The SEC grants Maurice Smith his waiver to be admitted to Georgia.
Welcome aboard, Mo. Um… first scrimmage is Saturday.
**************************************************************************
UPDATE: Here’s the official statement.
The SEC grants Maurice Smith his waiver to be admitted to Georgia.
Welcome aboard, Mo. Um… first scrimmage is Saturday.
**************************************************************************
UPDATE: Here’s the official statement.
Bama grad transfer DB Maurice Smith granted conditional waiver to transfer within the SEC pic.twitter.com/isQxUcZcIN
— Barrett Sallee 🇺🇸 (@BarrettSallee) August 12, 2016
Filed under Georgia Football, SEC Football
“We remember the Sugar Bowl, I think it my junior year of high school, we let Alabama beat us twice,” Brinson said of a team that also lost to the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship game. “We’re not letting Alabama beat us twice. In the Sugar Bowl in 2018, they… thought they should have been in the playoffs and lost to Texas.” -- AB-H, 12/27/23
Alright Maurice. Now GATA.
LikeLike
Is this what a shift in the balance of power feels like? Why do I feel like we’re not living in the same absolutely-Bama-dominated universe we were living in just a few weeks ago?
LikeLike
Strange times indeed.
LikeLike
I sure hope Maurice spends a LOT of time with kids also being recruited by Alabama (and their mommas). I mean a LOT.
LikeLike
Yes!
LikeLike
Hell, all he has to do is just walk in with a few newspaper sports headlines from the last week.
LikeLike
Two comments:
1) I really, really didn’t expect the SEC to grant the waiver. I assumed they were just taking the heat off of their meal ticket.
2) Holy crap, this could have happened weeks ago. If this move was in his best interest today, it was in his interest back then as well. Nothing changed but the spotlight.
LikeLike
He did not graduate until Saturday. It could not have happened sooner than Monday – and that’s only if Alabama, Georgia, and the SEC completed all necessary bureacracy in one business day.
LikeLike
Oops. Yes, you are right about that. But the kid tried to get these wheels in motion well before that, and he got stonewalled with a lot of pious BS.
LikeLike
There’s justice in this cruel world!
LikeLike
Good for him. Glad it all got settled. Hope he can get to school and get caught up on everything and make an impact.
I dont know if it is a shift or anything, but glad that things worked out for this kid.
LikeLike
Now he can spill all of Alabama’s secrets…right, Bert?
LikeLike
Yeah… I’d like to find out the inside poop on that Jeremy Pruitt fella. Hear he’s a pretty good coach.
LikeLike
I thought he might be able to bring the Bama defense playbook with him. Smart could probably use a copy.
LikeLike
This just goes to show….Mike Adams ain’t in charge anymore. We would have never been involved in this even if Kirby was the coach.
LikeLike
I honestly never thought Saban would relent. Alabama graduates a lot of players in 3 years, and this opens the door for a lot of them to jump from back-up or semi-starter at Alabama to a thinner depth chart elsewhere.
I still don’t get how a kid who wasn’t seeing huge minutes under Smart and Tucker at Alabama is going to see huge minutes under Smart and Tucker at Georgia. Yes, Alabama has far more recruiting stars in the back 5, but a lot of it lacks experience. Georgia has a lot of talent and experience there already. Smith adds some depth. At Alabama, he had a shot at displaying some senior leadership and demonstrating some intangibles to complement his physical skills. Now, he starts over. No way Smart and Tucker anoint him. He’s going to have to work his way up the ladder.
Smith must really have high hopes for his time in Athens. I hope it works out for him.
LikeLike
Alabama football’s academic advisory staff just lost 3 employees.
LikeLike
I hope he takes time to talk to the guys — Locker room Chemistry- is the only potential downside to this.
LikeLike
The stipulation is curious. He must graduate during the 2018-19 academic year or UGA may not request similar wavers for a period of three years.
However, Sankey also says the graduate rule needs to be addressed. So if they do away with the rule then UGA will never need to apply for another graduate transfer waiver anyway… So it could be a stipulation without teeth.
LikeLike
Good for him. It sounds like he’s going into the Master of Public Health program, so I’m assuming that’s not a bunch of classes that aren’t going to be academically challenging. I hope he has a great year on the field and makes sufficient progress toward his 2nd degree off.
I’ll admit I was pleasantly surprised about the SEC’s decision. I still think the conference will change this rule in the offseason to reward athletes who take care of business in the classroom.
LikeLike
Not surprised, kind of expected it yesterday since the SEC office has to have been all over this as it was playing out. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they hadn’t been applying some heat to the Alabama prez. I expect the rule to be amended in before next summer, no way to defend it with graduate transfers, imo. Also wouldn’t be surprised to see other conferences use this against the SEC in recruiting, just a dumb rule.
LikeLike
But put in place in response to the Masoli transfer to Ole Miss, which gave the SEC a bit of a black eye.
The idea was to ensure transfers were academic rather than athletic in nature. There’s an argument for that.
The bad press on this all summer long will result in a change – but he graduated Saturday and had his full clearance Friday.
LikeLike
There is an argument for that, but it is undermined by not applying that standard to all cases before, as well as the different standard one conference is trying to set. Rules must be consistently applied to be respected. Pandora’s Box was opened long ago and the PR battle has been lost.
LikeLike
Yep
LikeLike
Very interesting language in the 1st paragraph … if he, Kirby and Tucker decide to take a redshirt with the idea that he’ll be a starter in 2017, he has two years in Athens to get ready for a potential NFL run. Given Saban’s roster management tendencies, there’s no way Little Nicky gives him that flexibility. If he didn’t keep the nickel starter role, he would have covered kicks, played in mop-up time, and shown the door in January in the hope of an undrafted free agent contract.
LikeLike
If that’s the plan, then he has no need of a waiver from the SEC. Without the waiver, he has to take a redshirt year at Georgia and wait to play in 2017.
So, I’m thinking Smith wants to play in 2016 and has been promised prominent playing time in 2016. And after all the slings and arrows the SEC office took over this issue, I don’t think Kirby would be making many friends in Birmingham if he effectively says, “Hey, thanks for taking all those bullets and granting the waiver, but turns out we didn’t need it after all. Thanks anyway!”
LikeLike
THe last paragraph in interesting as well, if he does not graduate as of the 2018-19 academic year, UGA can not request certain wavers again. I hope this kid is worth it.
LikeLike
Popular thinking is that those conditions will expire with an SEC review/revocation of the existing rule come spring meetings. I suspect in fact that the new rule will be just what Sankey outlined for Smith – clears room for players with genuine academic ambitions, provides a serious drag on both player and the new program if the intention is simply athletic free agency.
It does raise a really interesting problem if Smith pursues a pro career. Does he get a deferral on that graduation stipulation?
LikeLike
Good point – he does have the option if he gets hurt or something like that
LikeLike