Rich Rodriguez is blowing up spring practice.

At Georgia, Kirby Smart is pushing for the entire state to show up for G-Day.

Meanwhile, at Arizona, RichRod’s decided the whole spring thing isn’t worth the trouble.

Spring football for colleges begins Friday. Really.

“Hell, the weather’s nice her year round,” Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez said from Tucson, where his team was set to hit the practice field amidst a forecasted high of 88 degrees. “Let’s enjoy it.”

Rodriguez is not the first coach to shift his 15 “spring” practices into February. Duke opened even earlier in 2015 (Feb. 6), while Stanford, Northwestern and a couple others have moved to late February. The stated reasons include giving players that suffer injuries more time to recover and freeing them up to concentrate on academics the rest of the semester.

Practices are spread out over seven weeks (which includes spring break), concluding March 25.

But Rodriguez is taking things one step farther. He’s basically decided to blow up the way his team practices altogether. The Wildcats’ 15 practices will overwhelmingly consist of individual drills and basic fundamentals. There will be only one formal scrimmage, no spring game and relatively few 11-on-11 periods.

Inconceivable!  Can you imagine the hue and cry that would arise if we were deprived of spring scrimmage stats?  How would we know that the coaches were starting the wrong quarterback without G-Day QBR to fall back on?

Even better, can you imagine if RichRod had taken the Alabama job and tried this?  He’d be run out of Tuscaloosa on a rail.

Mr. Conventional Wisdom sniffs at Jim Harbaugh.

By the way, has famed mouthpiece of the SEC Tony Barnhart weighed in on Michigan spending spring break at IMG?

— Michael (@BravesAndBirds) February 10, 2016

Why, yes, now that you ask.  And it’s everything you’d expect.

I don’t know what I like best, the macho posturing that starts with the header and keeps on going, or the lame attempt to claim that Harbaugh is the real hypocrite here.  Actually, the winner comes when he combines both:

… If there is no rule prohibiting what Harbaugh wants to do, then I don’t blame him for trying to take advantage of it. Just man up about why you’re doing it. You’re not doing it because your players want to practice in nice weather during their spring break. It’s about recruiting.

Yeah, grow a pair, bitch.  You’re gonna need ’em when Sankey’s boys come for you: “Translation: The SEC is not going to start this fight. But it will be more than willing to finish it.”  Whew, that’s some rough stuff, that is.

In any event, it ought to keep Tony in good standing with the SEC office.

“However, circumstances have put us in a position that we are going to part ways.”

And the NCAA investigation into recruiting violations at Ole Miss claims a victim… who’s not at Ole Miss.

Horns247 has learned that Texas and defensive backs coach Chris Vaughn are expected to part ways. It is unclear whether Vaughn will resign or be fired.

Vaughn, who was an assistant at Ole Miss six years ago, may have been implicated in part of the NCAA allegations recently levied against Ole Miss.

Many of the violations involve the staff of current Rebel head coach Hugh Freeze, but per an ESPN report, four of the violations are attached to former Ole Miss staffers under former Rebel head coach Houston Nutt.

Vaughn coached for the Rebels from 2008 to 2011 and served as the team’s defensive backs coach and recruiting coordinator. Sources tell Horns247 the evidence against Vaughn “were damning.”

It’s not great news for OM, although it could be worse.  But the real question for me is, between this guy and David Saunders, how in the hell was the Nuttster’s recruiting so mediocre?  I mean, if you cheat and still can’t land the talent, what does that say about your coaching ability?

Buck Belue, master of the obvious

Here’s the header for an AJ-C piece (you definitely do not need to click on the link) – “Former UGA great says Jacob Eason needs to earn the QB job“.

With keen insight like that, I can only hope there’s a support staff spot they can open up to take full advantage of Buck’s wisdom.  I mean, who knew?

I think we’ve officially hit the offseason, folks.

Greatest Southern conservative crisis ever?

Boy, now here’s a tough call:  Louisiana’s governor warns his constituents that if state government can’t solve its serious fiscal problems, “… you can say farewell to college football next fall.”

Hey, if that happens, can Kirby Smart have dibs on LSU’s offensive linemen?