In the game

Bill Connelly posted his five-year S&P+ rankings here.  From a selfish standpoint, all you really need to know is his conclusion.

As always, this list reminds us that college football’s top tier is pretty defined.

Your last three national championship programs — Alabama (2015, 2017), Ohio State (2014), and Clemson (2016, 2018) — lead, followed by a team that’s made three of the last four CFPs (Oklahoma) and a team that made the national title game just 13 months ago (Georgia).

Bitch about falling short, if that’s what blows your skirt up.  But there are about 125 programs that would be more than happy to trade places with where Kirby has Georgia at today.

Don’t mess with Texas.

From the stick to politics division:

Gov. Greg Abbott’s State of the State speech was heavy with policy priorities for the Texas Legislature, but he ended his 50 -minute address by throwing his support behind legislation that would require the University of Texas and Texas A & M to get back to playing football every year.

Beyond being music to many sports fans’ ears, Abbott’s support was an olive branch of sorts to the bill’s author, state Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio. Abbott and Larson have clashed on several issues in recent years, most notably ethics reform, and the governor took the rare step of backing Larson’s challenger in last year’s GOP primary. On Tuesday, Abbott said he was inspired by the unprecedented spirit of “camaraderie and collaboration” that he has felt in the first month of the legislative session.

“I gotta tell you, I’m feeling it myself. I’m feeling moved, and I want to set an example,” the UT graduate turned governor said, smiling. “I’m willing to step up and put aside past differences and work with Lyle Larson to reinstate the rivalry game between the Aggies and the Longhorns.” Larson, an A&M graduate, filed House Bill 412 to require the schools to meet on the football field on the fourth Thursday, Friday or Saturday of November — returning a marquee matchup between the Texas schools to college football’s rivalry weekend.

“There’s a huge hole in rivalry weekend, and it’s A&M and Texas not playing each other,” Larson said shortly after filing the bill in November. “I think we’re depriving generations if we don’t restore this.”

Man, depriving generations, he tells ‘ya!  Sounds like a serious issue.

The schools have indicated a willingness to restart the rivalry, but “scheduling nonconference games is complicated”.  Might want to un-complicate that, boys.  The pols don’t sound like they’re letting this low hanging fruit go unplucked.

“This devalues the offer.”

Hey, remember the day when Mark Richt decried programs handing out offers like candy?  That seems so quaint now.

Never in the sport’s history have colleges dispersed so many scholarship offers, frivolously doling out hollow promises with the lure of free tuition. Using the 247Sports recruiting database, Sports Illustrated research shows an accelerating trend at the major college level that hit new, disturbing benchmarks this year. The study, covering the last eight recruiting cycles, produced galling figures within college football’s major conferences: more than 101,000 scholarship offers issued in order to fill about 12,000 available scholarships. For the 2019 cycle alone, the 65 programs in Power 5 conferences made more than 15,000 scholarship offers in order to secure what is expected be about 1,600 signees. That’s an average of about 237 offers per school per year, a 100-offer increase from the average in 2012. In what is believed to be a first for a college program, Louisville hit the 400-offer mark in 2017, and six programs have delivered at least 400 offers this year. One-fifth of Power 5 teams handed out at least 300 offers this cycle, for classes that do not often exceed 25 members. Just seven years ago, no school surpassed the 300-offer mark…

Tennessee and Syracuse each distributed more than 440 offers this cycle, which is believed by industry experts to be a record. The Volunteers lead all major college programs in offers over this eight-year stretch (328 per year), followed by Louisville (323), Kentucky (291), Ole Miss (290) and Illinois (283). Rounding out the top 10 are Mississippi State (278), Nebraska (270), Indiana (268), Syracuse (254) and West Virginia (251).

440 offers.  Jesus.

Some schools use offers as marketing ploys, offering players they have no chance to land or aren’t serious about just so their school is linked to the player on internet searches, recruiting web pages and social media. “It’s a huge issue, and it continues to snowball,” Wright says. “People are throwing out hundreds of offers out there, because why not? You’re getting publicity.”

This is so bad that I actually find myself in sympathy with Paul Johnson.

At one point last year, former Georgia Tech head coach Paul Johnson, now retired, found himself in a meeting with his staff discussing 14- and 15-year-old prospects. He shook his head, looked around the room and, knowing he would soon step down, delivered a message: “I told our guys, ‘Hey, you guys offer all the ninth-graders you want. I don’t care. I won’t be here.’”

There is an obvious way to stop this bullshit, and that is to make all offers binding and allow them to be accepted at any time.  Not that that’s gonna happen anytime soon.

Musical palate cleanser, Maceo, blow your horn edition

I keep saying it, but Prince’s guitar work was the most underrated part of his game.  Here he is, channeling his inner-Jimi with a live version of “Red House”.  Oh yeah, he’s accompanied by Maceo Parker.