Meanwhile, in Alabama…

Alabama Democrats, still riding Tubs’ ass, with a touch of Saban added:

Let's talk about polls for a second. Tubs was consensus top 5 in the 2003 preseason polls, lost his first two games (scored 3 points total), and ended up in the Music City Bowl.

So y'all focus on that rat poison all you want. We'll outwork yesterday. https://t.co/CXHC0NJKGr

— Alabama Democrats (@aldemocrats) August 4, 2020

You know, they have a point.  Auburn’s usually at its best when nobody takes them seriously, and vice versa.

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Lack of confidence

Interesting poll that reflects the results I got here when I ran one about fan attendance:

Forcing unpaid help to play under conditions that a majority of your audience isn’t comfortable with is a good way to lose the PR battle.  Don’t think folks in Congress being asked to provide NIL relief aren’t sensitive to that.

But they diin’t get spring practice, PAWWWLLL!!!

The SEC puts limits on preseason practice.

The conference office has approved a new preseason plan that delays practice deeper into August. As part of the plan, teams can practice 25 times over a 40-day period beginning on Aug. 17, sources tell Sports Illustrated. During that time, schools must adhere to the NCAA’s normal in-season football access time of 20 countable hours a week. Two days off each week are required. The new preseason plan expands the SEC’s practice window by 11 days, providing flexibility for more off days and potential COVID-19 related interruptions.

I guess we’ll have to wait for the pundit class and the Gator message boards to weigh in on whether that’s sufficient for Georgia’s offense to get its shit together.

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UPDATE:  Note the official announcement.

“… fewer practices than permitted by current NCAA rules.”  Did somebody kidnap SEC management and replace them with pod people?

Happy birthday, big Dawg

One of my favorite games between the hedges, mainly because of this guy:

– 198 rush yards
– 100-yard kick return TD
– 4 total TD

In honor of @TG3II's birthday, we’re bringing back one of his greatest games with @GeorgiaFootball.

📺 2014’s Clemson vs. Georgia | 7 PM ET tonight pic.twitter.com/YW6FsQUTla

— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) August 3, 2020

Add to that Nick Chubb’s first collegiate touchdown and it was pretty much a magical night.  (‘Course, the buzz wore off a week later, damn it.)

Rahm Emanuel, Clemson edition

“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

IPTAY, bitchez!

“If you’re hesitant about letting us continue to spend your money like drunken sailors, please, think of the children.”

Not the gap you were looking for.

Over at The Athletic, David Ubben and Andy Staples ($$) ask the musical questions, “How big is the gap between Tennessee and Florida? Is it shrinking or growing?”

You can read the whole thing, but I’d like to inject Staples’ conclusion directly into my veins.

What Florida must guard against is overconfidence against Tennessee. As David has so astutely pointed out, the rosters aren’t as different as the results of the past two meetings would suggest. Tennessee is a completely different program now than the one that got shelled in Gainesville last year, and Florida players would be wise to understand that. They can’t get caught up worrying about LSU or Georgia, because Tennessee — and probably Kentucky — can give them hell if they aren’t completely prepared.

Hell, your typical Daily Gator isn’t worried about LSU or Georgia, so the meteor game posing a problem would come as a complete shock.

“A better future for college football players?” Why would anybody think that’s needed?

Some thoughtful words from Bill Connelly:

Every organization has its flaws and cracks — you just never know when and how they might get exposed.

The many cracks in college football’s infrastructure — from how players are treated to the sport’s leadership vacuum — have been exposed in a single offseason.

At some point, the athletes were going to push back in force…

Here are a few examples of those cracks, just from the last couple of days:

• From the Virginia Tech cornerback who was the first high-profile player to bail on the 2020 college football season:  “I started having deep concerns about staying healthy,” Farley wrote in the article, posted to the website on Sunday. “Guys were going home, going to Myrtle Beach, coming back to campus, and we weren’t getting tested. We’re all together, working out, close to each other, and you have no real idea who might have it, if anybody might have it. One day I looked around, and we were like 100-deep in our indoor facility, no masks. My concern grew more and more.”  Virginia Tech’s response is oh so reassuring.
• “We’re just out here getting gaslit en masse by our university.”
• “A University of Louisville athletics document that had been characterized as a pledge to follow COVID-19 protocols reads instead like a blanket release of legal claims.”
• “The same ones handling these regulations are the ones set to make millions if we play,” Daltoso said. “If our health and safety was No. 1, we wouldn’t be on campus.”

Seriously, we’re supposed to be surprised that there’s an organized reaction to this?

And for those of you who try to split the baby by conceding the #WeAreUnited players may have a point about concern over their health and working conditions, but that their economic demands are a bridge too far, it’s not easy to separate the two, as Connelly explains.

The shame comes when you bring back athletes without centralized, enforceable health-and-safety protocols. And it comes when, after you have acknowledged the desperate importance of athletes to your school’s well-being, you continue to actively and forcefully resist these athletes’ attempts to recognize their economic rights.

The NCAA has long insisted that college athletes are normal students taking in a normal student experience. But the fact they have been on campus at all proves they’re different from normal students. That they probably will remain on campus, working to represent their school and earn it money even if or when most of the student population is away, attending school remotely during this ongoing crisis, proves they’re different.

After giving schools permission to bring players back during a pandemic and asking them to take on physical risk in the name of their university’s financial health, the NCAA continues to restrict players’ ability to make money off of their time serving said university. And if anyone remained on the fence regarding whether this sport is fair enough to the athletes who will forever be the engine of all revenue and popularity, this great paradox of 2020 should have held sway.

Another way of looking at this:  if you honestly believed before this season that players were being fairly compensated for their efforts, now that the COVID risk has been added to the pot, how can you argue they’re still being fairly compensated when nothing has changed on that side of the equation?  How far can you stretch amateurism?

“We trust the process.”

Just wondering — is anybody else thinking Georgia is about to get rolled by the SEC’s schedule making for this season?  I mean, I know Greg McGarity is on the mother…

“We respect and trust that the Southeastern Conference will do what’s best for the Southeastern Conference as a whole,” McGarity said Monday. “There will be complaints, of course. It’s difficult to make 14 institutions happy. It’s impossible, in fact. It’s a thankless job in a jumbled world, and no one should be surprised by anything.”

Now there’s an approach that’s served Georgia so well over the years.

Fellas, I’ll get right back to you.

This, my friends, is why they pay Larry Scott the big bucks.

Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott is open to holding dialogue with a group of league football players who are threatening to boycott the 2020 football season, according to a letter that Scott sent the group Monday. Sports Illustrated obtained a copy of the two-page letter, which Scott wrote in response to the #WeAreUnited campaign’s letter Sunday.

Pac-12 officials are reviewing #WeAreUnited’s list of demands and documents, Scott says in the 1,400-word response, sent at 7 p.m. ET Monday. “We are eager to hear more about your concerns and very happy to discuss,” Scott writes. “I will come back to you in the coming days following discussion with our members and student-athlete leaders to schedule a call for this week to discuss the matters that you have raised.”

He is open.  Eager, even.  But not quite yet ready to meet.  Surprisingly, the players aren’t grabbing Larry’s peace offering.

Hours after receiving a response from Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott that indicated he was eager to hear more about their concerns and would find a convenient time to speak later this week, leaders from the Pac-12’s #WeAreUnited campaign responded late Monday night asking for more immediate action.

“While we appreciate the response, we are looking to move on a faster timeline than you have proposed,” an email approved by the group’s leadership, and obtained by ESPN, said. “We are two weeks from fall camp and would like to work to come to a resolution so that we can play this season. Every day that we don’t have discussions puts players at additional risk of COVID.”

… In a letter to Scott and the Pac-12 athletic directors dated Aug. 2, and obtained by ESPN, the group asked for daily video meetings with Scott, the athletic directors and the player representatives to begin Monday at 8 p.m. PT, but that meeting was not granted.

Where’s the fire, kids?  After all, the health of athletes is the league’s “No. 1 priority,” Scott wrote.  That ought to keep you safe while the bucks roll in.

I’m really looking forward to watching how long Scott can stall this.

Well, yeah, that’s what I said. But **this** is what I meant.

Random mouth noises from a guy who realizes he shot his recruiting in the foot.

“Without knowing the concerns of the group…” — sure, brother.  As I alluded to yesterday, when you’re explaining, you’re losing.

Meanwhile, Rolovich’s athletic director gamely tries to close the barn door after the horse departed.

That might have been a handy thing to have in place before your coach botched things, Pat.  Not that it would have excused the rest of his dumbassery.

Not that I don’t feel a little sorry for the guy.  Who would want to get caught in the crossfire of a hold my beer contest between Leach and Rolovich?