Another day, another hash tag

This time, it’s the Big Ten’s turn.

No boycott threat, though.  I’m sure that will generate plenty of concerned sympathy in the usual quarters.

Advertisement

Another day, another shot of Newman porn

PFF evidently is coming out with a college football magazine.  They posted a couple of pages to chum the waters.

“Georgia struck gold by landing Newman.”  Those guys are about as all in as anyone can be.

Hope is maybe the best of it just means more things.

Boy, this is some quote.

“The problem is that all the other sports are treating this like Democrats and college football is handling this like Republicans, thinking this virus is just going to go away,” said one SEC coach, comparing college football to pro hockey and basketball. The coach spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive topics. “And I’m saying that as a Republican.”

More than anything, I’m surprised an SEC coach said it.  Not that his basic point is wrong.

The cartel takes another L.

The NCAA is probably sphinctering up today.

In practical terms, what does that mean?

With the NCAA out of the picture, it’ll be up to each conference to set its own rules about education-related compensation.  Competition, in other words.

The NCAA is going to appeal, which means it’s taking the position that college athletes should be denied this opportunity.  Nice optics, guys.

**************************************************************************

UPDATE:  Get a load of this horseshit.

Corch, as drama queen

Heartbreaking?  Urbs, I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Although I suppose I should be grateful he didn’t say they’ll handle it, and it’s going to be a big deal.

Cancel culture, for reals

This is the inevitable result when you don’t have conference revenues to worry about:

The UConn football season is over before it could get started.

With a schedule that was already eroded after several canceled games and the ongoing concerns related to coronavirus being transferred through close contact, UConn officially canceled its football season Wednesday sources close to the program told the Courant. It was set to be the first season for the Huskies as an independent program.

“After receiving guidance from state and public health officials and consulting with football student-athletes, we’ve decided that we will not compete on the gridiron this season,” athletic director David Benedict said in a statement. “The safety challenges created by COVID-19 place our football student-athletes at an unacceptable level of risk.”

It just makes the rationale behind the P5’s approach that much more obvious.

Your 8.5.20 Playpen

Regrettably, I’ve come to the point where I feel I have no choice but to make some changes to commenting here at the blog.

It’s regrettable because I’ve been a firm believer since the day I started GTP that a free-wheeling comments section makes for a better experience for the readership here.  The last six months of watching how some of you have reacted to the pandemic has changed my mind about that.  I’ve tried in as many ways as I can to channel discussion so that the comment threads aren’t overwhelmed with irrelevant debate, name calling and other forms of personal disagreement, but nothing has worked, to my disappointment.

In the past few days, it’s culminated in a feeling that I’ve never experienced before:  the blog has become something a drudge for me.  Not writing about college football and related matters — that stuff is still fun — but spending greater amounts of time and energy babysitting the comments section.  And I’ll be the first to admit I’m not doing a very good job with that right now.

My last try at getting a handle on things has turned out to be a complete flop.  Some of you don’t understand how it works.  Some of you have simply continued to plow right through my requests to respect the commenting space.  And the time I spend monitoring your behavior has actually increased, and rather significantly at that.

It’s gotten to the point where I’m devoting so much attention here that it’s bleeding into time I should be spending on my day job and my family.  That ain’t right and I can’t continue to do that.  So, I’m making two changes, with the hope that I won’t have to make any more, but with the understanding that I still have a couple of options left to use if I need to.

Effective immediately, I’m ditching the timeout.  The two folks who are in there now are being moved out.  (That doesn’t apply to anyone who has been banned.  They’re still gone.)  Instead, I’m going to take a different step when I find that a comment thread has gone off the rails:  I’ll shut down the comment thread in its entirety.  That’s much easier for me to monitor and it achieves the same end result.  Further, if I find a person is repeatedly responsible for thread closings, I’ll boot them from commenting altogether.

By the way, I’m not going to waste your time or mine elucidating the rules again.  Gawd knows I’ve spent plenty of bandwidth doing that already.  You know where the lines are drawn.  You also know the Playpen exists for whatever off-topic musings you want to dive into.  Either respect the blog protocols, or find someplace else to comment.

The second change will come Saturday, so that I have the weekend to make sure it works.  Starting then, you will have to register to comment at Get The Picture.  You can still use your moniker as opposed to your real name, if you so choose, but you will have to provide me with a working, real world, email address in order to register.  I don’t wish to clog the comments section with warnings about behavior anymore, and that means I must have a valid way to reach you with a message.

There won’t be any further limitations on your access to commenting than that, but I will tell you that registration gives me the ability to condition your comments appearing upon administrative approval.  I don’t want to do that for several reasons, but I won’t pretend it’s not a future option if circumstances warrant it.

I’m not going to apologize to you for this.  It’s been a long time coming, and, quite frankly, it’s something of a relief for me.  I can also say the number of emails I’ve received over the past two months asking for something to be done about out of control commenters has been the highest I’ve ever received in such a period.

I hope everyone will work with me to make the comments a better place than it’s been of late.

Today, in doing it for the kids

Sounds like they’ve got a real mess brewing at Colorado State.

Joyce McConnell, president of Colorado State University, said Tuesday she was launching an “immediate and objective” investigation into the athletic department following allegations that student-athletes have been intimidated and threatened as leaders sought to disregard COVID-19 protocols.

Coaches, players and sports medicine staff at Colorado State University told ESPN that athletic department leaders are discouraging athletes from being tested for COVID-19, are failing to provide accurate information to local and state health officials and are ignoring guidelines to quarantine athletes who might have been exposed.

Football players have also been told their playing time could be affected by a positive test and an extensive absence due to COVID-19, according to multiple sources.

To be fair, there are CSU players who have contradicted the story publicly on social media, so it’s wise to let the process play out.  Notably, though, neither the head coach nor the athletic director have taken such a stance.  This may be a reason why:

Last week, Addazio addressed the team in a virtual meeting the day after the program had temporarily paused activities following a COVID-19 outbreak, according to sources who participated.

At the time, eight players had tested positive for the virus, prompting a 14-day quarantine, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for the entire team. According to multiple sources, Addazio told players that he’d planned to resume activities as early as this week, depending on the results of Monday’s teamwide testing.

“I can confirm he said that ‘although the CDC recommends 14 days, we’re going to try to come back early,'” a source who attended the meeting told ESPN.

Another person who attended the meeting told ESPN, “He was making it sound like, depending on the test results, he wants to get back before 14 days. It’s like … is that even possible?”

Team spokesman Kyle Neaves said the quarantine was voluntary.

“I can tell you that there was never any official 14-day quarantine,” Neaves said. “When we voluntarily paused — where most others are being shut down by their local health departments — that was instituted in order to give us the opportunity to test the entire team again, which we did on Monday and ran 150 tests.”

There is a lot of pressure on these mid-major programs that don’t have the resources to match what the P5 schools can bring to the issue.  But that’s not really a good look.

Speaking of things that aren’t a good look, Eastern Kentucky kicker Landon White quit the program on Tuesday over concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic (h/t).

At Eastern Kentucky Football there is little or no testing, (last team test was July 6). Symptomatic players still in the building and around other teammates. But the same day people had symptoms we continued to practice instead of face the issue head on. Keep in mind we started fall camp on Friday July 31st. We have plenty of players and staff test positive over the past month. But you have probably heard very little on the matter. Have y’all heard about us suspending anything? Of course not. There are meeting rooms with 100+ players and staff crammed into it with zero space and no social distancing rules in sight. There are a bunch of potential positives in there. The Player cafeteria (case dining hall) endangers the EKU Cafeteria staff as well as other students who are now on campus, masks are routinely not worn while players are constantly being reminded by the dining hall staff instead of our coaches to keep it on.

The Head Coach knows and the Head Coach does nothing. The Head Coach does not care about his players safety as well as his staff and their families. He cares about the 500k we are about to earn by playing WVU in Morgantown at the end of the month. The truth has to be told and I’ll be your guy.

Yeesh. I guess we’re about to hear of another investigation being opened.

Alex, I’ll take “nah”, for $200

Somebody had a question at The Athletic about the Portal Master™’s recruiting ($$) and I’m all here for the answer.

Despite Florida’s top-10-ish recruiting rankings every year, Dan Mullen seems unable to consistently recruit five-star players. Do you think the Gators can beat Georgia and Alabama simply through maintaining their high blue-chip ratio? Or do they need to improve their recruiting to compete? — Benjamin W. 

… The next issue is, what do you mean by “beat?” Like one time in a head-to-head matchup? Sure, Florida has enough talent to put together a good game plan and compete with Georgia and Alabama. College football games are close all the time. But that’s not what we’re talking about. When you’re a fan of Florida, you don’t just want to win one game and be the upset special of the week. You want to recruit well enough to be just like Alabama and Georgia.

So the long answer to your question is no.

So is the short answer.

“The season is creeping up on us and we have no answers.”

The #WeAreUnited players can’t get a meeting with Larry Scott, but the California governor’s office has time for them.

A group of Pac-12 football players with the #WeAreUnited movement met with officials from the California governor’s office Tuesday to discuss concerns about their schools’ COVID-19 protocols and protecting their college eligibility.

The players hope an executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom could mandate player-approved, third-party oversight of COVID-19 rules at the Pac-12’s four California schools and ensure players who opt out of the coming season because of the coronavirus won’t lose a year of eligibility.

The Pac-12 has said players who opt out will stay on scholarship this season, but whether college athletes would be allowed to preserve their eligibility in that situation is undetermined.

Given its track record, it’s probably not the smartest strategy to let California drive the bus here, but Larry’s gonna work that stall as long as he can.