Thursday morning buffet

All part of college football’s rich pageant:

• Peak Grantham:  “While Colorado State is less of a challenge than the Wildcats, Todd Grantham saw some positive improvements from his defensive unit.”  Does that include the Fightin’ Bobos’ 38 minutes of possession?
• “At various points in the past three seasons, each of the top three teams in this week’s Amway Coaches Poll have leaned on a true freshman…”
• “NCAA announces it will require schools to pay for tuition, fees and books for basketball players who leave after at least two years and want to return to their same school to get undergraduate degree.”  Why at least two years there?  Why do you think?
• Classy gesture, kids:  “The North Carolina football team is helping with relief efforts following the devastation of Hurricane Florence by donating per diem allotments…”
• Per Dave Matter, Mizzou’s best receiver has been nursing a groin injury and its best defensive back suffered a concussion against Purdue.  (Both are expected to play Saturday.)
• Missouri’s running game should expect to receive Georgia’s defense’s best shot.
• Larry Scott is all pissy about that California judge’s tentative ruling that show-cause order provisions in the NCAA bylaws violate California law.

Advertisements

Giving the game away

In a moment of clarity at the Alston trial, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott compares his compensation package (a whopping $4.5 million/year) to “other media executives”.

We knew he wasn’t getting paid the big bucks to oversee a competitive football conference, so I guess that makes sense.

A sign you’re not having a good year

Random UCLA fan Father of current UCLA starting quarterback describes Chip Kelly’s success at Oregon “simply a fluke on his part. I am sure that he stood on the shoulders of the actual play callers.”

It’s one thing when fans of the other team break out into an “O-ver-rated!” chant; it’s another when the quarterback’s daddy leads the mockery.

Derpitude

Jake Browning makes an ill-fated decision to throw the ball while running for his life and the rest, well… I’ll let you judge the rest.

This whole play is… something. pic.twitter.com/SEL5OGNdN4

— Bryan Fischer (@BryanDFischer) September 16, 2018

The Pac-12 appears to be hot garbage this year.

“By this measure, we’re achieving unmatched success.”

Suddenly, it makes sense.  Larry Scott is making the big bucks because he pumps out the bullshit better than any other P5 commissioner.

“There are different ways to measure success in college sports,” Scott said, snuggly wearing his salesman’s cap during Wednesday’s Pac-12 Media Day. “The scorecard we think matters, and that I know our university presidents and athletics directors care about most is academic and athletic excellence across all sports.

Hell, he probably deserves a raise for saying that with a straight face.

“So when I tweet, it’s important.”

Matt Hayes thinks college football has crossed another Rubicon.

One tweet, 10 words: “I didn’t come to Arizona to run the triple-option.”

One tweet, one purposeful and poignant tweet from a football player who three months earlier was an unknown backup on a struggling team, changed the way they do business at University of Arizona and laid the groundwork for similar change elsewhere in college sports.

A paradigm shift may be coming in the way athletes and universities view their complex relationships. The days of players being excluded from key university decisions that affect them may be on the verge of a dynamic detour.

The thing I find strange about this story is that despite crazy talk from Arizona’s president about the process that went into hiring a new coach after Rich Rodriguez was canned (“I want our student-athletes to have a voice,” says Arizona president Dr. Robert Robbins. “I want them to be disruptive problem solvers.”), nobody, including Khalil Tate himself, comes out and actually says his tweet was the reason the school walked away from Ken Niumatalolo.  You’d think that’s kind of a big omission, no?

That being said, if there has been some kind of paradigm shift there, good luck to Kevin Sumlin.  Managing a football program via Twitter ought to be a real blast.

“Well, I plan on spending $40 million.”

It’s always heartwarming to see the focus schools and conferences bring to their primary mission: academics their revenue streams.