And now, another word from your sponsor

I cannot begin to tell you all how much the tidal wave of well wishes I’ve received over the past week plus have meant.  It’s been inspiring.

But I probably need to make clear that the last few days have been more of a respite than a resolution to my health situation.  In fact, as you read this, I will be undergoing what I hope is a final resolution of that.  It’s pretty substantial and I expect I’ll be out of commission for at least a week afterwards.

I promise I’ll return to blogging as soon as it’s feasible, so bear with me.  And, thanks again.

Advertisement

There’s depth. And then there’s depth.

Is there an argument to be made that we may be looking at a second generational-type defense in Athens in three seasons?  Seth Emerson ($$) ponders that question and amasses some stats that suggest it’s not a far fetched question.

Experience

Snap counts: Georgia returns seven of its top 10 and 14 of its top 18 and a total of 19 players who had more than 100 snaps. That doesn’t include former five-star recruits Xavian Sorey Jr. (87 snaps) and Marvin Jones Jr. (64) or potential new starting cornerback Nyland Green (38 snaps, mainly due to missing a lot of games).

Production

Tackles: Georgia returns players who accounted for 75.2 percent of its tackles last season, including the top three (Smael Mondon Jr., Jamon Dumas-Johnson and Malaki Starks) and nine of the top 11.

Sacks: Georgia has back 70 percent of its sack production from last year (24.5 out of 35), including the top three, Mykel Williams (4.5), Dumas-Johnson (four) and Javon Bullard (3.5).

Interceptions: Gone are playmakers Christopher Smith (three picks last year and a high-profile one in 2021) and Kelee Ringo (two picks last year and a national championship-clinching pick six the year before). But Bullard, Starks, Dan Jackson and Mondon combined for six interceptions last year.

That, quite simply, is nuts, especially when you consider this:

Among just defensive players, Georgia will have 10 players who were five-star recruits this upcoming season. It will have 29 more who were four-star prospects. So for the non-math inclined, that adds up to 39 total blue-chip players on the defense.

All that after losing a record number of players in last year’s NFL draft, and Smith, Ringo, Smith and Carter in this one.  It’s what stacking top three recruiting classes on top of each other will do for a program.

Elite facilitatin’

Thought this was kind of interesting.

Back in January, before the All-American Bowl in San Antonio, Texas, participants in the game were asked to fill out a survey that asked them to name which school had the best athletic facilities. Ninety-four players anonymously filled out the survey and while some gave multiple answers and one refused, the results were revealing.

And the winner?  Glad you asked.

Sitting atop the list is Georgia, a program that’s won consecutive national championships and is the favorite to win a third in 2023. Georgia is looking to solidify its spot as college football’s next dynasty and have worked toward that goal with remarkable recruiting.

Crawford: “May 2022 marked the completion of Georgia’s $80 million upgrade, which included 136,300 square feet of new space including a locker room, a player’s lounge, a plunge pool, a nutrition bar, a barbershop, a sensory deprivation tank and a weight room with a double-sided video board. According to a press release by HOK, which helped design the facility per Dawgs247, the design creates three floors of high-performance training experiences for student-athletes and coaches. The modern, amenity-filled space will also support UGA’s efforts to continue to recruit and retain top talent.”

We’ve come a long way from that silly halfassed IPF Richt was saddled with, baby.  That’s one way to keep the recruits coming.

Chomp on this one

While this isn’t an entirely fair comparison due to the implementation of the CFP, that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the shit out of seeing it.

Steve Spurrier won 1 national title and played for 1 more in 26 years as a head coach. Kirby Smart has won 2 titles and played for 1 more in 7 years as a head coach. #GoDawgs #CommitToTheG #GoGators pic.twitter.com/IjA0yZSyrV

— Paul Westerdawg (@GeorgiaBlogPWD) March 24, 2023

I’d love to hear somebody ask Spurrier what he thinks about that.  It sure makes up for a lot of 3-18 trashtalking.

G’Day, G-Day

Georgia’s spring game will kick off a little later than usual.

Mark your calendars‼️

📅: Saturday, April 15
🕓️: 4:00 PM ET
📺️: ESPN2#GoDawgs | #GDay2023 pic.twitter.com/s8Y9pqPthP

— Georgia Football (@GeorgiaFootball) March 25, 2023

That is probably tied into the fact that Georgia’s spring game is the only for an SEC program not airing live strictly through a streaming platform.

The special status makes sense, when you think about it.  After all,

From my brother “I told @TylerDawgden they should do a spring game preview podcast since it’s such a huge game. I mean it's a matchup of the two previous national champions.” What a line. pic.twitter.com/rk7WPbPh0W

— Paul Westerdawg (@GeorgiaBlogPWD) March 25, 2023

In any event, make sure your QBR calculators are charged up.

Sorry Charlie

In case you were operating under some notion that new NCAA President Charlie Baker was prepared to deliver a fresh approach to resolving NIL concerns in at least a somewhat reasonable manner, allow him to set the record straight.

New NCAA President (and former Governor of Massachusetts) Charlie Baker says he wants "consumer protections" around NIL, saying he's "gonna talk some with the folks in Washington."

Charles Barkley responded, as only he can. pic.twitter.com/w1XURZ0sEm

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 24, 2023

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.  Except I don’t think I ever heard Mark Emmert propose something as stupid as “I would love to create some transparency and accountability around that, so that families actually know what they’re getting into, and I would really like to see some sort of uniform standard contract, so that when somebody signs it, they know they’re signing the same kind of agreement everybody else is signing,”

I’m sure you would, dude.  Except the courts would toss out your uniform standard contract if you tried to do it on your own and there’s no way Congress is going to wade in and do it for you.

In this guest column, Sen. Chris Murphy writes: ‘It has been a year and a half (into NIL), and unsurprisingly, the sky hasn’t fallen.’

College leaders keep hoping for Congress to referee NIL.

Good luck with all that. https://t.co/yPs3eUcq9g

— Blake Toppmeyer (@btoppmeyer) March 21, 2023

The schools really don’t have anything more to offer.  And the longer term problem they’ve got is that as this goes on, NIL payments become more and more normalized in the eyes of the public.  It’s too late for the NCAA to stop now, I guess.

Still doing it for the kids

So, Notre Dame’s president and AD pen an editorial in the New York Times entitled “College Sports Are a Treasure. Don’t Turn Them Into the Minor Leagues.” and it’s every bit the joke you’d expect.

The perception has grown in recent years that student-athletes, whose talent and hard work create so much revenue for schools and even coaches, get nothing in return.

Gee, I wonder how that happened.  Let’s trot out that old, familiar straw man in rebuttal.

The claim that student-athletes otherwise get nothing from a multibillion-dollar college sports industry is false — and the misperception behind it goes to the heart of what is at stake.

If a talented high school player heads straight to the minor leagues, he earns a paycheck. If he goes instead to college, he can earn something far more valuable: a degree. Economists estimate a college degree is typically worth about $1 million in enhanced earning power in a lifetime. At our institution, 99 percent of student-athletes who stay for at least four years get a diploma. Because less than 2 percent of all our student-athletes will play in their sport professionally, such a benefit is useful indeed.

The claim isn’t that college athletes are getting nothing.  It’s that they’re not receiving fair market value for their participation.  And if there’s anything that demonstrates the difference, it’s what the NIL era has ushered in and what these two gentlemen complain about in their piece.

Again, expressing concern about what the money flow was doing to change college athletics would have been relevant and even considered a couple of decades ago.  Now, with the horse out of the barn, it’s little more than insipid nostalgia.  But, good luck with it, dudes.

Topping Toppers

So, I’m rummaging around the intertubes, trying to catch up on what I’ve missed, and come across this remarkable tweet:

In press conference, #uga coach Kirby Smart accepts no responsibility for series of transgressions that culminated in deaths of a player and recruiting staffer in January car crash.

— Alan Judd (@AlanJudd3000) March 14, 2023

The accompanying sniff is palpable.  And who is this guy to be passing judgment like that, anyway?  It’s one thing to be an investigative reporter pushing the boundaries (what’s been happening at Toppers lately?).  It’s another to be editorializing about where the moral responsibilities of a head coach lie.

For what it’s worth, this really isn’t that hard a question to address.  If you want to see where a coach takes actions that do bear responsibility, take a quick look at what recently went on with New Mexico State’s basketball program, where the head coach interfered with a criminal investigation.  There’s a big difference — or at least there should be a big difference — between enabling criminal behavior and not reacting to such behavior as forcefully as one may like.

Anyway, I digress a little.  I do wonder whether Kirby internalizes such criticism to motivate himself and his team this season.  Actually, this being Kirby Smart, I don’t wonder about that at all.  As Seth Emerson ($$), put it in his Mailbag today,

… I agree with a point Josh Pate of 247Sports made on his podcast this week (at about the 36-minute mark): Smart will use the criticism about the team having a culture problem because of the car crash and racing arrests. I’m already on record what I think about the issue; I don’t see a big culture problem. But some of my media colleagues (only a few, but that’s enough) have been pretty harsh, and Smart could use them as a foil. As Pate said, and I already knew from covering this program, Smart and his coaches likely already have been telling their players to answer all the culture questions with their play on the field. And yes, the culture questions have been about off the field, so the best thing the Bulldogs could do is keep their noses clean. But undoubtedly the criticism creates a rallying cry inside the program, fuel to make offseason workouts and lifting sessions fierier than they might have been otherwise.

There’s a certain amount of irony in letting the AJ-C provide fuel for the motivation fire, of course, although I doubt we’ll ever hear Smart publicly acknowledge that.  But if in fact Judd’s sanctimony helps drive the team towards another national championship run, something which we all know the paper will provide copious amounts of coverage to accompany the finger wagging, well, that’s why they have a scoreboard to point to.

Look what the Waffle House coffee cup drug in

I have so many questions…

Former Georgia Tech coach Geoff Collins, in blue hat, a guest at Georgia spring practice today. pic.twitter.com/nSKLfSqAet

— Seth Emerson (@SethWEmerson) March 21, 2023

The beginning of a beautiful friendship

Really, this is going about as well as I expected.

Jimbo Fisher asked who would make the offensive play calls after hiring OC Bobby Petrino:

“We’ll go through that as we go.”

“Plan on him making calls, plan on him calling plays. I have no problem with that at all.” pic.twitter.com/nMLMUfERhq

— SEC Mike (@MichaelWBratton) March 20, 2023

Feel the excitement!