Will nobody think of the academics?

The horseshit here, she is epic.

College football is racing headlong into a coaching crisis. Experience is headed out the door. Men who have been in the game for decades have had enough of a taste of the new model of college football to know they don’t like it.

Asked point blank if he expects an exodus, Todd Berry, the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, said, “Oh, absolutely.”

“There are certainly a lot of coaches throwing up their hands and saying, ‘This is ridiculous. This is absurd.’ And it is,” Berry said. “It is completely off the rails.”

That’s what revolutions are supposed to do. Revolutions upend the old way of doing things. The old model, where a coach went into a living room and promised Mama he would see to it her baby got a college degree, is about as relevant as black-and-white television.

“The idea of actually having a conversation about the academics at the school?” Berry asked. “That’s just a waste of time because nobody wants to hear anything about the school…

Yes, coaches being paid millions are threatening an exodus from the profession because nobody wants to talk about academics with the guys who specialize in convincing their players to take a course load best suited for not interfering with practice time.  Todd, quit pissing down our legs and telling us it’s raining.

That’s a nice story, Nick.

Okay, now, here is an example of somebody bullshitting Finebaum.

"One of the things I like to see us be able to work back to is everything in CFB has always had parity."

Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban on the state of college football. pic.twitter.com/tibfsUvUeM

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) May 13, 2022

“Always had parity”?  Seriously?  That’s either massive bullshit, or Saban’s getting senile.  And I don’t think he’s getting senile.

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

UPDATE:  Junior ain’t buying it, either.

Paul did you tell 🐐 what that word means????@AlabamaFTBL
Parity = “the state or condition of being equal, especially regarding status or pay” @CFB 🤔 https://t.co/9hJSLgL6Fh

— Lane Kiffin (@Lane_Kiffin) May 14, 2022

Dabonomics 101, part two

The man was on a roll in that interview yesterday.  Here’s another sample:

You’ve been outspoken that you’re adamantly against pay-for-play in college sports. Is that the direction big-time college sports is headed with NIL?

I am against anything that devalues education. That’s what I’m against. I am for anything that incentivizes education. People will come after me because I’ve always said that I’m against the professionalism of college athletics, and I am. Kids don’t know what they don’t know. That’s a slippery slope if you professionalize college athletics, and now you’ve got salaries and taxes and you can fire kids on the spot and they’ve got to pay for their tuition and they pay for their housing and everything else. Athletic directors would sign up for that in a heartbeat. They’d save that money.

Um… about that whole “and you can fire kids on the spot” slippery slope thing…

“I met with my team, each student-athlete, individually to discuss my plans moving forward with the Grambling State University volleyball program. My decision was to not to bring back some of the current student-athletes on the team. While student-athletes are granted athletic scholarships, a scholarship is not guaranteed and not binding, per NCAA rules and regulations.”

Coach Chelsey Lucas

Actually “some” is a little misleading there.  Lucas fired the entire team.  I guess that means Grambling’s fully professionalized, Dabo.

Dabonomics 101, part one

This is one of the most profoundly moronic things I’ve ever heard Dabo Swinney say:

Do you understand when people say, ‘Well, coaches like Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban are making in the $10 million range, why shouldn’t the athletes be able to profit even before they get on campus?’

Well, Nick Saban is 70 years old. I’m 52 years old. None of us set markets on what we do. We live in a capitalist society. The head of Delta probably makes a lot more than the people who are checking your baggage in, but those people are as vital as anybody. None of us set markets on what we do. It’s a free market we live in, in anything. It’s just that our jobs are so visible and so public. I can tell you this: None of us got into coaching to make money, but I don’t apologize for being successful.

A lot of folks on social media were saying this is evidence of how dumb Swinney is, but he’s not dumb.  He’s just incredibly stubborn about player compensation.  That’s the only way you can insist with a straight face that the market on college football labor hasn’t been set just moments after proclaiming that you like NIL compensation for college athletes — something the NCAA had banned until state legislatures stepped in.

I wonder how Dabo’s players like being compared to airplane baggage handlers.

Today, in utter horseshit

This is truly something.

Pleas Read this statement. #forgiveness #redemption#enlightenment #GramFam pic.twitter.com/XWstabSdll

— HueJacksonFoundation (@HueJacksonFDN) February 25, 2022

The last paragraph — Art Briles as victim — is particularly contemptible.  These people should all rot.

Taken out of context

Dan Mullen corrects the record, or attempts to, anyway.

Two days after shutting off all media access for the week other than an SEC-mandated teleconference call following a terse press conference on Monday to open the week, Florida coach Dan Mullen attempted to clear the air about what he described as a situation taken out of context…

Following Monday’s press conference, Mullen opted to close off media access to defensive coordinator Todd Grantham and players this week to allow his guys to focus.

With that schedule?  If you have focus issues that threaten your chances with South Carolina, you’ve got bigger problems than we saw last Saturday.

He had a team meeting on Monday, one that sources described to Swamp247 as being very animated, including plenty of yelling. After gathering his guys and attempting to set a clear agenda for the rest of the season.

That agenda being “save my ass”.

“And so because of that, I made myself available for media every single day this week — Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday — because we didn’t have the players available. So I just want to clarify some of those things that apparently have been taken way out of context over the last several days.”

Though Mullen did meet with local media at his regularly scheduled time, his Tuesday ‘availability’ with the media was an exclusive interview given to the Orlando Sentinel. Wednesday’s SEC teleconference appearance was mandated by the league.

And by the way, had he said this —  “Our staff recruits non-stop. We grind at recruiting every day. We’re always recruiting and working the best to get great players that fit the Gator standard and bring them here to our program.” — Monday when he was asked about recruiting, he wouldn’t have spent the next two days in PR free fall.

As noted the other day, the man is a walking “this is fine” meme.

An entry in the annals of bullshit

Shot.

Dan Mullen at SEC Media Days on Georgia being the team to beat in the SEC East: ‘Didn’t they say that last year?’

— Edgar Thompson (@osgators) July 19, 2021

Chaser.

SEC Media picked Florida over Georgia just last year. https://t.co/D4WFsHrdBB

— Bud Elliott (@BudElliott3) July 20, 2021

Today, in amateurism is what we say it is

Just a reminder that Mark Emmert once uttered this horseshit under oath:

Lest we forget, here is the sworn testimony of Dr. Mark Emmert in federal court on June 19, 2014, regarding the NCAA's position on college athletes doing paid endorsements pic.twitter.com/0yrMXo8ZAg

— Andy Schwarz, presented by Envelopes of Cash (@andyhre) June 30, 2021

Dr. Emmert continued:
THE FUNDAMENTAL NOTION IS THAT YOU — YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE STUDENT ATHLETES, AMATEUR STUDENT
ATHLETES, BE IN A POSITION WHERE THEY ARE PITCHING FOR — FOR PRODUCTS AND FOR COMMERCIAL INTERESTS AND BEING — BEING ESSENTIALLY PITCHMEN FOR VARIOUS PRODUCTS. pic.twitter.com/8KGirayz7i

— Andy Schwarz, presented by Envelopes of Cash (@andyhre) June 30, 2021

And here’s where we’ll be — totally blessed by the NCAA — tomorrow ($$):

That is a different approach from Jenloop, the relatively new platform started by NFL agent Neil Schwartz. Jenloop creates athlete and entertainer profile pages, and users can pay them to send out a tweet or Instagram post (so a Georgia fan on his birthday pays a player to tweet a message to him).

“Jenloop is the 21st-century version of Hallmark,” said Schwartz, who added he is not running afoul of prohibitions of contract agents representing collegians because the platform only facilitates connections among fans, brands, and players. Unlike Opendorse, he is only activating pages for athletes in states that passed NIL laws.

Lewis Cine, a defensive back from Georgia, is on Jenloop, though his page is not yet live. He has talked with several other services. “Well, it’s kind of like certain platforms that come and say, ‘Hey, we want to help you out when the rules pass, when we can begin,’” Cine said.

… How much a non-star collegiate athlete can earn on platforms like Jenloop is unclear. The biggest name currently on Jenloop is the rapper Waka Flocka Flame, who has 1.8 million Twitter followers and charges $1,000 a tweet for fans and $2,500 to endorse a product in a tweet. Cine, by contrast, has fewer than 7,000 followers.

“A player can easily make, minimum, five figures, easily,” Schwartz said. “Six figures if they promote themselves through their own platform.”

Poor Lewis, exploited like that.

Today, in jealousy

UK AD Mitch Barnhart is quite the card.

Barnhart stresses importance of locker room harmony, e.g., one teammate not getting jealous of another for their NIL deal. Says UK will be focusing on that.

— Tyler Thompson (@MrsTylerKSR) June 25, 2021

The idea that the program run by the king of one-and-done puts a high priority on being a “relationship enterprise” (whatever the hell that’s supposed to be) is hilarious.

It’s also bullshit.  As Mitch no doubt knows.  So does Calipari, for that matter.

Singing for their supper

Stewart Mandel ($$) shoots a couple of fish in a barrel:

In 2007, Gordon Gee, then Ohio State’s president, famously defended the BCS by declaring, “They will wrench a playoff system out of my cold, dead hands.” On Tuesday, Gee, very much still alive and now West Virginia’s president, said he has “always been supportive of playoffs” and is particularly supportive of the 12-team format model recently recommended by a working group of commissioners.

“I’d like to be playing in November knowing that we (West Virginia) have a chance to be in the playoffs,” he said.

In 2010, Bill Hancock, then the executive director of the BCS, defended that system, in part, by saying, “We believe a playoff would diminish the regular season and end the Bowl system, certainly as we know it.” In 2021, Hancock, now the CFP executive director, said, “Twelve (teams) keeps September important, and it also keeps November important.” (And, “There will always be a place for bowl games.”)

Men of principle, every one of them.  For a price, anyway.