach in SEC history. Just think, if Butch Jones wins his opener he will have a .500 record!
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+1 Hard to believe he has ever lost….it might be all those moral victories they count in Knox Vegas these days.
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“he players who served as leaders weren’t very good, in his opinion”
What a shitty thing to say publicly about your former teammates.
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Crowd funding…disruptive process likely to cause a great disruption. The gang that thinks a bagel is a snack but adding cream cheese makes it a meal is the same gang that thinks they can handle this?
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