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UPDATED: UGA’s class gets big boost by signing Lowndes OLB Josh Harvey-Clemons
UGA Sports Blog (ajc.com) - 1 hour 52 min ago
ATHENS – Greetings from Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall, or recruiting central here at UGA, where the Bulldogs just received their biggest news of the day.
Josh Harvey-Clemons, the athletic defensive end/outside linebacker from Lowndes County, announced during an awkward live telecast by ESPNU that he was signing with the Bulldogs. He chose UGA over Florida State, Florida and Miami.
This is a huge acquisition on a couple of fronts. Never mind that he is considered the No. 1 player in the state. The truth is, Georgia would have been fine without his addition as it is well stocked at the position. But it’s more important from the standpoint of the Bulldogs re-establishing themselves in the city of Valdosta and at Lowndes High in particular.
There has been a pipeline that has run between Valdosta and Tallahassee for a number of years now and still gets some pretty good use. But the Bulldogs have secured the best players out of that city the last couple of years, including Malcolm …
Categories: UGA Blogs
Another shot across the bow of roster management
Get the Picture - 3 hours 12 min ago
The Big Ten isn’t waiting on the NCAA to mandate multi-year scholarships. It’s moving ahead on its own.
… Buckeyes, as well as players at most — if not all — Big Ten schools and some other programs around the country, are signing four-year scholarships instead of renewable one-year scholarships, as has been the standard. After an NCAA rule change, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany encouraged conference schools to offer four-year grants.
The SEC has declined to follow the Big Ten’s lead, although individual schools are free to do so.
In the Southeastern Conference, money isn’t an issue, but some conference coaches, like South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier, have come out publicly against multi-year offers, saying players need to continue to earn their way. SEC commissioner Mike Slive, however, has publicly supported multi-year scholarships, and Greg Sankey, the SEC associate commissioner for compliance, said Tuesday that Slive maintains that stance.
However, for now, SEC schools made their own calls without conference input.
“We took the less regulatory approach to see how this is implemented across the country,” Sankey said.
Translation: we’ll wait and see if this starts costing our member programs recruits.
If it does, expect Steve Spurrier to find religion on the matter.
(h/t: CFT)
Filed under: Big Ten Football, Recruiting, SEC Football
Categories: UGA Blogs
And heeeeeere’s signing day!
Get the Picture - 3 hours 34 min ago
Filter today’s craziness through Paul Myerberg’s summary:
For now, the fast and quick guys are going to U.S.C., Alabama, L.S.U. and the like. The fast but not quick guys are going to B.Y.U., Kansas State, Missouri and the like, programs that seem to be doing fine with the hand they’re dealt. The not-so-fast and not-so-quick guys go to the Sun Belt. That’s signing day in a nutshell. Now we can ignore the recently-committed recruits until they step onto practice fields in August.
All the rest, as the wise man once said, is commentary. The thing is, we like the commentary… we need the commentary. For that, Groo’s got some handy links for us here.
And remember, sometimes it’s about the food.
*************************************************************************************
UPDATE:
Ha #YouKnowItsSigningDay when it's not even 8am and there's an abnormal
amount of old men heading towards the Butts! #GeorgiaNSD #GoDawgs—
Christian Robinson (@crob45) February 01, 2012
Filed under: Georgia Football, Recruiting
Categories: UGA Blogs
This is Georgia Tech recruiting.
Get the Picture - 3 hours 44 min ago
Paul Johnson's powers of persuasion ain't what they used to be.
Three links which sum up the state of the program:
- Michael Felder’s takedown of the hypocrisy of Johnson’s “no visit once you commit” policy is worth a read.
- “Over the past five years, the Jackets have landed only two of the 74 Georgia recruits ranked in ESPN’s top 150.” And both of those were signed by Chan Gailey.
- It’s tough to persuade commits to stay loyal when you’re penalized by the NCAA due to recruiting violations from having contact with them.
Just amazing.
Filed under: Georgia Tech Football, Recruiting
Categories: UGA Blogs
A fine mess
Get the Picture - 4 hours 3 min ago
Imagine there’s no SEC divisions…
… The SEC must persuade the NCAA to dump its requirements for a championship game. If that were to happen, the SEC could go to a divisionless format that would allow the league to protect the conference’s oldest rivalries and keep a good rotation going for non-permanent foes.
Without divisions, the SEC could simply pair the teams with the two best SEC records in its championship game. Forget the problem of having the two best teams in one division. Without divisions, the two top teams in the league would always reach Atlanta.
Oy. I know Pennington’s heart is in the right place – he’s trying to figure out a way to save traditional conference rivalries in the face of a fourteen-team league playing an eight-game conference schedule – but what he’s come up with is what I used to dislike about the Big Ten before it went divisional, on steroids. You wind up with a conference that’s too big to play round robin ball in the regular season, with all the issues that creates as to which school wins the regular season title, and you then make it worse in those years when there isn’t such a problem by requiring the team with the best regular season record to prove itself against a runner-up which doesn’t even have the justification of being a divisional champ as the basis for making a title game.
That sounds like what people just got through bitching about with the BCS title game, no?
Don’t blame Pennington, though. It’s a useful exercise to go through what he’s come up with. Nah, blame Mike Slive and the school officials he answers to for messing with a good thing in the name of jacking up the TV dollars. Particularly if the move to a seven-win qualification for bowl participation goes through, this round of SEC expansion is going to go down as awkward at best, because that will surely end the possibility of a nine-game conference schedule. The people running the show had best hope it’s not any worse.
Filed under: SEC Football
Categories: UGA Blogs
National Signing Day
Georgia Sports Blog - 4 hours 28 min ago
Over night there were a couple of interesting developments:
- Josh Harvey-Clemons didn't narrow his choices to two. Does it mean anything? Not sure. Some say it has to do with his cell phone being left on Nevin Shapiro's boat in Miami. If I had to guess, it makes me think Georgia and FSU aren't the slam dunk top two.
- Eligwe narrows to two. UGA ain't one. Swing and a miss.
Categories: UGA Blogs
Sticking around
Get the Picture - 4 hours 30 min ago
A lot of folks (including me) saw the parallels between Tennessee and Auburn back in 2009 – both programs flushed out successful head coaches, both brought in replacements without the greatest track records, both spent wads of cash on assistant coaches, both crowed about the recruiting prowess of their new staffs…
It turns out they’ve got something else in common. In what sounds eerily like what’s happened to Junior’s only recruiting class, Auburn is also going through an impressive rate of attrition.
… Remarkably, 43 percent of Auburn’s 2009 and 2010 signees are no longer on the team, or never joined the program in the first place. That’s a brutal percentage, especially as Auburn sits with the SEC’s fewest 2012 commitments and two new coordinators who inevitably will weed out some veterans…
… The missing signees are spread out among positions. They include six offensive linemen, four wide receivers, four defensive backs, three linebackers, three running backs and three defensive linemen.
They’re not just fringe players. Forty percent of Auburn’s four- or five-star signees listed by Rivals.com from those years are gone. That doesn’t include five-star offensive lineman Shon Coleman, who hasn’t played while fighting cancer and remains in the program.
Maybe that’s just a coincidence; Auburn hasn’t lost a single kid from its last class. But it’s a weird one. Does it take time for a new staff to shake off some of the mercenary vibes before settling in? Or do Trooper and the Laner have something more in common?
Filed under: Auburn's Cast of Thousands, Don't Mess With Lane Kiffin, Recruiting
Categories: UGA Blogs
Name that caption: he’s tanned, rested and ready.
Get the Picture - 5 hours 4 min ago
He’s getting ready to punch himself… or point with both fingers.
Either that, or he’s about to launch into an “I’m a man” tirade.
Your comments are welcome.
Filed under: Name That Caption
Categories: UGA Blogs
Lots of recruiting drama on horizon as Georgia welcomes national signing day
UGA Sports Blog (ajc.com) - 5 hours 33 min ago
ATHENS – Happy National Signing Day to you.
For college coaches and recruitniks everywhere, today is the big day. Today we find out who’s going where and, in many cases, if they’re going where they said they would. The latter may apply quite often today for Georgia. The Bulldogs have been working hard to try to flip a few elite prospects who are committed elsewhere, while also fighting to hold onto some of their own, of course.
I’ll be at Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall following the drama all day long, and there figures to be plenty. For up-to-the-minute news on commitments, be sure to follow me on Twitter.com @ajcuga and get the news as soon as I do.
Here’s what we know:
- Georgia has 17 commitments coming into national signing day.
By rule it could sign as many as 10 more but is not expected to do so. But ideally the Bulldogs would land five or six more than they currently have — assuming, of course, all the commitments remain committed.
- It appears to be a solid class that …
Categories: UGA Blogs
Georgia loses another member of football strength staff
UGA Sports Blog (ajc.com) - 11 hours 19 min ago
ATHENS — Georgia is losing its second strength coach in a month.
Keith Gray, who has been an assistant on Georgia’s strength and conditioning staff for 13 seasons and worked under three different directors, is leaving to accept a similar job with the Philadelphia Eagles.
“The guy called me on Friday and wanted to know if I was interested in the position,” Gray said Tuesday evening. “He said he wanted me up there but he needed to talk to the GM and the head coach first. He called me back on Monday and formally offered me the job.”
Gray said he accepted the position between “lifting groups” on Monday afternoon and immediately informed current program director Joe Tereshinski.
“He was genuinely happy for me,” said Gray, a former linebacker at Virginia Tech. “Everybody’s just been so great at Georgia. They’ve been happy for me and pulling for me. It’s just been an outpouring of affection people have shown me.”
Gray is the second member of the football team’s strength staff to step …
Categories: UGA Blogs
Signing Day 2012 Resources
Dawgsonline - 11 hours 33 min ago
There are a ton of sites now with Signing Day pages, but we’ll focus on two:
- The official Signing Day page at georgiadogs.com. Signings shouldn’t be considered official until the school posts them, and this is where they’ll do it. Most everyone else will be sourcing from this info anyway.
- The commitment / signing list at UGASports.com. The school can’t name verbal commitments of course, but this page from UGASports.com will show you who has signed and which verbal commitments are yet to sign. There is also a mobile version here.
Twitter is perfect for the fast pace of Signing Day, and that’s where most of the news will break first. Rather than suggest dozens of people to follow, we’ll make it simple.
We’ve created a Twitter list of 20 or so of the media outlets and recruiting services/blogs that will have relevant content on Signing Day. Just follow this list, and you’ll see the tweets from all of those people whether or not you follow them. Follow @dawgsonline/UGASigningDay11
If all of the sites and analysis and rumors throughout the day are a bit too much and you just want to know who signed where, we’ve created a Twitter account for that, too. Just follow @uga_nsd. It’s a low-noise feed that will just tell you 1) when someone has signed with Georgia and 2) the Signing Day decisions of 8-10 key prospects where Georgia is heavily involved. It shouldn’t be more than 30-35 tweets throughout the day, so you can even sign up for mobile notifications on that @uga_nsd account and not be overwhelmed.
Of course you can keep up with the #signingday hashtag for nationwide recruiting news and talk.
Categories: UGA Blogs
Musical palate cleanser, pre-signing day edition
Get the Picture - Tue, 01/31/2012 - 15:41
Click here to listen to “Horse Back”, a new 30-minute jam from Neil Young and Crazy Horse. (If you’re a Zuma fan, you’ll thank me.)
Filed under: Uncategorized
Categories: UGA Blogs
SEC Hoops Power Poll Ballot - Week of January 29th
Georgia Sports Blog - Tue, 01/31/2012 - 11:07
- Kentucky - Nothing to see here. Move along.
- Florida - Gators are rolling. They might not lose again until the season finale against Kentucky.
- Vandy - Teams are figuring out Vandy. Can Stallings get the Commodores back to playing top 15 basketball?
- Mississippi State - This team really confuses me. I'm starting to think the coaches take long stretches of games off. Still they are in the discussion for the top of the conference.
- Ole Miss - We'll find out just how good this team is this week with two tough road games.
- Alabama - Plays down to the level of the competition too much to be a contender for anything more than an NCAA bubble team.
- Arkansas - Starting to look like the team is wearing out playing the super up tempo game.
- LSU - The Tigers are competing, but might not win another game until late February with their schedule. Will Johnson still have his team by then?
- Tennessee - Reverting to pre-conference schedule form. Still a talented team, but seems to play younger than they are.
- Georgia - Woo hoo! Dawgs didn't lose this weekend. What's that? They were off? Oh.
- Auburn - At least they have played South Carolina.
- South Carolina - I wanted to reward them for their win over 'Bama, so I am not ranking them 13th. This week.
TD
Categories: UGA Blogs
Ten@10: UGA gets first DB in Dawson, now needs more O-linemen
UGA Sports Blog (ajc.com) - Tue, 01/31/2012 - 10:05
With national signing day bearing down on us and a plethora of UGA news swirling, it seemed like a good time to dust off . . .
THE TEN AT 10
1. With the commitment of Memphis defensive back Sheldon Dawson on Monday, the Bulldogs now sit at 17 public commitments heading into national signing day. It does not appear that they’ll receive any more announcements before the official letters-of-intent start rolling in at Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall early tomorrow. Meanwhile, don’t let Dawson’s original commitment to Memphis fool you. He committed to the Tigers before last season when he lit it up both offensively and defensively for Ridgeway High and showcased what has been reported as 4.4-second, 40-yard speed. By the end of his recruitment, Dawson claimed more than 20 offers and the majority were from major BCS programs such as Ohio State, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
2. Now Georgia looks to close strong, and it has the opportunity to do that. Probably the most important …
Categories: UGA Blogs
After flurry of late interest, former UGA commit Chester Brown decides on UCF
UGA Sports Blog (ajc.com) - Tue, 01/31/2012 - 09:31
The Chester Brown saga finally has a conclusion.
The 6-foot-5, 340-pound lineman from Bradwell Institute, who had to back out of his longtime UGA commitment due to an immigration issue, has decided to sign with Central Florida after all. Brown committed to the Knights over the weekend during an official visit, but had second thoughts upon returning to Hinesville.
Coach Jim Walsh said charted calls and visits from 29 different schools over the weekend that were either inquiring about Brown’s availability or stepping up with actual offers. Among the schools showing late interest were Auburn, Missouri, Miami, North Carolina and Southern Cal, Walsh said.
“We had schools coming in from everywhere,” Walsh said. “It almost became more of a burden. Just overwhleming is a better way to put it. Up until [Monday] night our intention was to take it past signing day. It got sideways there for a minute. But once Chester could clear his head and talk it over with his family he was able to …
Categories: UGA Blogs
T minus 23 hours until National Signing Day
Georgia Sports Blog - Tue, 01/31/2012 - 09:10
Here we find ourselves 23 hours before National Signing Day. NSD is the last shot of methadone given before we are kicked out of our program, at least until Spring football. I don't expound on recruiting much, other than giving a snarky, usually ill informed, opinion about the outcome, but that doesn't mean I don't follow it and want Georgia to win at this as much as I do everything from football to tiddlywinks.
Having said that, the rational Tyler (call him The Narrator, if you like) knows the actual Scout/Rivals/ESPN/randomeblogyouveneverheardofbuteveryoneswearsisthebestatrecruiting rankings are just tools for those sites to talk/write about something to feed the voracious appetites of their readers. Addressing need is much more important to The Narrator than winning recruiting rankings.
That being said, it is important for Georgia to close strong. There are several 4-5 star players out there that would fill needs. Recruiting sites often miss on a 3 star player's upside. They rarely miss on 4 and 5 star players' downsides. If a guy is a 4 or 5 star, they it is likely they are the real deal.
My dream list for Georgia (and how likely the Dawgvent will explode at how they are being underused we are to see them in Athens in the Fall):
Dalvin Tomlinson - 8:45 announcement; 30% likely a Dawg, likely going to Alabama
Jaquay Williams - 8:45 announcement; 60% likely a Dawg, 40% Auburn
Josh Harvey-Clemons - 9am announcement; 90% likely a Dawg
Brandon Greene - 9:00 announcement; 40% likely a Dawg, 60% Alabama
Kenderious Whitehead - 9:00 announcement; 2% likely a Dawg, he's going to NC State
Josh Dawson - 10:00 announcement; 50/50 with Vandy
Cordarrelle Patterson - 11:30 announcement; 90% likely a Dawg
Avery Young - 2:00 announcement; 60% likely a Dawg, Auburn and Florida are even if he doesn't come to Athens.
And....the mystery recruit. The white whale of recruiting. It is hard to say if the rumors are true or if Georgia having an easy two unspoken for spots mean the class is fuller than we know. Honestly, if I had to say, there is a guy out there that has publicly committed to another school, but has told Georgia's coaches they are still very much in the hunt. Like everyone, I think it is a Dback. I'd say someone that is totally unexpected like Deon Bonner (due to his situation during the visit), Chaz Elder (who has a SC hat on for his Rivals picture) or Ronald Dabry (who hasn't really even mentioned Georgia in his many discussions with the media). I'd also throw Eligwe and Dillon Lee (he's already enrolled at 'Bama) in the discussion, as both have been committed to their schools for quite a while and both could see some immediate playing time. If I were forced to guess, I'd say Eligwe or Darby (note that Eligwe has postponed his decision until Feb 6 and made less than positive comments about UGA).
TD
Categories: UGA Blogs
Is the SEC’s new 25-man cap having an impact?
Get the Picture - Tue, 01/31/2012 - 08:44
Sometimes, the devil’s in the details, as Seth Emerson tells us.
… But programs also accept early enrollments — such as Georgia did with Keith Marshall and two other recruits earlier this month. Under the old rules, teams had back-counted early enrollments toward the previous signing class, as a way of signing more players. That is still allowed.
But the programs were also allowed to not count players who signed but failed to qualify academically or didn’t enroll for whatever reason. The SEC clarified Monday that the new rules prevent teams from doing that anymore.
“If a player signs, he counts without regard to whether or not he actually enrolls,” SEC spokesman Charles Bloom said in an e-mail Monday. “ ‘Back counting’ is only permitted for mid-year enrollees who are able to be included as an initial counter for the academic year in which they enroll. ‘Back counting’ is an artificial term for this discussion and not accurate as the question is about the signing limit.”
So essentially under the old rules, what mattered most was who actually enrolled. But the SEC’s new rules are directed at who signs. [Emphasis added.]
If you’re a coach who takes chances with kids who haven’t qualified academically on signing day, that definitely makes the math trickier. If you guess wrong, you don’t get a mulligan. And even if you aren’t that aggressive, well… this stuff sorta sounds like rocket science:
The SEC rule — and the national rule next year — allows an annual exception for teams to sign more than 25. That is possible if one or more signees can be counted backward toward the previous year’s class. There must be spots available in the previous class to do so.
The maximum 25 new scholarship players who can enroll each academic year are called “initial counters.” Almost always, initial counters are players who were recruited to be put on scholarship upon enrolling for their first year.
How does counting backward work? If a team shows up in the fall and adds, for instance, 20 new initial counters to go with 65 returning players, it would be maxed out at the NCAA limit of 85 scholarships and there would be five initial counters the team didn’t use.
Come December and January, the team could add five mid-year enrollees who count back toward the previous class if there are at least five current players whose eligibility ended. The mid-year enrollees could be any combination of junior college and four-year college transfers or early graduates from high school.
If that team brought in a sixth mid-year enrollee, one of those six mid-year enrollees would have to be counted forward, reducing the size of the upcoming signing class from 25 to 24.
The new rule supposedly has its first poster child.
… Alabama’s handling of North Atlanta High School running back Justin Taylor, who committed to the Crimson Tide a year ago, is the most high-profile example of the signing cap working as intended. Taylor told reporters that Saban said he couldn’t sign with the 2012 class because of the new rule and Taylor’s torn ACL.
In the past, Taylor might have been a grayshirt who signed a National Letter of Intent and delayed enrollment. Alabama still has an offer to Taylor, who may eventually sign in 2013. But in the meantime, the SEC cap prevented Taylor from signing, which had he been able to do so would have taken away his leverage to still be recruited by other schools.
If Saban hasn’t figured an effective way to tap dance around the new cap, maybe it’s fair to say there’s something substantive to it.
As the article notes, this rule goes into effect nationally this August, so at least the conference won’t be at a competitive disadvantage with other conferences in the future. There’s also another roster management rule from the NCAA coming down the turnpike:
… The NCAA also adopted the SEC’s proposal to count summer enrollees on financial aid toward a team’s scholarship numbers for the next academic year. That gives universities less freedom to remove a scholarship from a player after he attends summer school simply because a different recruit gains eligibility late. The SEC has not yet adopted the summer-school rule, which goes into effect next summer.
If it’s an SEC proposal, you’d have to think it’ll be adopted in time. Grayshirting, while not prohibited, looks like it’s becoming more and more of a challenge. We’ll see how the coaches adapt.
Filed under: Recruiting, SEC Football
Categories: UGA Blogs
Pay the price.
Get the Picture - Tue, 01/31/2012 - 08:09
Welcome to your SEC, where everything other than the air you breathe is monetized. And that which is not expressly permitted is forbidden:
… It seems that the 40 or so videos of old Bulldog games I had posted on YouTube over the last one-and-a-half years and embedded into my blog posts were committing copyright infringement. XOS Digital – a division of XOS Technologies, Inc., and the group behind the SEC Digital Network - has apparently been on a mission to rid the Internet of any video depicting members of the SEC. They finally caught up to me a few days ago, and in the process, got rid of every last one of my 40+ freakin’ videos that I spent hours cutting up and preparing!
Suddenly, without any sort of notification or warning of my wrong doing, my blog was temporarily removed, all of my videos were wiped out, and my YouTube account was suspended.
Look, I get the need for some of this. The conference doesn’t want entire games posted on YouTube when it derives some financial benefit from controlling distribution.
But Patrick Garbin is posting clips from games more than a decade ago on a fan blog. He’s not trying to generate commercial competition; he’s simply encouraging interest from a (relatively) small number of folks with a passion for a football program. Hell, if anything, should he manage to whet somebody’s appetite with a post, with a little effort, that’s something SEC Digital Networks ought to be able to make a buck off of, as Gawd and Mike Slive intended.
You’d think that fan interest is something precious and worth nurturing. But this is the SEC, which has a hard time seeing past anyone’s wallet now. I may be disappointed, but I can’t say I’m surprised.
Filed under: It's Just Bidness, SEC Football
Categories: UGA Blogs
Chasing those stars
Get the Picture - Tue, 01/31/2012 - 07:25
One of the more valuable services Matt Hinton provides is his annual reminder that, quite simply, “(t)he better your recruiting rankings by the gurus, the better your chances of winning games, against all classes.”
You want an illustration of what that means? Okay, here’s a handy chart:
No, there are no guarantees in life. There are plenty of five-star busts. There are any number of unheralded recruits who turn out to be raging success stories. But when your typical five-star player has a ten-times better chance of becoming an All-American than does your average three-star recruit (and a one hundred-times better shot than a two-star kid!), then you have to play the odds if you’ve got the opportunity to do so. It’s simple math.
Filed under: Recruiting
Categories: UGA Blogs
Hell hath no fury like a momma scorned
Get the Picture - Tue, 01/31/2012 - 07:13
Landon Collins’ mom definitely ain’t happy with Nick Saban. Her heart belongs to The Hat.
In an interview with a website called MomsTeam.com, Justin expounded on her distaste for the Tide as Collins’ choice, saying that “[Alabama] want[s] to redshirt – or greyshirt – him and they want him playing nickleback instead of safety. He is the top safety in the country and he will never play a game his freshman year.” At the choice of school for her son, LSU, “coach Les Miles is offering to play him as safety during his freshman year.”
She also claims that her son’s girlfriend has been offered a job in Saban’s office, the implication being that his school loyalty is following his little head around. (Shocking to think that could happen, I know.)
But for all that, you have to wonder if the woman is a little clueless when she says things like this:
“His (Nick Saban’s) goals don’t meet the criteria of the family; they meet the criteria of Alabama,” Justin added.
She has to be the only person in America who finds that to be a profound observation. And if she thinks Saban is unique in that way, she’s even more clueless than I already think she is.
Filed under: Nick Saban Rules, Recruiting
Categories: UGA Blogs