You had one job, Dave Hart.

And that was not to screw up a job hire as badly as Mike Hamilton used to do.  Scratch that.

Tennessee fired men’s basketball coach Donnie Tyndall for cause Friday morning because it believes the NCAA is likely to charge him with significant violations as a result of its investigation into Tyndall’s former Southern Miss program. Also included in the termination letter obtained by the News Sentinel is that the first-year UT coach deleted emails of NCAA interest.

Jeez.  Bruce Pearl, dude.  What were you thinking?

"I think we vetted that very well." — Tennessee AD Dave Hart on the hiring of Tyndall. Um, if you had, you wouldn't be standing there.

— Andy Staples (@Andy_Staples) March 27, 2015

Amazing.

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UPDATE:  The big picture in Knoxville is stunning.

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The beginning of a bee-yoo-tee-full friendship

Second Chance U news:  About Tray Matthews, Boom discloses that he’s “been pleased with his maturity level.”

Well, it’s not like Matthews hasn’t had plenty of opportunity to work on that.

The TKO of Patton Robinette

Announcements like this seem to be coming once a week now.  If this keeps up, at some point we’re going to reach critical mass on the need to change concussion protocols for football.  Which is why if anyone at the NCAA had half a brain on the subject, he/she’d be feverishly working on getting ahead of the curve to save the sport.

Fortunately for Robinette, he’s got a real future ahead of him outside of football.  Best of luck.

Where have all the DBs gone?

Yeah, this one made me blink a little, too.

Since signing with Georgia in 2013, Mauger has watched six of his classmates from the secondary alone bolt with eligibility remaining — Paris Bostick, Shaquille Fluker, J.J. Green, Brendan Langley, Tray Matthews and Shaq Wiggins.

Now, that’s attrition.  No wonder it felt like at times last year Pruitt might have to pull people out of the stands to fill out a two deep.

“It does feel kind of weird,” Mauger said. “It’s kind of like I’m the last guy standing, but the coaches always say that they’re going to work with the people who stay here.”

I hear ‘ya, dude.

Freedom’s just another word.

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that as the NCAA was willing to wade into the murky waters of Confederate flagdom, it’s now preparing to take a stand on another culture war matter.

On the eve of next week’s Final Four in Indianapolis, the NCAA expressed concern about a new Indiana law that will allow businesses to turn away gay and lesbian customers based on “religious freedom” and suggested future NCAA championships in the state could be impacted.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on Thursday signed into law a measure that has created uproar in the state where the NCAA is located. Some conventions are threatening to pull out of Indianapolis. Greg Ballard, the Republican mayor of Indianapolis, broke with the Republican governor on the bill and said it would put the city’s economy at risk.

“The NCAA national office and our members are deeply committed to providing an inclusive environment for all our events,” NCAA president Mark Emmert said in a statement Thursday after the bill was signed. “We are especially concerned about how this legislation could affect our student-athletes and employees. We will work diligently to assure student-athletes competing in, and visitors attending, next week’s Men’s Final Four in Indianapolis are not impacted negatively by this bill. Moving forward, we intend to closely examine the implications of this bill and how it might affect future events as well as our workforce.”

I don’t know where the NCAA has been on this before now.  It’s not as if Indiana is setting a trend here.  Does this mean Emmert’s prepared to announce that the organization will prohibit championship games it sponsors in every one of those nineteen states (soon to be twenty, if Georgia’s proposed law passes) that allow individuals to discriminate against gays?

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UPDATE:  The Big Ten weighs in.

“Are You Willing To Pay $36 Per Month For ESPN?”

Given how few other channels I regularly watch on Dish, in essence, I already am.

The amusing part of the linked article is this:

Michael Nathanson, of MoffettNathanson Research crunched the numbers to see how much it would really cost to create an a la carte world where consumers only had to pay for the stations they wanted to watch. Looking at “reach” (defined here as the percentage of U.S. viewers watching an individual channel over a finite period of time) and subscriber fees (the price per subscriber a company like Comcastpays to a network like ESPN to carry the network) Nathanson found that users would have to pay $36.30 per month for ESPN.

Of course ESPN is an outlier. With a $6.10 subscriber fee (paid by cable companies) ESPN is far and away the most expensive network.

But even less expensive networks like TNT, Disney Channel and USA would be pricey on an a la carte basis.TNT would cost $8.95 per month, Disney Channel would cost $8.25 and USA would cost $5.45 per month.

Those number are, of course, ridiculously high and they’re even worse when you look at what people believe they should be able to pay for something like ESPN a la carte. Beta Research found that the perceived value of ESPN to viewers is $1.45 per month — a $34.85 difference between what they would actually be asked to pay.

So your average rube undervalues what ESPN currently costs in a bundle by a factor of four.  Yeah, I’d say somebody’s in for a bad case of sticker shock if unbundling cable ever becomes a reality.

“He should be fine in a matter of weeks.”

Well, this sucks.

Georgia tailback Sony Michel has re-injured his collarbone and is expected to miss the rest of spring practice, head coach Mark Richt confirmed.

The injury will not require an operation, added Richt.

HOWCOMEHEKEEPSGETTINGHURTPAWWWLLLITHOUGHTTHEYWEREFIXINGSTRENGTHANDCONDITIONING!!!11!1!!

Seriously, tough luck for Sony.  You hope this isn’t something that chases him throughout his career.

Failed to convert

It looks like Butch Jones’ Fourth-and-1 sessions aren’t clicking with their intended audience yet.

Though I’m sure the Vols will learn the right lesson from the punishment Jones doles out to Coleman Thomas.

The only thing more porn-y than Dawg porn…

… is Dawg recruiting porn.

Eason could be mentioned up there with the likes of Stafford, Murray and David Greene as one of the best quarterbacks of the Mark Richt era at Georgia. In fact, it is a safe bet. Furthermore, the Bulldogs are chasing an elusive National Championship (none since 1980) and you can see the pieces to their program talent-wise coming into place in other areas (like defense under coordinator and ace recruiter/evaluator Jeremy Pruitt). Having a guy with this much talent as your future signal caller is a huge piece to the puzzle moving forward for UGA.

Jeebus.

Herschel Walker, wordsmith

#UGA's Herschel Walker on the going being tougher for tailbacks nowadays b/c def. players are bigger, better: "The ball's heavier today."

— AJC UGA (@ChipTowersAJC) March 26, 2015

He’s still got it.