Tubs, to the rescue!
You’ve got to admit a man who famously jumped ship from a school during a lunch with recruits ought to be an expert on free-for-alls.
Yeah, this is going to end well.
Daily Archives: August 3, 2022
Is the Bennett narrative being challenged?
Only somehow, some way, on the road to the greatest underdog story in modern college football history, the player everyone should’ve been celebrating all along was cast as — can you believe it? — the villain.
“Yeah, of course I heard it all last year. I know what was being said,” Stetson Bennett IV says now, all of 7 months since leading Georgia where no one (maybe even some of his teammates) believed he could. “It was strange, but I couldn’t get caught up in it.”
… Two years of those who doubted and those who dragged him through social media — where there’s no filter and no brakes — because he wasn’t 6-2 and 225 pounds with a live arm and uncanny athletic ability. Because he didn’t have 5 stars and he wasn’t an NFL scout favorite.
Because if anyone were the reason Georgia hadn’t reached its massive potential, it sure as hell had to be the former walk-on from Nahunta, where everything you need to know about the unique journey of Stetson Bennett IV can be told over one of those meal deals at Jerry J’s Family Kitchen. Right off Highway 301, before you run up on the Piggly Wiggly.
“How could anybody blame one player for a team not winning? It makes no sense,” Georgia center Sedrick Van Pran said. “You know how many great quarterbacks never won a championship?”
… A game manager at the most important position on the field, and a quarterback whose own offense game-planned around him. He had limitations early in 2021, and then kept getting better.
The throws were crisper, and more accurate. The decision making improved. The timing and anticipation arrived, and the numbers drastically improved: from 8 TDs and 6 INTs in 2020, to 29 TDs and 7 INTs in 2021.
He found two freshman targets (TE Brock Bowers and WR Ladd McConkey) who combined for 18 TDs, and the next thing you know, the guy who would eventually screw it up became the guy who could do no wrong.
Throw in Greg McElroy for good measure.
“Everyone wanted to blame Stetson Bennett for their loss in the SEC Championship last year when Alabama scored 42 points,” McElroy said. “Unless Stetson Bennett was also playing corner covering Jameson Williams, I don’t know how you could blame him for that performance. Now, he didn’t play well. He forced a couple picks. One pick wasn’t his fault. But either way, as the quarterback at a high-profile school you’re always gonna get way too much credit and way too much blame. The only thing that’s different about Stetson Bennett is he never actually gets the credit. I don’t think it’s fair.
“He is extremely underrated, and if you look at what he did in the fourth quarter of the national championship game, he should be forever beloved by Bulldog Nation. I called the spring game. The second Carson Beck threw a touchdown pass, I saw people lighting up my Twitter feed saying ‘There’s MY quarterback. Stetson Bennett no longer. I want Carson Beck.’ Y’all, it’s a spring game. He’s going against the twos. What are we doing? I think Stetson Bennett is going to get unfairly criticized regardless of how he does.”
‘Course you’ve gotta love the finger pointing at social media and the fan base by both of them. Like the paid media has been fully in Bennett’s corner this offseason, as evidenced by all the preseason All SEC teams Stetson’s appeared on… oh, wait.
Filed under Georgia Football
TFW they say it’s voluntary
I mean, the kids do it for the love of the game, amirite?
Wednesday is “Report Day.” At least, that’s the way it’s listed on Georgia football’s official calendar.
There was a time that was a real red-letter day for the Bulldogs. Players would pull back into town with their cars loaded down with clothes and dorm supplies to move back onto campus and start getting into shape for the fast-approaching season.
Nowadays, even the incoming freshmen have been living in Athens for months. Most haven’t left town for more than a week since the first of June. And they’ve stayed plenty busy in the meantime.
I do love the smell of sausage making in the morning.
Filed under Georgia Football, It's Just Bidness
Anonymous shit talking, an SEC tradition unlike any other
Jimmy Hyams talks to some SEC coaches about what they think of SEC East head coaches. Here’s something one of them said about Kirby:
At Georgia, the NIL was alive and well at least for the last four years, make no mistake about it.
No specifics were forthcoming. Naturally.
And here’s an observation about Florida:
“I don’t think Dan Mullen did a good job recruiting talent at Florida,’’ said an SEC coach. “He was a great offensive coach there, but ultimately he couldn’t control those kids.
“The same question goes for Billy Napier: can he manage those kids? Billy will recruit kids that fit his culture and personality and stay away from the guys that don’t. But the best kids in Florida often have an edge to them, and you’ve got to be able to handle them.
“Nick Saban is smart and can handle edgy kids. I don’t know if Billy (a former Saban assistant) is wired that way.’’
I guess edge is the new thug. Some things never change. They just get repackaged.
Filed under Gators, Gators..., Georgia Football
For want of a comb, a ‘Cock was lost.
This could only happen at South Carolina.
You’ve seen him, petted him, perhaps held him. Ever since Mary Snelling got the idea to start bringing a live rooster to University of South Carolina athletic events, Sir Big Spur has been a sideline staple and a photo favorite.
He’ll still be there for this football season, baseball season and future games. But he’ll have a different look, and a different name, because of a bone of contention between the original owners and the new owners.
Make that, a comb of contention.
… The comb is the bright-red crest on top of a rooster’s head. It matches the color and function of the wattle, another lump of tissue that hangs below the chicken’s beak.
They’re each part of the birds’ heat regulation systems because, in an outstanding piece of trivia, chickens cannot sweat. The comb and wattle act as a sort of “air conditioner” in the birds’ circulatory system — hence the red — and the cooler blood then passes back through the rest of the bird’s body.
Throughout Snelling and Albertelli’s ownership of the birds, they clipped the combs. They felt it made them look more like USC’s namesake, the Fightin’ Gamecock, i.e., fiercer than the average chicken.
“Fiercer than the average chicken” sounds like the perfect motto for Carolina football. But I digress.
Albertelli has had a contract with USC for the past five years, allowing USC exclusive rights to use the trademarked name “Sir Big Spur.” That contract ran out on Aug. 1 and Albertelli has no plans to renew it, or to let the Clarks use the name.
“A chicken is a chicken but a fighting gamecock is something different. This is dumbing down the Gamecocks,” Albertelli said. “Whenever a new coach goes to a school that’s been struggling, you always hear a statement similar to, ‘You’ve got to change the culture.’
“I don’t know what culture in our day and age means, but if it means making a gamecock look like a chicken, or not hurting him because it might make the chicken feel good, it’s not preserving what we’ve built. This is dumbing down our culture.”
Dumbing down the Gamecocks… is that even possible?
By the way,
Nichols and the Clarks have not come to a decision on a new name and aren’t sure how they’ll select one. They could just pick one — Snelling said she has heard “Thee Spur” as a frontrunner but Clark said no name or list of names has been approved — or perhaps have a fan vote.
Please cast your ballot in the comments.
(h/t)
Filed under 'Cock Envy
Get The Picture 