“I gotta take care of my boys.”

Kirby Smart and the beat writers, a short story:

Kirby Smart had a session outside the main room with reporters, local and national. When a UGA spokesman declared it over, the national writers walked away but Smart and the local writers stayed.

“What else you got?” Smart said to the beat writers.

There was a pause.

“I gotta take care of my boys,” Smart said.

“OK,” the team spokesman said, smiling.

“As long,” Smart said, “as Seth doesn’t ask me about facilities again.”

So obviously I then asked about facilities.

That’s pretty funny on both ends.  Maybe Kirby can give McGarity a few pointers.

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All you had to do was ask.

Nick Saban, for once, is positively lost for an answer.

Saban (on Mo Smith): "I don't know what advantage was gained. I don't know who won more games & who didn't. I don't see who benefitted."

— Mark Schlabach (@Mark_Schlabach) May 30, 2017

I wonder if he ever said the same thing to himself about Jonathan Taylor.

Zen and the art of Booch

Grasshopper, this is deep.

Butch Jones says that the first element of winning championships is contending to win championships.

— Barrett Sallee (@BarrettSallee) May 30, 2017

But they’re already champions, I thought.  Of life!

The difference between potential and production

Mike Farrell has a solid rebuttal to Mike Huguenin’s breathless take on this year’s SEC quarterbacks group.

I just read an article stating that the 2017 SEC quarterback group is among the elite in the country and I had to raise an eyebrow. I’d have to put the word “potentially” in front of elite.

The Pac-12 has the best quarterback group by far and the Big 12 and Big Ten can also make a strong case for being better than the SEC. The ACC would have had a case if a few guys such as Je’rod Evans and Brad Kaaya stuck around like they should have. The potential in the SEC, however, is off the charts.

Austin Allen (Arkansas), Danny Etling (LSU) and Drew Lock (Missouri) are solid guys, but the real potential in the conference lies in Jacob Eason (Georgia), Shea Patterson (Ole Miss), Nick Fitzgerald (Mississippi State), Jake Bentley (South Carolina), Jarrett Stidham (Auburn) and Feleipe Franks (Florida). Heck even the reigning SEC Offensive Player of the Year, Alabama’s Jalen Hurts, has a long way to go to show he can be a downfield passer.

Can all of these guys develop as expected? They sure can as the talent is off the hook. Will they? No way. It never happens that way.

Better hope Georgia is on the right side of that observation.

“Oftentimes, the most popular player on a roster is the backup quarterback.”

Which begs the question:  when do the trolls start talking up Stetson Bennett IV?

Kids, they have your table waiting. Please come this way.

Speaking of “you know how to take the reservation, you just don’t know how to hold the reservation”, SEC coaches are quite the maitre d‘s when it comes to the new early signing period.

Many SEC coaches have a new phrase to describe early commitments that still take their allowed five official campus visits and have some doubt leading into the month of February: reservations.

“If a guy doesn’t sign in December, you know he’s not committed. He’s got a reservation,” Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin said. “It’s got potential to really help everybody as a cost-cutting measure. By that time, our guys have usually committed. We’re not down to the wire except for a couple, maybe three guys. We spend the month of January basically spending money to see a guy every week. If he doesn’t sign then, that clears the picture up. He’s not really committed to you.”

Sumlin’s program currently has 95 offers out in his 2018 recruiting class.

Many coaches are using the “reservation” term to vilify prospects that they see are still flirting with other college programs while taking up one of their 25 signee spots in a recruiting class.

This “reservation” term might serve a de-facto ultimatum from Power 5 Conference programs for a prospect to either sign in December or get left behind.

“Some of the commitments nowadays are reservations, so they’re really not a commitment. You find out in December if the guy is committed to you,” South Carolina head coach Will Muschamp said. “If he’s not signing in December you better rethink your numbers or continue to recruit because you’re not sure you can sign him in February. That will bring some clarity to it.”

However, the “reservation” term is very much cloak and dagger both ways. According to 247Sports.com, Auburn currently has scholarship offers out to 185 prospects for the 2018 recruiting class, and while that number seems like a lot it’s not close to leading the SEC. According to 247Sports.com, Georgia has 262 scholarship offers out for the 2018 class, Alabama has 238 and Mississippi State has topped the 300 mark.

It becomes more than interesting when Muschamp, whose South Carolina program has 222 scholarship offers out for this recruiting class, referencing loyalty by using a passive aggressive term like “reservation” for a decision by a 17-18 year-old when they won’t take the offered scholarships of 197 prospects because of the 25-man limit to recruiting class by SEC programs.

“One of the big things we need to look at is if a majority of kids are signing Dec. 15, that’s really going to affect how we do things in the future,” said Muschamp, who has 222 offers pending.

Hell, Kevin Sumlin looks like a chump with only 95 offers out there.  If you ain’t offerin’, Kevin, you ain’t tryin’.

Vegas starts cranking some numbers for us.

VegasInsider.com has spreads for the opening week here.  The Dawgs are roughly a two-touchdown favorite against Appy State.

As for other conference teams, Florida and South Carolina are currently underdogs in their respective games against Michigan and NC State, Tennessee is a modest favorite over Georgia Tech and Alabama is minus-5.5 against FSU.

Meanwhile, the sports book at the South Point casino has announced lines for what it bills as 65 of the biggest games of the year.  Georgia appears in three of those, per the linked article, all favored:  Florida by three (!); South Carolina by fourteen; Georgia Tech by five.  (Check out the Iron Bowl line, by the way.  The betting public seems to think the Gus Bus is ready to roll this season.)

Could be happier

I did not know this is a thing.

The SEC Country approval rating poll is designed to give an indication of fan happiness over a period of time.

Our formula is based on the percentage of respondents who select each answer. We multiply that percentage by the following factors: 1 (strongly approve), 0.67 (approve), 0.33 (disapprove) and 0.0 (strongly disapprove). In other words, if 50 percent of respondents select “strongly approve” and 50 percent select “approve,” the formula would be (50 x 1) + (50 x 0.67) = 83.5% approval rating.

They’re into their fourth month with this.  With a 77.7 fan approval rating, Kirby Smart sits firmly in ninth place.  Maybe that’s whom McGarity was referring to with his plea for unity.

What I’d really like to know about, though, is what the ‘Bama fans holding Nick Saban back from a perfect score are disappointed.

Too bad there isn’t an AD poll.

From the land of “It just means more”…

… comes this sad statistic.

Yes, SEC flagship Alabama came within a second of locking down another national championship. But that 35-31 loss to Clemson only seemed to rubber-stamp what qualified as a down year.

Each one of the other 13 SEC programs lost at least four games for the first time in league history.

Could history repeat?  You look at the conference schedules and tell me.

Donors wanted.

I’m Greg McGarity, and you have my word.

Georgia’s legendary tennis coach Manuel Diaz confidently proclaimed that shortcoming will be addressed before the NCAA’s next bid process resumes around 2019 or so.

“Honestly, when this tournament comes back, I expect we will have 10 indoor courts, a new six-court complex and we’ll keep the four we have,” said the Bulldogs’ coach of 29 years. “It will be, once again, probably the best facility of its kind in the nation.”

Diaz, when asked if he’d been given assurances by UGA’s administration that it will provide the resources to build such a facility, he grinned and laughed. “Yes, that’s been part of the conversation. Assurances? That’d be nice.”

This kinda sounds like the Georgia Way version of “you know how to take the reservation, you just don’t know how to hold the reservation”.  Maybe Manny’s planning on going all Jeremy Pruitt on B-M’s ass.  Hey, if it worked once…