When they assure you it’s all about the student-athlete…

… they lyin’.

(h/t)

Putting his financial aid where his mouth is.

Quarterback of the future Jake Fromm has signed financial aid papers with Georgia.

Fromm has maintained throughout his recruitment that Eason being at Georgia has no bearing on his decision.

Apparently Georgia’s offensive line being at Georgia has no bearing on his decision, either.

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It’s not whether you win or lose. It’s how you punish the other team.

Maybe this is why Kirby called that last time out against Florida.

In the latter stages of Saturday’s 24-10 loss to Florida in Jacksonville, Kirby Smart didn’t see any quit in a Georgia defense that the last couple of weeks arguably has played good enough to win but hasn’t.

“They were just hell-bent that they were going to go out there and punish somebody,” Smart said. “That’s what we play for, to go punish the other team and not look at the scoreboard. That’s the first time I thought, ‘You know what? They didn’t care about the scoreboard, they just wanted to go out there and stop them over and over again. They found joy in that and that’s all they can do right now is control that.”

Of course, Florida got another first down after that, but it’s a nice thought, right?

If it feels good, do it.

Butch just cited a Wall Street Journal report that proves teams that have more high-fives and chest bumps win more games.

— Wes Rucker (@wesrucker247) November 2, 2016

Booch is losing it.

Stay classy, Baylor.

Just when you think it can’t get any sleazier…

Baylor’s former Title IX coordinator alleged that the school’s head of public safety said that some women making sexual assault accusations at Baylor were mentally ill.

Patty Crawford, who resigned from her position at Baylor earlier this fall, told 60 Minutes Sports in an interview that Reagan Ramsower made the statement in an emergency meeting in September 2015 following the rape conviction of Baylor football player Sam Ukwuachu.

The meeting was in then-president Ken Starr’s office.

“As I understand it, what someone said in this meeting was, quote, ‘What Patty is saying is not fact,’” 60 Minutes reporter Armen Keteyan said. “‘Those women had mental illness. We have to stick with the facts and there are none.’ Is that accurate?”

“That is,” Crawford said.

Always look on the bright side

We already know that one thing Kirby is selling about this mediocre season on the recruiting trail is the opportunity to play early.  There’s something else he can offer, too.

Farrell expects Smart to be willing to play guys he recruited fast like he has this year.

“The good thing for him,” he said, “is the SEC East is awful so they’ve got an opportunity to turn it around maybe a little quicker than they would if they were in the Big Ten East or SEC West.”

Ain’t that the truth.

 

How we got here.

Ladies and gentlemen, your SEC East, in one sentence:  “Kentucky has played better than Georgia this season, but UGA still has superior talent on both sides of the ball.”

“In retrospect, you can look back and say, ‘Why did you play him?’”.

Seriously, can anybody explain something Kirby Smart said about Solomon Kindley’s future to me?

When Solomon Kindley stepped in for a third-and-short against Missouri, it appeared to be the first of many plays the freshman from Jacksonville, Florida, would see in his first season.

But Kindley hasn’t seen the football field since and may not be eligible for a redshirt as a result. Georgia head coach Kirby Smart is holding out hope that the Bulldogs can work out something to get him a redshirt in the event he doesn’t see another snap this year.

Smart said Kindley has battled some injuries to where Georgia could possibly look into a medical redshirt. In addition, because he played one snap over the first four games of the season, Smart believes there may be a way to get a redshirt even without the medical designation.

But nothing is certain when it comes to whether Kindley will get back this year of eligibility.

“We’re basically looking into all those with him to hopefully get it back,” Smart said. “But to be honest with you, if he’s a really good player down the road like we think he will be then he may not play that next year anyway.”

The kid was good enough for the staff to burn his redshirt in his true freshman season, but if he turns out to be really good, he’ll redshirt for sure as a sophomore?  So what would that say about Kindley if Kirby figures out a way to redshirt him for 2016 after all?

One good thing about this season

We won’t have the “Georgia needs a special teams coordinator to fix its special teams problem” or “if only the head coach were more animated on the sideline” memes to kick around any more.

If you’ve got the top job in the country, try acting like it.

Every once in a while, I think back to something Andy Staples wrote about the head coaching spot at Georgia.

I used to consider Texas the best job in the country, but now I think it’s Georgia, followed by Ohio State. Why Georgia? My top criterion is access to players relative to competitors, and Georgia is in a really enviable position…

Do Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Tennessee, South Carolina and others come in and poach Georgia talent? Absolutely. But there’s such an abundance of it in the state that Georgia can afford to lose a few top in-state targets and still field a team capable of competing for SEC and national titles. Alabama and Auburn have to invade Georgia. During that five-year period, their state produced 36.4 Power Five signees a year. People talk about LSU’s monopoly in its state, but the numbers between Louisiana and Georgia aren’t even close. Louisiana’s average number of Power Five signees during that span was 38.6 a year.

Add to this great facilities (now that the Bulldogs are building an indoor), great tradition, a sharp athletic director, possibly the best college town in America and the fact that they play in the easier division of the nation’s deepest conference. That’s the recipe for a great job that just about every coach in America would crawl over broken glass to take. [Emphasis added.]

For the sake of argument, let’s say he’s right about that.  If so, after dismissing Richt, how easy should it have been for Greg McGarity to survey a field full of candidates with successful experience?  Instead, we heard nothing but crickets chirping Kirby Smart’s name.

Purely for yuks, take a look at the list of possibilities being chewed over at LSU to replace Les Miles.  (Note that Godfrey is careful to say that it’s compiled “according to multiple sources around the program”.)  Jimbo Fisher, Tom Herman, Jim Mora, Dana Holgorsen — all experienced head coaches; there’s not even a thought of giving some hot assistant coach his first crack at the big leagues in Baton Rouge.

The point here isn’t to say that any of those guys are slam dunks, or that Kirby Smart was a bad hire (although Staples whiffed badly on his early call that Smart “walks into a program stocked with talent; after nine years at Bama he should know how to unleash it.”).  Rather, it’s that if you’re the one holding the hot commodity, there’s no reason to push the panic button if your first choice talks to another program in the division about taking over there.  That’s not how Butts-Mehre’s “sharp athletic director” rolls, though.

Kirby may well work out.  It’s way too soon to tell otherwise.  I honestly hope he does, and not just because I’d like to see Georgia break through to the next level while I can still enjoy it.  If he were to fall short of expectations, the thought of watching Greg McGarity or whomever go through the same motions in choosing the man after Smart is too depressing for me to contemplate.  Although maybe this time the folks chomping at the grass is always greener bit will understand my hesitation about making such a move a little better than this past time.

Contrary to what people like Staples think, it’s been a lot easier for the athletic administration to screw the job up in Athens than it’s been to get it right.  That’s part of what makes the Georgia Way the Georgia Way.  So, please, Kirby, bail those people out.