This is the one weekend where I really want to make an effort to watch... looking forward to the slate of conference championship games.... SEC & Big 10 games primarily.
Can’t wait. I’m all wound up. A waste of a work week, which may be why I’ve burned time posting about some Chinese tennis chick on TGG. So tired of outplaying Alabama for 3.75 quarters only to get stung in the end. This was encouraging, though. The 11th missing guy he’s talking about was probably the highest draft pick of all - Adam Anderson. Until he was suspended for rape charges.
I’ll raise your draft grades stat and give you this. This is the first game after 92 consecutive games that Alabama is a Vegas underdog. They’ve been dogs 6 times under Saban since 2008. 10 times total including his first season in 2007.
And oddly enough, Jordan Davis wasn’t even one of them. Consider also - Jermaine Johnson, ACC Defensive Player of the Year and Brenton Cox, sack leader for Florida. Georgia transfers. Crazy.
I have a friend that worked for the Georgia program last year who told me calling Adam Anderson dumber than a box of rocks is an insult to rocks. I gotta ask him about Jordan Davis. I have to go back and watch Jermaine Johnson. His name keeps popping up in draft circles and I’m curious to see what he looks like. In any event, it’s gotta actually be a hard decision for these kids to want to go to Alabama for playing purposes. But it’s been made a lot easier with the transfer portal.
I think if you believe in yourself you have to jump at a chance to go to Bama. They just pump out guys year after year, and a lot of times they only end up playing 1 year of college ball as a starter. The thing is that NFL talent evaluators don’t hold that against any of them because they know how deep the roster is. The coaching is top notch, and you’ll have big time, publicizes games. If you take advantage of the bench time to really take coaching, you can launch yourself into a high pick with only one season playing. Quinnen is a great example of that actually.
Spencer Sanders blows. Imagine Oklahoma State had a real QB? Rattler has a lot of options, but I wouldn’t be too shocked if he ended up there.
Yeah, not to get all preachy, but I have a tough time with that part. Especially when the selling pitch to most of these top-tier high school kids is the path to the NFL, which most won’t realize, and those that do will probably only see a 3-4 “career”. The open transfer portal and NIL rules were long overdue and finally give these kids some leverage. We were robbing these kids of their marketable skills and value. When the UGA bookstore is selling Todd Gurley jerseys for $150 each and he gets suspended for selling $200 worth of autographs, the rules are whacked. And so unfair when a kid like Quinn Ewers - the number one recruit in the entire friggin’ nation - is sitting behind CJ Stroud on the depth chart but would have to sit out a full season under the old rules if he wanted to transfer somewhere else. It was also stupid and self-defeating for the NCAA to purposely keep talented players off the field, but I don't give a flying fuck about the NCAA. The players, though - I'm glad they finally have some leverage. I just hope the NCAA handles it properly while Dodge City normalizes. Quick story that will make me sound soft and gushy and not entirely related, but I’ma tell it here for the first time ever. Thank the SEC Network for constant reminders this past week of all the times Alabama stabbed me in the gut with a salad fork. My favorite UGA recruit of all-time was a kid named Keith Marshall. The draftniks around here will remember him. He was a 5-star recruit out of North Carolina and the number one RB that year. Lightning fast. Ranked higher than Todd Gurley. I was thrilled when he committed to UGA because, much like I do with most of their targets, I followed his recruitment and devoured every bit of video the internet had on the kid. He and Todd Gurley both had an incredible (“Gurshall”) freshman year and Georgia had an incredible season - up until a heartbreaking loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship. The first of several to follow. Keith blew out his knee early the following season and Gurley was limited that year by an ankle sprain. Fortunately for UGA, they had a new kid named Nick Chubb. Whatever plans Georgia had for Keith Marshall as a feature back, the circumstances had changed. Keith never really recovered, but he had a solid combine and was drafted by the Redskins near the end of draft. I was absolutely positive that his knee injuries were behind him and once Washington put him on the field he’d show everyone what I knew. Never happened. He spent two years on IR and then retired. I felt horrible for the kid. After news of that he tore up his knee again in his second training camp, I wrote him a letter (Edit: Link removed). Embarrassing fanboy stuff, I know. I'll probably take that link down, so get it while it's hot. But, the story has a happy ending. A year or so ago, I read a "Where Are They Now" thing and found out that Keith went back to school and just completed his MBA at Emory. He's now working with a consulting firm in Atlanta. Keith Marshall is unfortunately the exception. I'd probably be heartbroken to dive into the bowels of the internet and find out where all the kids are that I watched as high school recruits. Most of them prevented from realizing any profit of their most marketable skill and done by age 22. Anyway. . . enjoy the games!
I’ll counter your player leverage point with the fact that all of these kids get the chance at a free education of $70-$120k+ from the start. It’s not the NCAA’s fault that they choose not to take full advantage of it to better themselves for life after college football. I get that the NCAA makes tons of money off their likeness and what not, but I have a pretty hard time getting on board with them getting paid through the NIL for that reason. Especially when I believe a guy like Quinn Ewers is already a pre-tax millionaire before ever taking a snap.
Yeah, I hear you. And that's not lost on me. There's also a huge risk that NIL could ruin college football as we know it now. But I know you follow the way these 17-18 year-old, four and five-star kids are treated when they announce their college choice. Same ceremony and fanfare as a pro athlete signing a free agent contract. They're signed for their football talent, not their math skills, so it's no surprise that education takes second place to football. Plus, coaches risk losing a recruit by telling them the harsh truth - that they should prioritize their education over football because they probably won't have an NFL career. So, I'm in favor of them getting every dime out of their talent before it's all over and they have nothing at all. Not without concerns, though.
I’ll counter you one more by saying most of these educations should cost a fraction of what they do, and that many college programs have all kinds of ways of “helping” these kids maintain academic eligibility and most of them have nothing to do with studying or tutoring. In many cases they are not guided towards maximizing, or even utilizing the education they have access to.
I’m still more torn on it than my post made it seem and all of your points are good ones. I’m worried for one on the change of the college sport but more important the long term pipeline of the NFL. How long are these guys going to want to play after being multi-millionaires coming into the league? I think it also creates a bit of entitlement out of a portion of these kids. What if Ewers never amounts to anything more than a 6th round pick? You just killed meritocracy because advertisers threw money at a guy thinking he was something he’s not.
Hey. I’m with you 100%. The modern day college system is fraudulent and the system doesn’t teach kids how to maximize their experience to gain crucial skills needed for a career. I lived it and own the debt although I’ve luckily found a good career path on my own, no thanks to college. But that doesn’t change the fact that they get massive benefits for playing a sport regardless of what the benefit is that the scumbags at the NCAA reap. I think it’s a global societal issue though. Celebrities and athletes are valued way more than educators and nurses. It’s not good for the long term sustainability of humans.
On the other hand, a cynic would say that college stars were already being paid and NIL now brings everything out into the open and has the potential of controlling mercenary spending by boosters. Emphasis on the words "potential" and "control". Boosters are still going to game the system. Either way, if I'm going to let young, irresponsible millionaires bother me, it's going to take me a while to get through the entire entertainment industry before I can focus on back on college football. I'm with you, though - it has the potential of turning into a disaster for football.
I will say. One thing I like a lot that the traditional college football fans (and the coaches and guys like Dicky V in CBB) hate is the transfer portal. Guys shouldn’t have to do what Cam Newton did and score 80 touchdowns against D2 players for a year before getting back on the field. Let the guys control their own destiny if they’re not getting playing time. It’s the best thing the NCAA has done in it’s existence.
I'm headed out. Hope you guys enjoy Championship Saturday. But, before I take off, as someone who follows Georgia football intently, I'll let you all in on my biggest concern today and all season. It's been proved over and over again throughout history . . . . You can never trust anyone who uses even-numbered Roman numerals.
