As ringing endorsements go…
… that isn’t one.
Daily Archives: July 17, 2023
They still talking about gaps, honey.
Move over, ‘Bama, the SEC has a new measuring stick.
Filed under Georgia Football
The mountain goes to Mohammed.
Welp, that didn’t take long.
Nothing like making the noobs feel right at home, I guess. Although it does make you wonder what else may be heading Texas’ way.
Filed under SEC Football, Texas Is Just Better Than You Are.
Clueless
Talk about your athletic director who had his finger on the pulse of the football program…
In emails obtained by the Knoxville News-Sentinel through an open records request, Fulmer was asked during his final weeks as AD by Tennessee chancellor Donde Plowman what he planned to do should Pruitt have to be fired. The Volunteers were going through a COVID-shortened season in 2020 that yielded a 3-7 record, but Fulmer paid more attention to the wins and losses than any of the allegations into the program in his response.
“You also have to realize how bad the program was when we arrived here,” Fulmer wrote to Plowman. “We had no big linemen, no one that benched 400 (pounds), and no natural leaders.
“(Pruitt’s staff) inherited a very bad 2018 football team. The loss to Vanderbilt was really hard for anyone to swallow. Vanderbilt had an excellent QB that picked us apart.”
The NCAA is in the early stages of planning to tear a new asshole into Tennessee football over compliance issues, and Fulmer’s blaming Vanderbilt for UT’s problems?
Another email from Fulmer stated: “Jeremy knows the rules and will ask if something comes up. I have made it clear we will not cheat.”
Oh. I guess that’s why.
It’s hard to understand why he’s not employed as the AD now.
Filed under Because Nothing Sucks Like A Big Orange
Time is on their side.
Now, here’s a question ($$) I would love to hear asked of all the coaches at this week’s SEC Media Days.
College football games will be shorter this year.
In April, the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel approved three rule changes for the 2023 season. Most notably, the clock will continue to run after first downs, like the NFL, outside of the last two minutes. (Previously, the clock stopped until the ball was set. That will remain the case for plays that go out of bounds outside of the final two minutes.)
Will it have a notable impact on games this fall?
That question was asked of the Big 12’s head coaches last week. I’m a little surprised at how much their answers varied. Mike Gundy thinks it’ll be a big deal, but Malzahn and Holgorsen disagree. I don’t see how you can avoid the conclusion Sonny Dykes reaches, though:
“To me, one of the things that makes college football unique and different is if you’re down 21 points in the fourth quarter, you can rally because if a team is playing prevent and you pick up 10 yards consistently, it stops,” he said. “It gave you an opportunity to rally your team. Now I think that’ll be much more difficult to do. It was something never talked about or discussed. There are a lot of other things they can do to shorten the games, starting with reviews.”
Speaking of those other things…
Along with reviews, fans are quick to point to TV timeouts, which can drag and ruin the flow of the game. Broadcasters maintain those haven’t increased dramatically.
As we like to say around this joint, “dramatically” is doing a shit ton of heavy lifting there.
Most people around the sport want games to be shorter; they just don’t want less football.
Good luck with all that, peeps.
Filed under Big 12 Football, Strategery And Mechanics
An early look at the new 2023 direction
247Sports’ SEC writers get together ahead of SEC Media Days to share a few predictions here. This is what they came up with for an order of the division standings:
EAST
1. Georgia, 167 (23 first-place votes)
2. Tennessee, 137 (1)
3. South Carolina, 103
4. Kentucky, 100
5. Florida, 86
6. Missouri, 48
7. Vanderbilt, 25WEST
1. Alabama, 158 (14)
2. LSU, 153 (10)
3. Ole Miss, 101
4. Texas A&M, 92
5. Arkansas, 73
6. Auburn, 55
7. Mississippi State, 40
A majority of them picked Georgia to win the conference title. (Again.)
There’s a bunch of other stuff there. My favorite prediction by far is…
Alabama’s Tommy Rees will excel in SEC
Kirk McNair, Bama247: Tommy Rees at Alabama and Mike Bobo at Georgia will be finalists for Broyles Award as top assistant coaches as Tide and Bulldogs go undefeated in conference.
Mike Bobo, Broyles finalist is this season’s equivalent to last season’s Stetson Bennett, Heisman finalist: you know if that happens, the Dawgs are having a damned good year.
Filed under Georgia Football, SEC Football
Prepping for the next level
Following the 2023 NFL Draft, FOX Sports pulled decades worth of recruiting data and looked at how productive (or not) each active Power 5 coach was at both recruiting and developing players when it came to the ultimate eye in the sky of the NFL.
Across nearly a dozen parts this summer, we’ve looked at every Power 5 league to see who the best coaches within each conference are at developing players across every position group. But when looking at the picture nationally, just how do coaches stack up against each other when it comes to finding all of those good players and, well, coaching them up?
To sort it all out, FOX Sports utilized a points system that rewarded development and applied it to every active Power 5 coach’s draft class. Every drafted quarterback received a certain number based on what round he was drafted and what kind of recruit he was coming out of high school. An unrated offensive lineman coming out of high school going in the first round would be at the very highest end of the scale, while a former five-star sneaking into the seventh round of the draft would be at the lowest end.
And the winner is…
There’s something of a mixing apples and oranges feel to that, given Venables has a whopping one year under his belt as a head coach (he had two olinemen drafted, so that’s why he shows well).
Still, for a defensive-minded coach, Kirby Smart’s doing okay.
Like the coach he defeated in the Peach Bowl last season, Smart is still relatively early in his tenure at his alma mater, but he has been able to churn out offensive line prospects at the next level (11 total in seven seasons). Over half of that group have gone in the first round, all four of whom were offensive tackles ranked either four- or five-stars coming out of high school.
Pittman, no doubt, deserves some major kudos there.
Filed under Georgia Football, Stats Geek!, The NFL Is Your Friend.
More than one way to skin the enforcement cat
Siri, what does “pulling out all the stops” look like?
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti threatened legal action against the NCAA if it had given the University of Tennessee football team a postseason ban in the Jeremy Pruitt recruiting scandal, documents show.
The weapon was a new state law protecting college players’ right to earn money from name, image and likeness.
It was amended during the investigation to match UT’s needs. And it was leveraged by UT to produce a favorable verdict from the NCAA.
Apparently the threat had its desired impact.
UT petitioned to get the letter entered into the case record for its NCAA infractions hearing under the 30-day deadline. The NCAA granted the request just seven days before the hearing began on April 19 in Cincinnati.
The NCAA also thought it could carry weight.
In its response, the NCAA accepted the late submission because Skrmetti’s letter appeared to be “pertinent to the institution’s arguments with respect to … the imposition of penalties.”
We may have moved beyond the post-cooperation stage of responding to NCAA investigations. Why cooperate when you can just threaten to sue their ass three ways into Sunday?
Musical palate cleanser, blues edition
How about a little Howlin’ Wolf to get your week started. Hear the Wolf school you on what the blues is:
The man ought to know, right?
Filed under Uncategorized
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