SEC media preseason prediction

Wow, they actually went there.

SEC preseason media poll

Eastern
1-Florida (53 1st place votes)
2-Georgia (43)
3-Tennessee
4-Kentucky
5-S. Carolina
6-Missouri
7-Vanderbilt
 
Western
1-Alabama (86)
2-LSU (8)
3-Auburn
4-Texas A&M (2)
5-Ole Miss
(Tie)Miss St
7-Arkansas
 
Champ
Alabama 77 votes, UGA 7, LSU 7, UF 5

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) September 23, 2020

I honestly didn’t think they would.  (But check out the votes to win the conference.)

Kirbs has to be grateful for the bulletin board material.  He’s gonna wear that disrespect thing out.

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UPDATE:  Heh.

So wait — you guys are serious about this Florida thing? pic.twitter.com/CUO89nTg2w

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) September 23, 2020

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UPDATE #2:  The preseason All-SEC teams are listed here.  Interestingly, Georgia has nine players on the three teams and Florida has six.  Damn, that Mullen guy must be really good.

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Erik Ainge isn’t a Georgia insider. He just plays one on the Intertoobz.

Geez, this is flat out embarrassing.

I got my teeth pulled and played because I could play. I was not forced to nor were any ill words spoken about the situation. https://t.co/V0QpkD2ngE

— Cade Mays (@cade_mays) September 23, 2020

Just heard from Cade, we both know where I got my info (from UGA folks, not UT) crazy how people make stuff out of nothing. Glad to hear some details were not true. He really is a good young man with legit reasons to play.

Regardless…let the kid play. #FreeCadeMays

— Erik Ainge (@ErikAinge3) September 23, 2020

UGA has some awkward leaks in their AD. If it’s not true and makes your own place look terrible…why leak it?

Reminds me of Butch towards the end where people working for him were the ones saying stuff. Really weird. Sorry for Misinformation. Why would I think it was false?

— Erik Ainge (@ErikAinge3) September 23, 2020

“Crazy how people make stuff out of nothing” is one helluva self own, my dude.

Less risk, more reward

I posted this yesterday:

As for keeping bowl season safe for the Mississippi schools, I think it’s time to start lobbying the NCAA to drop the six-win requirement. The lower bowls are nothing but broadcast fodder for ESPN anyway, so why not just look for entertainment wherever you can find it? Personally, I would love to see how upper-tier mid-majors do against lower tier ACC schools. Even better, give me an Arkansas-Vandy bowl game so we can see which team is the conference’s worst. I’d sure watch.

Somebody’s listening, I guess.

A waiver has been filed to the NCAA by the Football Bowl Association to eliminate all bowl eligibility this season. https://t.co/K7FKv8d2Ta

— Dennis Dodd (@dennisdoddcbs) September 23, 2020

One thing I hope to come from this otherwise shitty year is the permanent adoption of a few sensible moves made in the wake of stitching together a worthwhile season in the midst of a pandemic.  In this specific instance, dropping the bowl eligibility requirement would do more to allow schools and conferences to strengthen regular season scheduling than anything I can think of, including playoff expansion.

Would you rather see a six-loss school play a cupcake game during the regular season or during the postseason, most of which is little more than glorified exhibition games?  I know what I’d choose.

Sankey’s message to Mays and Reese

Basically, it boils down to “if you want a transfer waiver, choose a different conference” ($$).

And during a radio interview on Wednesday morning, Sankey didn’t make it sound like he would be changing his mind.

“There’s a very direct rule that says to transfer from school A to school B in the SEC, they serve an academic year residence,” Sankey said during an appearance on Birmingham radio station WJOX-94.5 FM. “There are a set of NCAA oddity exceptions and then in 2018, our membership created two more: One for grad transfers, and one for individuals on teams that face postseason bans. And people send in waiver (requests) but, you know, one of the questions that should be asked is that what the commissioner is going to do, is why haven’t our members voted to change that rule? So we’re inviting people to campus knowing there’s a clear rule and now everyone points and says, ‘Well, you need to let people out of that rule.’ And one of the questions that’s real is, why is our membership not acted to change? And the answer is because we have to work together. We have to be respectful.”

Who knew the SEC Commissioner was an angry, retaliatory Georgia fan?

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UPDATE:  Kirby makes the same point.

“You’ve got to look at it from 3,000 feet above and see the landscape of things and what’s going on with everyone in the country,” Smart said on the SEC Coaches teleconference on Wednesday.

“I’m certainly one that thinks if a kid could have a better opportunity to go play somewhere else, and that’s their choice, we want to support that young man,” Smart, who’s entering his fifth season as Georgia’s head coach, said. “In the SEC, there are rules that are in place about going from one school to another that i’m not really in control of, that’s not my decision, that’s not my rule.

“Those are rules that were voted on among the ADs and presidents, and the commissioner has to uphold those.”

He also touched on Reese’s racism criticism.

“I don’t think he actually leveled comments about racism (within) the program,” Smart said. “But I can’t comment about what’s going on (with Reese’s case) because it’s still going on with the SEC and NCAA. I think the statement we released earlier is pretty explanatory.”

It’s up to Ron Courson now.

Kirby sounds less confident by the day that Daniels will play against Arkansas.

Georgia QB J.T. Daniels has not been medically cleared yet to play at Arkansas but Kirby Smart said he remains "hopeful" he will be by Saturday. "It's one of those things that's really beyond our control right now."

— Marc Weiszer (@marcweiszer) September 23, 2020

Let’s hope Mathis stays healthy.

Legend

Honestly, just when you think Rodrigo Blankenship couldn’t say or do anything more to burnish his name at UGA, he up and does this:

Can confirm that @RodTheKicker3 really did turn down a scholarship from Florida to walk on at UGA.

Hear Rod’s words on that decision & more in this podcast: https://t.co/U9kIDSnc7J pic.twitter.com/YiIfzq2lSL

— The Savage Pads Podcast (@savagepads) September 23, 2020

It’s almost as if calling him a DGD is an understatement.

Your 9.23.20 Playpen

I thought this would be a fun topic for today.

four movies you’re pretty sure you like more than anyone else you know https://t.co/Y0kozqV6D5 pic.twitter.com/DtwYtu627Z

— Ira Madison III (@ira) September 16, 2020

Note that it’s not about your four favorite movies, or the four you think are the greatest of all time.

I’ll start, in alphabetical order.

• Battle Beyond The Stars.  Intended as a “Magnificent Seven in outer space”, the screenplay was written by John Sayles, the score by James Horner and special effects designed by James Cameron.  It’s Roger Corman’s finest hour.  Bonus credit for casting Robert Vaughn again as one of the seven.
• Breaker Morant.  I’ve posted about this flick before.  It’s genuinely moving, with a superb cast.  It’s not so much an anti-war movie as it is an anti-hypocrisy one.
• Layer Cake.  I’m a sucker for a good Brit gangster movie.  In this one, you get a pre-Bond Daniel Craig as somebody who’s looking to get out of the business, but not having an easy time of it.
• Local Hero.  Pretty much a modern fairy tale.  Burt Lancaster is a hoot.  Plus, a score by Mark Knopfler.

Alrighty, then.  Those are mine.  What about yours?

Talk about the weather

Seth Emerson ($$) explores the possibility of a regression by Georgia’s defense this season and finds Kirby discussing an old friend.

“If you are scoring a lot of points people are playing you different. We were in a lot of tight ballgames last year it seemed like,” Smart said. “Probably some weather conditions were favorable for the defense in terms of tough weather conditions (we had) to play in throughout the year.”

Echoes of Mark Richt trying to explain Georgia’s struggles in Jax…

I guess if you want to see continued excellence from the Dawgs D this season, you’d best hope for a well timed monsoon or two along the way.

Today, in coachspeak

Kirbs says something, something about offense:

On the direction of the offense under Coach Monken/whether it is influenced by the success of other programs’ and their RPOs (Run-Pass Options)…
“I don’t think that the offenses that are highly success aren’t necessarily RPOs—I would disagree with that… Yeah, it’s built around what we think we can do and be most successful with the players we have. Certainly, [we] study a lot of teams that were successful last year, as we do every year. [We] look [at] what we have similar to other teams that might have something similar to us—meaning if there is an elite receiver or an elite tight end or maybe [defensive] backs or a really good, featured quarterback. Whatever it is that we think we can simulate with the players we have that teams have been successful with. You have to be careful when you talk about that because our league is very different than many others. The outlier for me would be obviously LSU last year, being what they did. You can see on every Sunday what they had, and what they were capable of with the ammunition they had. Everybody tries to copycat to an extent, and do what people do well. We have to build that around what we have and what we are capable of doing with what we have.”

First, can somebody help a blogger out and parse “I don’t think that the offenses that are highly success aren’t necessarily RPOs—I would disagree with that” for me?  For the life of me, I can’t figure out if he’s praising or dissing RPOs.

Building around what you have is fairly anodyne stuff, but you’ll have to forgive me if I think he was really stung by what LSU did last season.  Not that I blame him, either.

Branches on the coaching tree

I sure hope somebody asks Mark Richt for his thoughts on the South Carolina-Tennessee game.

Tennessee is opening its 2020 college football season Saturday night against South Carolina inside Williams-Brice Stadium, so why is tape of Alabama, Colorado State and Georgia being studied so intently?

It’s all about the background.

Georgia’s 2014 team in Mark Richt’s next-to-last year as head coach went 10-3 and finished No. 9 in the Associated Press poll. The Bulldogs had Todd Gurley, Nick Chubb and Sony Michel in their backfield, and they also had Mike Bobo as offensive coordinator and Jeremy Pruitt as defensive coordinator.

Bobo left Athens in December 2014 to become head coach at Colorado State but returned to the Southeastern Conference last January as the offensive coordinator for Gamecocks head coach Will Muschamp. Bobo’s first task will be trying to top Pruitt, who is in his third season of guiding the Volunteers.

“Mike’s a competitor, whether it’s playing against him in college, coaching against him, coaching against him every day in practice, playing golf against him or shooting pool,” Pruitt said this week. “He wants to win in everything that he does. He’s going to have a great game plan. His kids are going to play hard.

“They’ll play together, so it will be a challenge for us.”

No, I don’t mean I want to hear a prediction on the final score.