The ultimate way to reduce football injuries

Normally I take a pass on April Fools Day humor, but this is too inspired to ignore.

Could be a real game changer in recruiting, too.

(h/t)

Smart-hired, SOD-approved

You will be relieved to know that Derek Dooley gives two thumbs up to the hires of Chaney and Pittman.  With that comes a warning:

As has been well documented, Dooley was fired as the Vols’ head coach at the end of that season. But it had nothing to do with his teams’ offensive performances.

“Kirby’s pretty smart; he’s seen what’s happened to Will (Muschamp) and me,” Dooley said with a laugh. “He knows you don’t have much time. Even though it takes time to establish your program, nobody wants to hear that. They don’t care what the state of your program is.”

No doubt Kirby’s already figured out it’s not a good idea to make student-athletes’ shower hygiene a matter for public discussion.  The sky’s the limit!

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“When it takes three months to answer FOIA requests, often the story will no longer be relevant.”

For those of you questioning what sort of information comes out of Open Records requests from the media, you might want to review Seth Emerson’s chat from yesterday.

… Most of the time the FOIAs result in things like coaches’ contracts and salaries, non-conference scheduling news, NCAA secondary violations, etc. But there have been several other good stories that probably only saw the light of day via FOIA. There are too many to list, but one that jumps to mind is a few years ago when Chip discovered that Mark Richt had been paying some staff members out of his own pocket, because of Damon Evans’ perceived unwillingness to do so.

Maybe that doesn’t matter to you.  Or maybe you think it’s a distraction that holds the athletic department back from achieving greatness.  As a blogger trying to assess why the program succeeds or fails, I find that stuff of interest.

Read the whole thing.  Seth probably spent more time discussing the topic than he wanted, but it sounds to me like there are Georgia fans trying to figure out why the change in the law matters.  If you haven’t thought about it, maybe you should, too.

‘Well, you were an insubstantial player with insubstantial offers from an insubstantial school.’

If you love unflattering stories about Urban Meyer, then you’ll enjoy this one.

“I understand why optically people have a lot of questions around all that.”

You gotta admit focusing on the political stupidity of state governments is an obvious way to distract attention from being paid to your own stupidity.

This year’s “Finish The Drill”

Apparently Kirby’s channeling his inner ancient Roman poet now.

Just a coincidence

You may have heard yesterday about Judge Wilken approving an attorney’s fee award in O’Bannon that’s somewhere north of $40 million.  It’s an interesting data point, I guess, especially when you consider that plaintiff’s counsel is risking that in their appeal to the Supreme Court, but, as usual, I find something else in her order that’s more so.

Evidently one of the arguments the NCAA made in its motion to reduce the award was that as schools are now paying cost of attendance stipends purely out of the goodness of their hearts, it made the litigation superfluous and thus meant the lawyers’ fees were excessive.  (Call it the Seth Davis defense.)

Wilken wasn’t having any of that.

Wilken wrote that a change in the NCAA’s rules that now allows athletes to receive scholarships based not only on tuition, fees, room, board and books, but also the full cost of attendance does not reduce the impact of her ruling in the plaintiffs’ favor.

“The NCAA has failed to rebut the inference that Plaintiffs’ lawsuit and this Court’s order were factors in its decision to change its rules,” she wrote.

I’m shocked anyone might think Mark Emmert wouldn’t do the right thing on his own without any outside prodding.  Shocked, I tell you.