“There is an immense pressure on Dan Mullen this year.”

Dial this bad boy up to the 22:30 mark and give a listen.

Agree?  Disagree?

Also, if you have a subscription to The Athletic, starting about about the 35-minute mark, Andy Staples talks to Seth Emerson here about Georgia’s offense.  It’s a sane, informative exchange, which almost seems like a novelty these days.  My only quibble is that Seth didn’t mention what I think will be Monken’s area of greatest improvement over Coley, as reflected in this old quote:

“He’s seen it work at both the collegiate and pro level so he knows the spacing he’s looking for, he knows the timing he’s looking for and he knows how to drill it. He knows how to get the reps because, especially in college, you only have a limited amount of time you’re with those guys, a limited amount of time in the meeting room, a little amount of time on the field. He knows how to get the most out of his time.”  [Emphasis added.]

Agree?  Disagree?

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They just keep coming.

Another day, another antitrust suit against the NCAA.

Attorneys acting on behalf of two current college athletes on Monday filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA and the Power Five conferences that could substantially increase the tension — and financial stakes — connected to athletes’ ability to make money off their name, image and likeness.

The suit, which seeks to be a class action, not only asks that the NCAA be prevented from having association-wide rules that “restrict the amount of name, image, and likeness compensation available” to athletes but also seeks unspecified damages based on the share of television-rights money and the social media earnings it claims athletes would have received if the NCAA’s current limits on NIL compensation had not existed.

This has the potential to put, conservatively, hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. As allowed under federal antitrust law, the suit seeks to cover athletes who played in any of the past four years and carry forward through the date of a final judgment. In addition, if a jury decides to award damages to an antitrust plaintiff, the amount is tripled.

Specifically, the suit claims that football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball players at schools in the Power Five conferences are entitled to damages related to the use of their NIL’s during telecasts of games and that athletes in any sport at a Power Five school are entitled to damages related to social media earnings.

It’s filed by Steve Berman, who’s filed other such cases, and it’s filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California’s Oakland Division.  If that venue rings a bell, it’s only because it should.

This is the same venue through which several other antitrust suits against the NCAA related to college-athlete compensation have proceeded over the past 10-plus years. In the two cases that have gone to trial there before Judge Claudia Wilken, the NCAA has been found in violation of antitrust law.

Looking forward to a quick resolution of this… eh, who am I kidding?  This should generate months of denial, embarrassing disclosures during discovery and even more strained pleas for Congress to give the NCAA that antitrust exemption it’s jonesing for.  The NCAA’s greatest hits, in other words.

Wahoo won’t.

I’m gonna go way out on a limb here and predict that an offense that’s lost a quarterback who outgained the team’s leading running back by almost 300 rushing yards is going to have trouble running the ball against 2019’s top rushing defense.

Getting to know you

I noticed a fair amount of overwrought reactions to the excerpt from Seth’s piece yesterday that I posted.  That was just one part of a bigger picture he painted.  Nobody knows exactly how much the absence of spring practice will affect Georgia’s offense — well, nobody outside of some Florida fans and some pundits, that is — because everybody will react differently to a new offense and, in Jamie Newman’s case, new teammates.

That being said, it’s neither Newman’s nor Todd Monken’s first rodeo.  The idea that the quarterback Kirby Smart scouted and pursued is going to walk into his first practice next month and become immediately overwhelmed is probably unlikely.  Sure, he’s going from the ACC to the SEC, but c’mon, be realistic.  That’s not the same as this:

Between those two seasons of offensive struggle, it’s no coincidence the worst one was 2016, when the quarterback was a freshman. Kublanow said the adjustment was bigger because Jacob Eason, as talented as he was, still had to make the adjustment from high school to college, which is a bigger adjustment than veteran players learning a new offensive system.

“The offensive systems, a lot of them are close to the same. I think if you’re an older guy they’re not typically hard to figure out, because you’ve been through a system and you understand things,” Kublanow said. “(Newman) knows the ins and outs of what a college offensive playbook is like. Obviously we do a lot of different things than what Wake Forest does, and it might be a little more intense because we’re in the SEC and not the ACC. But from a knowledge perspective I’m sure he’ll be able to get in and move pretty quickly.”

The bigger issue for me is this:  “Spring practice is when you run quarterbacks through situations, such as third-and-longs, see what they do well, then adjust over the summer. Now it has to all take place during the preseason.”

Offsetting that to some extent is that the preseason will be a little longer.  Will that be enough?  Maybe I’m putting too much faith in him, but I have to believe Todd Monken will figure out a way to get enough of his offense installed before the season’s start to see what his guys do well… and what they don’t do well.  (Along those lines, I don’t foresee a lengthy quarterback battle because that’s a luxury Monken probably doesn’t have sufficient time to indulge.)

It may not be optimal, but with that defense, functional should more than suffice to get going.

Go, Dawg, go.

If you didn’t watch football back in the day, it’s hard to appreciate what a freakish mix of power and speed Herschel Walker’s game was.  With the possible exception of Bo Jackson, there simply wasn’t another player like him at the time.

Starting with his very first carry, you can point to several plays that illustrate his power, but as far as his speed goes, there’s no other play from his Georgia career that best demonstrates that than this touchdown run his freshman season against South Carolina.

pic.twitter.com/REXZWcZ16A

— DawgStats (@Dawg_Stats) June 14, 2020

That last defensive back had the angle.  I mean, he had the angle.  Until he didn’t.

Assumption of risk, ctd.

To be fair, I did look for the specific waiver language that was the subject of my last post.  I couldn’t find anything until last night, and what I found isn’t a scholarship waiver.

The waiver states “any failure to comply with my Buckeye Pledge above may lead to immediate removal of athletic participation privileges (not my athletics scholarship) and/or the inability to use athletics facilities.”

Every football player has signed the waiver, according to a school spokesman who also said the university is not sharing cumulative testing information publicly.

Smith said the waiver is intended more for educational purposes than it is for liability.

“That’s why we call it a pledge,” he said. “We don’t look at that as a legal document. It’s a Buckeye pledge. Allow us to help you so that if we face a situation, our trainers, our strength coaches, our coaches or any athletic administrator sees a student-athlete not wearing a mask or not social distancing, we can say, ‘Hey, you made a commitment. You signed a pledge. Your parents signed a pledge. Your parents are a part of this.'”

There isn’t much there, there, which, I suspect, is what Ohio State’s attorneys advised Gene Smith.  As a means of getting kids focused on proper procedure, hard to see a problem with it.

I guess if somebody’s gonna push the liability envelope with college athletes, it’ll be elsewhere.

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UPDATE:

 

Here is the form the student-athletes signed pic.twitter.com/0njsF1Ok4O

— billlandis25 (@BillLandis25) June 15, 2020

There is one paragraph in there that isn’t simply a pledge.

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UPDATE #2:  We have a winner!

SMU athletics is requiring student-athletes to sign a liability waiver prior to returning to campus for voluntary workouts.

The document was developed by SMU’s Office of Legal Counsel, and requires student-athletes to agree that they cannot hold the school liable for anything related to COVID-19. It waives the students’ right to litigation.