Today, in voluntary

Those of you who keep posting comments like this need to check out the news from the Houston program.

NEWS: The University of Houston is immediately suspending all voluntary workouts after six symptomatic student-athletes tested positive for COVID-19.

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) June 12, 2020

That’s symptomatic athletes testing positive.  Add this to that…

Of note: Houston did not conduct COVID-19 tests as athletes returned to campus last week. Plans are to only test if a player shows symptoms. https://t.co/cdvMYPWjTS

— Joseph Duarte (@Joseph_Duarte) June 9, 2020

Smart.  I mean, they are highly conditioned athletes, after all.

There’s a similar story coming out of Iowa State.

Iowa State athletics announced June 3 that a part-time student worker had tested positive for coronavirus. It also said that four student-athletes had been quarantined when they experienced COVID-19-like symptoms after having contact with an infected person outside the department.

My point here is not to play gotcha with some of you, as tempting as that might be.  It is, instead, bring this to your attention as a lead in to repeat what I’ve been saying all along:  we don’t know enough about this damned disease to be confident about anything.  “We” includes school athletic administrators.

As much as I want college football back, schools need to be adhering to best practices, whatever that costs.  Otherwise, we’ll see more stories like these.  I don’t know about you, but finding out after the start of the season that Georgia played a school shortcutting health protection that got our guys exposed would truly suck for me.

Football fans ought to quit playing doctor.

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Synergy and the new guys

Marc Weiszer has a really good piece on JT Daniels here.  This is the part I found particularly interesting:

Daniels missed out on having a chance to shine in a new “Air Raid” offense run by first-year coordinator Graham Harrell, who played for Mike Leach at Texas Tech and coached under him at Washington State.

New Georgia offensive coordinator Todd Monken is from the “Air Raid” tree from his days as Oklahoma State offensive coordinator.

“I know JT and I know he loves the system,” Roth said. “I think the system fits his skill set really well. Hopefully, the coordinator and the system remains in place for a couple of years.”

Roth said he expects Monken to run a pro-style system with Air Raid principles.

That, he says, “is the majority of football these days whether you’re looking at the Seahawks, the Patriots or Mike Leach’s teams or USC. There’s a blend of, hey, get the ball out. Most teams in college don’t try to understand defenses for the most part. It’s mostly what I call pro progression reads.”

Going from a first read to a second to a third.

“You can still play fast, but you can still use your mind and manipulate defenders through changing things at the line of scrimmage,” he said. “I think that’s where JT can be special.”

Monken was head coach at Southern Miss in 2015 when it went up against Western Kentucky and Ellis in the Conference USA championship game.

Ellis sees some similarities between Daniels and Nick Mullens, who Monken coached at Southern Miss and is now with the San Francisco 49ers.

“Nick wasn’t the most athletic guy, didn’t have the biggest arm, he wasn’t the tallest guy, wasn’t the biggest,” Ellis said. “He just knew how to play quarterback. He was smart. He knew mismatches. He understood spacing on the field, he understood what defenses are supposed to do, where the openings are. That’s really what JT’s strength is, just understanding football.”

The story this year is we’ll find out how well Monken adapts to the talent he has on hand.  The story next year is we’ll find out how well things mesh when Monken runs his offense with the kind of talent that fits what he likes to do.

I’m beginning to see how Kirby sold Daniels on coming to Georgia.  Now, as Ellis says, let’s see if Monken can stick around for a couple of years to get everything in place.

In today’s episode, Bret Bielema is represented by Tom Mars.

Jeff Long’s current employer:  Hey, let’s get into a futile legal fight over a $3 million buyout with a football coach we canned that wound up costing us more money than just paying the buyout would have and forced us to show our ass in discovery.  Nobody else is that stupid!

Jeff Long’s former employer:  Hold our beer.

Your Daily Gator can dream, can’t he?

Speaking of all that’s left is believing this really is the year of the Portal Master™, you’ve got to read this puff piece from Gator Land to get a taste of that belief.

The average unit ranking for Georgia is 2.14. The average unit ranking for Florida is 5.42.  The Bulldogs have the same average per unit as Alabama who is picked to beat Florida in the SEC Championship.

Just looking at this and what the editors at Athlon Sports might be thinking, it seems this is either a huge endorsement of the coaching ability off Dan Mullen and his staff, or it is a huge indictment of the coaching ability of Kirby Smart and his staff.

Certainly there are other things to consider when picking winners and losers in the preseason like their schedule and who they might play before the big games, but their opinions on the players of each team and that level of difference should really be the biggest determining factor. It wasn’t in this case.

Fans of the orange and blue can only hope that the Athlon guys are right in what they think about how the season unfolds. Maybe a win by the Gators and a subsequent trip to the SEC Championship Game would make a lot of folks take a further look at the rosters and see that maybe they were a little closer talent wise.

Then maybe Mullen could pull a Steve Spurrier who made a habit of whipping Georgia every year in Jacksonville. Spurrier used to mock the recruiting acumen of Georgia back then and say things like this quip… “Why is it that during recruiting season they sign all the great players, but when it comes time to play the game, we have all the great players? I don’t understand that. What happens to them?”

Sure, that could happen.  And then maybe monkeys will fly out of my ass.

Athlon: “This is probably the toughest debate of the 2020 preseason prediction process.”

Previously, I posted a link to an Athlon piece from March asking the musical question “Who should be the early favorite in the SEC East for 2020?”.   Seven participated and the final vote was 4-3 in favor of Georgia over Florida.  A sample of their thinking indicates they thought it would be a close battle between the two.

The race between Georgia and Florida might be one of the tightest of any division in college football in 2020. Though neither squad is perfect (I’m a little worried about the Bulldogs on the offensive line and the Gators’ struggles in the running game carrying over from last season), both teams are worthy of a spot in the preseason top 10 and are legitimate playoff contenders. If Georgia hadn’t landed Jamie Newman (or a similarly talented grad transfer quarterback), Florida would have the edge. But coupled with arguably the best defense in the country, and a forward-looking change at offensive coordinator, the Dawgs should be considered the early favorites.

Forward to… well, now.

This is apparently what passes for close now.  [NARRATOR:  It’s not.]  You can’t really use the schedule to explain the difference in talent level away, because even if the cross-divisional games play out as most expect, with Georgia losing to Alabama and the Gators beating Ole Miss, the division will still come down to the Cocktail Party.

All that’s left is believing this really is the year of the Portal Master™.