Woo, boy, this is gonna be awkward.
Daily Archives: February 18, 2022
Life is good.
If that is what comes of bad will against Greg Sankey, I hope it festers for at least another decade. Well played, Alliance.
Filed under BCS/Playoffs
Back to nine
Georgia’s staff appears to have returned to full strength with this news:
Before you say “Rutgers? WTF?”, know that Brown is very well thought of. And since this is a Kirby Smart hire, you don’t have to speculate about Brown’s recruiting chops.
Welcome aboard, Coach Brown!
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UPDATE: Here’s a complimentary piece on Brown after he didn’t get the Temple job. Unfortunately for Rutgers, this part hasn’t aged well:
This is great news for Rutgers and Schiano. Keeping him in the fold turned out to be the surprise recruiting win on Wednesday fans were hoping for. Obviously, Brown will be linked to other head coaching jobs in the future, so he should continue to be valued and appreciated for what this program has in him both as a coach and a recruiter. The longer he is at Rutgers, the more impact he will make to elevate this program to new heights in the Big Ten.
Filed under Georgia Football
Today’s reader poll #3
Okay, here’s the last one.
Once again, feel free to dazzle us with your insights in the comments.
Filed under GTP Stuff
(Early) opportunity is somewhere.
If you’ve ever wondered how much early enrollees get to play under Kirby Smart, here’s a class-by-class breakdown.
It’s all interesting, but I found this to be the most interesting: “Every early enrollee played in at least one game in 2022 (sic, should be 2021), with seven playing in at least eight games.” That’s only the second class to make that claim, but while 2020’s early enrollee class numbered five, last season saw a whopping sixteen get on the field in some form or fashion. And that was in a national championship season!
Georgia’s got a few things to sell on the recruiting trail these days.
Filed under Georgia Football
Today’s reader poll #2
Second question:
If you feel the need to elaborate — perhaps your answer is different, depending on the overall size of the conference — you know where to go for that.
Filed under GTP Stuff, SEC Football
Jes’ showin’ off
Georgia’s got some new digs, y’all.
The new weight room facility provided a 193 percent increase in floor space, from 11,000 square feet to 24,000 square feet, a 44′ 6″ ceiling height, and increases the number of lifting platforms from 16 to 32 custom-built racks. The expansion gives Georgia one of the largest weight room facility in the country, although exactly where it stands is up for debate. The interpretation of what is counted as weight room space changes from college to college. Some count offices, cardio stairs and mezzanine, ingress and egress areas, and turf areas. Michigan has a 32,000 square foot weight room, and Alabama’s is listed at 37,000 square feet. The video also mentions 165,000 square feet of new and renovated space.
The upgrade includes new lounging areas for the players, a new locker room, new and expanded meeting rooms, new coaches’ offices, there is also a strip of turf running through the new weight room on head strength and conditioning coach Scott Sinclair’s request. The number of showering areas in the new locker room has also doubled. A nutrition facility is also included as well as an all-purpose room to set up tables and host recruits at the football hub. It’ll include a new team meeting room and 11 individual meeting rooms, one for each of the 10 assistant coaches, and another for the scout team. Another area with showers, cold tub, hot tub, sauna, steam, and cryotherapy also has a barbershop. A new NFL section also honors all of the Dawgs in the NFL, with a custom-built screen that displays weekly highlights of top performances by former Georgia players.
Filed under Georgia Football
Today’s reader poll #1
The Athletic has a fan survey up at its site and I freely admit to stealing three questions from it to gauge GTP’s readership’s temperature.
Here’s the first one:
Feel free to elaborate in the comments, of course.
Filed under BCS/Playoffs, GTP Stuff
OJT
Kirby was on Mike Krzyzewski’s radio show yesterday to talk about a range of subjects. I thought this was an interesting admission on his part:
During the interview, Krzyzewski asked Smart about taking over at his alma mater following the 2015 season.
“Well, the state of the program I took over was better than most,” Smart said. “I have a lot of respect for Mark Richt and the job he had done here prior to my arrival and I actually worked on his staff. So it was in a really good position. We had good players. If anything, I thought the first year, I messed it all up because we didn’t have a great record. And we struggled.”
“I thought maybe I was a little too tough on guys and set the expectation, maybe too high in practice,” Smart said. “In retrospect, I think that was making my own culture. Look, we’re gonna do this thing really hard in practice, and the games are going to be easy. And the guys had to adjust to that. And they started buying into that.”
Honestly, that’s what you worry about with an assistant coach coming in on his first head coaching gig, whether it’s due to a lack of experience running a program, a need to put an immediate stamp of his own on it or (most likely) a combination of the two. Fortunately, it turned out that Smart was a quick learner and got the team’s trajectory going in the right direction in the aftermath.
Filed under Georgia Football
There’s a fine line between a teaching moment and excuse making.
And, to be honest, I’m not sure which side of the line Nick Saban’s positioned himself with this:
I mean, this is Nick Saban, right? He’s about the last guy who needs to make any excuses. But, “We lost the national championship game, basically because we had 3 corners out, both starters and the best backup,”?
Maybe he needs to recruit better.
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UPDATE: The video may be down, but transcripts live forever.
“We lost the national championship game, basically because we had 3 corners out, both starters and the best backup,” Saban said. “So we’re playing with some guys that didn’t have a lot of experience. It eventually got us in the fourth quarter. We had the kind of team where we had a really good quarterback and we wanted to have skill guys that they couldn’t guard. So we had 2 who were really, really good — (John Metchie III and Jameson Williams). They both got hurt.
“Now, we were playing with guys that typically didn’t have to play at those positions. The lesson to be learned is there were 3 guys, and I’m not calling out any names, that basically didn’t do the things they needed to do throughout the season because they were frustrated with their circumstance. … They’re frustrated with their circumstance because they’re not playing as much as they want to. They’re outcome oriented, they want to worry about how many balls they catch or how much playing time they get or whatever it is. So they don’t focus every day on being a complete player at their position, and they don’t work in practice and prepare for the games because they say to themselves, ‘Why should I do this? I’m not gonna play anyway.’
“So, we had 3 guys, they all had a significant role in the national championship game, and not 1 of them, not 1, could take advantage of the opportunity that they had, because they never ground through it. They never made themselves the best player they could be. When they got the opportunity, they couldn’t do it. That’s a lesson for everybody. What comes first? Playing time? Or making sure that you’re ready to play and create value for yourself when you get the opportunity?”
Filed under Nick Saban Rules
Get The Picture 