Name that caption, thank ‘ya very much edition

In Baltimore with the @SC_HBC and @UnderArmour and we're making new friends. #ThankYouVeryMuch pic.twitter.com/M8sE8oQSSt

— Tommy Tuberville (@TTuberville) May 15, 2015

Words fail me.  Hopefully you won’t have that problem in the comments.

Mark Richt? Huge Collin Barber fan. Huge.

This is not what I’d call a rousing show of support.

Richt said when Barber didn’t boom it this spring, the positive thing is the punts weren’t often returnable.

“The only thing good I can say about if you miss-hit the ball and it ends up being 36 yards or something, usually there’s no return, it’s a fair catch, and you’re not getting somebody taking it to the house,” Richt said.

“You can kick it too far and too flat, and give them too much space then all of a sudden the guy takes it to the house. So the only good point was when we were mis-hitting some of them they were balls that just really weren’t returnable. We always knew that the defense would get to line up and play.”

That’s the kind of backhanded compliment you’d hear Coach Dooley throw out in the day.  Of course, he was talking about the other team’s punter when he said it.

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Friday morning buffet

As always, come and get it.

• Jim Harbaugh’s latest loophole:  “They’re not doing recruiting at the camps.”
• So Mark Richt said in the spring the coaches didn’t run Nick Chubb between the tackles much?   PAWWWLLL, they’re makin’ him too soft for the SEC!!!
• Tommy Tuberville says coaches can’t lay out the tough love like they used to, and knows who to blame for it:  “It’s all in the doctors’ and trainers’ hands. That’s the way you have to handle it, unless you want a lawsuit on your hands.”  Damned lawyers.
• If any programs could drive their fans to drink, it would be Tennessee and Iowa.
• Here’s a look at returning talent, not from a team by team perspective, but from that of the conferences.
• And Athlon ranks the SEC’s running backs.  What’s striking here isn’t so much who ranks where on the list, but rather how much overall talent at the position the conference boasts.

The NFL keeps getting crankier about the spread.

Seattle’s offensive line coach Tom Cable isn’t a fan, either.

… Cable said that the proliferation of spread offenses in college has made it harder for players to adjust in the NFL, particularly the offensive linemen under his charge. That, in turn, has made it harder to evaluate players as they prepare to enter the league.

“Unfortunately, I think we’re doing a huge disservice to offensive football players — other than a receiver — that come out of these spread systems,” Cable continued. “The runners aren’t as good. They aren’t taught how to run. The blockers aren’t as good. The quarterbacks aren’t as good. They don’t know how to read coverage and throw progressions. They have no idea.”

Judging from his record as Idaho’s head coach, I’m not that convinced Cable’s got an idea.  But the more this stuff circulates, the more it grows into a real thing.  Expect more pushback from spread coaches; at this point, they’ve really got no choice.

Gary Pinkel knows what he’s doing.

I read a quote like this from him and I believe it.

Missouri has won back-to-back SEC East titles, but again probably won’t be the pick to get to Atlanta out of the division.

Gary Pinkel, entering his 15th season as head coach at the school, is still looking for more.

“We want to make ourselves about 5 percent better every year, our football program, all the different aspects of our program,” Pinkel said. “We’re not going to make huge changes because what we do works, but we’re always trying to make ourselves better.”

This doesn’t come off as a Goff-esque, wistful hope for “buttah” times, but as a realistic management goal from a man running a successful program who sees a few things worth tweaking in order to keep that going.

Sure, the schedule probably makes his Tigers the division favorite right now, but he deserves some credit for that consideration, too.

Mike Bobo on COA

There’s another school of thought emerging from coaches about the role COA will play in the recruiting process – it will have a place, but it’s unlikely to be the overwhelming factor that some fear (or, perhaps in cases like Auburn’s, hope) it will be.  Per Bobo,

“I’m sure if somebody has a high cost of attendance, they’ll use it to their advantage in recruiting,” Bobo told CoachingSearch. “But at the end of the day, some of those factors always play in recruiting, whether it’s playing time, jersey number, where you live, all the little things. At the end of the day, it comes down to people convincing that player that your university is the best place for himacademically, athletically and socially to grow as a person, that he feels like the coaches are going to help him get there.

“That’s what we’re going to be selling at this great institution, along with chances to win championships and be successful in life. It’s not all about X number of dollars, but we are going to pay full cost of attendance. I think it’s going to be more than fair and help us in recruiting.”

In other words, close enough should be good enough.  We’ll soon see if that’s right.

Shooting yourself in the foot as a marketing tool

Conference USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky actually suggests that if UAB elects to restore its football program, it would make for a powerful brand.

No, really.

“I think UAB has a chance of becoming a real strong Cinderella brand nationally,” Banowsky said. “There’s been so much national attention paid to UAB that they would have brand equity right out of the gate.

“People would root for them coast to coast. People like to see the underdog rise up.”

If I were as cynical as Banowsky appears, I’d suggest this was UAB’s strategy all along.  It’s certainly stupid enough to qualify.

Musical palate cleanser, the King is gone edition

Ah, hell.

B. B. King, whose world-weary voice and wailing guitar lifted him from the cotton fields of Mississippi to a global stage and the apex of American blues, died Thursday in Las Vegas. He was 89.

His death was reported early Friday by The Associated Press, citing his lawyer, Brent Bryson, and by CNN, citing his daughter, Patty King.

Mr. King married country blues to big-city rhythms and created a sound instantly recognizable to millions: a stinging guitar with a shimmering vibrato, notes that coiled and leapt like an animal, and a voice that groaned and bent with the weight of lust, longing and lost love.

“I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions,” Mr. King said in his autobiography, “Blues All Around Me” (1996), written with David Ritz.

He did that.

I’d heard he’d been placed in a hospice, so the news of his passing doesn’t come as a complete shock.  And what a legacy!  His greatest work, in my humble opinion, is Live at the Regal, but there is so much more you ought to listen to out there.

I’ll leave you with a couple of clips for a taste.  First, check out this remarkable performance from 1972, at Sing Sing Prison:

And here he is performing his greatest hit, “The Thrill Is Gone”, in Montreux, Switzerland.  The year is 1993.

The last word, from his AP obit…

In a June 2006 interview, King said there are plenty of great musicians now performing who will keep the blues alive.

“I could name so many that I think that you won’t miss me at all when I’m not around. You’ll maybe miss seeing my face, but the music will go on,” he said.

 **************************************************************************

UPDATE:  King talked about his guitar here.  It’s pretty cool.