“It was on a need-to-know basis.”

Mock the secrecy surrounding this if you will, but when you’re living in Harvey Updyke’s world, I don’t think it’s crazy to keep the hedges’ location on the low down.

Gotta get those rats.

Meet rat poison’s kissing cousin, “rat trapping“.

Smart is hopeful that his players have been mindful with what the coaches have taught them throughout the spring. What he doesn’t want to see is what he calls “rat trapping,” which is when a player starts “doing his own thing” on the football field.

I smell a Lexicon entry coming.

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And now, junior pro days

For the reader who suggested the other day that it was time for the NCAA to crack down on those kids who were skipping bowl games to protect their health for the NFL draft, I have some bad news:  the NCAA is taking steps to coddle the ungrateful bastids.

Thanks to a proposal from the SEC, the NCAA is paving the way for full-fledged football pro days in which NFL personnel evaluate underclassmen considering entering the next year’s draft.

Earlier this week the NCAA Division I Council adopted proposal 2017-80, legislation from the SEC, which will help up to five underclassmen per school to be evaluated by NFL personnel during a separate pro day each year.

“Our proposal would make it easier to facilitate our student-athletes being observed under the revised NFL rules,” an SEC spokesman said. “Our motivation is to help young people receive the best information possible on which they base decisions about their future.”

The change will allow each school to conduct a the pro day practice and specify that both the college team’s coaches and NFL personnel can be present and conduct the practice and that the practice won’t count towards the college team’s practice limit (i.e., 15 spring practices).

See, if you’re chasing the top recruits (the SEC pushing this proposal should be a giant tell in that regard) with a message that your program will do everything it can to get them ready to play on Sundays, it would be beyond stupid to undercut that by threatening them with punishment if they actually made a decision to look out for their pro futures.

How does it feel to argue in favor of something too dumb for the NCAA to consider?

G-Day rosters announced

Weiszer has the deets.

The Red team appears to include the first-team offense and the second-team defense and the Black team looks like it has first-team defense and second-team offense.

The offensive players for the Red team include:

–Quarterbacks Jake Fromm, Stetson Bennett and Sam Vaughn; offensive linemen Kendall Baker, Ben Cleveland, Lamont Gaillard, Andrew Thomas, Isaiah Wilson and Solomon Kindley; running backs D’Andre Swift, Elijah Holyfield and Brian Herrien; tight ends Isaac Nauta and Charlie Woerner; wide receivers Terry Godwin, Mecole Hardman, Riley Ridley, Jayson Stanley and Trey Blount.

And the defensive players for the Red include:

Defensive backs Tray Bishop, Latavious Brini, William Poole, Ameer Speed, Eric Stokes and Tray Bishop; defensive linemen Michael Barnett, Michail Carter, David Marshall, Devonte Wyatt, Justin Young and Chris Barnes; inside linebackers Monty Rice, Natrez Patrick and Jaden Hunter; outside linebackers Keyon Brown, Brenton Cox and Jaleel Laguins.

The defensive players for the Black include: Defensive backs Deandre Baker, Richard LeCounte, Tyrique McGhee, J.R. Reed, William Poole (again), Mark Webb and Jarvis Wilson; defensive linemen Tyler Clark, DaQuan Hawkins-Muckle, Jonathan Ledbetter, Julian Rochester and Malik Herring; inside linebackers Juwan Taylor, Tae Crowder and Nate McBride and outside linebackers D’Andre Walker, Robert Beal and Walter Grant.

The offensive players for the Black include: Quarterbacks Justin Fields, Stetson Bennett (again) and John Seter; offensive linemen Pat Allen, Warren Ericson, DeMarcus Hayes, Trey Hill, Cade Mays and Netori Johnson; running backs Prather Hudson and Ian Donald-McIntyre; tight end Jackson Harris and wide receivers Ahkil Crumpton, J.J. Holloman, Kearis Jackson, Matt Landers and Tyler Simmons.

Kicker Rodrigo Blankenship and punter Marshall Long are on the Red team. Kicker Brooks Buce and punter Bill Rubright are on the Black team.

A few random thoughts:

• The running back arrangement looks a little lopsided, no?  Swift (who’s questionable), Holyfield and Herrien vs. Hudson and Donald-McIntyre isn’t what you’d call a level playing field.
• That second-string offensive line doesn’t look too shabby there.  I’m looking forward to see how deep that position group really is.
• Stetson Bennett’s gonna be er’rywhere.
• We may be worried about depth on the d-line — although the Red team looks to have a decent bunch at the position — but, man look at the linebackers!
• Should we make anything of Natrez Patrick lining up with the Red team?

And your thoughts?

It’s gonna be a Chantastic day!

I can’t blame you if you’ve forgotten Georgia Tech is holding its spring game tonight.  It’s not as if there’s been a huge amount decent level any promotion of the event.

In fact, I’m not sure Tech really cares at all.

Georgia Tech has broadcast its past four spring games online, but will not do so this year. The reason is that the athletic department has committed to using its in-house production capabilities to an online broadcast of the softball team’s home game against North Carolina, which also is being played Friday evening.

An online broadcast of a home softball game trumping your football team’s spring game sends quite the message to recruits, don’t it?  Not that the genius is all that concerned.

At the least, coach Paul Johnson wasn’t protesting the decision.

“There’s no advantage into giving your opponents the spring game,” he said Wednesday after the team’s 14th practice of the spring. “I just don’t know what you’d gain from that.”

When the Jackets go 12-0 this season, remember where it started.