Maybe it’s just me, but when you hear Greg McGarity wax rhapsodic (“I think would not only excite our team but our fans in traveling”) over the possibility of future home-and-homes against big name opponents, don’t you get the feeling that what excites him the most is the opportunity to leverage more contributions from Magill Society donors?
Daily Archives: August 21, 2018
“We are ecstatic about having Georgia and Oregon.”
College football teams from near and far – Georgia and Oregon – will meet in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium at the start of the 2022 season.
The SEC and Pac-12 teams have signed contracts to play one another in a Chick-fil-A Kickoff game that year, the event’s chief executive said Tuesday.
“Both coaches wanted to do it, and we got with the athletic directors and were able to put a deal together,” said Gary Stokan, president and CEO of Peach Bowl Inc, which runs the Chick-fil-A Kickoff games.
For some reason, I don’t have the same reaction to this as I did the announcement about the Notre Dame series. I wonder why that is.
Filed under Georgia Football
Option stopping
As you wade into the Fabris Pool this season, you might want to take a peek at what Matt Melton writes about Georgia Tech’s ACC record under Paul Johnson — particularly if the Tech-Louisville game is a pick. (Hint: the piece is entitled “The Option: Familiarity Breeds Success”.)
Oh, and there’s this:
I neglected to include Georgia in the annual opponent table, in the interest of looking at solely ACC teams, but the Dogs’ inclusion would serve to bolster my argument. The Yellow Jackets have averaged just 23.6 points per game in their ten games with Georgia, including just 21.2 points per game after scoring 45 in their initial meeting under Johnson.
Filed under Georgia Tech Football, Stats Geek!
“Drag his ass across the field!”
Man, Sally Jenkins brings the righteous indignation today.
Heatstroke didn’t kill Jordan McNair, the berserk excesses of coach DJ Durkin and his staff did. No amount of “honoring” McNair can pretty up that fact. The investigation into what Maryland did wrong after McNair collapsed is misplaced. It’s what came first — the deranged college coaching mentality that drove McNair to the staggering point — that requires full inquiry, and no one should be allowed to forget it.
An NFL player hasn’t died from heat exertion in 17 years. That’s the full measure of the crude, knuckle-dragging stupidity at work here. You know how many kids NCAA football coaches have killed with conditioning drills in that same period? Twenty-seven. I say “kill,” because that’s what it is, when tyrants force captive young men to run themselves to death, out of their own outdated fears of weakness. Why is the NCAA tolerating this kill rate, which is unmatched at any other level of football?
Now there’s a question I’d love to hear someone ask Mark “The NCAA is all about the student-athlete” Emmert.
Sadly, in this case, it isn’t about the money. Virginia monitors its players body temperatures by means of a technology that costs $60,000 a year — a shitload less than you can expect Maryland’s gonna pay out to McNair’s family. Nor is it particularly exotic.
Virginia put the system in use earlier this month when the Cavaliers started fall camp. The technology itself is about 20 years old, Pugh said. In fact, she used it when she did her thesis for her Master’s degree at Florida 16 years ago.
Good grief.
No, this is about a peculiar mindset unique to college athletics.
Since 2000, there have been 40 athlete fatalities in conditioning sessions in multiple sports across the NCAA, yet not a single death on the field, according to Casa. This despite the fact that schools have all the education and tools to prevent it: Heatstroke exertion is 100-percent survivable with a thermometer and some ice. The NFL has eliminated it altogether and to its credit continues to consult with the Stringer Institute on research and best practices to prevent sudden deaths. The NCAA, on the other hand, has remained lethally antiquated. Unlike NFL players, collegians have “no voice, and no rights,” Casa pointed out. McNair was forced to run 10 sprints of 110 yards, until his body temperature was 106. It was a nonsensical workout that had zero football relevance and demonstrated nothing about his character except that he was willing to work himself into a coma for fear of punishment from an all-powerful authority figure. “It’s a totally unregulated environment,” Casa said.
University of Oklahoma trainer Scott Anderson has a term for this idiotic and outmoded brand of collegiate workout: “irrational intensity.”
Anderson wrote a 2017 academic paper entitled, “NCAA Football Off-Season Training: Unanswered Prayers,” that documents the stunning kill rate in the college game.
“Collegiate football’s dirty little secret is that we are killing our players — not in competition, almost never in practice, and rarely because of trauma — but primarily because of non-traumatic causes in the off-season alleged to performance enhance,” he wrote.
Anderson cites the example of a player who died from exertion-induced asthma, after being forced to run 2,160 yards of serial sprints in just 12 minutes, with a 1:1 work-to-rest ratio. You know what the work-to-rest ratio in an actual football game is? Somewhere between 1:8 and 1:10. Even in a hurry-up offense, it’s 1:4.
Coaches conduct these workouts for only one reason: because they have backward notions of man-making and are completely unread in the latest sports science. Mesozoic notions die hard..
You’d like to think this would be easy to stop, but as Jenkins notes, Durkin’s not exactly a lone wolf here. If he stays in the job, I doubt it becomes much of an issue on the recruiting trail, even as he assures moms he’ll take care of their sons, because he’s far from alone out there.
Too bad the concept of a players union for student-athletes is anathema.
Filed under College Football, The Body Is A Temple
The least surprising thing you’ll see today
What you get when you combine a target-rich environment and a dogged reporter:
If you’re the Ohio State folks, you’ve got to weigh what McMurphy might have left to share against how you would prefer to coddle Corch. Tough call.
Filed under Urban Meyer Points and Stares
Welcome to the Playpen
Look, I don’t want to make a major production out of this, but it’s apparent after yesterday’s shitshow in the comments thread to this post that my laissez-faire approach to commenting is being taken advantage of by folks who are convinced of their own political righteousness.
It’s gotten to be a boring drag and it’s a pain in the ass to moderate, to be honest with you. So, like it or not, I’m making some changes.
If you insist in going off on a tangent in a comment thread, I’m no longer going to suggest politely that you back off. I’m simply going to remove the comment, no questions asked. If you persist in doing so, I’m going to remove your posting privileges.
Before you go all ballistic on me or start asserting your (nonexistent) 1A rights, I am offering a compromise. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to put up a weekly post for open comments, where you can freely jaw about any subject near and dear to your hearts. You want to rail about a crappy movie you saw recently? Go for it. Taking a trip to Tuscany and looking for recommendations? Ask away. Tried a fabulous new bourbon and want to share? Lay it on us.
More to the point, want to engage in a political wankfest that winds up resembling the later rounds of the first Rocky Balboa — Apollo Creed fight? Enter your own private Thunderdome, brother. I won’t stop you.
I figure this lets those of you who really want to get into the nuances of things that bore the crap out of most of the readership here have a way to do so, while marking out a clear space for those readers to avoid.
This does not mean that I won’t touch on political things in my other posts. Politicians are like people. (So are college athletics administrators and head coaches, for that matter.) They say and do stupid things just like the rest of us, and when those stupid things touch on college sports, well, I reserve the right to bloviate.
What I expect, though, when you comment in response to posts like that, is that you stay on topic. Going off on a tangent is what ruined yesterday’s discussion and that’s not going to be tolerated in the future.
If you want to complain that you’re uncertain as to what constitutes a tangent for me, consider me Justice Stewart: I know a tangent when I see it. Trump’s syntax and grammar? Tangent. Obama’s golf game? Tangent. Insight into Hitler’s mind as to what he meant when he included “Socialist” in the name of the party he headed? Tangent squared.
Bottom line, if you’re not sure whether a comment of yours might run afoul of the new rules here, best not to post it in a regular thread, but save it for the weekly open thread.
Sorry I’m having to do this, at least to some extent. Please don’t waste your time or mine trying to explain in the comments to this post why it’s unnecessary or wrong. That’s kind of like wrestling with a pig. You should probably save your energy for tomorrow’s Playpen.
Filed under GTP Stuff
Been there, done that.
17 Consecutive AP preseason polls have included Georgia, which starts at No. 3 this season. The most recent preseason rankings that didn’t include the Bulldogs were for the 2001 campaign. Georgia finished 22nd in the final poll for that season.
At least they’ve been consistent.
Filed under Georgia Football
Hook ’em.
Seth Emerson ($$) is reporting that Georgia and Texas are exploring the possibility of a home-and-home. A road trip to another iconic stadium? Be still, my heart.
There is a catch. The ‘Horns have home-and-homes scheduled throughout the next decade, so to add Georgia would mean making a decision to play more than one P5 non-conference opponent in a season or two. In this day and age, that’s a pretty big catch.
Still, a man can dream about another compelling excuse to visit Franklin Barbecue, can’t he?
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UPDATE: More deets from the Texas side.
The Texas Longhorns are working on a home-and-home football series with national title runner-up Georgia in the next decade as well as another high-profile opponent, a source with knowledge of the situation told Horns247.
Currently, Texas has marquee non-conference opponents lined up through 2027. The source said a home-and-home with Georgia would be after that — most likely 2028 and 2029.
And, it sounds like they’re still asking what time it is in Texas.
Texas is 3-1 against Georgia but the two teams haven’t played since the Longhorns suffered a painful, 10-9 loss to the Bulldogs in the 1984 Cotton Bowl, which knocked UT out of contention for the 1983 national title.
Filed under Georgia Football
Garbage in, garbage out
I tells ‘ya, if Miami has a disappointing year, the metaphors will write themselves.
The new uniforms are made, in part, with a regenerated yarn that has been transformed from fishing nets and other nylon waste picked up from marine environments. In addition to the uniforms, players will also wear new cleats and gloves featuring recycled materials.
That gives a whole new meaning to throwaway season.
Filed under ACC Football, Stylin'
The vector of the disease is spreading.
Doctor: Gator fans, the test results are back and the results are troubling. Your coach is in the early stages of Boochitis.
If symptoms persist, the only known cure is a Boochectomy.
Filed under Gators, Gators...
Get The Picture 