“That’s going to be a fun luncheon tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow” being today’s annual SEC coaches’ meeting at the league headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama.  “Fun” being Missouri’s Barry Odom showing up to feed some of his peers shit sandwiches, evidently.

Barry Odom will have some choice words for his fellow SEC coaches on Wednesday. Missouri’s head football coach is just now realizing the full impact of probation recently handed down by the NCAA that included a bowl ban in 2019.

Odom said Tuesday that his 19 seniors are being “contacted and bombarded non-stop” by teams taking advantage of NCAA bylaws that allow rising seniors from programs hit with postseason bans to transfer without penalty…

No Missouri players have transferred due to the ruling, but Odom and Missouri remain frustrated.

“I’m also now recruiting our senior class again,” Odom said.

The coach said that he has “made a number of calls” to conference peers pursuing his players. This comes in advance of Wednesday’s annual SEC coaches’ meeting at the league headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama.

“I haven’t gotten return phone calls,” Odom said.

“I know there is a handful of guys who are talking daily to my players,” he added.

And the number one offender?

Odom singled out Tennessee as the most frequent caller for his players among SEC programs during a booster event on Tuesday.

“Everybody is going to have a bad day,” Odom said, expressing his frustration with keeping his players from transferring. “You combine that with somebody that — who’d we beat 51-17 this year? Tennessee? Yeah, those guys. They are non-stop reaching out daily [saying], ‘Hey, come here.’ The grass is not always greener somewhere else.”

Sounds like something straight out of the Phil Fulmer playbook, don’t it?  Man, you gotta love “it just means more”.

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The continuing adventures of Todd Grantham’s agent

The man is working it, baby.

Update: The Bengals DC job is Todd Grantham's if he wants it, according to a source. https://t.co/lUHf6Zt4l0

— Fletcher Page (@FletcherPage) February 13, 2019

Only Florida’s AD knows if Todd really wants it.

*********************************************************************

UPDATE:

SOURCE: #Florida DC Todd Grantham to Cincinnati Bengals gaining more steam. Am told he went back for a second meeting there.

— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) February 13, 2019

Evidently Stricklin isn’t feeling it yet.

Your 2.13.19 Playpen

To kick things off, I have, not a political question, but a question about politics.

What kicked this line of thought off was this Ben Shapiro tweet I saw the other day.

 

Ben Shapiro: "The only reason to have a conversation or be friends with anyone on the left is if you're in public in front of large audience & your goal is to humiliate them as badly as possible."pic.twitter.com/cFOZkkTGpS

— saeen (@_Saeen_) February 3, 2019

Now Shapiro’s just another pseudo-intellectual grifter, so the source isn’t what I’m going into here.  It’s the sentiment.  Is that the mainstream now, or just provocation for provocation’s sake?

I know that Macallanlover and I have lamented that the days when we were growing up and friends could have different political opinions without it affecting the friendship seem to be long gone.  We live in an especially polarizing era when it’s… if not easier, exactly, but more reflexive to demonize than tolerate.

The reason I bring all this up is the number of times I’ve seen people express opinions, both here and at other Dawg sites, that because I’ve expressed certain views on political matters with which they disagree, they don’t enjoy reading the football posts at GTP any more.  As hard as I’ve tried to understand that point of view, I just don’t get it.  I’ve got readers here of every political stripe (okay, almost every political stripe) and nobody’s politics have affected the way I look at and react to their sports comments.

What I’m curious about is whether I’m the outlier here.  Does anyone’s political expressions — mine, commenters here or folks elsewhere — inform the way you process their thoughts on Georgia football?  I’d like to think not, but I have a feeling I’m going to be saddened to hear some of your answers.

Have at it.  Try to be civil about it, though.

“Jarring price tag”

What’s wrong with profiting a little off tragedy, I ask you?

Leading lawmakers Tuesday pressured the University System of Maryland to divulge more details on how it rang up a “jarring price tag” while investigating an allegedly toxic culture at the state’s ­flagship football program.

In a letter to Chancellor Robert L. Caret, the House of Delegates’ fiscal leaders expressed their “renewed and increasing distress” over the university system’s response to the death of Jordan ­McNair, a 19-year-old lineman who suffered exertional heatstroke at a team workout in May. The letter states the lawmakers’ “serious concerns” about the circumstances surrounding the tragedy “but also about the inconsistent, inadequate, and opaque response” by the university system and its board of regents, who took control of the investigations from the College Park campus in August.

The letter is signed by the six House of Delegates leaders with the most influence on the university system’s budget, including House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) and Del. Maggie McIntosh (D-Baltimore City), the chair of the House Appropriations Committee.

While the regents oversaw the investigation, the $1.57 million tab rung up by the eight commission members was passed on to the College Park campus.

If that’s the shot, here’s the chaser.

Maryland lawmakers want details on ‘jarring price tag’ of $1.57M for football culture investigation. Worth remembering: The investigation into Jordan McNair’s death was capped at $24,000. https://t.co/9xvl9Bfqty

— Jon Solomon (@JonSolomonAspen) February 13, 2019

Some more people need to lose their jobs over the debacle.

“… everyone knows a championship contender is the sum of its parts.”

And one more look at team recruiting rankings:

Some of this confirms what you, myself and every college football fan around knows intuitively: for the last half-decade, no one in the country has been as dominant on the recruiting trail as the power trio of Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State.

Now, true, that’s not the entire story.

The on-field success of Clemson and Oklahoma have shown that conference and national championships can be won without top-five recruiting classes, but they also each serve as examples for the disconnect between signing day and game day. The Tigers were able to close the talent gap with Alabama, in part, because Christian Wilkins, Clelin Ferrell, Mitch Hyatt, Austin Bryant and other key pieces of the 2015 recruiting class chose to return to college for their senior seasons instead of going pro. If fellow 2015 signees Calvin Ridley, Da’Ron Payne or Minkah Fitzpatrick had chosen to do the same, then maybe that showdown in Santa Clara goes differently. Oklahoma, on the other hand, has done enough work on the recruiting trail to contend for Big 12 championships, but this average does not have a factor for the addition of Heisman Trophy-winning transfer quarterbacks Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray.

But it’s a large part of the entire story.  Kirby’s recruiting has made Georgia relevant nationally and there’s no reason to think that’s going to change any time soon.  Whether it pays off with the ultimate reward, well… that’s why we’re along for the ride, ain’t it?

(As an aside, if you’re wondering why Athlon’s average for Georgia differs from CBS’, it’s because Athlon screwed up the 2015 rankings of Georgia and LSU.)

The SEC is a Jimmies and Joes conference.

This chart comes from Athlon.

The chart below highlights the average recruiting ranking for all SEC programs across the last five years (2015-19), according to the 247Sports Composite Team Rankings, in addition to the won-loss record for each team (both overall and in conference) during the last five years (2014-18).

That’s a pretty solid correlation between wins and recruiting rankings there… except for Tennessee and Mississippi State.

Another Mark Richt story

I’m just wondering how this fits in to the narrative some of y’all insist is the real Mark Richt, the money stealer.

Miami fans may be mad at Richt because of the way last season went and because of the state of the roster he left behind, but they should understand that few coaches in America would have done for a school what Richt did for his alma mater on the way out the door. He’d already donated his own money to spearhead a project to give the Hurricanes the indoor facility they sorely needed, and by retiring instead of insisting to coach or be fired, he removed several financial impediments to future success. He could have chosen to try to coach his way through a no-win situation, which would have forced Miami to pay him this year and pay him a buyout when he ultimately got fired. Miami is a private school, so Richt’s contract isn’t a matter of public record, but since he received an extension that lasted until 2023 and made about $4 million a year, it’s safe to assume his buyout would have been far more than the $4 million Miami had to pay Temple to buy back Diaz. And remember, had Miami fired Richt after the 2019 season, the school would have had to buy him out and probably would have had to pay a buyout for the coach it hired to replace Richt. The total price tag would have easily pushed into the double-digit millions for a small private school that doesn’t exactly have an overflowing war chest of booster donations.

I’m not posting this to start a debate about Richt’s coaching chops.  His offensive guru reputation took a serious hit last season and hiring his son as the quarterbacks coach went about as well as those moves usually do.  No need to go there at this time.

But maybe some of you who insist Richt was nothing more than a greedy SOB can explain how that works in light of the above.  Just wonderin’.

Blurring the lines

Not trying to be snarky here.  I’m legitimately curious about something.

You may have heard that Kirk Herbstreit’s twin sons are walking on at Clemson.  Kirk’s a proud papa — not that there’s anything wrong with that — but he took to Twitter with this announcement.

So… is that a little over the top in terms of Clemson?  Does it color your impression/expectation of Herbie’s professionalism?  If you were his boss, would you want him calling Clemson games in the future?  (Sadly, I have the feeling his boss sees that as a feature, not a bug.)  How about when he argues for which teams should be in the CFP?

Again, just curious what you think.