“There needs to be a level playing field here, some way.”

As noted before, Georgia’s raised its COA figure to middle of the pack by SEC standards.  And Seth Emerson reports it’s a fluid situation.

McGarity said UGA, especially Morehead, will be keeping an eye on COA figures around the SEC and the nation, in the hopes it levels out. If not, they’ll revisit Georgia’s next year.

“Our president has been very involved in the whole issue of cost-of-attendance,” McGarity said. “He has been very vocal in his concern about an uneven playing field, about the consequences that has now become evident, even in our conference, about the vast differences.”

It’s not that they’re scared of what they’re paying players.  It’s that they’re scared of what everyone else is paying them.

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A CFP Yar!

Mike Leach, I love ‘ya, but no…

Mike Leach reiterates that college football should have a 64-team playoff

— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyESPN) July 29, 2015

Burying the hatchet

… but at least not in each other.

Boy, there’s enough to read between the lines in that Weiszer article to make War and Peace feel like a short story.

“What I’ve learned about Greg is he’s going to do the right thing regardless of the criticism.”

I see another Greg McGarity PR campaign has been launched.  He’s tough, but often misunderstood.  Just ask him.

“You have to understand that the decisions that you make will always be challenged by everyone,” he said. “Maybe not challenged, but questioned. …I’ve always felt like any decision that’s made is made in the best interest of the institution. Sometimes that’s not in the best interest of an individual or a team or a coach or what have you. …I think sometimes people assume, they guess. They might read what’s on social media and then they form their opinion at that time. A lot of people voice frustration, they don’t understand. We are basically limited at times to talk about it until it’s all over. The hope is people would trust you to make the right decisions.”

The funny thing about this is that events of the past six months have overtaken the concerns about a dysfunctional program many of us had last December.  Immediately after the bowl game, this comment would have had me stewing.  Now, I find that I can’t get worked up about it anymore.  So feel free to keep spinning, Greg.  As long as everyone associated with the program appears to be rowing in the same direction, the rest doesn’t matter to me.

Dan Mullen has an idea.

Instead of Jim Delany’s blanket ineligibility proposal for incoming freshmen student-athletes, the Mississippi State coach offers something more nuanced to help kids adjust:  Any player above the NCAA’s new core grade-point-average requirement should get five years of eligibility instead of the standard four.

As he explains it, here’s what you’d get with that.

“You might take a freshman and they are being punished for having better grades. They might be forced to play even though they needed a redshirt year,” Mullen says. “One of the thoughts I had was there’s a mandatory academic redshirt year for a certain group of people…well, if you are above that new standard you should get five years of eligibility. Why punish someone who might be forced to have to play?

“Instead of punishing guys for doing bad, why not reward guys for doing good?”

Well, that’s nice, but he’s a coach, so you can figure there’s another agenda lurking in the background.  And there is.

His idea is to counteract the NCAA’s requirement, set to go into effect August 2016, which requires prospective student-athletes to have a minimum GPA of 2.3. If the recruits can’t hit that 2.3 GPA figure but are above the old 2.0 scale, they’d be forced to take an academic redshirt year. The NCAA also raised its sliding scale based on GPA and SAT/ACT scores, and now requires recruits to have completed 10 of their 16 core classes before their senior year.

Mullen imagines a hypothetical scenario in which multiple players have to take an academic redshirt year, and how that’d force other guys into playing time before they might be ready. That’s the impetus behind his push to give those players an extra year of eligibility.

If Mullen’s idea were passed, it could dramatically change the way programs recruit. Schools would still recruit talented players with shaky transcripts, but the benefits of signing a stronger student would be big when another year of eligibility is on the table. It would even the scales a bit for programs with tough admissions standards.

So what he’s really after is more signing flexibility.  That, in and of itself, isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  (In fact, if it leads to less pressure on coaches to futz with players’ grades, it’s likely a good thing.)  But the bottom line here is that this is about giving guys like him a lifeline to be able to manage continuing to bring in athletic talent that isn’t so talented in the classroom.  And to the extent that eases the pressure on high schools and high schoolers to bring their academic efforts up to a more serious level, that isn’t such a good thing.

What do y’all think?

Today’s simple question

Why does seemingly every advanced stats projection of the 2015 season favor Georgia more than we do?