Thursday morning buffet

Get you some.

• It’s a little nauseating to see pundits hoping for three SEC teams in the CFP in hopes of blowing up the four-team playoff.
• After two weeks, PFF rankes Jake Fromm as its number three quarterback in college football.  And, no, neither Tua nor Trevor are ranked higher.
• Andy Schwarz games out what the NCAA might come up with to allow student-athletes to exercise their NLI rights.
• “Jeremy Pruitt’s former boss” breaks down Jim Chaney’s work.
• Hammer, meet nail:  you can probably guess what part of Zamir White’s early showing impressed Kirby Smart the most.
• Yeti, you bastards.  You’re killing me with this stuff.
• Kirby’s not in favor of giving freshmen a one-time free transfer waiver.

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When you’re 0-2…

… you can forgive a lot.

Full statement from Pruitt. pic.twitter.com/eyPO64mnuL

— David Ubben (@davidubben) September 11, 2019

Anybody surprised?

Parity is a beyotch.

From Stewart Mandel’s Mailbag today ($$):

My theory is this: There are more good coaches out there than ever before, but there’s only a finite amount of great ones. If you put a Nick Saban at Alabama or Dabo Swinney at Clemson and give them a blank check to hire the best assistants, pay for the best nutritionists and trainers, take private planes to recruit, etc., they can basically build a parity-proof juggernaut. But if the guy in charge is really a $500,000-a-year Sun Belt coach in a $5-million-a-year body, all those bells and whistles won’t matter. Because he’s competing against a bunch of good coaches more qualified for his job than he is, all of whom have enough good players to compete with his.

Gee, I wonder who he’s referring t…

The poster child for this is Tennessee, with its national title trophies and 100,000-seat stadium, but which is now on to its fourth overmatched coach in a row, and it shows.

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Transition story

After the first two weeks of the season, Georgia is fifth nationally in yards per offensive play, at 8.13 ypp.

At 5.55 ypp, Tennessee is 75th.

Kicking a program when it’s down

Man, Pete Fiutak really piles it on here:

You ready for pain? Since 2008, Tennessee has as many bowl wins as Vanderbilt.

And it gets worse.

After last week’s loss to BYU, Tennessee has gone 9-17 since opening up the 2017 season with a thrilling win over Georgia Tech. Over that time, the Vols have a grand total of two wins over Power Five programs.

And it gets even worse than that.

Even with the losses to Georgia State and BYU, Tennessee barely gets on the radar to be among the nation’s biggest early disappointments, mainly because no one really expected anything in the first place.

Ouchy ouch.

Not that he’s wrong about any of that.

There’s nothing like recycling golden oldies.

#Vols coach Jeremy Pruitt: We’re nowhere near the ceiling of what this team can be. I really believe that.

— Wes Rucker (@wesrucker247) September 9, 2019

I do, too, fella.  We might disagree on how near the floor is, though.

************************************************************************

UPDATE:

Jeremy Pruitt, talking to the Knoxville QB Club, mentioned players leaving the program recently and referenced the scene in Titanic where the mice ran to the top of the ship as it sank. Saying you find out who really wants to be here.

— @GrantRamey (@GrantRamey) September 9, 2019

Analogizing your football team to the Titanic?  Damn, son, I don’t think I woulda said that.

Today, in brevity is the soul of wit

Stewart Mandel, a man of few words ($$):

The school: Tennessee.

The problem: The Vols are a hapless, poorly-coached football team. Even worse than usual.

Is it fixable? I seriously doubt it.

As the Talmudic scholar once said, all the rest is commentary.