This doesn’t bode well.

They’ve cancelled their home opener as a result.

This, from a professional sport with less in-game contact than college football.  And, presumably, better able to restrict player exposure to the public, as well.

It’s hard to see how college football makes it through a season unscathed.

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UPDATE:  Related food for thought…

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UPDATE #2:  Oy.

There have to be at least a thousand better ways to respond to the news than that.  Why are these people so inept at PR?

Mr. Conventional Wisdom alert

BREAKING:  “Stay tuned.”

Nobody has a better grasp of the obvious than Tony Barnhart.  That’s why he’s Mr. College Football.

Enhancing the academic experience

At Duke, they’re all students.  It’s just that some students are more special than others.

While the majority of Duke juniors and seniors are no longer eligible for on-campus Fall housing, one segment of the University’s upperclassman population will still be able to live on campus.

Junior and senior student-athletes on Duke’s fall and winter sports teams will be eligible for on-campus housing for the Fall semester, Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, wrote in a Sunday evening message to The Chronicle.

But, sure, let’s keep pretending otherwise, NCAA.

Jordan Rodgers has questions.

About Georgia’s offense, that is.

“My biggest question mark with Georgia, looking back to last year, with Jake Fromm, this offense is going to be completely different,” Rodgers said…

“I don’t think it comes around quick enough to beat Bama early,” Rodgers said, referring to a current UGA schedule that features a Sept. 19 road trip to Alabama. “I’m giving Florida a slight edge just because of the question marks that Georgia has on offense and how quickly it can come together.”

But, what about the obvious?

Rodgers acknowledges the Bulldogs have a championship level defense, but he doesn’t believe that’s enough.

“They have a an elite defense,” Rodgers said. “But you can’t depend on your defense every week in the SEC to hold their opponents under 20 points to win a football game.”

Ummm… I know it seems like ages ago, but isn’t that what Georgia’s defense did during the 2019 regular season?  (Yeah, yeah, at least during regulation…)

TFW a “non-profit” business plan is an oxymoron

College athletic departments, you made your own beds.  Now lie in them.

Things open up

Just a reminder, today is when life gets busier for Kirby Smart.

Although no decision has yet been made regarding the status of college football in the SEC, another milestone in the “new normal” of season preparations is underway for head coach Kirby Smart and the Georgia Bulldogs.

Coaches and players can now implement the actual use of a football in workouts, per the NCAA-approved six-week schedule leading up to the start of fall camp Aug. 6.

So, what’s changed from the previous few weeks?

Plenty.

Over these next fourteen days, coaches can spend 20 hours working with their respective teams — although players won’t be able to don the pads until the five-day acclimation period is completed next month.

Aside from all the usual things on his plate, like figuring out how all the new puzzle pieces on offense fit together, Smart’s also got to see to motivating his troops during practice when nobody knows yet what sort of season they’ll get to play.

Practice what you preach.

Yes, if there’s one thing we associate with Urban Meyer’s Florida teams, it’s their humility.

"The best way to keep people humble is competition." – Urban Meyer pic.twitter.com/5bULiBj8i8

— James Light (@JamesALight) July 26, 2020

The man is a living testament to the concept that if you win big, people will swallow your bullshit endlessly.

That’s why he’s paid the big bucks.

That this piece states the obvious isn’t what matters — it’s that so many folks don’t recognize that Mark Emmert’s main purpose in life is nothing more than serving as the P5’s useful idiot.

As long as there is value in that, he’ll have a job.

Reminiscing

Anybody who spent time in Athens, say, forty or so years ago, will get a huge kick out of this long (and I do mean long) piece from DavetheDawg.

Read it, and if you’re of that era, or a few years earlier, as am I, share your memories in the comments.

Musical palate cleanser, white boy blues edition

Damn, we lost another one over the weekend.

Peter Green, who has died aged 73 was, alongside Eric Clapton, widely regarded as the foremost white blues guitarist of his generation, although he became equally famous as rock’s second-most notable LSD casualty (after Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett).

In 1969, Green’s band, Fleetwood Mac, sold more albums than the Beatles and the Stones combined, and in its first three years the group’s best-known hits were all written by Green. These included Black Magic Woman, which later became a massive hit for Carlos Santana, and Albatross, the dreamy instrumental which went to the top of the charts in 1968 and has featured as the soundtrack of numerous surfing and wildlife films. Both Oh Well and Man of the World reached No 2 in 1969.

Casualty is putting it mildly.

But the 1960s drug culture took a heavy toll, and in 1970 he dropped out of the music scene and plummeted out of sight (though not before writing the haunting The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown), which seemed to document his descent into madness).

For the next 25 years Green drifted in and out of psychiatric hospitals, earning only the occasional reference in the press – as a cautionary tale about the excesses of Sixties rock.

A real loss.  The man was one of the greatest guitarists to emerge out of ’60s Britain.  Just ask B.B. King.

Critics praised the understated brilliance of his singing and the liquid brilliance of his guitar playing and the pure tone he could coax from his 1959 Les Paul guitar. The great blues guitarist BB King, one of Green’s heroes, whom he had originally set out to emulate, would say of Green: “He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.”

That is one helluva compliment.  Here’s a brilliant example of what King referred to:

Not a wasted note.  Here’s one more clip, where the blues are tinged with a little psychedelia.

Sorry to see you go, Peter.