Legends

Whoa.  Chip Towers dishes up the rat poison for Georgia’s receiving corps.

… Of the group remaining, any who earn their place in the rotation will have to be truly exceptional to do so. The returning starters each are all-SEC caliber – at least. And if Pickens can stay out of trouble and off the injury list, he should be in position to become Georgia’s first consensus All-American receiver in school history.

All that at Manball U?  Color me a wee bit skeptical… not to say I’d be unhappy if turns out he’s right.

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He’s no mystery.

Over at Rivals, Mike Farrell wonders whether Florida will take the conference’s biggest step back in the 2021 season, and, honestly, I love the way he phrases his rationale more than I even do the answer.

My opinion is that the Gators lose so much on offense and have some questions on defense with coordinator Todd Grantham coming back…

Of course, you could argue that most SEC offensive coordinators don’t have any questions about Todd Grantham.

Amateurism, you turn me on.

Dennis Dodd summarizes one of the arguments the Alston lawyers made to the Supreme Court:

At the core of the NCAA’s argument is that paying players will turn off fans, thus depressing the demand for the “product,” in this case, major-college sports as a whole.

Alston lawyers argue that players already get financial rewards, including for academic achievement, and that has not affected fan interest to this point. There’s bowl gifts (capped at $550 per player) given out “simply for being on a team.” In addition, the cost of attendance stipend that has been around since 2015 is awarded only to athletes.

We’ve already told you about former LSU long snapper Blake Ferguson who “made” $12,000 per year while in school from scholarship checks and cost of attendance. Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston reportedly received $80,000 to purchase insurance as he headed to the NFL Draft through an NCAA Student Assistance Fund at Florida State.

And you might have noticed, the NCAA is fully on board with name, image and likeness compensation as it “modernizes” its rules. That compensation could reach into the high six figures for social media accounts alone.

I know, I know.  Amateurism romance doesn’t care about your facts.  The NCAA knows that, too.

“A parade of NCAA, conference and university witnesses admitted that they had never even attempted to study any relationship between the compensation restraints and consumer demand,” the Alston brief said.

Pffft.  And why should they?  The heart wants what the heart wants, amirite?

All mockery aside, this feeling argument grows ever more detached from reality, and that’s got to be putting more and more strain on the fiction the NCAA continues to peddle, as David Hale notes.

That last observation is the real kicker.

I know that many of you believe that player compensation will prove to be the final straw for you, and that, once a reality, will turn you away from collegiate football for good.  From my standpoint, authorized player compensation is merely the culmination of a series of events over decades that have steadily eroded the allure Hale refers to.  Conference realignment and broadcast partnerships have traded college football’s uniqueness for a mess of pottage, at least from this fan’s perspective.  Cutting players in on a piece of the action isn’t going to change any of that.

Funny, not funny

Shot.

Despite a sixth of his attempts being uncatchable, Pickens owned UGA’s best Catching Success Rate, Drop Rate, and TD Rate with a team-high 14.2 ADOT. Only the Heisman logged more than his 6 “created catches” within the SEC. His 10.2% Rate was tops among dudes with at least 20 tgt https://t.co/t10cmYBdIk

— SEC StatCat (@SEC_StatCat) March 4, 2021

Chaser.

If you come at the king, you’d best not miss.  Unless you’re his quarterback, in which case there’s still a good chance he’d bail you out.

Les, Les, Les…

This, my friends, is one helluva lede.

At the height of his fame as Louisiana State University’s head football coach, Les Miles was accused of texting female students, taking them to his condo alone, making them feel uncomfortable and, on at least one occasion, kissing a student and suggesting they go to a hotel after telling her he could help her career, according to an internal investigative report released by LSU on Thursday.

Les describes all of that as “simply mentoring young women at the university”.  Yeah, sure.

Miles also was accused by athletic department staff of saying that the female student workers who helped the football team lure top recruits needed to be attractive, blonde and fit, according to the investigative report. Existing student employees who did not meet this criteria should be given fewer hours or terminated, the report details.

His attorney hopes the release of the report puts an end to the “baseless, inaccurate media reports.”  As opposed to the sourced, accurate legal report, I guess.

As for what else the report’s release might put an end to, Stewart Mandel ($$) speculates about the ripple effect at Kansas.

So while Kansas, as KU Athletics spokesman Dan Beckler says, may not have known about these allegations at the time of Miles’ hire, it’s fair to question whether the school can justify keeping him. Long did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

After Miles went 0-9 in his second season and lost his offensive coordinator to Middle Tennessee State, one might wonder if Kansas AD Long would even care whether he stays.

The truth: Long desperately needs the LSU allegations to blow over, because if Miles has to go, so surely does the man who hired him.

Mandel says it raises a “legitimate” question about how much vetting Long did before hiring Miles.  The adjective is amusing, considering how Long ineptly tried to engineer a situation to avoid paying Miles’ predecessor a $3 million buyout, not to mention one of the many lowlights on Long’s resume was the hire of Bobby Petrino at Arkansas.  Deep reflection is not part of Long’s MO.

If that winds up biting him in the butt and costing him a job, well, karma is a bitch.  The real question is whether, should that happen, another school is dumb enough to employ him.  Eh, don’t answer that.

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UPDATE:  Didn’t see this coming.

New information. Former #LSU athletic Joe Alleva recommended in 2013 to fire Les Miles with cause and said the public opinion would be in LSU's favor. pic.twitter.com/y5ykBaYPTR

— Brody Miller (@BrodyAMiller) March 5, 2021

Alleva got it right?  Hoo, boy.  Guess the powers that be thought Les had a title or two left in him.

Musical palate cleanser, it’s alright edition

Sort of a bookend to Monday’s MPC, here’s NRBQ’s swinging tribute to a couple of Southern favorites, “RC Cola and a MoonPie”.