Really, this is almost a bad joke.
No, I have no idea what either Finebaum or Mickey have to do with anything.
This may be the most clueless human being in Columbus:
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UPDATE: Talk about your perfect touch.
And it is, of course…
Filed under Urban Meyer Points and Stares
Not that that’s anything new, but in light of this morning’s post about the facilities arms race, Marc Weiszer has an interesting story out now.
As Georgia puts the finishing touches on its west end zone project in Sanford Stadium, it is laying the groundwork for more changes on the horizon to its football facilities.
“We are working on plans to enhance the football spaces that are currently in the Butts-Mehre building in the future,” athletic director Greg McGarity said. “We are looking at all type of options. It’s more or less a feasibility and massing exercise now where things could potentially go and how they fit. …All football spaces will be under review.”
Expect a larger weight room (currently 12,000 square feet) and other upgrades that could include additional office space to accommodate an expanded support staff and to the locker room the team uses on practice days.
“The misconception is everybody thinks it’s just the weight room,” McGarity said. “We’re talking about all football spaces, but we’re in the feasibility process right now.”
Georgia added 53,000 square feet to the Butts-Mehre building and renovated another 23,000 square feet in a project completed in 2011 at a cost of about $40 million. The domed structure opened 31 years ago.
“Staffs have expanded, services are now necessary to provide on-campus recruiting experiences,” McGarity said. “It’s a different way of thinking. What happens is you run out of room. Those are things we’re looking at right now, really every space inside the Butts-Mehre building is under evaluation.”
You know, the kind of thing a competent athletic director who stayed focused on something more than just making sure reserve fund deposits kept coming in might have done at least five years ago.
At this point, the best I can hope for Butts-Mehre is that they luck out and make a Kirby Smart-type hire when McGarity’s gone.
Filed under Georgia Football
Last season scoring was down in college football, a drop of about a point and a half per game per team to 28.8, and the lowest mark since 2011 (28.3).
And there was much defensive coordinator rejoicing, right?
Turns out offenses across college are running fewer plays.
FBS teams averaged 69.9 plays per game in 2017, down from 71.6 the season before and the fewest since 2011. Eighty-three of 129 FBS teams last season ran fewer plays per game than in 2016. Seven teams averaged at least 80 plays per game last year, half as many as in 2016 and the fewest since 2011. There were 31 teams that ran fewer plays per game last season than in 2016, but saw their average time of possession increase.
The end result is that college offenses are more efficient than ever.
Championship Analytics Inc., a company that provides dozens of FBS schools a weekly advanced metrics breakdown of their upcoming game, uses drives per game to measure pace. Responding to a request from The Associated Press, CAI’s research showed drives per game have been decreasing in FBS for the last three seasons. In 2014, FBS games averaged 25.12 drives per game. Last season that dropped to 24.39. Points per drive, however, have remained relatively steady. In 2014, teams averaged 2.21 points per drive. Last season, it was 2.23. [Emphasis added.]
The rest of the article, which is about the timeless chess match between offensive and defensive coordinators, is worth reading. Suffice to say that the offensive guys aren’t losing the war yet.
Filed under Stats Geek!, Strategery And Mechanics
First of all, let me say that the idea that Kirby Smart “plans” to avoid a quarterback controversy — like that’s something controllable — is borderline laughable.
If Justin Fields manages to supplant Jake Fromm as the starter this season, there is no way in hell a kid who started in a national title game as a true freshman isn’t going to have plenty of options outside of Athens available to him. And if Fromm keeps Fields on the bench until he leaves for the NFL draft… well, we’ll see if Kirby’s as good at convincing quarterbacks to wait until their time comes as Richt was.
By its very nature, you can’t control a situation when you say it’s all about competition and letting the best player start. It’s silly even to pretend otherwise.
That being said, it seems to me there are two very obvious outcomes: if Fromm is superior to Fields on the field, he starts, and vice versa. Period.
The tricky part comes if things aren’t so clear cut. What if Fromm’s command of the playbook is better than Fields, but Fields is the kid with the better physical attributes? You can tailor a playbook, which they did for Fromm last year, but you can’t coach arm talent or running ability. Which kid gives you the better chance to win?
Even if you say that’s Fromm at the start of the season, aren’t you going to want to play Fields, not just to take advantage of defenses with some special packages, but simply to develop him so that at some point his command of the playbook catches up with his physical gifts? What if while this process is ongoing, Georgia keeps on winning with Fromm at the helm?
These are all rhetorical questions, of course, meant to illustrate that Kirby will have much to occupy his attention at the most important position on the field. He’s Kirby, so I would be surprised if he hasn’t already given this a reasonable amount of thought (especially since he’s seeing up close what the two bring to the table), but the idea that there’s some sort of organized plan to keep everything under control isn’t the least bit realistic.
That’s something I’m sure the coaches recognize. Whether the pundits and the fan base do, on the other hand…
Filed under Georgia Football
For some weird reason, I find myself fascinated by ESPN’s FPI ranking Clemson first, Alabama second and Georgia third, while its group of pundits show the Dawgs with only two of the nation’s top fifty players (neither inside the top 30), while Clemson and Alabama have five each on their rosters.
I don’t mean that as a complaint. It’s really interesting to me how much weight is being attributed to depth.
It’s probably just me.
Filed under Georgia Football
Good Lord… some folks are gonna need a cold shower after wading through this.
Filed under Georgia Football
This is how you wind up discussing your team’s shower hygiene with the media.
Just ahead of the team opening fall camp though, it seems Dooley is doing some opening up himself. In an excellent Q&A with the St. Louis Dispatch, the always colorful coach discussed a number of topics like becoming an athletic director to working for Nick Saban to doing a job that he hasn’t done before. Perhaps the most notable parts of the piece are, as one might expect, Dooley reflecting on his time with the Vols however and he does not disappoint in talking about what went wrong in Knoxville.
“The difference was at Louisiana Tech everybody listened to me and did what I said. At Tennessee very few people listened to me and most of them did something different than what I said. That’s how it is at a lot of big places when you don’t come in empowered as “the guy.” you have to learn how to manage those environments,” said Dooley. “That’s what frustrated me. You can’t even compare the two. You had a lot of division going on between (Phil) Fulmer, (Lane) Kiffin and fans. There was a lot of division on campus. It was a different environment, and I didn’t see it that way but should have.”
The truly befuddling part isn’t that Dooley didn’t see it coming, but that Mike Hamilton thought it was a good move to hire Dooley in the first place, seventh choice or not.
On the other hand, “Dooley did add that his three years at Tennessee were a “humbling” experience and has made him a better coach.” So Missouri’s got that going for them.
Filed under Because Nothing Sucks Like A Big Orange
The latest:
Filed under Urban Meyer Points and Stares
Or, to put it another way, if you build it efficiently, you hope they will come.
A conservative count shows at least 17 of the 65 Power Five programs have opened or renovated football-only complexes since 2013. The combined cost: more than $800 million. Add in at least seven other projects that are in the works, and the total hits $1.2 billion…
… Considering coach Dan Mullen’s goal is to develop talent better than anyone else in the country, wasting 10 minutes that other programs are maximizing is a problem. That’s why the Gators toured facilities at Kentucky and Clemson and hope to study the flow of corporate offices like Google to get ideas for their new complex.
“I want guys efficiently moving around the building,” said Mullen, who helped plan the Mississippi State complex that opened in 2013. “I don’t want a line walking out of the team meeting room. I want to efficiently get in and out fast.”
Which means even a detail like where you enter a room is important.
To figure out where to put a single door at a position room in UF’s proposed 130,000-square-foot facility, the architecture firm HOK will find out the minutiae of the Gators’ schedule. Where is that position coach coming from? Where is he going next? If the coach needs to exit the meeting first but can’t get to the door before his players do, then the design team failed.
“It’s just like NASCAR,” said Nate Appleman, HOK’s director of sports, recreation and engagement. “We’re talking about shaving a few seconds, 30 seconds, a minute with each of these little moves. But over the course of a day and over the course of a year, it all adds up.”
And what has it all added up to at Kentucky? For Conrad, it’s an hour a day.
“At least,” Conrad said.
As important as that efficiency is, only part of this facility boom centers on maximizing players’ time.
The bigger part is getting them on campus in the first place.
All of this makes Vanderbilt’s “screw it, we’ll cash those SEC checks and spend any way we like” approach seem almost refreshing.
Filed under College Football, It's Just Bidness
Really, this is quite remarkable. Only three of the top thirty five recruits in the state of Georgia have yet to commit to a college football program.
None of those thirty two have committed to Georgia Tech.
Filed under Georgia Tech Football, Recruiting
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