The lessons of G-Day

I was a little surprised with some of the hostility I saw in the comments to my post about cutting off media access to spring practice.  Unlike some of you, I guess, I see value in what the beat writers are able to glean from their steady observation of the team this time of year.  A good example of what I’m talking about comes from this Seth Emerson post, where he describes a difference in approach to the G-Day game by Grantham and Pruitt:

That doesn’t mean G-Day won’t be worth watching. Most eyes will be on Jeremy Pruitt and the defense, trying to divine the noticeable changes he has wrought. I’ll have a story later in the week focusing more on this, but here’s my early guess on how Pruitt will handle G-Day:

- Plenty of players seeing the field, with playing time distributed fairly evenly. And if the first few weeks of spring practice are any indication, there will be some surprises on the initial first- and second-teams.

- Pruitt will focus less on pure stats and results and more on effort and fundamentals. That’s been his obvious focus the first few weeks, and he doesn’t appear to be in any rush to pick starters.

There could be something else at work here: The last few years of Todd Grantham’s tenure, there seemed an unstated but real competition between Grantham and Bobo. That’s not very unusual for a football team, and not necessarily unhealthy.

Still, it was obvious last year that Grantham and his staff were very happy to do well on G-Day and most of the other scrimmages. But now you have a much different dynamic on staff, which could lend to Pruitt and co. not caring if their defense gives up a few more first downs, as long as it means overall progress, at least in their eyes.

That bit about “an unstated but real competition between Grantham and Bobo”?  Yeah, that.  If that’s gone, how will that color your perception of what comes out of Saturday?

Who needs logic to fight a union?

Shorter Ron Morris:  The NCAA possibly being moved by the threat of unionization to do a bunch of stuff I think would be good for college athletics is proof that college athletes don’t need a union.

Wednesday morning buffet

Grab a plate.

• Tracy Rocker sounds pretty no-nonsense about his charges:  “You produce, you stay,” Rocker said. “You don’t produce, next. It’s all about playing with the right combination and to get guys to produce with full-speed effort. That’s the most important thing. That’s what I’m working on up front is effort. Try to eliminate the MA’s (missed assignments) and go forward.”
• Bill Connelly looks at how the 2013 FBS teams ranked in order of their per-game difference between projection and reality as to offensive and defensive scoring efficiency.  Georgia ranks 116th.  He didn’t speculate how much of that to chalk up to luck, randomness or something else, but perhaps I need to dust off the ol’ “regression to the mean, bitchez!” meme.
• Another day in paradise on Finebaum.  (Do any of his listeners actually care about basketball?)
• Athlon ranks the SEC head coaches.  I don’t get how you can put Malzahn ahead of Miles, but that’s just me, I guess.
• Kirby Smart is coaching defensive backs again, drawing upon his experience at Georgia:  “He just coaches us at a different level, trying to get us to understand it from his point of view because he played the position and he knows what’s going on…”  They should be awesome in run support this year, if that’s the case.
• Today, Quayvon Hicks is Georgia’s only healthy scholarship tight end.
• One reason CAPA is going to Washington:  “One obstacle in securing some of the protections we want is the NCAA is colluding and excluding opportunities for trust funds. To solidify an antitrust exemption would be to the detriment of player protections.”
• Malik McDowell has outlasted his momma.
• I missed this when it came out, but Pete Fiutak’s April Fools’ story about Herschel finding a loophole in the NCAA eligibility rules and announcing a return to Georgia is a fun read.  Richt then joked, “If you can find an extra year of eligibility for Champ Bailey and Richard Seymour, we’d find a spot for them, too. ”

Where’s the moral outrage now?

Here’s a helluva lede:

The dispute between two Florida State teammates that allegedly led to a December shooting and an attempted murder charge for a third-party man has now also reportedly resulted in the arrest of one of the Seminoles involved.

The Tallahassee Democrat reported that redshirt freshman offensive lineman Ira Denson was arrested Tuesday and charged with illegal use of a credit card and petty theft.

Herbstreit’s Twitter feed?  Crickets.  Herbie’s too busy with March Madness, I guess.

Fisher’s dismissed Denson from the team.  But that’s hardly relevant if you want to vent about coaches and programs creating lax atmospheres in which players don’t seem all that concerned about the consequences of their bad actions.  Of course, it’s possible Herbstreit views FSU as a place where there’s little history of poor behavior… yeah, that’s it.  That’s the ticket.

All of which is why I think Jerry Hinnen gets what we’re morally outraged about with regard to this bullshit.

“Maybe ya’ll wanted to hear about football.”

Or maybe not.

Technically it was a nondescript first day of spring football practice. But because four of his players were arrested and jailed on theft charges 18 hours before it started, Georgia coach Mark Richt was greeted by a couple of dozen media members and cameras from all four of Atlanta’s network television stations after the 90-minute practice concluded.

None of them got the answer they were seeking: How does he plan on punishing the four offending players?

Kinda rude of Mark not to accommodate them.

Rub a little dirt on it and get back in there.

Shorter Matt Hayes:  Football players need to get back to what’s really important about the college experience – taking shit and never complaining about it.

The art of gentle criticism

Really, David Paschall deserves some sort of mention for the… um, restrained way in which he describes the Hindenburg-like performance of last year’s Georgia defensive backfield here:

Pruitt looks to improve a secondary that was young last season and had to learn on the fly, which resulted in several disastrous moments.

Sympathy for the devil

See if you can spot the straw man Chris Low builds to better his argument that Nick Saban Will Survive, By Damn.

So regardless of what Saban’s agenda is or isn’t, saying he’s trying to create a competitive advantage for his defense through a rules change is a stretch.

The competitive advantage he has created goes back to the way he has recruited and developed players.

Nobody’s saying Saban’s trying to create a competitive advantage with the 10-second substitution rule proposal.  He’s simply trying to keep the one he’s already got – you know, the one Low references in his second sentence.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But the reality is that Saban’s advantage is hard to construct and expensive to maintain, which is why it’s one that few programs can match.  While that makes it worthy of a strong defense on Saban’s part, it also makes it harder to support if others lacking in Alabama’s resources are able to level the playing field on any given Saturday with greater strategic creativity.

You know it’s the offseason when…

I guarantee you the only person who cares less about the question posed in this header than me is Nick Saban.

Tuesday morning buffet

Have at it, guys.

• Scarbinsky mocks Nick Saban’s concern about football becoming a “continuous game”.
• Arthur Lynch be preppin’ for the NFL.  It’s always interesting when players find new motivation (read:  $$) to take better care of their bodies than they did in college.
• Dan Jenkins has a memoir coming out today.  That should be a semi-great read.
• Ed Aschoff says Jeff Driskel, who’s important enough to the Florida program that Boom pushed back the spring practice schedule to accommodate his recovery, “has every reason to be bitter”.  Hmm.
• CFN‘s “unsolicited advice” to Georgia for spring practice is to work on turnover margin.  Dang, I bet Mark Richt wishes he’d have thought of that.
• Miami joins the ranks of programs hiring high-profile high school coaches in an advisory position.
• Weiszer notes a comment made by a 2015 Georgia commit:  “They’re switching to a 4-3 defense and I think that will give me an opportunity to come in and play as a true defensive end…”  Jeremy Pruitt, all things to all men.