Built to last?

Marc Weiszer is just askin’.

After ending a 41-year national title drought behind a generational defense and an underrated offense with former walk-on Stetson Bennett at quarterback, will the incoming recruiting classes add more hardware during their time in Athens? Or will Georgia slide back like an LSU team that won the national title just two seasons earlier?

He got an answer from someone who’s been in a position to judge.

“It’s probably apples and oranges,” LSU athletic director Scott Woodward said last week at the SEC spring meetings. “Two different people. I know Kirby well and obviously I know Coach O well. Two different situations, two different things.”

Woodward, who returned to his alma mater before the 2019 season and was the school’s director of external affairs when Smart was a Tigers assistant in 2004,  said he would be surprised if Georgia takes a downturn under Smart.

I’d say there’s a huge difference between the two, if only because of the way both managed their coordinator positions.

Besides that, there’s the consistency thing.

Georgia has finished in the top seven each of the last five seasons in the AP poll, something only Ohio State has done. Georgia is tied with Clemson for second most national championship game appearances since the 2017 season with two behind Alabama’s four.

Pretty, pretty good.

Life after you-know-who

From yesterday’s Mandel Mailbag ($$):

… We just assume at this point Alabama will reload at receiver, where it has produced six first- or second-rounders in the past three years. But Jameson Williams arguably saved the Tide’s season last year when he transferred in from Ohio State. We think Jermaine Burton (Georgia) and/or Tyler Harrell (Louisville) will fill that void this fall, but neither is a given.

Young is a potential No. 1 pick, but you saw what happened in Indianapolis when he was suddenly without both Williams and John Metchie. He still needs some help.

I’d like to think Stewart misspelled “when he was suddenly facing a Georgia defense that elected to show up and play like it had for almost the entire season” there, but even if he didn’t, it’s a point to consider — if indeed Metchie and Williams were all that, what are we supposed to think about ‘Bama this season if it turns out Burton and Harrell aren’t?

Lincoln Riley, straight talker

Man, this guy is so full of it.

No matter what bitter OU fans think of the blink-of-an-eye move following a brutal late-November loss to rival Oklahoma State, the man knows what it takes to get to the playoff. Counting his time as a coordinator, he has been to four of the eight CFPs.

During a wide-ranging interview with CBS Sports this week, Riley clearly believes USC at least an even chance to getting to that point.

“I’ve walked into four playoffs, and I’ve never had better than maybe the third-best roster [of the four teams],” Riley said. “Every other year, we were four of four. We had really good rosters, but they weren’t the same. … I can’t imagine that there could be a setting that we could build a better roster than we can here.”

I can’t help but wonder where 2017 fits into that story.  But I digress.  If you can’t make things work better at Oklahoma, is that really a shortcoming of the school, or the coaching staff?

Sales pitch

🗣 YOU HEARD DA MAN @Goldberg #GoDawgs pic.twitter.com/ZnrDZeCeIS

— Georgia Football (@GeorgiaFootball) June 8, 2022

Hey, you wanna argue with him?

Standing pat

A friend of mine asked me about this last night — as of yesterday, the only SEC team without a player coming in this season via the transfer portal is Georgia.  To put that in perspective, half the teams in the conference have at least nine transfers coming in, led by Ole Miss with 16 and LSU with 15.

That is some statement by Kirby Smart, who essentially is telling us he really, really likes his roster without saying he really, really likes his roster.  And that’s after 15 players left for the NFL draft.

That sound you hear is Dan Mullen, shaking his damn head somewhere.

Vroom vroom

Just like the football program, the quality of legal support in Gainesville, Florida is on the decline.

A judge on Wednesday gave a homework assignment to Florida Gators quarterback Anthony Richardson – an essay explaining his reason for speeding 105 mph and what he learned after spending 12 hours in traffic school.

Alachua County Court Judge Meshon Rawls also fined Richardson $349 after his lawyer entered a plea of no contest to a charge of speeding at least 30 mph over the limit.

The judge appeared dissatisfied with Richardson’s explanation about why he was driving so fast, that he wasn’t paying attention when a sheriff’s deputy stopped him at 4:11 a.m. on April 4.

“I just remember driving home that night,” Richardson said during his court hearing. “I was putting in my maps, and I didn’t realize I was going that fast because I looked up and seen blue lights, and that’s pretty much all I remember.”

Richardson’s lawyer, Joshua Houston, asked the judge not to assess points against the player’s driver’s license. The judge balked after she learned that just weeks before Richardson was ticketed for 105 mph in Florida, he was also ticketed for driving 90 mph on an interstate in Georgia in a 70 mph zone.

“I don’t think there is a compelling circumstance or explanation for 105 mph,” Rawls said.

It wasn’t clear why Richardson’s lawyers didn’t better prepare the player to explicitly apologize, express regret or offer a fuller, more credible explanation for driving so fast.

Shit, Huntley Johnson would have had this matter wrapped up before breakfast, without a pesky hearing in front of a skeptical judge.  So much for the Gator Standard.  I tells ‘ya, there’s no way Corch would have tolerated this kind of sloppy criminal defense work.

Still, there is some good news for AR15.  He should be able to cover that fine amount in the near future.

The judge said she would reconsider whether to assess points against Richardson’s license if he submitted an essay, which Houston promised would happen within one week. Richardson – whose agent has been pursuing six- and seven-figure endorsement deals under new NCAA rules allowing athletes to earn money from their name, image and likeness – was given 60 days to pay the $349 fine.

NIL to the rescue!