I have come not to bury your Daily Gator.

The offseason marks a good time for Gator sport here at the blog.  There are plenty of reasons to mock Florida fans’ dreams of world domination in 2020, but one of those probably isn’t losses from the receiving corps, as this David Wunderlich post demonstrates.

I am curious to see what happens in 2020. There is a clear top three of returning wide receivers in Grimes, Toney, and Copeland, and Pitts easily could lead the team in targets and catches again. If Toney stays healthy, I want to see how much he does with routes and traditional receiver stuff in addition to taking screens and handoffs and using his elusiveness to try to break big gains. This will be his fourth year as a receiver, the second under a highly regarded developer in Billy Gonzales. If he has the full receiver toolset in him, we should start to see it this year.

After those four, it’s a complete crapshoot.

Yeah, they’ve got some holes to fill, but they’re not anywhere near the void Georgia was facing before the start of last season.  Just sayin’.

Another early clue to the new direction?

I know many of you follow recruiting more closely than I do, so you’re probably already aware of the late offer to Ladd McConkey.  I don’t know anything about the kid, but there’s something in Jeff Sentell’s piece about Georgia’s offer to him that caught my eye.

“Georgia offered me to be a true slot guy,” McConkey said. “Guys that can win the one-on-one battle. I mean obviously they have guys who can win one-on-one matchups but really get in space there down in the slot and make people miss in real tight coverage.”

But, muh blocking!  What are you thinking, Kirby?

His weight is a story on its own. He weighed 178 pounds this past summer. That was before basketball camp and then a football season and then basketball season.

He’s about 165 pounds right now. That’s not really SEC grade, but keep in mind this is a Monken system fit. A new way of looking at that spot. McConkey has impressive ball skills and the short-space quickness that will flourish in any “Air Raid” sets. He’s also a guy who wants the ball coming his way in big spots.

He’s small. Especially for a typical UGA signee, but consider his stature in the right context.

This is not your father’s manball, Dawg fans.

The rich always want to get richer.

I’m guessing these two proposals have Nick Saban’s approval.

There are three proposals related to signing limits in football. One would end the hard cap of 25, allowing 50 counters over a two-year period with a cap of 30 in one year.

— Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) January 23, 2020

Boy, if there’s one thing the Sabans and Smarts of the recruiting world need, it’s a mulligan.  It’ll be roster management on steroids.

Today, the role of Hamlet will be played by the NCAA.

Mark Emmert: “Many people believe that college sports is fundamentally unfair right now… And I know for me, that’s really frustrating.”

— Bryan Fischer (@BryanDFischer) January 24, 2020

Cry me a river, Mark.

“You can’t flip a switch. There’s an overwhelming sense of urgency but there’s an urgency to do it right and get it right. You get one chance at this thing.”?  Give me a fucking break, dude.  This isn’t a crisis that sneaked up on you people.  You’ve let it fester until the politicians got involved and now there’s a sense of momentum running against you that you can’t control.

You probably felt like you could handle this the same way you did when the politicians started pushing you on playoff expansion.  The difference is that there you were faced with controlling how to let more money flow into your collective pockets.  This time, the threat involves the cash going in the opposite direction and you don’t like that.  Even more, you don’t know how to change the narrative.

So you’ll spin madly.

And when that doesn’t work, you’ll lobby Congress even harder than you are now.

Emmert said he has been working with members of Congress for much of the past year to ask for help in creating a national law that would make uniform rules for college sports in different states and allow the NCAA to maintain some control over policing the new market for college athletes.

“Clearly people in Washington want to know what the desires are of college sports, and we need to work with them to help figure that out,” Emmert said.

But mainly, you’ll flail and hope somehow you’ll get bailed out.

Emmert said he did not know if the NCAA would regulate that market or if it would ask a third party to be in charge of that process. The National College Players Association, a non-profit aimed at advocating for college athletes and an outspoken critic of the NCAA, published a paper last week saying that it is in a better position to make sure it is representing the interest of athletes in future discussions about money-making opportunities. Emmert urged NCAA delegates at this year’s convention to make sure they were keeping the well-being of athletes at the forefront of all their decisions and acknowledged that many critics believe the organization has conflicts of interest that keep it from acting in the best interest of athletes.

This is what comes of taking maximalist positions and failing to be proactive.

Athletics directors, by and large, are watching this from the sidelines with cynical eyes. Many of the younger, more progressive administrators saw the crisis coming years ago and have little trust in NCAA leadership to get this right. They’re not particularly doctrinaire about the name, image and likeness issue, they just want to know the rules they’re playing by. What was notable, however, was how few of them came to this NCAA convention. This is largely the presidents’ show.

“Maybe some anticipated that we could get all the parties together in the old collegial way,” said Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson. “I don’t think there’s going to be that kind of time.”

Tell that to Emmert.

$1.1 million

Alex, what is Todd Monken’s 2020 salary?

More than Coley’s, but less than Jim Chaney was making.  (If I’m not mistaken, Monken is still receiving something from the Browns after being canned.)

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

UPDATE:  And check this out.

Faulkner made $250,000 at Southern Miss. https://t.co/gG0z4G6a6s

— Zach Barnett (@zach_barnett) January 23, 2020

A pay cut to come to Athens.  For now, anyway.

Today, in amateurism

Once again, amateurism is nothing more than what the NCAA says it is.

On the policy front, the NCAA Div. 1 council approved legislation that will allow athletes designated as elite by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and corresponding national governing bodies in other countries to receive additional training expenses, including travel for parents, guardians, coaches and sports experts.

That sound you hear is romantics everywhere clutching their pearls.  This will kill college sports, amirite?

Nah, just kidding.  Like every other NCAA retreat on player compensation, this one won’t make a dent in public perception.  Too bad football isn’t an Olympic event.

Not too many, but not too few

While I don’t think it’s as high-profile as his change of offensive coordinators, here’s another modification of Kirby Smart’s approach to offense that’s significant.

There aren’t as many empty seats in Georgia’s quarterback meeting room as there have been in the past and that’s a very good thing.

When Kirby Smart arrived at Georgia in 2016, he acted quickly and secured the signature of Jacob Eason, giving him three quarterbacks to start his first season as a head coach. The following season, UGA added Jake Fromm in the 2017 class to join Eason and Smart was able to convince Brice Ramsey to stick around after he considered transferring for his final year of eligibility.

When 2018 rolled around, Ramsey was out of eligibility and Stetson Bennett IV, who was offered a scholarship to stay, transferred to Jones County Community College (Ellisville, Miss.). Justin Fields joined the program in January of that year and it gave the Bulldogs just two scholarship signal callers on the roster.

Fields transferred to Ohio State a year later but Smart, once again, didn’t waste any time. He brought Bennett back on scholarship as a redshirt sophomore and flipped D’Wan Mathis from Ohio State to give the Bulldogs three quarterbacks on scholarship.

Now, in January of 2020, Smart has more quarterbacks than he ever has before and he’s clearly hoping to keep that number as high as possible. Fromm left early for the 2020 NFL Draft but the Bulldogs brought on Wake Forest graduate transfer Jamie Newman, the clear favorite to win the starting job, and signed four-star triggerman Carson Beck out of Mandarin High School (Jacksonville, Fla.) [Emphasis added.]

I tend to agree with Rowe’s assessment there.  I don’t think Kirby was comfortable with his depth situation at the position last season and, given Newman’s ability to run the ball, it wouldn’t be sensible to play things that close to the vest this season, especially with Mathis’ health remaining in question.

Given transfer trends at the position, that’s likely another reason to carry more depth, but it also puts additional pressure on a staff to run a scheme that’s relatively easy for a college quarterback to master.  We’ll see how good Monken is in that regard sooner rather than later, I suspect.

“This is just a ridiculous depth situation.”

Seth Emerson ($$), in the header quote, is referring to Georgia’s cornerbacks for 2020, but to be honest, that line could be applied to every defensive group with the possible exception of free safety.

It’s truly an embarrassment of riches.  It’s also the reason the Dawgs should be favored to win the East again.

Hello, Newman… a continuing series

This piece isn’t really much from an Xs-and-Os perspective, but if you want to get a little feel for Jamie Newman’s physical attributes and his ability to work in pressure situations, there’s some stuff worth looking at.

Though I’m not sure how much I buy into this:

Newman isn’t Fromm. Their games, strengths and weaknesses are different. If he’s asked to run the same offense Georgia ran last season, the Dawgs will be setting Newman up for failure.

I don’t know how anyone can safely predict what Georgia’s offensive scheme for 2020 will look like, but Newman’s said he wanted to play in a pro-style attack this season to prepare him better for the NFL.  My uneducated guess is that whatever Monken constructs, it’ll look more like Georgia’s 2019 offense than Wake’s.

We can work it out.

So, Boise State went and did it.

Boise State University has filed a legal complaint against the Mountain West Conference over the new TV contract announced earlier this month.

Boise State claims that the Mountain West breached its contract with the school and “violated, nullified and significantly impaired Boise’s State’s rights” by signing the deal without the Broncos’ approval. The complaint also says that the conference has decided to put an end to two benefits the school negotiated as part of its 2012 deal to stay in the Mountain West, including a $1.8 million annual bonus.

Dan Wolken speculates that the AAC, seeing an opportunity here, may be mulling over a decision to extend an invitation to the Broncos to join that mid-major conference, partly in hopes, I assume, of strengthening its own brand.  I have no idea whether he’s right or wrong about that, but I have to say it smacks of some of the same brilliant reasoning that brought geographic outliers like Missouri and Rutgers to their respective conferences.

Of course, this move, were it to become a reality, would dwarf those distances, as the AAC would stretch almost across the entire country.  And for what?  If these schools were the television draw they’d like to insist they are, they’d be pursued by bigger fish than another mid-major conference.

The other unanswered question is what’s in it for Boise State, other than the enjoyment of taking your ball and going home.  It’s unlikely the AAC would give the Broncos preferential treatment when it comes to sharing broadcast revenue.  There are also AAC programs which possess name recognition similar to BSU’s, so there goes the big fish in the small pond flavor Boise currently enjoys.

Most likely, this is little more than legal maneuvering over money, just like the big boys play it.  It’s only the size of the pot that’s different.  College football these days — what are you gonna do?