About Dan Patrick

I don’t know if you’ve seen the latest clip, where he provides some specific allegations about what got Jeremy Pruitt in trouble and doubles down on Georgia (no specifics, though), but if you haven’t, here ’tis:

Source: Tennessee #Vols got sloppy with recruiting. They were handing recruits cash in McDonald's bags when they visited campus.

Also a name to look out for to fill the Head Coaching vacancy: Jason Witten pic.twitter.com/HKDd02rldz

— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) January 19, 2021

“Sloppy” is his big word here.  The Vols were sloppy.  Georgia was sloppy.

Well, as much as I have enjoyed watching the debacle in Knoxville unfold, even I can’t buy Mickey D bags o’ cash.  That’s so far beyond sloppy that were it true, UT should have fired Pruitt just for being galactically moronic.  (Before you go there, I said “galactically”.)

And as for Georgia, the school has already taken the unprecedented step of denying Patrick’s claim publicly.  Beyond that, though, of all the criticisms we could lay at the feet of Kirby Smart, sloppiness ain’t one of them.  Let’s just say that without getting into sausage making details, I’ve love to know how Dan’s source came by his information.  I’m guessing it’s not exactly first hand.  In other words, there’s never a bad time to cast aspersions on the recruiting trail, and if you can stir a little unwanted shit in another direction, it’s almost a bonus.

That being said, I have to admit I would enjoy it immensely if UT were to hire Jason Witten as its next head coach.  I can never get enough of watching the Urnge inmates run the asylum.

Quite the track record you got there

If at first you don’t succeed…

I am 100% confident that if I were given the authority to make the Tennessee coaching hire I’d do an incredible job. And I’d take no money for it. That’s just how selfless I am. Time to win once and for all.

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) January 18, 2021

LOL.  Meanwhile, you can bookend the legacy of the Coach Who Isn’t Greg Schiano between these two quotes ($$):

In the months before Jeremy Pruitt’s first game as Tennessee’s coach, a person close to Pruitt offered The Athletic a frank assessment of how his first head coaching tenure would play out.

“In three years, he’ll either have them in the Playoff or on probation,” the person said…

“When I took the job, I sat down with Coach Fulmer and he looked me dead in the eye and he said the head coach at Tennessee is going to be judged on three games: Florida, Georgia and Alabama,” Pruitt said at the lectern of a Rotary Club meeting back in 2018.

The thing is, Travis, shtick and all, probably couldn’t do a worse job hiring a football coach than UT’s last few athletic directors have.

The take, she sizzles.

–@ESPNBooger "If you are a Bulldog fan and you are going to sit there and stare honesty in the eye – Kirby has done less with more maybe than Mark Richt"

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) January 15, 2021

Well, Booger — may I call you Booger? — as we say here at the blog, “maybe” is doing a shit ton of heavy lifting there.  But thanks for speaking for us.

When you haven’t lost Danny Kanell…

Ah, hell.

“I think you should be massively excited if you are a Georgia fan, for a couple reasons,” Kanell said. “One, because of what you’re bringing back. JT Daniels looked the part. Todd Monken, another year getting that offense kind of developed, getting the players more familiar with it because, remember, they did not have a full offseason. It wasn’t normal. JT Daniels didn’t get to start or play much in the preseason, now he gets to start a handful of games late and he looked good in those. You bring back George Pickens, your top three pass catchers. I know there are losses on the defensive side of the ball, but that’s just where you trust the recruiting classes and trust Kirby. This is going to be a good defense. Are they elite? That’s a question you have to ask and that’s maybe concerning but my biggest issue with Georgia has always been around the offense and I think they should be excited about that.”

Danny even tossed in some Florida shade, to boot.

Now I’m a little worried about Georgia’s 2021 prospects.

Narrative, distilled

Pat Forde may deserve some kind of award for neatly summing up every easy take we’ll see pundits offer up about Georgia football in the coming preseason in one paragraph.

Once transfer quarterback JT Daniels was healthy enough to play, the season changed for Georgia. With Daniels coming back, top running back Zamir White doing the same and the nation’s No. 1 recruiting classes from 2018–20 continuing to suffuse the program with talent, the time is now for the Bulldogs. Yes, there are a lot of early-entry losses to the draft, especially on defense—but the return of interior linemen Jordan Davis and Devonte Wyatt gives Georgia a chance to once again field the nation’s No. 1 run defense. Can Kirby Smart answer the lingering questions about his in-game coaching?

There’s probably a solid drinking game to be designed from all that.  Hell, you could get alcohol poisoning just from the number of times “the time is now for the Bulldogs” gets repeated in the next seven months.

You can leave your hate on.

Aside from a few good journalists at the top of the magazine, Sports Illustrated is a shadow of its former self, unfortunately.  Ownership/management has followed the path forged initially by Bleacher Report of letting a lot of amateurs pretend they’re journalists on the cheap and flooding its online site with quantity as a substitute for quality.

One of the few good things about that is it does present an increased opportunity for straight out comedy.  Like this, for example.

Clemson will beat Georgia like a drum in the opener: Georgia may have bigger issues than facing the Tigers in the opening game, as it appears some recruiting shenanigans have been afoot in Athens (shocking, I know). And it appears that after the NCAA drops the hammer on the Tennessee Vols, who should be allowed to cheat, pay recruits or anything else they can think of to at least become relevant again, they have their eyes set on Georgia.

This distraction, combined with the fact that the Tigers are simply the better team—even with the loss of Trevor Lawrence and Travis Etienne—on the offensive side of the ball than the Bulldogs…

The author, according to his bio, is “the 2017 South Carolina Sports Writer of the Year”, which, I suppose is either a reflection of the entity that made the award or the state of South Carolina sports journalism.

In any event, you have been put on notice that Clemmins ain’t skeered.  Or something.

Wasted

An unfortunate choice of words from Mark Bradley:

I know from conversations that Stricklin is high on Mullen…

Kids, that’s why they tell you, don’t do drugs.

Circular reasoning

I don’t mean to pick on Stewart Mandel in particular (okay, maybe a little), but this is the kind of punditry that drives me crazy — from today’s Mailbag ($$) about why he doesn’t respect Texas A&M sufficiently:

… beating a three-loss North Carolina team playing without the sport’s most productive running back tandem in 15 years in a game that was tied with four minutes remaining did nothing to change my opinion. If A&M was one of the three or four best teams in the country, it would have won that game by 25-30 points, much like Oklahoma did against three-loss, stripped down Florida.

Which brings me the point of that exercise. It frustrates me that it’s 2021 and we’re still ranking football teams almost entirely by “number of losses.” You can’t tell me Oklahoma wasn’t one of the four best teams in the country by season’s end. The Sooners beat four Top 25 teams (A&M beat two), including two of the committee’s top 10, Iowa State and Florida, in their last two games (A&M beat one top-10 team all season).

So, “three-loss, stripped down Florida” still counts as a big top-25 win because of style points?  By the way, that top-10 team Mandel mentions that TAMU beat?  That would be undefeated, fully stocked Florida.

I’m not saying whether he’s justified ranking Oklahoma ahead of A&M.  It would be nice, though, if he were a little more coherent about his reasons.

When does spring practice start?

Shot.

Remember guys, the Peach Bowl result only counts if Georgia wins. If Cincy wins, it’s only because Georgia didn’t want to be there. Sorry I don’t make up the rules.

— Jason Kersey (@jasonkersey) January 1, 2021

Chaser.

Kirby Smart: "The narrative was out there that our team didn't want to be here, they didn't want to practice. That was never true. Our guys practiced hard. They played a really good, motivated football team that was trying to remain undefeated." https://t.co/A0yhZ4mQW4

— Marc Weiszer (@marcweiszer) January 1, 2021

Between that and the perfect Justin Fields hindsight, it’s gonna be a long offseason.

“You guys are killing me.”

If there’s such a thing as a meteor press conference, I’d say yesterday’s Brian Kelly vs. the Alabama media hook up surely qualifies.