At some point, you have to quit asking the question.

The question in this case being “will Georgia throw to the tight ends more next season?“.  Why quit?  Welp,

… Former position coach Shane Beamer left Georgia to take a promotional opportunity at Oklahoma. At the present time, there hasn’t been official word as to who will preside over the tight end position group.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest when you can’t even find a position coach for the group, upping their role in the passing game probably isn’t your highest priority right now.

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Gift Guide update

A new item has been added to the GTP Gift Guide.

I wish I could claim credit for finding these bad boys, but the truth is a friend of mine showed them off a few days ago and I knew on the spot that something was missing from my empty life that only these tire valve stem cappers could fill.

I was right, too.

You can’t imagine the satisfaction — nay, the outright relief — I felt when I slipped those on my car.  Don’t deny yourself the same feeling.  You know you want them.  How often do you get that much joy in your life for a paltry $10.31?

Today, in simple questions

The Sporting News is taking the position that the September 8th meeting between Georgia and South Carolina will be a big deal.

As mentioned in South Carolina’s preview, the Sept. 8 matchup in Columbia will be the biggest game of the season in the SEC East. The Gamecocks are riding high off an impressive 9-4 campaign and have a considerably easier conference slate than does Georgia, who travels to No. 13 LSU and hosts No. 8 Auburn from the West. The margin of error is a lot smaller for Smart and Co. and, on paper, a loss to South Carolina would give the Gamecocks a sizable lead in the SEC East race. Conversely, a Georgia win relieves some pressure before the Bulldogs face off against LSU and Auburn.

Agree or disagree?

Sure, they’re laughing about it now…

No pressure, Jimbo.

If new football coach Jimbo Fisher didn’t quite get the message of what Texas A&M chancellor John Sharp expects of him, Sharp put it in writing.

By awarding Fisher a national championship plaque – of the future.

“… You get to fill in the date,” a chuckling Sharp said, in handing Fisher the plaque during the annual Chancellor’s Century Council meeting in mid-February before a roomful of Aggies.

Sharp had just presented Texas A&M-Commerce football coach Colby Carthel a legitimate plaque after Carthel guided the program to its first NCAA Division II national title in mid-December.

Sharp’s gag is revealed on a YouTube video released by the A&M university system and particularly highlighting A&M-Commerce. It was first brought to public attention on Wednesday by Travis Brown of the Bryan-College Station Eagle.

Sharp has said he expects a national title at some point from Fisher, who was awarded a guaranteed 10-year, $75 million contract from A&M in December, after the Aggies lured him from Florida State. Fisher, 52, won a national title with the Seminoles in 2013.

Let’s see how funny it is in a few years if the Aggies don’t have one.

Whatever the market will bear.

For those of you struggling to understand how student-athletes’ talents could ever possibly be valued in an open market setting, let a former Washington football player explain how it’s done in the real world.

Former NBA player Nate Robinson says a University of Washington booster offered him six figures to return to the Huskies football team after he left to focus on basketball.

On the latest episode of their Sports Illustrated podcast, “Holdat,” Robinson and fellow former pro Carlos Boozer discussed the times they were offered impermissible benefits as college players. Robinson said he was offered “$100,000 per year” by a booster to resume his football career after leaving the team after his freshman season.

“When they fired Rick Neuheisel my freshman year that made it easy for me to make my decision to quit and go play basketball, which I wanted to do anyway,” Robinson explained. “For my three years at UW, I had a booster offer me $100,000 per year to come back and play football because they needed Nate Robinson back on the football field because we weren’t winning any games, it wasn’t exciting…

It’s not that hard, folks.  Supply and demand.

By the way, the UW is shocked, shocked, something like that might have happened.

In a statement issued to the Seattle Times, the Washington athletic department denied any knowledge of the scenario Robinson described.

“The events described by Nate Robinson had not been reported to our department in any way, and were new information to us this morning,” the school said. “Based on his statements it does not appear that any NCAA violations occurred, but we look forward to following up with Nate and any other relevant parties to learn more about this matter in hopes of continuing to foster a full environment of compliance within all of our athletic programs.”

Yeah, I’m sure they’ll get right on that.

Five-star video board

(Photo by David Cobb) Photo by Contributed Photo /Times Free Press.

Okay, it’s not exactly like the standard Stalin-era USSR’s go-to erasing history moves, but UT wants to move on.

Work is scheduled to begin Monday on the project to remove an image of Butch Jones from the back of the video board at Neyland Stadium, Tennessee athletic department spokesman Tom Satkowiak said.

The project’s timeline will depend on weather conditions.

One roadblock is that the Russians were more competent in going about their business.

Satkowiak declined to reveal what will replace the image of Jones. In January, Fulmer told WBIR-TV that swapping images on the video board is “not an easy process.”

The Vol Network has the multimedia rights to the video board. Vol Network general manager Steve Early told the Times Free Press in January that one of the problems in replacing the images is finding files high enough in resolution to be enlarged to the 35-by-30-foot dimension required.

On the other hand, don’t underestimate the role personal satisfaction plays in the makeover.

In 2013, Jones’ image replaced one of former football coach Phillip Fulmer holding the 1998 national championship trophy. Fulmer took over as Tennessee’s athletic director in December.

I bet the AD’s got an idea on a holdover to tide things over until they can find a high-resolution replacement.