It’s the law!

Is it just me, or does anyone else find this phrasing curious?

Today, State Senator Niraj Antani (R-Miamisburg) introduced a bill to legalize college athletes earning compensation from their name, image, and likeness.

It’s not against the law for college athletes to receive compensation.  It is against NCAA rules (which themselves have been found to violate antitrust law, for what it’s worth).  There’s nothing to legalize, in other words.  It’s kind of pathetic that a state legislator doesn’t know the difference.

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SEC SP+ 2021 projections

I always like it when somebody else on the interwebs does my heavy lifting for me, and that’s the case with this gentleman who painstakingly compiled the regular season record for the fourteen conference teams based on Bill Connelly’s SP+ metric.  Here’s what it looks like:

And here’s how that adds up by division:

Lane Kiffin, SEC Coach of the Year.  That’s my first reaction.  My second one is wondering how much heat Bryan Harsin gets after one year on the job.  My third one is bracing for the hot takes from Vol Nation.

What do y’all think about those results?

“If you turn it around, you’re going to go get someone from the portal, too.”

Shot.

Tampering officially arrived in college football this offseason, leaving coaches to both lament the current state of the game — and try to keep up.

They know if they wait for a quality player to enter the transfer portal to begin recruiting him, they’re too late. So they’ve been reaching out to third parties and using players as go-betweens. It’s a violation of NCAA rules, of course, but enforcement is nearly impossible.

An SEC head coach said that not only is tampering happening, “it happens most of the time.”

A prominent high school coach told ESPN’s Tom VanHaaren he has seen it increase to the point that he estimates 60% of college teams are doing it.

“With one player, last season I got four calls from four different conferences,” the high school coach said. “‘Is he happy? They’re not using him like we would use him.’ These are SEC, Big Ten and some big-name schools.”

A Power 5 coach surveyed the current landscape. It looked to him, he said, like the “wild, wild West.”

Chaser.

Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz scoffed at the idea of NCAA oversight. It would need to open an investigation, he said, and what good would that do when it still hasn’t punished the coaches implicated in the FBI’s investigation of college basketball?

“What kind of ferociousness is behind the enforcement if you have people on tape admitting to violations and they’re still actively coaching?” Drinkwitz asked.

SMU coach Sonny Dykes brought up those wiretaps, too. He said he believes the NCAA’s inaction is reinforcing the old adage, “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.”

It may be the wild, wild West, but the old sheriff is still in town.

“You want people in our sport to be ethical enough where they don’t fall prey to that,” Dykes said, “but … you got to win and you got a high-pressure job and you have all these things and then all of a sudden, you look up and you go, ‘Oh, they didn’t punish anybody, and they’re not going to punish me. So why not?'”

The grown ups can’t be trusted, so the only solution is to restrict the youngsters.  Helluva system you got there, fellas.

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UPDATE:  This is getting nuts.

Sources: Multiple mid-major programs are opting to not play guarantee games against high-major programs because it gives power conference teams a "free live evaluation" of future players who could move up via the transfer portal.

The level of separation has NEVER been greater.

— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) May 25, 2021

Rothstein is a basketball reporter.  I can’t imagine mid-major football programs are going to turn down big guarantee fees over this, but it sure would send a message if they did.

Give it up for Mullen.

From Pete Fiutak’s Florida preview:

The Gators turned it over 19 times on the season after giving it up 18 times in 2019 and 14 in 2018. The difference in ’18 and ’19 were the takeaways from the other side, coming up with 49 over the two seasons. The 2020 D came up with just 16, and that was a problem.

The Florida O gave it up eight times in the final three games – all losses – going -5 in turnover margin. In the nine losses in the Dan Mullen era, the Gators are -9 overall in turnover margin and failed to be on the plus side in any of those games. In other words …

Florida has yet to lose under Mullen when it won the turnover battle, going +29 in the 29 wins.

I don’t need to tell you which game last season saw the Gators record their best turnover margin number on the schedule, do I?

Which true freshmen will contribute in 2021?

Jake Rowe ranks all twenty in order of likeliness here.  A couple of things worth remembering — twenty is the smallest class Kirby Smart has signed (he even left a couple of spots open) but that is somewhat offset by sixteen of the twenty being early enrollees.

I don’t see many cracking the two deep to start the season, Mitchell and Mims being the most obvious candidates, but I suspect we’ll see several of them being special teams contributors this season.  By season’s end, perhaps a couple of more, like Bowers, might impact the depth chart.

Who do y’all like to make an impact this season?