The truth shall set you, Freeze.

This is from TMZ, so take it with a grain of salt, I guess (at least until it’s picked up elsewhere), but it’s both unsurprising and amusing.

Ole Miss football coach Hugh Freeze says he does NOT want to testify in the Laremy Tunsil domestic violence civil case … citing concerns that his testimony might be used in an NCAA investigation…

The stepdad now wants to depose Laremy’s college football coach Hugh Freeze — believing he has information that will help prove his story.

But Freeze doesn’t want that to happen — and has filed court docs to block the deposition — in part because “at this time, the NCAA is considering allegations against the University and its football program, including allegations related to [Tunsil].”

He does not expand on the allegations.

Freeze says he’s concerned that any information from the deposition could be accessed by NCAA investigators and possibly used against him … and he doesn’t believe that’s fair.

If the judge DOES force Freeze to testify, he at least wants the transcripts sealed to prevent the NCAA from getting their hands on it.

This is not a good look for you, man.

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UPDATE:  You can toss that grain of salt now.

Freeze's attorneys filed request to prohibit taking of Freeze deposition in Miller-Tunsil lawsuit. Story coming to @clarionledger.

— Daniel Paulling (@DanielPaulling) May 11, 2016

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UPDATE #2:  More here.

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Put a cap on it.

The state Board of Regents has set limits on the amount of money from student fees and tuition that can go toward athletic programs.  If you’re one of Georgia’s smaller fry schools, that’s a huge deal.  Here are the deets:

The Regents set limits on the amount of money from student fees and tuition that can go toward athletic programs at the state’s public colleges and universities. The cap will be between 65 percent and 85 percent of the athletic budget at most schools, depending on each school’s athletic association.

The new rules come as a national review of the high cost of athletics at some schools has led to debate about rising college costs and whether students get a good return on their investment when they foot the bill for sports. The goal is for Georgia colleges to seek money for sports through fundraising and other revenue sources beyond what students pay.

All well and good at UGA.  But elsewhere, not so much.

Georgia State University would have to cut the amount of student fees and tuition that fund its athletic programs by about $700,000, according to a new policy adopted by the state’s Board of Regents on Tuesday.

Part two is more of the same in terms where the crunch will fall.

The new rules also cap growth in athletics expenses at 5 percent a year.

The policy update will have little impact on athletic powerhouses Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia, which already fund most of their sports programs through broadcasting rights, contributions, ticket sales and other revenue sources. UGA relied on just 2.8 percent of student funding for sports last year; Georgia Tech, 7.2 percent. Both were well under the 10 percent cap placed on them.

Georgia State is one of six schools — along with Armstrong State, Middle Georgia State, East Georgia State, Gordon State and Atlanta Metropolitan State colleges — that is over the subsidy cap, and must cut its reliance on student funding. Almost 68 percent of Georgia State’s athletics budget was subsidized last year, almost 3 percentage points higher than the 65 percent cap now set.

Personally speaking, this is a long time coming and the BOR is to be commended for adopting these policies.  But there’s little doubt it’s more of the rich getting richer.  I doubt Georgia Tech will mind much if Georgia State has a harder time raising money to be competitive.

Meanwhile, McGarity gets to keep students contributing to the reserve fund and can tell Kirby there’s only so much new spending a year he can do.  Win-win, baby!

PAWWWLLL, Georgia has a dual-threat quarterback!

I can barely imagine the online meltdown that would have ensued had Jacob Eason pulled off this in the G-Day game.

That was before spring practice, when the highly-touted Eason, a five-star freshman recruit, made waves for his arm talent. But he also showed some running ability: According to multiple sources who were at one of the team’s two closed scrimmages, Eason had a touchdown run of around 50 yards. It came on a broken play.

Boy, would that have done wonders for his QBR.

‘Well, he won 10 games.’

I know I shouldn’t waste my time quoting Fran Tarkenton, but, honestly, this is such a perfect encapsulation of the mindset of a certain few who wanted a change without wasting any time on a credible search process that I can’t resist.

“Head coach in pro football, college football is a tough job, and I think that it was probably time for a change,” Tarkenton said. “You say, ‘Well, he won 10 games,’ and I understand that, and nobody would’ve faulted (athletics director) Greg McGarity if he’d kept him. He probably got a lot of ridicule for not keeping him. But here’s my point: I think the University of Georgia football program, I think it should be the best football program in the country.

“I think that the standards that we should set is we should compete every year for an SEC championship and have a chance to go (to the national championship). That’s what Alabama does. With (Nick) Saban they do it. They did it with Bear Bryant. Why not us? Why should we be content with winning nine or 10 games?”

The point here isn’t to argue about whether it was time to replace Richt.  Nor is it about whether Kirby Smart can succeed at Georgia.  It’s about how much consideration went into whatever planning was made for elevating the program to the place where Tarkenton believes it should occupy before McGarity made the decision to hire Smart.  Does anybody seriously believe there was much more contemplated than “Hell, Kirby worked for Saban for years.  That ought to be good enough.”?

Then again, maybe that’s all it takes.  I don’t know.  All I can say, though, if it were that easy, there are other resource-laden programs that could have duplicated the Process and gotten similar results.  That no other school has done so should give people like Tarkenton pause.  Maybe it will when it comes time to hire the next head coach.

The player strike you never heard about

Greedheads.

Two Stanford football captains sat out a week of summer workouts and meetings last year in protest over the university’s delay in providing players scholarship money, according to a recent Stanford player.

Rollins Stallworth, a Stanford wide receiver whose eligibility expired after last season, revealed the protest Tuesday while serving as a panelist at a forum by the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. Stallworth said the decision by the captains, whom he declined to name, happened after Stanford was late in providing players with stipends for the third straight summer.

“So we were expected to be at meetings at 7 in the morning, go to practice for three hours, go to classes for another three hours and have nighttime meetings without having our stipend or our money — with literally no compensation,” Stallworth said. “At that point, two of our team captains stopped coming to practice, stopped coming into meetings for almost a week or a week-and-a-half as protest.”

Hey, I thought those were voluntary!  (The meetings and practice, not the stipend, that is.)

By the way, you can probably guess the punchline.  The sit out got results.

In an interview after his public remarks, Stallworth said the stipends arrived about a week after summer workouts started. In the past, he said, the stipends took a couple weeks to reach players.

Stallworth, who is chair of the Pac-12 Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, said the protest might have sped up the delivery. Stanford officials were concerned about the protest and only the two captains participated, he said.

“It was a mistake, a human error on the filing of our stipends that occurred,” Stallworth said. “But the thought process was, if we’re not being compensated on our end (and) you’re not holding up your end, we shouldn’t hold up our end as well.”

Stanford athletic department communications director Alan George said via email, “The delay in providing summer school financial aid was due to problems with administrative procedures that were impacted by financial aid office processing activities and the timing of when students enrolled in courses. The matter was addressed when it occurred and procedures for providing summer financial aid have since been changed.”

Which is why you’ll see more of this down the road.  The hard part isn’t using your leverage.  It’s realizing you have leverage in the first place.

When Big 12 membership absolutely positively has to be there overnight…

You can sit there, gussy yourself up a little bit and convince yourself that you’re a terrific fit for the Big 12.

Or you can try outright bribery.

On Feb. 24, Memphis president David Rudd penned a letter to Gee and copied Oklahoma president David Boren and Baylor president Ken Starr, the other two members of the composition committee, as well as former Big 12 board chairman and Kansas State president Kirk Schulz. In the letter, Rudd pledged that Memphis will make a $500 million investment in academic and athletic infrastructure over the next five years. Rudd also enclosed a letter from FedEx chairman Fred Smith, who stated that the delivery services giant headquartered in Memphis will be behind the school’s Big 12 campaign.

“We strongly support the university’s efforts to become a member of an expanded Big 12 athletic conference,” Smith wrote to Rudd in a letter dated Feb. 23. “In support of [Memphis’] Big 12 aspirations, we have researched college conference sponsorships and are prepared to become a major Big 12 sponsor of football and basketball.”

Smith also wrote that FedEx would be prepared to sponsor a Big 12 championship game.

“We believe the University of Memphis and the Big 12 are a great fit and hope our support will contribute to the University of Memphis becoming a member of this storied athletic conference in the near future,” Smith wrote.

Sounds like a match made in heaven.

 

“I feel sorry for the kids.”

After reading this, I feel sorrier for Kirby and Mrs. Kirby.

“Mary Beth’s not going to like it,” Georgia coach Mark Fox said of Smart’s wife. “You go to bed with your phone, you know? There are times I’ve laid my phone on my cheek in case so if a kid texts you back, you know what happened. You are always constantly trying to recruit and having the ability to recruit and now those kids pick and choose when they want to communicate. They’ve got different hours than a lot of us.”

Sounds romantic, no?