“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”

Gathering intel on the hush-hush at the College Football Awards sounds like fun.

If there’s one thing you don’t mess with in Alabama…

… it’s Roll Tide.

Maybe somebody knew what they were doing with this write-in instruction video.

The Moore-Jones Senate race has been entertaining, to say the least.  The perfect capper would be if a Nick Saban write-in vote swung the election.

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UPDATE:  Per the New York Times,

And a number of votes will almost certainly go to someone widely considered the most important man in the state, the University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban.

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UPDATE #2:  What a country.

This guy just voted for Nick Saban instead of Roy Moore or Doug Jones in the Alabama special election pic.twitter.com/l1gtg3puqp

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) December 12, 2017

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Have we got a gift guide for you.

Unlike the Death Star, the GTP Gift Guide has gone operational.  The page link appears at the top of the blog.

I’ve seeded the page with sixteen suggestions in six categories.  You suggestions are not only welcomed, but encouraged.  Again, please follow the formatting guidelines set out on the page, largely for my convenience.  Also, your suggestion must be in the form of a gift, not just something you like.  (For example, I love Popeye’s Chicken and consider it an essential part of any fine tailgate.  But I ain’t making a gift of a 20-piece box to anyone any time soon.)

So, go ahead and dazzle us with your recommendations.  Let’s grow this sucker.

Reading a few recruiting tea leaves

Sorry to disappoint some of you, but this post is about the eventual shape of Georgia’s 2018 class, and not what some individual recruits may be doing.  Anyway, Jeff Sentell focused on a comment Jim Chaney made to a Texas receiver Georgia is pursuing…

The Georgia class seemingly has about as much room as a Sam Pittman offensive line class in a Prius, but Bush said he has heard otherwise.

“He basically said that after Dec. 22 they were probably only recruiting four guys and I was one because he doesn’t have my size in this class,” Bush told DawgNation.

… and drew the following conclusions:

• Georgia’s class is indeed wedged like the top of a Pittman OL board into a Prius.
• There is room for Bush.
• Taylor also is scheduled to make his decision known Dec. 22. The majority of the 2018 early targets for UGA all plan to make their decisions known Dec. 20. It was very interesting phrasing.
• DawgNation has been pointing to a 24-man class for 2018 for quite some time. If that is the true limit for the class, then the staff does indeed plan to have about 18 to 20 members signed up into #Rarebreed18 by the end of the early signing period.

24 has been the number I’ve heard, but I’m not sure how cut and dried that is.  For starters, I’m uncertain about how many early enrollees will be counted against the 2017 numbers.  (I’ve heard anywhere from one to three).  I also don’t know how many kids currently with scholarships will still have them by next August.  If Kirby has learned everything about roster management from the master, I suspect that number will ultimately be a factor driven by how large a 2018 class he wants to sign.  (Besides a couple of candidates for medical hardships, you have to figure Roquan elects to turns pro, while Patrick has little choice but to follow suit.)

For now, I’d figure the class finishes anywhere from 24 to 28, with the likelihood that Georgia emerges from February over the 85-man limit, followed by a slow and steady attrition all through the summer until Smart hits the magic 85-man limit.  What are your thoughts?

Today, in amateurism

Apologies for missing this when it was announced a couple of weeks ago, but Judge Wilken approved the settlement agreement reached in the Austin case.

A federal judge in California on Friday orally granted final approval to a $208.7 million settlement that will compensate tens of thousands of college athletes who received traditional sports scholarships rather than a relatively new version that covers the full cost of attending school, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys told USA TODAY Sports…

Speaking after a hearing that U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken held in Oakland, attorney Steve Berman said about 43,000 current and former athletes will get checks from the settlement, and they will do so without having to file a claim form. Although 11 major conferences are co-defendants, the NCAA has said all of the money in the settlement pool will come from the association’s financial reserves.

The math works out to a check of about $6000 to “scholarship athletes in Division I men’s basketball, Division I women’s basketball or the Football Bowl Subdivision whose award was limited by NCAA rules to basically tuition, room, board, books and fees”, and if you’re wondering…

Athletes who have remaining NCAA eligibility when they receive a check will be able to accept the money without any impact on their eligibility.

This, no doubt, will mean the end of college athletics as we know it.  I mean, Title IX, player jealousy and teenagers spending NCAA money on tats and video games can only lead to chaos, amirite?

The remarkable part of this is that Berman’s gotten his clients millions from the NCAA and still has his bigger gun cocked and ready to fire.

The deal wraps up the damages portion of a suit that, along with another case, is still seeking to upend the NCAA’s new compensation limits altogether…

“I’m thrilled with how this came out, and we’ve saved the best for the next trial,” Berman said, referring to the quests for an injunction against the compensation limits that currently is going through bids from the plaintiffs and the NCAA for a summary judgment ruling by Wilken.

More realistically, those efforts come down to the NCAA trying to get the cases dismissed and the plaintiffs trying to move the cases to trial. “One hundred percent we will get there,” Berman said.

I assume Stacey Osburn has no comment.

#yessirrrrr

After gaining Trey Hill’s verbal yesterday, Sam Pittman was doing a little crowing.

#yessirrrrr pic.twitter.com/xyPvMjxqUf

— Coach Sam Pittman (@CoachSamPittman) December 12, 2017

If the thing I’m most ecstatic about in the transition from Richt to Smart is the improvement in overall roster management, a close second is a subset of that, the focus on building a dominant and deep offensive line.  The vision for that may be Smart’s, but the implementation belongs to Pittman, who’s done a masterful job in two seasons on the recruiting front and is probably a year ahead of schedule in terms of seeing results on the field.

My only regret is wondering what somebody like Gurley could have done behind an offensive line like the one Pittman is building.  But that’s water under the proverbial bridge at this point.  I’ll happily settle for grinning back at Coach Pittman.

Signs your program may not be as attractive as you thought it was.

We already know that Fulmer had to lay out a six-year, $22.8 million contract to entice an assistant coach who’s been seriously jonesing for a head coaching gig for a few years to join him in Knoxville.  (For reference, that’s a bigger deal than Sexton arranged for Kirby Smart.)

Now it turns out that former AD John Currie promised Greg Schiano even more, a six-year deal starting at $4.4 million annually in 2018 with an increase of $50,000 for each ensuing year.

Vol fans are probably patting themselves on the back for what they perceive as Fulmer’s astute deal making while ignoring the underlying truth that UT is having to promise more than the average bear to get folks like Pruitt and Schiano to pay serious attention to it in the first place.  If the Fulmer-Pruitt marriage doesn’t take, one can only imagine what Tennessee will have to offer to get the next hack to listen.

Box of crayons, for the win

If you think that taking a true freshman quarterback suddenly thrust into a starting role after a key injury in the first quarter of the opener and molding him into a successful cog in a wheel that finished the regular season 12-1 on the way to a berth in the CFP is a fairly impressive achievement, well, somebody out there agrees with you.

FootballScoop is proud to announce that Jim Chaney is the 2017 FootballScoop Quarterbacks Coach of the Year presented by AstroTurf as selected by prior winners…

The FootballScoop Coaches of the Year awards presented by ProGrass are the only set of awards that recognize the most outstanding position coaches in college football. The finalists (Ryan Day [Ohio State], Josh Huepel [Missouri], Rhett Lashlee [Connecticut], Rod Smith [Arizona], Warren Ruggerio [Wake Forest], Mario Verduzco [UCF], Brian Wright [Toledo] and Chaney) were selected based off of nominations by coaches, athletic directors, and athletic department personnel. The prior winners selected this year’s winner.

It’s impressive that this group can find a way to ignore a 2016 performance that’s seemingly etched in the head of a chunk of our fan base for good.  One can only hope that, in the minds of those folks, Chaney will at least go into 2018 on double-secret probation, rather than being on a short list of assistant coaches to be run out of Athens.

Mark Richt has lost control over Jacob Park.

Judging from the latest news, that’s probably a good thing.

Today, in GATA

If you’re worried about whether Georgia’s defensive front can mount enough pressure in the face of a formidable Oklahoma offensive line, I hope you’ll first join me in congratulating Notre Dame’s Mike McGlinchey and Quenton Nelson on their being named AP All-Americans.

You may last remember McGlinchey for this moment:

So, yeah, if Bellamy and Carter show up, I think they’re more than capable of wrecking wreaking a little havoc in the Rose Bowl.