2020, Year of Agent Muschamp?

I dunno about this one.

"2020 is the big year for Will Muschamp. 2019 is about survival on the field to set up what in 2020 is kind of a prove it year for Muschamp" – @JoshatTheState pic.twitter.com/JpNGbxIeNQ

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) April 30, 2019

Kendall’s level-headed and good at his job, so I have to think he’s gotten this somewhere from the SC administration.  But what exactly are they expecting for 2020?

Here’s what the schedule looks like at the moment:  a couple of cupcakes, Georgia and (a presumably improving) Tennessee at home, Florida and Clemson on the road and a brutal cross-division slate of Texas A&M and at LSU.

They finished eighth in the conference in recruiting this year, according to the 247Sports Composite.  Their 2020 class currently ranks seventh.

Oh, and Jake Bentley’s a senior this season.

So what’s Boom proving in 2020 exactly?

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Because you can never get enough Corch

Reggie Bush tells @ArashMarkazi if USC struggles this year, Bush & Matt Leinart will “recruit” Urban Meyer to replace Clay Helton as USC’s coach in 2020. “We’ll definitely be recruiting him,” Bush said. "What makes you think we won’t be recruiters? Nothing is off the table.”

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) April 30, 2019

What’s the over/under on that shelf life?

A primary secondary

I’ll say it again:  the biggest eye-opener for me at G-Day was the depth in the defensive backfield.  Deandre Baker is gone, but there’s plenty left to fill in the gap created by his departure.

A lot of Georgia’s reliance in the defensive secondary was on former cornerback Deandre Baker. He was the lockdown guy who hadn’t allowed a touchdown in two years, and good luck if you try to throw at him. He’s walked through the doors and finished a career, and the Bulldogs got a taste of the new-look secondary only a few days before Baker donned a New York Giants jersey as a first-round draftee.

From the outset, the first-team defense has its core in place. That includes younger names like Campbell, Stokes and Webb and is rounded out by the older presences of J.R. Reed and Richard LeCounte (yes, it’s strange to call them veterans already). There were two moments that could’ve been to Georgia’s favor: Campbell, after being picked on and eventually benched, looked like a force, and Stokes ball-hawking tendencies continued to show.

Georgia’s recruiting prowess came into play with the production of that group. It’s a testament to the fact that bringing in a horde of highly-touted recruits will pay off and be fruitful (not everyone is great in year one, but that’s been noted before).

Some glimpses of guys who could contribute in the secondary were also seen on the Red team. Other than an egregious pass interference penalty from Divaad Wilson, most of the signs were positive. Early enrollee Lewis Cine led the defense with eight tackles, sophomore Latavious Brini had an interception at safety and Tyrique Stevenson saw play early and often.

Hubba hubba.

Maybe the best man won.

We saw Justin Fields’ less than stellar stats from Ohio State’s spring game, along with the reality that he’s pretty much a lock to start for the Buckeyes this fall.

It seems that much the same story is playing out at Washington with another former Georgia quarterback.

In the wake of senior quarterback Jake Browning’s departure, Eason, Haener and Morris will continue that competition this fall. Eason — a former five-star prospect, Lake Stevens product and the heavy favorite to start this season — completed 7 of 12 passes for 42 yards and a touchdown, while being sacked four times, in the Spring Preview.

Of course, maybe it’s just the case that Ohio State and Washington have much better defenses than Georgia does.

Blame it on the weed.

Chip Towers is just sayin’, y’all.

Elijah Holyfield, Jonathan Ledbetter, Natrez Patrick and Jayson Stanley all had to deal with marijuana and/or impaired driving charges while at Georgia. All of them ended up as undrafted free agents. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe they’d have been undrafted anyway. There’s simply no way to know for sure.

Maybe is doing a shitload of work there, but Chip Towers is just sayin’, y’all.

Again, there were plenty of NFL draftees that had been arrested for something during college — or before — and still heard their name called during the draft. But I’d suggest that it still affected their stock.

Mississippi State defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons is the first that pops to mind. He was arrested for the awful offense of punching a woman in a fight when he was still a recruit. Yet, Simmons was drafted with the 19th pick by the Tennessee Titans. Without that significant blemish, though, his talent surely would have seen him be one of the first to go off the board this past Thursday.

Likewise, LSU’s Devin White went with the fifth pick despite a couple of arrests before he’d signed with the Tigers. One of his purported offenses was complicated beyond my comfort with even discussing it here and ultimately was expunged from his record, anyway. But White has the size of Georgia’s Patrick and ran a blistering 40.

Imagine how much higher in the draft White might have gone!  Chip Towers is just sayin’, y’all.

Chip Towers is just sayin’, y’all.

“The NFL doesn’t tell us who to recruit and we don’t tell them who to draft.”

Sure, Mike Leach is a strange dude, but strange enough to actively torpedo the draft prospects of one of his players?

“I thought we had a really good spring.”

Georgia’s 2019 spring practice is in the books.  More than a week after G-Day, I thought I’d take my expertly formulated opinion — hey, I watched a spring scrimmage and read the media reports, didn’t I? — and post my thumbnail feelings about a few topics.  Bullet points, get over here!

• Areas of least concern:  offensive line (duh); secondary (even post-Baker, I couldn’t help but be impressed with the depth of talent in the defensive backfield); outside linebacker; running back; Blankenship
• Area of lesser concern:  quarterback, at least as long as Fromm stays healthy (Bennett looks like he’s functional, at the least, and Mathis has talent)
• Areas of some concern:  defensive line (not sure if the depth is there); inside linebacker (not sure if the speed is there, at least until Dean is a regular part of the rotation)
• Area of concern:  receivers (mainly because of depth after Holloman, Simmons and Woerner; the incoming group plus Robertson I hope will lower my anxiety)

This is a loaded bunch.  Based on my limited exposure watching as many spring football games as I could, I don’t see another team in the East at Georgia’s talent level.  But I also see an offense that is probably going to be brought around more slowly than the spring chatter might indicate and a defense that has a few things to sort out in the front seven.  Plus, there are new coordinators on both sides of the ball.

For those reasons, I don’t find a reason to think there’s going to be a major deviation from last season’s offensive game plan, at least early on.  Mashing defenses with that huge offensive line makes too much sense, given where the talent and depth on offense lies right now.

Your post-spring thoughts?

“I knew how to work the game.”

Let me see if I’ve got this straight:  the NCAA doesn’t allow student-athletes to be compensated for the use of their name, likeness and image, but has no problem allowing them to promote the use of their name, likeness and image.

Snell is part of a growing number of college athletes capitalizing on their popularity. The NCAA prevents athletes from endorsing products or being paid by sponsors, but they’re allowed to turn themselves into online personalities. And that helps lay the groundwork for future deals.

It’s a trend that Jim Nagy, executive director of the Senior Bowl, has noticed over the past few years. By building a personal brand in college, athletes “can really monetize themselves when they become professionals, rather than start from scratch in whatever NFL city they end up in,” said Nagy, a former NFL scout.

Evidently, it’s not spending time commercializing yourself that’s a problem.  It’s getting to the commercially viable stage while you’re still in school that is.

The really perverse twist to this is that schools are starting to take advantage of it.  No, really.

INFLCR was founded in 2017 by Jim Cavale, a former college baseball player who felt NCAA athletes were losing out on a golden opportunity to leverage their stardom. Schools pay between $10,000 and $50,000 per year for the service, and in return athletes receive approved content on their phones right after a game or practice. The service uses the professional cameramen that schools already employ.

“Athletic departments are often so focused on the return on investment, which to them means ticket sales or merchandise sales,” Cavale said. “Our service is a different kind of play. This is about recruiting, reaching a wider audience, and a better student-athlete experience. It’s a bit more abstract.”

Schools are coming around to the idea. Kentucky bought the Snell Yeah trademark and website, then transferred both to the running back after he left school. Guy Ramsey, who oversees the Wildcats’ website and social media, said the department’s approach has evolved over the past few years to become more collaborative. The school understands that its athletes reach an audience that the Wildcats’ accounts often miss.

“It even dips into recruiting,” Ramsey said. “It’s difficult to get a recruit to follow your brand account sometimes. But if you have an ambassador putting content out through their own personal lens, that’s then a reflection of our own brand.”

So there it is:  kids, you can have the brand.  You just can’t have the money.

I’m sure this makes sense to somebody.  I’m not sure how they keep a straight face about it, though.

Transfers are scary things.

That’s why everyone uses scare quotes these days.  Here, for example, is a question from yesterday’s Bill King post:

Bill, the way I see it, this “transfer portal” the NCAA has instituted is going to remake the game of college football, and not in a good way. No wonder Kirby and other coaches hate it. If players can leave whenever they want and transfer wherever they want, it’s likely to make it impossible to stockpile talent and let it mature. Top-ranked players come in and don’t crack the starting lineup in their first season? They’re outta here! Won’t that put pressure on coaches to start all the 5-stars they sign, even if they’re not ready? And that’s so unfair to players who’ve worked hard in the program. What are your thoughts?

Now, transfer portal is a real phrase, so why the quotation marks?  There’s only one reason, Bubba.  Fear!  Anxiety!

Much the same in this Hartford Courant piece about “free agency” and the “transfer portal” (again).  I’m beginning to think coaches tell their kids scary stories at bedtime:  “if you don’t behave, you’re going straight into the transfer portal!”.  Ooh.

Well, it’s only fair to say that Randy Edsall, of all people, ain’t buying that.

“I think you have too many people in the NCAA who are out of touch with reality of what this is all about. They want to sit there and think grad transfers is about academics. It’s not about academics. It’s about these young men taking advantage of an opportunity, because they did get an undergraduate degree, to maybe go somewhere and give them a better opportunity to showcase their abilities and talents that’s going to help them get a better opportunity in the NBA or the NFL. That’s really what it’s all about.”

Ironically, both Edsall and entitled college football fan grasp the situation better than does the NCAA.  This isn’t about academics, as much as some schools and Mark Emmert would like to insist otherwise.  It’s about who should have control over student-athletes’ playing futures.

And maybe how much control they should have.  Edsall goes on to make what I think is a valid point with this:

… He would also like to see a binding letter of intent as part of the process.

After last season, defensive lineman Michael Hinton, who graduated from Columbia, committed to play at UConn as a grad student and signed a financial aid agreement, binding for the school, but not the player. Last week, Hinton changed course and decided to play at Tulane, another AAC school, and Edsall said he believes he won’t be able to use the scholarship on another player, because Hinton had signed a financial agreement at UConn.

Bottom line, there should be some sort of reasonable common ground to attain regarding transfers.  That probably won’t happen until the NCAA drops the fiction it’s trying to preserve the academic mission.  Oh, and everybody loses the scare quotes…

On the up and up

In the wake of Dabo Swinney signing that ginormous contract extension at Clemson, I’ve seen a fair number of takes like this, suggesting his argument that player compensation is another form of entitlement that college athletics can do without no longer has any place in the discussion.

With all due respect, that completely misses the point.  Of course Swinney’s perspective continues to matter, and matter greatly.  Not because it occupies some moral high ground, but because, unlike some, Dabo ain’t stupid.  He can do the math, and the math here is pretty dang simple.

For now, there is no reason to think the top of the college football coaching marketplace is going anywhere but up. Rapidly.

Every year, more money pours into college athletics departments. There is no legal way for schools to cap coaches’ compensation. And for the time being, at least, there is a legal way to cap athletes’ compensation.

So a market that’s governed by the usual economic factors, plus the wild card of emotion, is almost assured of going higher than it did Friday.

All that money’s gotta go somewhere, and if it’s not going to the players directly, well… like I said, Dabo ain’t stupid.  There’s a good reason college sports are the only major commercialized venue where coaches make more than star players.

What I wonder about is what happens should the time come when the NCAA and the schools go all out for an antitrust exemption.  Will college coaches realize what that will likely mean for them, too?  And, if so, what would they do about it?