An honest man

Coaches tamper.  You know it.  I know it.  They know it.  Despite that, and despite all the carping about it, with extremely rare exceptions, nobody calls anybody out over it, which means there’s no way to enforce any prohibitions against it.

You’d think if they were that passionate about the subject, such wouldn’t be the case.  Let Sam Pittman ($$) explain the facts of life to you:

Just don’t expect many more coaches to name names publicly.

“Coaches that want to do it? They do now. But the business is all about if you make somebody mad, you cut that possibility of a job market off your resume. We gotta figure that out a bit,” Pittman said.

Such is why folks like Hugh Freeze suggest penalizing the players instead.  Better they take the hit than jam Jimmy Sexton up the next time he has to go shopping in the job market.

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Tampering is a lot like the weather.

Everybody talks about it, but no one does anything about it.

“It’s hard to police that,” Smart said. “So, it’s disturbing, it’s upsetting, but I really don’t know [what can be done]. People want to blame the coaches for tampering. But a lot of the time it is the player who is negotiating or is looking for greener pastures and when they do that, sometimes they create the tampering. It goes both ways.”

Kids create tampering?  Interesting spin, Kirbs.  But one of your peers sounds like he’s ready to roll with it.

Auburn coach Hugh Freeze said he expects the issue of tampering to come up during meetings with coaches and administrators this week.

He said he has a preference on a possible solution but asked, “Is it doable in today’s time?”

“I would love to see it go back to players not being able to transfer and be immediately eligible unless the coach leaves or fired or they graduate,” Freeze explained. “And I think that eliminates tampering. People are not going to come take players if they have to sit out, unless it’s one of those two reasons.

“But I don’t think that will ever happen again. So outside of that, I don’t know how you really stop some of the discussions that will take place.”

The perfect solution is (1) to penalize the players rather than coaches and (2) unavailable.  Sounds about like Freeze’s speed.

Master of his domain

Bill Connelly ($$):

The transfer portal has made it a lot easier for teams — at least those pretty high up in the rankings — to add experienced players and field more complete teams. That’s not to say everyone uses the portal equally well, but now that I’ve had time to play with data from the transfer-heavy 2022 season, recruiting rankings for transfers have become a solid-sized piece of SP+ projections.

That means intriguing things for a team that (A) has won the past two national titles and (B) hasn’t dipped into the portal all that much.

… When it comes to the impact teams’ recruiting hauls will specifically have on their 2023 performance, Georgia’s class ranks just 22nd overall despite their freshman haul ranking second…

Alabama’s transfer-light class ranks No. 11, and Georgia comes in just ahead of Wisconsin and Nebraska in the 20s. That’s not to say Smart is doing anything wrong; the Dawgs’ recent rings certainly say plenty about the recent product. But it does appear that, by choosing not to upgrade experience and production levels through transfers, the Dawgs are giving other teams an opportunity to catch up, at least slightly…

Andy Staples ($$):

To put it in NFL terms, building through the draft usually will beat building through free agency. (Even the Los Angeles Rams, who won a Super Bowl two seasons ago with a lot of free-agent pieces, would be willing to admit they wouldn’t have gotten there without homegrown stars Aaron Donald and Cooper Kupp.) Georgia, for example, has offensive linemen who are growing into starting roles in Year 3. They weren’t sitting around those first two seasons. They were learning the offense they’ll block at Georgia. Meanwhile, most of the high-schooler’s Georgia signs are evaluated by the coaching staff for months in terms of how they’ll fit into Georgia’s culture personality-wise. At last year’s Peach Bowl media day, Bulldogs defensive coordinator Will Muschamp explained that Georgia coaches want high school recruits to visit multiple practices to understand exactly how they’ll be coached if they choose Georgia. That way, there are no surprises when those players arrive on campus.

Portal recruiting, on the other hand, is speed-dating. Unless a staff thoroughly evaluated a player during that player’s high school recruitment, it’s unlikely either party really knows what they’re getting.

The more I think about it, the less I think those two observations are in conflict with each other.  It’s just that Bill’s “at least slightly” there is doing some serious heavy lifting.

Smart has built his program in a way very few others can emulate.  Georgia’s talent base is sustainable through recruiting, which means that hitting the portal is… well, I wouldn’t call it a luxury, more like an opportunity to fine tune a roster.  The advantage of continuity (with Georgia’s talent base, natch) should be obvious.  It’s something maybe Bill needs to account for in his SP+ calculations.

You just keep on using me until you use me up

The Tyler Van Dyke to Alabama rumors were ‘absolutely real’ according to @CaneSport.

"I think they took advantage of Alabama’s interest in him to get a better NIL deal out of Miami."https://t.co/9kY61auFFv pic.twitter.com/OLvwnuo0Gc

— On3 (@On3sports) May 17, 2023

I don’t know if that story is true, but I hope so.  Must be the romantic in me.

From Jameson Williams to…?

You know, post-Williams, it’s not exactly as if Alabama’s harvest from the transfer portal has been all that.  I mean, check these out:

2023 Alabama portal addition rankings according to On3

• 31. CJ Dippre, TE, Maryland
• 72. Trezmen Marshall, LB, Georgia
• 192. Trey Amos, CB, Louisiana
• 227. Tyler Buchner, QB, Notre Dame

2022 Alabama class

• 3. Jahmyr Gibbs, RB, Georgia Tech
• 6. Jermaine Burton, WR, Georgia
• 8. Eli Ricks, CB, LSU
• 66. Tyler Harrell
• 94. Tyler Steen

Yes, Gibbs and Burton were contributors, Gibbs a major one, but neither really lifted the program as expected.  Ricks and Harrell were complete busts.  And yet the ’22 group came in with a lot more sizzle, as the article puts it, than this year’s bunch does.  Either the ‘Bama bloom is starting to wear off the portal rose, or Saban’s ability to assess talent has aged like fine wine.  We’ll soon see.

Moving on

If there’s one player I’m not going to begrudge or mock for making a decision to transfer to Georgia Tech, it’s this guy.

Dominick Blaylock is staying in the Peach State to continue his College Football career but it won’t be at the University of Georgia. The former Bulldog wideout entered the transfer portal in January and has chosen Georgia Tech as his landing spot.

“Proud to say that I am graduating this week from the University of Georgia,” Blaylock said in an exclusive interview with DawgsHQ. “After talking to over 15 programs, I have decided to further my graduate studies and finish my eligibility at Georgia Tech. Thank you Athens and for everything and all the great memories. GO DAWGS”

“Dom has loved everything about Georgia, he has loved his experience at Georgia, he loved Kirby Smart, he loved it all,” His mother, Janelle Woods, told DawgsHQ Tuesday evening. “This decision was about the rest of his life for the path he wants to take after football. He is so excited to have his degree from Georgia as well. I think it is important for Bulldog fans to know he loved there and this is his next chapter for him. He can also be closer to his brothers who live in the city as well and they are very close. Going to Georgia Tech is really the next phase for him whether it is NFL or working in the IT world, which he is really interested in too. I think at this stage, Georgia Tech was the best spot for him, he can play football and learn further in their IT departments.”

Dom’s been a class act who left everything on the field for Georgia, unfortunately for him, as injuries curtailed what I thought was going to be an elite career.  I wish him nothing but the best, both as a Jacket and also in his future endeavors.

“I’m a change agent.”

By my count, Colorado's now lost all 4 QBs who threw >20 passes, 3 of 5 RBs, all 9 players targeted >8 times, 5 of 8 OLs and 7 of 8 DLs with >100 snaps, all 4 LBs with >200 snaps, and 12 of 17 DBs with ANY snaps.

Obviously added like one jillion transfers, too, but GOOD GOD.

— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) April 24, 2023

I admit I haven’t been following the Coach Prime Goes To Boulder saga that closely, but with what went down yesterday ($$), I’m on it now.

At Colorado, Monday morning began with second-year linebacker Shakaun Bowser entering the NCAA transfer portal at 8:14 a.m. local time.

Wide receiver Montana Lemonious-Craig, one of the breakout stars of the Buffaloes’ spring game on Saturday, entered a few minutes later. Backup offensive lineman Jackson Anderson was next. And then safety Tyrin Taylor, a 10-game starter last year.

At noon, it was time for the big roster purge: 11 scholarship players became available in the transfer portal in less than an hour.

By the end of the day, 18 players were in the portal.

Eighteen in a day has to be some sort of record, doesn’t it?  And yesterday was just the exclamation point to Sanders’ effort to completely remake Colorado’s roster seemingly overnight.

… After Monday’s departures, Colorado has now seen 46 scholarship football players enter the transfer portal in 2022-23, with 41 exiting since Sanders took over. No other Power 5 program has lost more than 29 in this cycle.

Colorado had 83 scholarship players at the start of the 2022 season. Only 20 are still on the roster as of Monday night.

Not sure what adjective best describes what’s going on.  Unprecedented?  Sure.  Aggressive?  Absolutely.  And while the article makes clear it’s impossible to say how many left voluntarily and how many were forced out, it’s clear that Sanders is doing some heavy lifting, as he flat out admits.

“We’ve got to make some decisions,” Sanders said. “That’s gonna be on me now. That was on them. Now it’s on me.”

I have no idea how this plays out in ’23.  On the one hand, Colorado finished last season with a 1-11 record and a points differential of minus-349, so it’s not as if Sanders could make things a lot worse with this wholesale roster shuffle.  On the other hand, that’s a shitload of turnover.  Expecting all those new faces to mesh in a relatively short period of time strikes me as overly optimistic.

The other part of this that intrigues me is the dog that didn’t bark aspect of the story.  Let’s face it, Sanders is canning players left and right.  Yet there’s very little outrage or even mild questioning about what’s supposed to be a no-no with um… student-athletes.  All of which leads me to wonder if what he’s done will become a standard template going forward for coaches coming in to resurrect substandard programs.

Bill Connelly’s words of wisdom

The man has a lengthy — and I do mean lengthy — post up this morning analyzing the transfer trends from last season and what they might portend for 2023 ($$).  You can read the whole thing until your eyes swim, or you can just jump to the punchline:

Unless you’re Georgia, you really should be dipping into the portal

Hey, that worked last season!

A record that may never be broken

This ($$), via Seth Emerson, is pretty remarkable:

QB JT Daniels (Rice): So much for the idea, expressed in some parts (including here) that Daniels’ and Stetson Bennett’s seasons would be constantly compared last year. Daniels passed for 2,107 yards in 10 games for West Virginia but couldn’t secure the starting job so he moved on to Rice, which will be his fourth school. Daniels never has used the one-time transfer exemption: He got a waiver to go from USC to Georgia, and the past two transfers have been via the graduate exemption.  [Emphasis added.]

He’s gonna run out of regular eligibility before he runs out of transfer eligibility.

A “duh” moment in Gainesville

This sort of bookends today’s first post, but I thought you should know that Billy’s still in the market, shopping.

Billy Napier had his quarterback room planned out. Former Wisconsin signal-caller Graham Mertz would serve as a veteran presence and likely starter with inexperienced returners Jack Miller and Max Brown and highly-touted freshman newcomer Jaden Rashada joining him to give Florida four scholarship players at the critical position.

But a late collapse with Rashada’s NIL deal led him to back off his signed National Letter of Intent and pursue other options (Rashada signed with Arizona State, his father’s alma mater, on Wednesday).

As a result, the Gators have just three scholarship quarterbacks on their roster, which falls short of the minimum number Napier set on Early Signing Day when he said his teams should have no fewer than four scholarship quarterbacks at all times.

While that could be reasonably challenging to achieve in quality fashion given the timing of Rashada’s shocking departure from Florida’s coffer, Napier said Wednesday that Florida will be in the market for another signal-caller this spring.

“I think if there’s an opportunity, there’s a player that passes evaluation,” Napier said, “we certainly would be in the market for another player there.”

No shit, Sherlock.  The problem is that no quarterback is finding Florida’s sales pitch particularly inspiring.

Initially, it appeared Florida could pivot from Rashada and target former LSU signal-caller Walker Howard, a one-time four-star prospect who entered the NCAA transfer portal after just one season with the Tigers.

… But, according to multiple sources, Howard had very little interest in the Gators and ultimately closed his recruitment down by committing to Ole Miss, which also added former Oklahoma State transfer signal-caller Spencer Sanders.

Ole Miss also has last season’s starter returning.  It says something that Howard would rather go fight two former starting quarterbacks than jump aboard the Good Ship Napier.  And he’s not the only one.

Sources also indicated to Swamp247 that the Gators had started to consider the possibility of pursuing former Washington quarterback Sam Huard, a former five-star quarterback who out of high school ranked No. 12 overall, No. 3 among quarterbacks and No. 249 among all prospects in the internet recruiting service era on the industry-generated 247Sports Composite

However, sources said that Florida’s communication with Huard never quite got off the ground and the former record-breaking high school quarterback eventually committed to Cal Poly.

Cal Poly beat out Florida for a former five-star?  Why, Miz Scarlett, I nevah!

Have fun in the portal, Coach.