Nothing wrong with that, except when I see it and think about what happened to AJ Green and Todd Gurley, it really manages to piss me off.
Daily Archives: July 25, 2022
Envy and jealousy, “worst SEC hire of the 21st century” edition
There are many people to point fingers at regarding the Pruitt debacle, but Pat Forde takes a well-deserved shot at Clay Travis, who encouraged the rabble to storm the castle.
The final bill is coming due on the fan tantrum that led to the firing of AD John Currie, the hiring of Phillip Fulmer to replace him, and the subsequent decision to bring aboard Jeremy Pruitt as the football coach. And the cost keeps going up. The bottom line: a 16–19 record (which will get worse after the Vols vacate victories) and a whopping 18 NCAA Level I violations levied in a notice of allegations that was delivered Friday.
Good job, good effort. You listen to a fanboy media grifter’s bright ideas on how to run a football program, this is where it leads you nearly five years later.
You disrupted the attempted hire of Greg Schiano, trumping up a dishonest moral outrage. The real issue was whether Schiano could win in the SEC, not what he knew or didn’t know about the monster Jerry Sandusky while on staff at Penn State. You get your way, which only adds to the power trip.
You push for Currie’s ouster when he’s on the cusp of landing Mike Leach from Washington State, with Fulmer positioned to benefit from a second Rocky Top palace coup. A comfort hire with nothing to recommend himself for the AD job other than being a beloved former coach and player, Fulmer called the oldest play in the SEC playbook—hiring someone off Nick Saban’s staff. Except Fulmer found the one who couldn’t win.
Pruitt was a rube who was pulled along in the Saban–Kirby Smart jet stream and unprepared to be a head coach. He lost 12 of his first 16 games—couldn’t beat Georgia State, let alone Georgia—before briefly righting the ship in the latter half of the 2019 season. Then came the pandemic, and the cheating spree, and doesn’t everyone feel high and mighty now?
Harsh, but fair. Can’t say everyone involved didn’t deserve the results.
And bonus points for this:
The only thing Pruitt wasn’t charged with was idiotically wearing his COVID-19 mask over his ears instead of his mouth during games in 2020. He did incur an SEC fine for that.
Filed under Envy and Jealousy
Eliminating the middle (bag) man
Shot.
Pruitt issued a response to ESPN about the allegations later Friday, saying: “A lot of this information in the NCAA’s report, I’m seeing for the first time and still reading through it. I’d rather not comment a whole lot past that, other than to say that I’m looking forward to telling my side of the story somewhere down the road.”
Now there’s a fierce denial if I’ve ever heard one.
The irony here, of course, is the timing. UT getting in trouble for this almost seems quaint in the new era of NIL compensation. Not that I’m complaining…
Filed under Because Nothing Sucks Like A Big Orange, The NCAA
Just don’t call ’em a union.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s… “a collective group coming together“.
Big Ten football players have had conversations with league commissioner Kevin Warren this week about giving athletes a bigger voice in the future and about improving a variety of benefits for players. Warren also spoke with the leader of a nascent players’ association about the possibility of having an independent group represent the players in conversations with the league.
Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford said the conversations with Warren have been a positive, collaborative start to giving players a seat at the table in future decisions with the league. He said he and the other players he has spoken with have no intention of creating a union or entering a contentious negotiation with the league at this point.
Sure, Sean. “At this point” sounds like it might be doing some heavy lifting there, but let’s give you the benefit of the doubt.
Stahl spoke to Warren earlier this week about a trio of initial topics the CFBPA wants to negotiate with the Big Ten:
• A representative on each campus who can advocate for players during medical situations or other disputes. The representative would be hired by the CFBPA and serve an on-site role similar to the player representatives in professional sports unions.
• Funds from the conference to purchase medical insurance policies for former players that would cover the treatment of injuries from their college football careers.
• A to-be-determined percentage of media rights revenue for players.A representative from the Big Ten confirmed that Warren spoke to Stahl but said to characterize their conversation as the beginning of any type of collective bargaining discussion is not accurate.
Sure, sure. Just a couple of dudes casually shooting the breeze with each other.
Clifford said he wasn’t yet ready to have a conversation about what players would do if the Big Ten is unwilling to make significant changes, because so far their conversations have been positive.
“We want to have a conversation we’ve never had before,” Clifford said. “Those three things are just the base of what we’d like to do. In reality, we think there is more that could happen. I could see a lot of changes being made moving forward. Realistically, the work force should have a voice at this point.”
“The work force”. Meet the new “student-athlete” euphemism.
Stahl said if the Big Ten does not make significant progress on doing more for players, he believes the organization’s next step is to register as a 501(c)(5) labor organization and potentially begin the process of becoming a union.
There it is!
Filed under Big Ten Football, Look For The Union Label
Epic
Honestly, and I don’t know how he does it, Mike Griffith has outdone himself on the Cocktail Party front.
Kirby Smart bowed up like the fearless safety he once was at Georgia when Tim Tebow figuratively lowered his shoulder into the Bulldogs’ head coach on the SEC Network last week.
It was a moment Georgia football fans watching the event live won’t ever forget. Smart’s stand was the stuff of legends, harkening memories of how Pat Dye stood up for Auburn in bringing the Iron Bowl to the Tigers’ campus some 30 years ago.
Tradition can be tough to take on and topple, even when it makes sense for changes to be made.
Dye, who was an All-American player at Georgia, angered many Alabama fans with the historic move, much like the Florida faithful are fighting to keep the Georgia game 70 miles from their campus.
All that needs is the NFL Films treatment — the solemn read over and the dramatic music — to really make it sing. Stuff of legends, my ass.
Filed under Georgia Football, Media Punditry/Foibles
Alliance, he hardly knew ye.
Greg Sankey knows how to rub it in.
No one seems to be enjoying the demise of the kumbaya between the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12, known as the Alliance, more than the man whom this group united to oppose.
“What was it called? The Alliance?” Sankey, the SEC commissioner, said with a smirk Monday on the SEC Network.
The next time these people get together to hash out their differences over the CFP format is gonna be a real gas.
Filed under ACC Football, Big Ten Football, Pac-12 Football, SEC Football
Musical palate cleanser, new blues edition
Here’s a great Washington Post piece on Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, the 23-year old blues guitarist from Clarksdale, Mississippi that’s definitely worth your time to read.
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram was wailing on guitar. Eyes shut and head thrown back in the emblematic pose of the guitar hero in ecstasy, he wrung screaming bent high notes and dense, fluid runs from his purple-and-black prototype Kingfish-model Fender. Just seconds into “She Calls Me Kingfish,” the opening song of his set at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston in March, fans were already well on their way up the stairway to guitar-solo heaven, nodding and smiling and shaking their heads in that mmh-mmh-mmm way that guitar freaks fall into when potent stuff starts flowing into their systems through their ears. The Berklee College of Music houses one of the planet’s greatest concentrations of high-end guitar freaks, and they were out in force to hear the 23-year-old phenom from the Mississippi Delta widely hailed as “the future of the blues.” The students in attendance made for a considerably younger turnout than a blues show typically draws. Out in the lobby before the show, I had overheard one long-haired dude saying to a fellow cool-nerd, “He’s, like, my age. It’s nuts.”
And here’s a clip sponsored by Fender (the guitar is gorgeous) of Ingram’s cover of “I Put A Spell On You”:
Filed under Uncategorized
Get The Picture 
You must be logged in to post a comment.