Your 5.13.20 Playpen

Watching this embarrassing display of legal representation (yes, I’m using that term loosely)…

I haven’t done a lot of lawyering in my day, but “my client is a public school educated idiot” is a wild ass defense. pic.twitter.com/3PFwld9xnt

— Ludakit (@Ludakit) May 12, 2020

… immediately brought to mind this classic moment in the annals of Georgia jurisprudence.

… There are three bulldogs, former mascots of the school, buried behind one end zone at Georgia’s Sanford Stadium. Joining them there, in a fourth grave, ought to be the opening argument as uttered for the ages by Hale Almand, the attorney for Ervin and Trotter. While conceding that, indeed, the university does give preferential treatment to athletes and that, to be sure, Kemp is a good teacher, Almand wrote the epitaph for his case by also saying, of the typical educationally deficient jock: “We may not make a university student out of him, but if we can teach him to read and write, maybe he can work at the post office rather than as a garbage man when he gets through with his athletic career.”

University officials understandably blanched at that. Vince Dooley, the football coach and athletic director, said, “I told him [Almand] that was a terrible statement. He couldn’t have done a worse thing.” But matters did get worse. As a poignant footnote to Almand’s statement, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution reported that Landy Ewings, a black football player who had gone through the remedial program and had dropped out of Georgia in 1983 after three years at the school, had taken a job working on a garbage truck in Athens, the university’s hometown.

I don’t think poignant is the word I’d use to describe that, but I digress.

Tell me, is there another state in the country where lawyers raise the “our education system blows, so you must find in favor of my dumb-ass client” defense the way Georgia lawyers do?  Asking for a moronic friend…

What?  Oh, yeah.  Have at it in the comments.

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21-9

Time to get something off my chest, I guess.

I made the mistake yesterday of stumbling into a Twitter debate highlighted by this:

Dude—Florida is literally 21-9 vs uga since ‘90 w/ no NCs in sight🤔. Where you get you that level of chirpitude is baffling. Uga are eternal Kings of Spring. Champions of nothing. Hell even UT has at least won an NC in that time!

— Boom shaka laka (@ufslide) May 12, 2020

Ah, yes, 1990, the last refuge of the embattled Gator fan.  Literally.

Look, I’ve followed Georgia football for four decades.  Believe me, I know the shortcomings of my program better than this guy does.  At least I’m honest about them, which is more that he can say about himself.

Spurrier and Meyer owned Georgia for two decades.  There’s no question about that.  Since Corch left, though, Georgia leads the series with Florida 6-3, and the Gators haven’t won a conference championship.  That is current and that is reality.

What’s fantasy is your typical Gator fan’s belief that the period when Florida was coached by two Hall-of-Fame level coaches (skip the personal shortcomings for the moment) represents normality for their football program.  The truth is that what’s going on now — a good but not elite level of accomplishment — is what is historically normal for Florida football.

Could Dan Mullen win a conference championship?  Sure, why not?  Galen Hall did… sort of, anyway.  Florida’s got the kind of resources available to it, particularly in recruiting, that fans of most other football programs would sell their mothers to have.  They’re good enough for a program to win its share of titles.  It’s just that the story of Gator football over the years is mostly a story of squandering those resources.

What history tells us is that it takes an elite coach to guide Florida football to an elite level of accomplishment.  Is Dan Mullen an elite coach on the level of Spurrier and Meyer?  Something, something, 21-9, sez the Gator dude.

They’ll always have 1990.  Too bad it’s 2020.

Dan Mullen and the greater good

Dan Mullen isn’t a selfish man.  He doesn’t want college football back because it means schools will get paid, which in turn means Dan Mullen will get paid.  No, he sees a bigger, more selfless picture.

“I think, for the American psyche, games being played would be a good thing,” Mullen said. “I think you’re starting to see other sports coming back. I’ve seen NASCAR looking like it’s coming back. The PGA Tour, it looks like they’re coming back. I think it would be great for the American psyche to have football. It would be great for our people.”

Look, I love college football deeply, but I’m under no illusion that it occupies the minds of the majority of my fellow Americans, and certainly not in the way it does Mullen’s.  People have bigger fish to fry right now, like getting a paycheck and avoiding dying.  Live football, while nice, doesn’t register as highly on the psyche meter.

Hell, Dan gives the game away with his next comment.

The one thing Mullen is opposed to when it comes to playing college football this year is waiting until every state has gotten the green light to hold sporting events. The Gators head coach thinks that would be detrimental to the parties involved with college football.

“I think what we have to do is we can’t get caught in the ‘until every school in the country is ready to get back and play football, no schools can start,’” Mullen said. “I think that it is a very naive way of thinking. I don’t think it’s a very healthy way of thinking. I don’t think it’s good for the sport, the game of football, or the individuals who are playing.”

“I don’t think it’s a very healthy way of thinking.”?  LOL.  Nice choice of words there, sport.

That’s that.

When it comes to Georgia football, Danny Kanell is never wrong.

"The Florida Gators are the team to beat in the SEC East."

Can @GatorsFB get past @GeorgiaFootball this year?@dannykanell thinks so pic.twitter.com/CqXmtNY8AJ

— CBS Sports HQ (@CBSSportsHQ) May 12, 2020

So much for regional appeal

Mark Emmert’s reluctance to mandate a common start date to the college football season aside, there’s a likelihood the commissioners want that, anyway.

SEC Commissioner @GregSankey tells us that the communication between college commissioners has never been stronger than it is now. "The notion that one thinks one conference is going to go off and doing something independently isn’t attached to reality."

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) May 12, 2020

Why?  Three words:  College.  Football.  Playoff.  Sankey and his peers aren’t walking away from that sweet postseason payoff.

The more interesting question is going to be what happens if not all teams within a conference are able to start at the same time.  My guess is they’ll accept what it takes to fashion a credible CFP, whatever that is, but in any event, it’s another indication that college football’s focus has changed, for better or worse.

All together now

Shot.

Washington coach Jimmy Lake said Tuesday in a video conference with reporters that he would prefer for all major college teams to begin six weeks of preparation for the season at the same time.

“I’m of the opinion it would be great if the NCAA made a blanket rule for the whole nation of when we would start, and I understand some states may be less hit by this than most. And I’m sure there’s going to be some different opinions on this,” Lake said. “In my opinion, I believe the NCAA should step in and say, ‘OK, here’s the date when everybody can start.’”

Chaser.

The NCAA won’t mandate or oversee a uniform return to college sports, NCAA president Mark Emmert said Tuesday, leaving decisions on start dates to state officials and university presidents.

College athletics came to a halt in mid-March, when the NCAA canceled the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, along with all remaining winter and spring championships, because of the evolving threat of the coronavirus pandemic. There is still no timetable for a return, and Emmert said it isn’t the NCAA’s role to determine one in this instance.

“Normally, there’s an agreed-upon start date for every sport, every season,” Emmert told ESPN, “but under these circumstances, now that’s all been derailed by the pandemic. It won’t be the conferences that can do that, either. It will be the local and state health officials that say whether or not you can open and play football with fans.

“We already saw the Oregon governor offering her views on what’s likely to happen in September. The Pac-12 can say, ‘Gee, we’d all like to open up on this date,’ but whether or not you can is going to be ultimately up to the state and local health officials and the campus itself making a decision whether or not they want to go forward.”

A man’s gotta know his limitations.  If only the coronavirus had a history of molesting boys in the shower, then we might see Emmert moved to act.

Your Daily Gator is cray-cray.

Okay, maybe some of them are worse than we ever were.

 

Jesus 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/fSYtK7mns0

— Pat (@UGA_PB) May 12, 2020

By the way (and I feel a little guilty getting in the way of a good, “Neidermeyer… dead“-type rant), it’s Brenton Cox, dude.  Carry on.

Musical palate cleanser, last dance edition

From October, 2002, here is Warren Zevon’s last appearance before an audience.  He would be dead a year later.