“Annoying”? Us?

Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me in the least.

#Hogs, #FSU, #UGA, #Michigan, #HailState, #Vols & #Aggies others mentioned by multiple recruits as being most annoying fans on social media.

— Jeremy Crabtree (@jeremycrabtree) December 29, 2015

PAWWWLLL, Kirby’s bitin’ the hand that fed him!

Really, this is a pretty obvious recruiting pitch.

Still, Smart made clear that even though he, Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher and Florida’s Jim McElwain are branches of the Saban coaching tree who must recruit against their former boss, the former coordinators can differentiate themselves even though their programs are structured similarly to Saban’s. In Smart’s case, his pitch is simple. “Do you want to play? Because if you want to play, let’s go,” Smart said. “We need you to come play. If you want to play, come on.” Translation: Do you want to sit behind all the five-stars stacked like cordwood in Tuscaloosa or see the field quickly in Athens? Of course, Smart isn’t going to say it like that.

We’ve been focused on our own butt hurt over Smart staying in Tuscaloosa to coach in the CFP, but come February, if Alabama loses a couple of top recruits to Smart, the reaction from some parts of Tide Nation should be fun to watch.

“Somebody got to him the night before the game.”

I don’t know what it is about contract offers on the eve of national championship games, but it turns out that Herschel Walker was wrestling with a $1 million dollar check from the owner of the USFL New Jersey Generals the night before the 1983 Sugar Bowl.  Like Vince Dooley two years before with an Auburn job offer, Walker had second thoughts and wanted to walk away.

Unfortunately, unlike Dooley, Herschel was an amateur and couldn’t.

“(Walker) got into a trap and couldn’t get out of it,” Dooley said. “He tried his best to get out of it. They tore up what he had signed, which is what they said they would do. He said he didn’t want to do this and they said ‘If you’ll sign it, if you don’t want to do it by 7 a.m., we’ll tear it up.’

“And guess what happened? They put all this pressure on him all night long, but the guy tore (the document) up and flushed it down the commode. But somebody made a copy of it and released it to the Boston Globe, and that’s how it all jumped out of there.”

Somebody made a copy and released it, hunh.  How convenient for the Generals.

So Walker never takes the money, cancels the contract and still wound up having his college eligibility terminated.  I bet that rankled.  Maybe that explains why Dooley wound up suing the NCAA a few years later over its control of television.

“Nothing suggested that could happen.”

If you’re wondering how Disney’s stock price could decline in the face of record breaking numbers from the new Star Wars flick, look no further than genius calls like the Longhorn Network.

That’s not to say ESPN’s future is doomed.  But it is an indication that viewers’ wallets aren’t as bottomless as school presidents and athletic directors assume them to be… not that any of them are likely to be paying attention to this.  Yet, anyway.

“OK, it’s time to get serious.”

The only thing missing from this Jason Butt “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” tale of expectations for Kirby’s first season as Georgia head coach, is a QBR reference for the G-Day game.  Otherwise, as a word of caution, it’s worth a read.

Once again, the Georgia Way is under attack.

You wonder how long everyone in Butts-Mehre can stick to Michael Adams’ legacy drug policy when current trends are turning against it.

At least one-third of the Power Five conference schools are not punishing athletes as harshly as they were 10 years ago for testing positive for marijuana and other so-called recreational drugs, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.

The NCAA last year cut in half the penalty for athletes who fail screenings for substances like marijuana at its championship events…

The AP found that some of the nation’s biggest universities, from Oregon to Auburn, have already eased their punishments as society’s views on marijuana use have changed. Marijuana use among U.S. adults has doubled over a decade, according to government surveys, and recreational use is now legal in four states.

How fast is this running away from the crusaders in Athens?  This fast:

The NCAA has been randomly testing athletes at its championship events and football bowl games for performance enhancing and recreational drugs since 1986. In 2014, the penalty for testing positive at either of those events for a recreational drug such as marijuana was reduced from a suspension of one year to six months.

Now NCAA chief medical officer Dr. Brian Hainline wants to end NCAA testing for recreational drugs.

Hainline said the NCAA should focus on catching cheaters who gain a competitive advantage by using performance-enhancing drugs…

Man, if you’ve lost the NCAA on being vindictive, you’re really out there on a limb.

Of course, you’ve still got that smug feeling of moral superiority to keep you warm at night, don’t you?  Um, well…

“If we’re going to test at championship events for things that are illegal, then we shouldn’t just test for pot,” Hainline said. “If there are any kids under the age of 18 smoking cigarettes, we should test for that. We certainly should be testing for alcohol for everyone under the age of 21. Then we ask ourselves, `Where does the moral authority stop?’ I’m all for moral authority as long as there is a philosophical consistency to it.”

Philosophical consistency in college athletics?  BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!  Oh wait… you were serious about that?

If Georgia announces its annual intention to make an issue out of a uniform drug policy for the conference when the SEC has its spring meeting next year, I hope somebody invites Dr. Hainline to speak there.

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

UPDATE:  You can find a school-by-school breakdown of drug policies here.

Today, in well-played snark

This made me laugh out loud this morning.

The only thing I can add is this matching t-shirt celebrating South Carolina Heisman Trophy winners.

It’s perfect for stenciling in the name of whatever ‘Cock you predict greatness for in August.

A few bowl game thoughts

The big question for this Saturday, of course, is how much the coaches and players will care about the game.  As Seth Emerson notes, things are a little weird right now.

John Lilly, one of the symbols of the weird transition going on with the Georgia football team, walked through a hotel lobby here on Sunday night still wearing a Georgia hat. He will serve as the team’s offensive coordinator in the bowl, but he has already cleaned out his office back home in Athens.

Other players and staffers began streaming in on Sunday. It officially was reporting day for Georgia’s final week, but more than a few coaches and players on this year’s team will be no-shows.

The former head coach is in Miami. The new head coach is still with his former team. The interim head coach is only with the Bulldogs one more week until he joins South Carolina. The former defensive coordinator is also back at Alabama, already in his new job. The former offensive coordinator will not be here, nor will one other defensive assistant. The quarterback who started this year’s previous game in Jacksonville has already transferred and found a new school.

All that served as the backdrop Monday as the Bulldogs return to practice, preparing for a match-up with Penn State in the TaxSlayer Bowl that many have deemed irrelevant.

Yeah, just a little.

I don’t think the coaches will mail it in, if only for reasons of professional pride.  But I can see how the players might struggle with motivation.  If only Penn State had a coach capable of pissing off Georgia folks… oh, wait.

By the way, as a side note, did you know Marshall Morgan has a chance to set a conference career scoring mark?  Or that, if Georgia wins, Greyson Lambert would tie D.J. Shockley for the highest win percentage (.833) among starting quarterbacks in the Richt era?

Like I said, things are a little weird right now.

Musical palate cleanser, take me down to your dance floor edition

I hadn’t heard this song for a while, but it popped up on my player and I can’t get it out of my head now – Gram Parsons’ “A Song For You”.

He may know what the song is about, but for me those lyrics have always been more about a general sense of longing and loss than anything more specific.  What really kills me about the song, though, is the poignancy of his vocals.  Parsons’ life was like something out of a Southern Gothic novel, and you can feel the pain and his inability to deal with life leaking out of every line he delivers.

When Emmylou Harris joins in, it sounds like how I imagine the angels harmonize.  Sadness has never been delivered more beautifully.