Talent isn’t everything.

At least not if you’re comparing Georgia to Michigan State.

“How do you figure out if a kid wiIl translate to a two- or three-year starter as a college quarterback?”

Um… don’t you just look at who had the best stats at G-Day?

Evidently there’s more to it than that.  Who could have known?

“If they change this rule so now I can force a kid to stay with me and be my backup, I think that’s just cruel and unusual.”

The thing people – and by that, I mean certain coaches – tend to forget in blasting kids for “taking advantage” of the graduate transfer rule, is that it takes two to tango.  Players who graduate and look to move on still need a dancing partner.

Or to put it another way, “Pass a well-meaning rule, and schools will find a way to bend it.”

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“We’ll be playing teams for a second time, so hopefully we’ll improve.”

In Pruitt’s second year, I’m hoping familiarity breeds approval.  So take these words from Jordan Jenkins for what they’re worth:

“He’s done everything we thought he would and so much more,” senior outside linebacker Jordan Jenkins said. “He’s developed us a lot as young men, and he’s developed us a lot on the field. He has really helped me with a lot of coverage issues that I’ve had in the past, and he’s helped the issues of some other guys, too.”

Considering what they’re planning on doing with Leonard Floyd and some of the fresh faces in the secondary, I sure hope so.

Eastasia has always been at war with Oceania.

And, as Andy Schwartz tells it, the NCAA has always paid players.

Contrary to popular belief, the NCAA has only ever truly enforced a nationwide prohibition on payments to athletes for three years—from 1948 to 1951. Prior to that, there was no NCAA-wide rule on scholarships at all, meaning that the full flowering of the popularity of college football prior to World War II was achieved without any intervention from any centralized, faux-regulatory body. Imagine it—all that sis-boom-bah and yet no national price fixing!

In 1948 that changed. The NCAA passed what was called the “Sanity Code,” which said that any form of merit pay to an athlete in exchange for his services as an athlete was forbidden, and any school that violated that policy would be boycotted by all other members of the NCAA. To be clear, what we now think of as athletic scholarships were item number one on this list of banned payments. In the Sanity Code world, an athletic scholarship was—gasp—pay for play.

By 1951, the NCAA had identified seven schools—BC, The Citadel, Maryland, Villanova, Virginia, Virginia Tech, and VMI—that were, apparently insanely, paying football players through athletic scholarships. The full NCAA membership, when asked to enforce the Sanity Code, had a moment of “there but for the grace of God go I” and realized that because they were also providing athletic scholarships, if they knocked out Virginia Tech, the next knock on the door in the night might be to haul them in to be judged for their own insanity.

So neither Virginia Tech nor its fellow “Seven Sinners” were punished and the Sanity Code, while it stayed on the books for a few more years, was left unenforced.

In the years since, the NCAA has never tried to prohibit athletes from receiving some form of athletic pay for their services. So while you often hear people decrying the horrors that would emerge if college athletes were to be paid, with the exception of those three years, college athletes have been paid. Often these scholarships include a monthly check that players use to pay their rent and buy food with. Sort of like everyone else does with the checks their employers give them.

Over the years, the only thing that really changes is its definition of pay.  Or, to paraphrase the former leader of the free world, It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘pay’ is.

Throw unprecedented revenues together with doing what’s convenient and you’ve just created the perfect formula to lose in court.

“We were kind of banging away at it, getting close and that kind of thing…”

This is the sound of a man who senses he’s finally getting the level of support he’s been seeking.

If there was something missing at Georgia in terms of resources, the perception now is there soon won’t be any longer.

“I think the things that we’re seeing are really not that uncommon in the league, it might feel uncommon at Georgia,” Richt said. “We are the last to put in an indoor. There are other things facility wise that we want to get done that would really bring us up to par with everybody. We’re not necessarily blazing a trail but we are moving in a very positive direction. …I’m thankful that we’re moving in the right direction.”

Notice that he says “moving”, as in the present tense.  As in the program hasn’t arrived at its final destination yet.

He’s got the gentle criticism of McGarity down to a fine art.