Wednesday morning buffet

Around the world of college football:

• Bert has an interesting approach to motivating his players:  y’all suck, really.
• Gotta love the SEC’s response to the Tennessee mess — a slap on the wrist with a $250,000 penalty and a promise to review UT’s alcohol availability policy, because, you know, stuff like that never happened before you could buy a beer in the stadium.
• Georgia announced an enhancement to its NIL program, allowing its student-athletes to use the school’s official trademarks and logos.
• Speaking of marketing, long time reader Chris Robinson has put together a line of hats and visors promoting you know what.  Check ’em out on Instagram @buckheadbrimco.
• JT Daniels’ health appears to be improving.  Bye week, for the win!
• And speaking of health, Smart was asked about George Pickens’ recovery time.  Florida, maybe?  “There’s a long term plan there, but I don’t disclose timelines on that kind of stuff,” Smart said. “Probably the week of the game we’d know more. We did a walk-through yesterday and he was able to do that, get signals, get calls. He’s done a tremendous job of working in recovery.”  So he’s saying there’s a chance?  Yeah!
• Is Dan Mullen’s seat the hottest in the SEC?
• Conference USA sent a letter to the AAC asking about reorganizing the two conferences on the basis of geography.  Instead, the AAC is expanding by adding six Conference USA schools.  Talk about your “you can have my answer now, Senator” response.
• Scott Cochran is back at Butts-Mehre, but not back as special teams coordinator yet.
• On a sad note, a reader who was a member of the Redcoats passed this on to me to share with y’all:  “One of my instructors on the drum line, John Moates, was married to an instructor of the Redcoats flagline, Cassie, who just passed — tragically, days after she had delivered their third daughter. John has been an instructor for 10 years now, and I believe Cassie had been helping out just as long.”  There is a GoFundMe set up for her, at https://gofund.me/dd1449c6.

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The return of karma

He’s back, baby.

Bielema's contract is for six years beginning with an annual salary of $4.2 million. He will begin his duties at Illinois immediately and will attend the game today's guest of AD Josh Whitman's when Illinois plays at Penn State.

— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) December 19, 2020

That’s a lot of money to pay for mediocrity.  What’s that you said about college athletics finances during a pandemic?

In today’s episode, Bret Bielema is represented by Tom Mars.

Jeff Long’s current employer:  Hey, let’s get into a futile legal fight over a $3 million buyout with a football coach we canned that wound up costing us more money than just paying the buyout would have and forced us to show our ass in discovery.  Nobody else is that stupid!

Jeff Long’s former employer:  Hold our beer.

Next time, they’ll do better.

One positive development from player compensation becoming a reality is that I doubt we’ll see the days of allowing a coach who went 29-34 overall in five seasons at Arkansas, 11-29 in the SEC during his tenure to walk away with an $11.935 million buyout again.

Which is a good thing, considering how boneheaded both sides were about Bert’s hire in the first place.

Since getting fired, Bielema has thought a lot about what worked so well at Wisconsin and what didn’t work at Arkansas. The biggest difference between the two, he believes, was how well he understood the Badgers’ program before he took over as the head coach after spending two years as Barry Alvarez’s defensive coordinator. “I want to go into a situation where you know everything that’s going on,” Bielema said. “I didn’t have to worry about uncovering land mines halfway into the job.”

Bielema estimates that he’d spent about 24 hours in Arkansas in his entire life before taking the Razorbacks job. At Wisconsin, he knew exactly what the program’s strengths and deficiencies were. Plus, Alvarez had provided a spectacular blueprint for success. (A blueprint current Badgers coach Paul Chryst has followed quite well.) At Arkansas, Bielema had to learn all that on the job. The fallout from Bobby Petrino’s firing and a disastrous season with John L. Smith as the interim coach necessitated an overhaul, but if you examine Bielema’s record, he actually came through that part O.K. The 2015 season, when the Razorbacks went 8–5 overall and 5–3 in the SEC, seemed to indicate a turning of the corner.

But Bielema admits he didn’t initially realize how deep a team needed to be on both lines of scrimmage to succeed in the SEC West.

Might have been nice to know that before you jumped jobs.  And to think that many people believed Jeff Long was one of the most competent ADs in the business.

Misery loves company, part two

This is the look of a man who realizes that karma owns his ass.

goodness gracious pic.twitter.com/NyGHheLuAO

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) November 12, 2017

Think he misses Wisconsin just a little?

When the going gets tough, the tough point fingers.

Bert, showing ass:

There’s also been a drastic dip in production running the ball over that same time. Arkansas is averaging 4.2 yards per carry over the past two seasons. The Hogs averaged more than 5 yards per carry during the first three seasons under Bielema.

The obvious difference between then and now is a new offensive line coach. Sam Pittman left for the same position at Georgia following the 2015 season. Kurt Anderson arrived from the Buffalo Bills and took over the unit. Things clearly haven’t been the same since.

But Bielema insists this is not a coaching problem. Instead, he’s looking at a lack of productive players as the reason for the downfall of Arkansas’ offensive front.

“I think, obviously, a coach is only going to be allowed to coach at a level of what his personnel is,” Bielema said. “It gets frustrating, but I think there’s some guys we recruited three or four years ago that just haven’t developed into what we want them to be.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t recruiting and player development part of coaching?

And what a coincidence that Pittman’s change of jobs has led to a drop in run production at his old school and improvement at his new one…

Patience, grasshopper.

The irony is pretty thick here.

Since Jen Bielema tweeted #karma on this day in 2013 after Wisconsin’s wild loss at Arizona State; Wisconsin is 41-12, Arkansas is 23-27

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) September 15, 2017

Of course, Bert does have a bigger paycheck as consolation for that.  Maybe that’s what Jen was crowing about.

A quote that will haunt your dreams

Oh, Bert.

“I do know this: For certain kids flash matters,” Bielema said, then added: “At Arkansas, we can be sexy.”

I find that… disturbing.

Bert’s all about doing it for the kids.

I’ve discussed the strategy behind the NCAA’s Proposal No. 2016-116, a package of rules changes designed to temper some of the flaws in the recruiting process, at least as the NCAA Division I board of directors sees it.  The hope is that there’s enough in the package that’s acceptable to coaches, such as adding a tenth staffer, to offset what’s less palatable.

Judging from this, that may be a tough balancing act.

The conferences appear to have found consensus on all of the above — except for adding April-June official visits. The Southeastern Conference and other leagues in the South are reluctant to sign off on the change.

It’s obvious why: College football’s ruling class longs to protect its turf. Those coaches don’t want prospects from the South visiting Big Ten campuses when the weather is nice.

They have proposed an amendment that would limit spring official visits to April, a month already congested by ACT exams and Easter. There’s almost no way a prospect could use all five of his official visits in April.

It’s easy for prospects from, say, Atlanta, to take unofficial visits to Georgia, Auburn, Alabama and ACC schools such as Georgia Tech and Clemson in the spring. Not so much to Penn State and Nebraska, especially if the prospect and his family have limited means and cannot afford to fly.

“It’s like Trump,” one Big Ten official said. “Except the SEC wants to build a giant wall around the Southeast.”

The SEC’s justification for its stance is what really has Big Ten coaches steaming — academics.

“It’s a joke,” one Big Ten coach said.

Arkansas coach Bret Bielema, in an interview with the Tribune, said it’s no joke.

“The North wants recruiting and signing day to move up,” he said. “I get it. But on the same account, you’d have kids potentially not focusing on getting good grades to end the school year, and to me that’s really dangerous.”

Fake unctuousness from Bret Bielema?  Why, Miz Scarlett, I nevah.

It’s never too early to start working the refs.

Bert’s got way too much time on his hands this offseason.