“The 55-year old Richt is one of the most respected coaches in the game.”

When it comes to being named to the new NCAA Division I Football Oversight Committee, it sounds like that plus five bucks will get you a mocha latte at Starbucks.

Bowlsby previously told CBSSports.com that the new oversight committees are expected to lessen coaches’ influence on the process.

“The NFL, they don’t ask coaches what they think about the rules,” Bowlsby said earlier this month. “The owners make the rules.”

Seems like just the kind of shit Nick Saban doesn’t have time for.

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Now this is how you hold a gun to somebody’s head.

The SEC is offering a pretty stark choice on the satellite camp craze.

Sankey on satellite camp options for SEC: Remove SEC rule and do that behavior, or introduce national rule saying run camps on campus.

— Jon Solomon (@JonSolomonCBS) April 20, 2015

I figure nobody does anything until Sankey lifts the ban, all hell subsequently breaks loose and then they scramble for a fix.

But, who knows?  Maybe Delany takes time off from his freshman ineligibility crusade and tells Penn State and Michigan to knock it off.

I’ve got some good news and some bad news.

Per some site called arrestnation.com, Georgia is tied for first among SEC programs in player arrests since August 3, 2010.

On the bright side, if you rank conference schools in order of most recent arrests, Georgia would only place tenth.

Progress, of a sort.

Either that, or Jimmy Williamson’s been on an extended vacation.

Age ain’t nothin’ but a number.

South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier is 70 years old today.

— Brent Beaird (@brentbeaird) April 20, 2015

Still, don’t you think Steve Spurrier would rather not have a public celebration today?

“There’s no reason to be that way.”

The latest podcast from Seth Emerson and Gentry Estes is definitely worth a listen, not because of their takes on G-Day (not to say they’re not interesting), but because of where they go with a discussion that develops as they talk about the Athlon list ranking the SEC football programs in which Seth participated.

Dial it up around the 35:00 minute mark and listen to where Estes goes discussing Georgia football.  And then tell me where he’s wrong.

Again, this is why I find so much of the Mark Richt criticism, and the replace Richt talk as well, to have been misguided.  Now if we’re really seeing a big change in administrative approach, I’ll be the first one to chime in if the results don’t step up accordingly, but before the bowl game, it never felt like Richt was the right direction at which to point fingers.

Jim Delany’s “year of readiness”

Mark Richt said during the G-day telecast that high school seniors are coming to college better prepared than ever (and given the way some of Georgia’s early enrollees played Saturday, he’s not lying).  The NCAA’s new high school academic protocols kick in for good this season, stiffening the course requirements for those same high schoolers.

And yet here comes Jim Delany, doubling down on his freshman ineligibility proposal.  The timing, to say the least, is hard to figure.

Speculation about Delany’s end game has been rampant across college athletics the past couple months, and it will only intensify after Delany sent out a 12-page treatise Friday on why he favors freshman ineligibility.

Delany stopped short of calling it a proposal, acknowledged potential drawbacks/arguments against it and emphasized again that the Big Ten will not implement this idea without other conferences doing the same.

But even in the face of initial backlash, Delany is pressing on, arguing Friday that the balance between athletics and academics has tilted too far in the wrong direction, that the professionalization of big-time college sports “jeopardizes the model of broad-based intercollegiate athletics” and that making freshmen ineligible would be a potential way to bring things back into alignment.

There are statistics and charts, anecdotes and catch phrases. Delany does not call it freshman ineligibility, which sounds a lot like punishment, but rather “a year of readiness.”

Honestly, it’s strange.  Slive opposed it strongly.  And now, as part of Delany’s doubling down…

To make up for the roster limitations that would come with freshmen not being allowed to play, FBS football programs would be allowed about seven additional scholarship players. The current limit is 85. Men’s basketball teams in Division I would be allowed about three extra scholarship players; the current maximum is 13. Using those “ball park estimates,” 5.4 women’s scholarships per Division I school would need to be added to equal the $47.25 million spent on new men’s scholarships.

… he’s come up with something that’s bound to alienate pretty much every mid-major program scraping by, financially speaking.

So what’s it all about?  Beats me.  Here’s what Delany claims:

— Because of the stakes involved in competition at the highest level, football and men’s basketball players do spend a significant amount of time on their sports, which can be a burden academically.

— There are inherent factors that drive toward a higher probably of academic fraud, which should be eliminated if possible.

— It is undeniably true that football and men’s basketball players on the whole enter college less prepared to succeed academically than their counterparts.

— It is “exploitive,” as Delany says, not to give athletes a “legitimate and substantive” educational experience.

“If we cannot defend the educational value of the student-athlete experience in the sports of football and men’s basketball, then we cannot defend the model as educational,” Delany said. “If we cannot defend the model as educational, then we cannot defend the model.”

There’s a bunch of stuff thrown out there, but I have a hard time seeing how much of that gets fixed by not letting freshmen play football or basketball.  The economics don’t change.  Whatever pressure to commit academic fraud exists, how does that change, if these kids are just as ill-prepared coming in as ever?

It comes off as a Potemkin village approach, particularly since freshmen would still be able to practice with their teams, though participation and travel would be limited.  Would that make as much of a difference as the new high school academic core requirements change will?  I’m doubtful.

Here’s what I do think is certain to come from Delany’s special year:  your typical high school McDonald’s All-American is going to think long and hard about going to Duke and Kentucky.  So, if this is a way to hammer one-and-done in men’s basketball, it’ll have an impact.  On the football side, you’re now talking about the top student-athletes only playing in competition for two years.  That’s great for the NFL – less wear and tear on its future stars – but not so great if you’re a fan of a college team that’s just landed a bunch of five-star recruits.

And how many of Alabama’s rivals are going to be thrilled with the idea that Nick Saban can lock up another seven kids a year?  I’m thinking very few.

Like I said, this is a puzzler.  Delany claims he’s pushing this to start a national dialogue, but it’s hard to see who wants to have a discussion with him about it.  All I can come up with is that it’s a nice fig leaf to offer Congress when Delany goes to Washington hat in hand to ask for that juicy antitrust exemption.

In the meantime, if he’s that convinced that players are being exploited by the current system, there’s nothing holding the Big Ten back from going it alone on the freshman ineligibility front. Go for it, Big Jim!

A prom night to remember

I bet Soso Jamabo woke up this morning wishing he’d have been an early enrollee at UCLA.

Musical palate cleanser, singin’ the blues edition

It’s an understatement to write that Bob Dylan has authored a lot of great music.

For what it’s worth, my favorite Dylan song isn’t from the sixties.  It’s something he cut in the early ’80s, “Blind Willie McTell”.  “BWT” is a blues number, ostensibly about how the old singer can’t be matched these days.  But it’s really an incredible meditation about the human condition.

The music – Dylan on piano, accompanied by Mark Knopfler on acoustic guitar – is as stark and beautiful as a Cormac McCarthy passage.  The bleakness of the lyrics is a perfect match.  And speaking of the human condition, if there’s a better lyric to summarize that than

Well, God is in His heaven
And we all want what’s His
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is

I have yet to hear it.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve listened to this song.  But it still moves me like very few others.  It’s really just an amazing piece of work.

To me, the most amazing thing about the song is that Dylan left it off the album for which he recorded it, Infidels.  (It wound up surfacing on one of the official Bootleg albums, fortunately.)  He’s never given a clear reason for what strikes me as a weird lapse of judgment.  Artists.  What are you gonna do, sometimes?