From our totally unbiased friends at Roll Bama Roll:
After Alabama lost a national championship due to a dramatic fall in WR play after injuries to John Metchie and Jameson Williams…
As we like to say here at the blog, “due to” is doing a shit ton of heavy lifting.
I wonder if Jermaine Burton recognizes the size of the shoes he has to fill in Tuscaloosa.
Filed under Alabama
And you wonder why Mike Bobo came back to Athens.
Filed under Georgia Football, Stats Geek!
If true, the implications arising from this chart are staggering, to say the least.
If you’re more of a numbers person, here’s how that looks:
I don’t care how clever the folks in the Alliance think they are, there’s nothing they can come up with to overcome that sort of revenue disparity. In fact, based on that, I question whether the Big Ten will remain on board with the Alliance’s goals. (Judging from that chart and the anticipated revenue bump in 2026, though, they were right to freak out over Oklahoma and Texas jumping ship.) The SEC’s revenues are projected to double between now and the end of the decade. Greg Sankey would have been a complete idiot to reject the Sooners’ and Longhorns’ request to join his conference.
And it’s not just about football, either. The linked article in the NVGT piece notes how SEC schools are starting to employ the same financial approach they’ve taken in football to men’s basketball.
Now, factor in player compensation and you realize that’s an arms race three of those conferences simply can’t maintain. Those of you bemoaning the death of college football as we’ve known it ain’t seen nothing yet.
No, that’s not to say that Stetson Bennett is a better quarterback than Bryce Young.
It is to say that he didn’t need to be better; he just needed to be more efficient. Which he was.
What that says in turn about Todd Monken is plenty. Georgia’s offense is going to be fine in ’22.
Filed under Georgia Football, Stats Geek!
Let’s check in on Auburn’s defense this spring, shall we?
… ex-defensive coordinator Derek Mason’s decision to leave for the same role at Oklahoma State came as a shock to the college football world. Linebackers coach Jeff Schmedding, another one of Harsin’s longtime assistants, was elevated to replace Mason. His defenses at Boise State and Eastern Washington were founded on pressure off of the edges based mostly on a 4-2-5 scheme. That should suit Auburn well since Hall and Pappoe are back. Yes, the Tigers lost eight defensive linemen as well as linebackers Zakoby McClain and Chandler Wooten, but there’s at least some talent for Shmedding to build around.
Eight defensive linemen and two starting linebackers gone? I’d say “at least some talent” is doing some heavy lifting there.
Filed under Auburn's Cast of Thousands
When you’re the (defending?) national champs, your spring doesn’t get relegated to streaming services.
All other SEC schools, including Alabama, will have their games streamed through SEC+ and ESPN+, the network announced. Georgia’s G-Day game last season was a streaming-only format. [Emphasis added.]
Et tu, Mickey? If only Metchie and Williams hadn’t gotten hurt…
Filed under Alabama, ESPN Is The Devil, Georgia Football, SEC Football
Emory Jones is having a change of heart about leaving the Gators. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that’s a good or bad thing, but in any event, you’ve got to love the sales pitch that has him wavering.
“I mean, yeah, I was really close,” Jones said after the team’s first spring practice. “But I mean coach Napier and coach (Ryan) O’Hara sat me down, a lot of the offensive guys sat me down and basically said they went through my film and said they really were excited about things that I have done. They think they can make me a way better player than I have shown. Basically I just wanted to give them a chance.” [Emphasis added.]
Dan Mullen passed on Matt Corral to stick with Jones, coached him for three seasons, made him the starter and Jones, after all that, hopes Napier can make him a better player than the quarterback whisperer did. For a Georgia fan, either way that goes is bound to be a win-win.
Filed under Gators, Gators...
This is my last post on the Mike White hire — this is a football blog, after all, y’all — but I do want to take note of the way Josh Brooks approached the matter. Start with this quote:
“We wanted to be thorough in our search,” Bulldogs athletic director Josh Brooks said Tuesday, less than 48 hours after the hire was announced. “We got to a point where we were comfortable but I wanted to take a swing at Coach White.”
Add this to the mix:
Brooks said he was looking for a proven winner and one that had postseason success.
That would seem to work against Xavier assistant coach Jonas Hayes who has yet to run a program of his own. The former Bulldog player and assistant coach was the popular choice for many fans and a vocal contingent of former players.
“I weigh everything into the equation,” Brooks said. “There’s no factor I didn’t take into account when doing this, but at the end of the day my ultimate responsibility as athletic director is to hire the best coach for our program, the one I think is going to give us the best chance to be successful and do it the right way.”
And, finally, this observation from Jere Morehead:
Morehead described Brooks, hired to replace Greg McGarity in January 2020, as “meticulous in this process. I’ve never seen a person that had more data and more information about candidates.”
“I’ve never seen a person”? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Morehead just took a mild cheap shot at a certain someone.
All told, I’d like to think that maybe this is a sign that the athletic department is slowly turning a page from the feckless, lazy decision making that’s gotten Georgia athletics to its current mediocre state (outside of football, that is). The next big test is whether B-M is prepared to support White’s program building financially. It’s too soon to tell, but I’d love to wind up in a place where I apologize to Josh Brooks for underestimating him.
Filed under Georgia Football
Emerging theme yesterday:
Okay for you guys, but I think I’m gonna wallow in that defending stuff for a while, thank you very much.
Filed under Georgia Football
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