Contingencies, contingencies

Nothing in this tweet comes as a surprise to me.

I didn’t name the category “The NFL Is Your Friend” for nothing, you know.

Advertisement

If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere.

Welcome to the SEC West, Texas A&M!

The Texas A&M football program violated NCAA recruiting and countable athletically related activity rules between January 2018 and February 2019, according to an agreement released by the Division I Committee on Infractions. The head football coach also violated NCAA head coach responsibility rules.

… The university, head coach and the enforcement staff used ranges identified by the Division I membership-approved penalty guidelines for Level II-mitigated penalties agreed upon for the university and assistant coach and Level II-standard penalties for the head coach. Those and other penalties, approved by the Committee on Infractions, are detailed below:

• One years of probation.
• A fine of $5,000.
• A reduction in football official visits by 17 days during the 2019-20 academic year.
• An off-campus recruiting ban for the entire football coaching staff for November 2019, which reduced the permissible evaluation days for the 2019-20 academic year by 19.
• A seven-day off-campus recruiting ban for the football coaching staff for the 2020 spring off-campus recruiting period and a 10-day off-campus recruiting ban for the football coaching staff for the 2020 fall off-campus recruiting period.
• The university ended its recruitment of the prospect.
• A ban on recruiting any prospects from the prospect’s high school for the 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-222 academic years.
• A six-month show-cause order for the head coach. The terms of the show-cause order include a previously served nine-day ban on phone calls, emails or texts with prospects in January 2020; a reduction in off-campus recruiting contact days by three for the December 2019 through January 2020 contact period; a ban on all off-campus recruiting activities for the fall 2020 contact period; additional one-on-one rules education; and a public statement from the head coach addressing the violations.

It’s a real shame Mike Slive isn’t alive to enjoy the fruits of his labors.  The Aggies fit right in now.

By their financial priorities, ye shall know them.

If you want to know why I whine so much about the finances of college football, here’s a distillation of the problem.

Funny, but I don’t think “doing it for the kids” means what they think it means.

“Newman has to be the pick right now…”

Georgia’s quarterback room may be more crowded, but Jake Rowe doesn’t think the pecking order has changed much.

Newman has to be the pick right now and until we hear differently, he’s our projected starter. He didn’t get spring drills to learn the offense but he did participate in all of the walk throughs and player-led throwing sessions prior to Daniels arriving last month. The 6-foot-4 235-pound triggerman is healthy and he has had over six months to build a rapport with his teammates. If Daniels doesn’t get the waiver, there’ll be an all-out battle for the No. 2 job with Bennett having the leg up going into camp. If Daniels does get the waiver, he’ll be the No. 2 at worst with a chance to win the No. 2 job. If Daniels were eligible right now, we’d still project Newman as the starter but the California native has time to make up ground.

Daniels is really good insurance right now.  Even if he gets the waiver, there’s still a question about his health.  2021 looks to set up nicely in either event.

Lack of imagination

Part of the problem with the NIL debate is that the older generation doesn’t really understand how most college athletes are going to monetize their names.  Yesterday’s Senate hearing was a clear indication of that.

Ummm… probably not.

Wicker did a fine job on his own, too, in that regard.

Answer here.

This is how Wicker thinks.

My first thought upon reading that was “yeah, so?”.  My second thought was that there are probably more than a few Ole Miss players getting more than that already.  Which is why this was the stupid cherry on top of the sundae.

Schools aren’t going to be compensated for the social media value individual athletes generate, so there’s nothing there to be pulled away.  Nor are those $100 handshakes going to have an impact on an athletic department.  As far as Nike deciding to spend $100000 on a stud athlete instead of a school — assuming for the sake of argument that’s the case, something there’s no real world indication for — isn’t that what the free market is supposed to be about?

And as far as threatening women’s sports, that’s a school’s call.  Nobody is putting a gun to their heads. We’re watching athletic departments across the country deal with declines in revenue because of the coronavirus.  I haven’t seen a single one slash women’s sports to the detriment of everything else; cuts, when they’ve come, have been widespread.

As I’ve said before, tying the fate of women’s sports to NIL compensation is simply an argument that college athletes have the financial burden of supporting an athletic department instead of the institution.  That is bullshit.

“Fans attending games, though, are assuming a level of risk by entering a stadium.”

Shocked face ($$).

The NFL is considering requiring fans attending games this season to sign liability waivers shielding the teams from COVID-19 lawsuits, sources said. The waiver proposal is likely to be forwarded to clubs by the middle of next week as part of a broad range of league recommended best practices for re-opening stadiums amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Even better, “It is probably something you do electronically, just trying to figure out the operational challenges associated with waivers…”  Yeah, those operational challenges can be a real bitch.  Compared to those, the aftermath should be a relative walk in the park.

I am under no illusions here.  The average fan who is willing to risk going to a game with 70,000 of his or her peers isn’t likely to be as worried about catching the coronavirus as in missing football.  Still, the NFL doesn’t sound like it’ll take any chances.

“I envision saying, ‘Hey, make sure you have your mask on when you come through to the next level,’” the source said. “I’d be careful calling it a checkpoint because I am not sure if that’s what it’s going to be. But make sure you have your mask on.”

Checkpoint implies responsibility.  Can’t have that.

Will this be a model for college football if implemented?  Does a wild boar pee in the woods?

“It seems somewhat perverse to be talking about [COVID-19] in those terms.”

Shot.

Another shot.

Chaser.

Would it be possible, or make sense, to intentionally create team-wide herd immunity?

It’s a question that has been lurking for weeks now. It gains steam as Clemson rolls on despite 37 positive COVID-19 tests. Most college athletes who contract the virus, the thought goes, will be asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. They’ll recover and become immune, or so they think. They’ll be free to live life and compete. One Power 5 athletic director told Yahoo Sports that multiple football players and other athletes have said they’d like to get the virus now, so that they don’t have to worry about missing games in the fall.

And while coaches clearly want players to be healthy, now and throughout the season, some have mentioned to Yahoo Sports that teams with large early summer outbreaks could be at a competitive advantage come September.

Hey, they’re just asking!

Soooo… if you had to pick, which coach would you put money on to be deliberately manufacturing a COVID-19 outbreak on his team right now?

Honor among thieves

Boy, Greg Sankey threw his conference members under a bus yesterday.

“It would be difficult and confusing,” Sankey said when asked about managing various state laws among the league’s 14 member schools. “Knowing the competition within my 11 states, I can foresee quickly the other 10 one-upping each other. And I think that’s a problem for fair and equitable competition.”

Well, damn, Commish. I just wish one of the senators at the hearing had asked him which school concerned him the most.

Maybe they should name the new law the Uniform Bagman Code.

Name that caption, en fuego edition

Talk about your target rich environment…

This one should be easy peasy.  Have at it in the comments.