“They didn’t.”
I think I feel even more sorry for Aaron Murray after watching that.
Daily Archives: November 11, 2016
“I don’t think it’s anything about home or away.”
Kirby Smart, making Georgia road games great again.
Defeating Auburn would help Georgia avoid its first winless season at home against Southeastern Conference opposition since 1962, when the Bulldogs tied Kentucky (7-7) and were thumped by Georgia Tech (37-6). They have not lost all of their home league games since 1957, when they played only two and fell to Vanderbilt (9-6) and Alabama (14-13).
This is already the deepest Georgia has gone into a season without defeating a Bowl Subdivision foe at home since 1962.
The Bulldogs are 5-4 overall, having won true league road games against Missouri, South Carolina and Kentucky but also losing badly at Ole Miss. They are 1-1 in neutral-site contests, opening with a victory over North Carolina in Atlanta and losing their annual matchup with Florida in Jacksonville.
You know, that’s not easy to do.
Filed under Georgia Football
Helluva division you got there.
The “SEC East really sucks” meme is approaching critical mass. Bill Connelly thinks the likely mismatch in the SECCG is grounds for blowing up conference divisional play altogether (eh,what does a Missouri carpetbagger* know about the SEC, anyway?).
* That’s a joke, son.
Also, I think Andy Staples is setting up the case to blame Georgia if the Dawgs manage to beat Auburn tomorrow and set in motion a chain of events that leads to Boom making an appearance in the championship game as the result of a multi-team 4-4 divisional logjam. And you didn’t believe Kirby Smart would have a major impact on the East in his maiden season.
2016 can’t end soon enough.
Filed under SEC Football
Sexual assault, with honor
Good to see the healing in Waco proceeds.
Billionaire businessman Drayton McLane, who name adorns the Baylor University football stadium, said Thursday he wants to see fired football coach Art Briles’ honor “restored” and any evidence that led to his dismissal publicly released by the school’s board of regents.
Yeah, because if nothing else comes out of the whole mess, at least they can see to it that Art Briles gets his mojo back.
Fortunately, the NCAA is willing to pitch in and do its part to help the process along.
With Baylor University at war with itself over the firing of its football coach in the wake of a sexual-assault scandal, this qualifies as good news: The NCAA is not planning to bring the hammer down on Baylor the way it did Penn State.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association has notified Baylor that it won’t exert its executive authority to impose sweeping sanctions against the school for broad institutional failings, and will instead follow its normal investigative process, according to people familiar with the matter.
Honestly, no one should be surprised by that. Some of Mark Emmert’s chickens have come home to roost, that’s all.
The NCAA decision indicates Baylor—at least for now—will not be subject to the sort of harsh sanctions the NCAA imposed on Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child-molestation scandal. That case, in which the former assistant football coach was convicted of abusing boys over a 15-year period, was viewed by many as a potential precedent for Baylor since it also involved alleged criminal activity within the athletic department but not clear-cut NCAA violations.
Under pressure from the NCAA, which cited a broad “failure of institutional integrity,” Penn State after the Sandusky scandal vacated 111 wins under Coach Joe Paterno, accepted a four-year bowl ban, reduced football scholarships and agreed to pay $60 million to fight child abuse. Many of those sanctions have since been vacated after a series of legal challenges.
The NCAA’s aggression in the Penn State case “really backfired,” says B. David Ridpath, an Ohio University professor of sports administration. “I doubt you will ever see the NCAA do anything like that again.”
As some warned at the time, there are inevitable consequences when the head of a powerful organization decides to run off on his own and disregard established rules and protocols to show the world his oversized concern about a matter.
If it all works out the way things appear to be headed, rest assured that nobody at Baylor or the NCAA will have any lasting regrets. Nice for them.
Filed under Baylor Is Sensitive To Women's Issues, The NCAA
There are times when I think college football has a death wish.
So here’s a Dennis Dodd piece that, as is often the case, leaves me shaking my head. Start with the questionable premise that college football games take too damned long. You know why? Well, don’t blame commercials, peeps, because they’re already baked into the cake.
We can talk about endless commercial breaks, but with TV being TV, that’s old news. The number of commercials basically remains static (see below). Reality TV has proven to be some of the highest-rated television. Whether its “Big Brother” or Alabama-Tennessee, those programs are — in some ways — always profitable platforms for commerce.
Nah, here’s the real problem.
Tempo teams run more plays. More plays mean more first downs. More first downs mean more stoppages of the clock. College football is unique in that it stops the clock to spot the ball after each first down.
Record scoring (30.3 points per team) means more frequent stoppages. That means the average game is halted 10 times for traditional scores (touchdown or field goal). In the nation’s highest-scoring league (Big 12), that number is 11.5 stoppages per game.
“The games are taking a long, long time,” said Baylor coach Jim Grobe. “The way we throw the football around, playing a team that is talented offensively that can make for a long game.”
Yep. It turns out college football’s real faux pas here is giving us too much college football. I bet you didn’t see that one coming.
Just to give you a benchmark against which to judge the absurdity of this line of thought, consider that the NFL, in the face of declining ratings, is pondering the possibility of cutting back on advertisements as a means of shortening game broadcasts. Eh, what do those guys know about marketing, anyway?
Meanwhile, Mike Gundy wants the networks to know he’s got his heart in the right place.
“I think it’s fair to start talking about the length of games,” Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy said. “The pace of offenses, increased plays, number of attempted passes and maybe — more so in our league — is affecting the games.
“I’m a little surprised we haven’t heard much from the networks on this. There’s probably a fairness to talking about games being 12-minute quarters instead of 15 based on the amount of time the clock is stopped based on forward passes that are incomplete.”
Oklahoma State, by the way, leads the nation this season in game length average. Maybe Gundy’s just looking for a little more Saturday quality time with the family.
Of course, no discussion about improving the college football product would be complete without Bob Bowlsby weighing in, so here’s your typical Bowlsby contribution to the discussion:
Bob Bowlsby said game length has gotten the attention of the NCAA Football Oversight Committee that he chairs.
“If we decided we weren’t going to kick off anymore or only kickoff in certain situations, you save a fair amount of time then,” said Bowlsby, also the Big 12 commissioner. “That’s exactly why we put the oversight committee together — to take a holistic look at it. It’s going to continue to be on our agenda.”
I, for one, welcome our new holistic overlords. Good to see they’re on the mother.
Filed under College Football
DGD passes.
Bill Stanfill, RIP.
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UPDATE:
Gotta appreciate a funeral with a red-and-blackout.
Filed under Georgia Football
Get The Picture 