PAWWWLLL sez…

Okay, here’s a fun little mental exercise for you.

As is always the case, the expectations in Athens and Baton Rouge will be very high in 2021.

There are plenty of reasons to like both teams to be legitimate contenders not just for their respective SEC divisions but the College Football Playoff but having preseason hype and living up to those massive expectations are two different things.

Taking that into consideration, which coach needs a big season more in 2021, Kirby Smart or Ed Orgeron?

That was a question asked of ESPN host Paul Finebaum on Monday during his latest appearance on Birmingham-based WJOX 94.5 FM radio show The Roundtable.

Without looking at the linked piece, predict the answer and Finebaum’s rationale for it.

“LSU has appealed Clark’s ruling.”

The rug, she is getting harder to sweep under.

After a nearly five-month battle, an East Baton Rouge Parish District Court judge fined Louisiana State University and ordered the school to give USA TODAY an unredacted copy of a 2016 police report that names former star running back Derrius Guice.

LSU “was unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious in its refusal and delay and the redacted manner in which the documents were produced,” Judge Janice Clark wrote in her Dec. 29 ruling.

Clark further ordered LSU to pay $10,000 for USA TODAY’s attorney fees and an additional $6,200 in civil penalties — $100 for each of the 62 business days between the request date and the trial date, Nov. 23.

Assuming this gets to the messy ending most anticipate, does anyone expect Mark Emmert to step in and hammer the school?  I don’t, but after Penn State, he deserves whatever screaming will come his way about it.

Hottest thing in town

Somebody’s gonna owe Georgia’s coaching staff a Christmas card this year.

Sources: Cincinnati DC Marcus Freeman is expected to interview for the LSU defensive coordinator job this week. Freeman wants to be a head coach next, but is listening to LSU and other DC jobs. #Bearcats

— Brandon Saho (@BrandonSaho) January 4, 2021

Seriously, that gives you some idea of the length of Coach O’s attention span.  Make sure you get a solid buy out before you sign on the dotted line, Marcus.

Bo Noes

LSU does something expected since… what, the second half of the first game of the season?

Pelini officially out. One time payment. pic.twitter.com/cO64N9LPjc

— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) December 22, 2020

The one-time payment is reportedly around $5.2 million, which is certainly nice work if you can get it.

As the linked article indicates, Pelini isn’t leaving by himself.

More staff changes are expected to come, including the departure of safeties coach Bill Busch and the retirement of defensive line coach Bill Johnson. Cornerbacks coach Corey Raymond, an assistant on staff since 2012, is the only defensive coach remaining on staff.

LSU is also expected to part ways with passing game coordinator Scott Linehan after one season, multiple sources told The Advocate. The 57-year-old Linehan is due the full remainder of his two-year, $800,000 per year contract, a buyout that is approximately $1 million.

All that, and an athletic department looking at taking an $80 million hit this year.  What a country, eh?

The punchline is that Coach O will be picking the replacements.  I mean, what could go wrong?

It’s early signing day week!

On a scale of one to ten, how much negative recruiting do you think LSU is facing?

Getting stuck in Red Stick

While we’re on the subject of LSU, this flat out stunned me:

Ed Orgeron says the key to next year will be graduate transfers who can come in and contribute immediately. #LSU

— Brooks Kubena (@BKubena) December 10, 2020

One year removed from an undefeated, national championship season, a team that’s always been able to recruit top level talent in sufficient numbers to be a regular factor in the SEC and national chases over the past 20 years is now that short?  Good grief, Coach O.

The door, she revolves.

Two of Georgia’s receivers are about to hit the transfer trail.

Dawgs247 has learned that a pair of Georgia wideouts are seeking a transfer. Trey Blount, a redshirt junior from Atlanta, and Makiya Tongue, a redshirt freshman from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, both intend to transfer according to persons with knowledge of the situation. As of early Monday afternoon, neither have entered their name into the NCAA’s Student-Athlete Transfer portal but it’s expected to happen in the near future.

Baton Rouge, you say?  Ummm… what a coincidence that this news made a buzz on social media last night.

LSU tight end Arik Gilbert is considering leaving LSU and missed Monday’s practice, sources told Geaux247. Head coach Ed Orgeron and his staff are fighting to keep the talented five-star prospect from the 2020 class, but Gilbert is homesick and is likely returning home to the state of Georgia for the remainder of the semester, sources said.

The true freshman is LSU’s leading active pass catcher with Terrace Marshall Jr. forgoing his eligibility to prepare for the 2021 NFL Draft. On the season, the Marietta, Ga. native and 2020 National High School Gatorade Player of the Year has caught 35 balls for 368 yards and two scores.

Tongue for Gilbert, and everybody gets to go home.  Sounds like a fair swap, if you ask me, but I’m not getting my hopes up.  Which isn’t to say Kirby ain’t on the mother…

I am told Gilbert is seriously considering going into the Tranfer Portal. Kirby always keeps those doors open.
He can bring Ojulari with him to Athens, reunite the family.

Discussion: https://t.co/duqglFU9cG https://t.co/RWfg2APv0o

— Radi Nabulsi (@RadiNabulsi) December 8, 2020

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UPDATE:  Potential glee aside, this is very good stuff from LSU’s punter.

Lol. However, people think this year is normal, it’s not. I couldn’t imagine being a freshman this season. Nobody wants to address issues like mental health. But imagine not being able to enjoy yourself away from football. No matter what you do you need an outlet. There are none. https://t.co/ubNI63oUUd

— Zach Von Rosenberg (@ZVR09) December 8, 2020

He’s a teenager, hundreds of miles away from his parents and high school buddies, with no way to reach them because of a pandemic.  How well would you handle that?

Sure, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

So, let’s check in at halftime and see how things are…

Coach O may kill Bo Pelini by the end of the night pic.twitter.com/bh2VMnXQS7

— Unnecessary Roughness (@UnnecRoughness) December 6, 2020

Gee, it appears the Bo Pelini experiment isn’t going very well.

The scientific method

I’m not posting this to make a snarky point, but I really am intrigued by comparing these two quotes:

LSU football coach Ed Orgeron said Tuesday that most of his team has contracted COVID-19.

“Not all of our players, but most of our players have caught it,” Orgeron told reporters. “I think that hopefully they won’t catch it again, and hopefully they’re not out for games.”

Asked later for further clarification, Orgeron said he didn’t know the exact percentage of players who have had the coronavirus.

“Hopefully that once you catch it, you don’t get it again,” he said. “I’m not a doctor. I think they have that 90-day window, so most of the players that have caught it, we do feel like they’ll be eligible for games.”

This was from Smart’s presser yesterday:

“I don’t know what long-term risk you’re referencing because every flu virus is associated with myocarditis. The research that’s been done hasn’t shown that COVID is a greater indicator of getting myocarditis than any other normal flu symptom. We didn’t actually check kids from when they got the flu and they had other viruses so now we’ve actually put ourselves in a better position because we’re testing the heart, EKGs, we’re doing ultrasounds, we’re checking everything now after this. It’s really much safer in terms of not wanting a player to get diagnosed or having myocarditis after having COVID, when before we didn’t do all those tests when we could’ve caused it. The key in what we all want is to not have a young man playing or performing or doing extra exercise while dealing with myocarditis. So how do you prevent that? You test. You research and you look at it. Ron and his staff have done a tremendous job with it. And we’re very fortunate at UGA to have a baseline test on every kid that’s come in here. so after they have COVID or antibodies for it, we’re able to test them and see what the differences are in their heart. So we’re very fortunate to be able to do that. Which makes me much more comfortable with the decisions.”

Coach O is a helluva recruiter, so I’m probably reading a lot more into this than I should, but if you were the parent of a recruit being chased by LSU and Georgia, which answer would impress you more in terms of making sure your kid would be properly looked after?

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UPDATE:  Oops.

LSU athletic director Scott Woodward said Coach Orgeron was "too forthright" and "too transparent" in saying "most" of the team has had COVID-19. (Also too accurate.)

— Glenn Guilbeau (@LSUBeatTweet) September 16, 2020

Might as well have said “too many Red Bulls”.

Genius

Somehow, this story doesn’t surprise me.

One day last summer, an LSU staffer came into Ed Orgeron’s office to ask if the recruits then on campus for a visit were allowed to watch practice. What practice? We don’t hold practice over the summer, Orgeron said.

The practice was being run by the players, he was told. As it turns out, quarterback Joe Burrow had issued an alert to his teammates: practice in the morning. To a man, the roster that would run through an unbeaten, championship-winning season showed up.

Is Coach O’s overnight raging success a matter of being a master delegator, or simply a guy who was in the right place at the right time?  I suspect we’ll find out something about that real soon.