Bruce Feldman’s piece in The Athletic about sign stealers in college football ($$) is a great read. I’m still chuckling over the first story he gets from a practitioner of the art who stole a conference rival’s sign for a boot play: It was someone on the sideline gesturing as if they were putting boots on.
And to think there are people getting paid large sums of money to call plays like that.
Filed under Strategery And Mechanics
Well, now. This didn’t take long.
The Big Ten has asked the NCAA to consider developing a national college football injury reporting system in reaction to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows states to legalize sports gambling.
The conference’s athletic directors proposed to the NCAA Football Oversight Committee in June what would be a first-ever weekly national injury reporting mandate. The ADs claim an injury report is necessary to protect the integrity of the sport.
Such a move would alter one of the most ingrained and long-standing traditions in college football — coaches concealing injuries. From the earliest days of the sport, the decision to release of such information has typically been made by the coaches themselves, sometimes flying in the face of fair play and transparency.
With the cross-country growth of sports betting in its infancy, it is becoming imperative that injury information be accurate and widely available.
“We have to be more transparent,” Ohio State AD Gene Smith said during a National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics panel last week. “In football, we’re going to kill this [idea of] gamesmanship around injuries.”
Remember, boys and girls, that proud conference member Rutgers just happens to be located in the same state that won the sport book litigation. Coincidence? I think not. Concern about making sure future revenues from gambling roll in unimpeded? Well, I will let you be the judge of that.
Filed under Big Ten Football, It's Just Bidness, The Body Is A Temple, The NCAA
Danny Kanell goes from disparaging Alabama’s national title…
… to calling Georgia’s 2017 season a “fluke”.
By the way — Auburn, “the best team in the SEC”? That explains why they faced off against UCF, hunh.
Son, you’re trying too hard to be noticed.
Filed under General Idiocy, Media Punditry/Foibles
It’s also true that transfers are up across the board, and not just at quarterback. There were 211 graduate transfers playing in the FBS in 2017, a drastic increase from the 117 such transfers in 2016 and the just 17 in 2011. But no other position embodies the transfer craze quite like quarterback, perhaps due to the overwhelming attention always paid to the position in the first place.
It’s led to the near extinction of a certain type of college player: the career backup. Once a roster staple, senior quarterbacks who begin their careers on scholarship and stay with the same program through four years of eligibility without ascending to the starting role are now the sport’s rarest breed.
“It’s definitely different, there’s no doubt,” Auburn coach Gus Malzahn said. “Those guys are few and far between.”
These guys are bitching about backup quarterbacks. These guys are also accepting quarterback transfers. It takes two to tango. They simply hope nobody’s watching their moves on the dance floor.
Filed under College Football
Meet Georgia’s Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library in Athens, the closest thing to a Smithsonian of Georgia football artifacts.
A sampling of what it includes: dozens of players’ jerseys, helmets and “silver britches,” football game programs (going back to the 1903 Georgia-Auburn game at Brisbane Park in Atlanta), tickets dating to the 1920s, athletic department working documents, letters from coaches, players’ scrapbooks, a hundred or so game balls, and an extensive photo archive (including the only known shot of the goat that was Georgia’s original mascot).
Hasty’s favorite items? One is a thick, wool jersey from the 1920s that is a darker red than what we now associate with the Georgia Bulldogs, and which has no insignia. He’s also partial to a silver chalice Georgia won when it beat Auburn in 1894. “It’s the oldest Georgia football artifact we have,” he said.
But, he said, “the one item everyone wants to see is Herschel Walker’s helmet.”
It’s all open to the public.
Filed under Georgia Football
Hey, you look like you could use a little Dwight Yoakam covering the Beach Boys…
Filed under Uncategorized
Get The Picture 