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Georgia football winners and losers following 2022 SEC Media Days
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Georgia football winners and losers following 2022 SEC Media Days
It was a busy week for Georgia coach Kirby Smart.
Comments
It's really "encouraging" to listen to experts like Rich Eisen condemn Smart for his opposition to NIL. It's pretty obvious that Eisen didn't even bother to find out how Smart feels about the NIL.
“I would rival anybody in the country with 95 NIL deals coming off a National Championship and pretty gaudy number total that we’ve been able to give out.”
So exactly what is the "pretty gaudy number" in US dollars?
Trying to tie a coaches salary as justification for a pay-for-play scheme has always been a tinfoil hat non-sequitur. I don't know who this Louis Riddick is, but he clearly has wax buildup in his ears. Kirby's position on NIL is that it needs national standards guardrails around it, as well as rules around NIL inducement deals. Those are reasonable/practical positions requiring sober analysis, not uninformed Twitter pot shots.
A couple comments about CKS's statement quoted above. 1) IMPORTANT - I don't think CKS was talking about UGA, the school, "giving out" money and/or NIL deals to players. I THINK CKS meant that he was "giving out" the figures on the NIL deals received by UGA players. I believe that is an important distinction to make. 2) It appears that no matter what UGA says about the success of their athletes, relative to NIL, the media paints UGA/CKS as anti-NIL. The media has made up their minds based on CKS's comments about putting some guard rails on NIL.
To CR's comment about recruiting. UGA had a GREAT week recruiting.......defensive players. KSmith OL looks like a prospect with a high ceiling. But is rated 3* on Rivals. UGA still has not been attracting the top rated offensive recruits. That may change. But so far it is concerning.
I see us getting the top RB-Young into the fold pretty soon as he isn't going to Alabama.
@UGADad20 regarding your offensive recruiting comment. its tuff when you see skill players like burton bolt to Bama and UGA try to convert a top ranked running back to a db. UGA is doing just fine as I believe some positions can be prioritized every other year.
Nothing you said is wrong. I found it interesting that the day after SBIV said he was returning to play QB (who wouldn't for $700K NIL?) at UGA, Burton went into the TP and committed to AL. It just meant that UGA's O would be similar to '21 and not especially WR friendly (#'s wise). UGA is still in the mix for 5* WR Hykeem Williams (#16 Rivals) and Tyler Williams (#216 Rivals) so there is still hope. It is still early.
As for Lavosea Carroll, UGA was in a bind for #'s at DB. Carroll made a team 1st decision to help out at DB. I'm not sure that DB wasn't his best position with his speed and size (6'1" 190 lb) long term. Certainly CB's play a lot longer in the NFL than RB's do. But he chose his preferred position and transferred. I wish him luck at SC.
RB Young to UGA makes sense now that JHaynes chose AL. Though Young still forecasted to AL also. In many years past UGA got 2 elite RB's/class. Gurley/Marshall, Chubb/Michel, Holyfield/Herrien, White/Cook. Last year UGA got 1 and had to scramble last minute to get a much lower rated Paul. Is this another offensive trend? IDK. The recruiting misses this year on O have been at QB, OL and WR. SO FAR. Still early but still concerning. NIL seems to be minimizing recruiting ability and promoting paying for recruits. Again concerning.
Of Rivals Top 250 rated players (O and D), UGA has 3 rated offensive recruits.
BUrton isn' that hard to understand. BAMA lost it's 3 best receivers(Metchie just got diagnsed wIth a rare but treatable form of Leukemia ---prayers for him.) and there was a HUGE void for a quality receiver for a team that will pass it 40 times per game on average. What's not to understand? Burton needs touches to make it as a highround draft pick and he'll get twice as many per game at BUMMER.
UGADAD- "The media has made up their minds based on CKS's comments about putting some guard rails on NIL."
The media is very liberal(think ESPN) and I understand the AJC runs this show here(very liberal) ,so no media pundit wants to be accused of agreeing with any idea that remorely hints of young black men not getting not getting paid as much as they can possibly get(think Rolls Royce's or Bentley to drive to school in, and such per Shannon Sharp).
To not tow the company line is a good way to lose your job. It will be portrayed as being racist and not being a team player. Find me a media pundit that is willing to say,"hey, let's make sure we have some guard rails for these kids." You won't.
Kirby means well(he truly cares about the kids IMO) but if he isn't extrememly careful in his comments on the subject , no matter how genuine and well meaning he is , there will be the race baiters who work at these liberal outlets who will see his comments as being racist. Old white men trying to keep young black men down. If you don't understand that, then you're head's been in the sand. It's taught now in virtually every institution of higher learning.
Go ahead, shoot the messenger.
Folks like Riddick--former high-level players with some pretty obvious and not necessarily unjustified animus--are responding out of emotion. Are players deserving of further compensation? Of course. But at some point this whole Wild-West mentality/reality has got to stop and reasonable voices have to be listened to. This is all a moot point, though, bc CFB is a ticking time bomb.
@reddawg1
No one turned NIL into a racial/political issue on this thread before you did. But since you did, allow me to point out that any conservative who opposes NIL is a hypocrite. The three main strands of modern western conservatism - paleoconservatism, neoconservatism and libertarianism - are united in their support of free market capitalism and in opposition to the various flavors of Marxism. (I won't go into the "alt-right" except to point out their similarity to Georgia's Alexander Stephens and other Fire-Eaters.) Indeed, capitalism is pretty much the only thing those 3 agree on.
Now do not misunderstand me: there are a lot of very good arguments as to why college athletes should not be paid as much as the market for their services is willing to provide. But please realize that none of those are capitalist arguments, which means that none of them are conservative ones. As for "guardrails" ... well those should exist for players when they do for coaches. Smart's $112.5 million contract indicates that no such guardrails exist. Also, the coaches asking for "guardrails" like Smart and Saban want them created in a manner that would allow them to maintain the recruiting advantages necessary for them to fulfill their massive contracts as opposed to regulations that would allow players to maximize their earning potential.
And please, no talk about "how we need to maintain a competitive balance." If you cared about that, it would have mattered to you those years that Utah, TCU and UCF went undefeated and didn't get squat. Even among the P5, you guys know that basically half those schools have no shot. NC State has been playing football since 1892 and has a single top 10 finish to show for it. Kentucky, Ole Miss and Vandy have never made an SEC title game; Arkansas, South Carolina and Mississippi State have only been once. Even among the "power programs" at best 2/3rds of the schools only serve as fodder for the other 1/3. Anyone who thinks that Wake Forest and Iowa State are playing the same game as Ohio State and Alabama - with the same resources, goals and theoretical chances of success - is choosing to delude themselves.
It is all about the money. And if your argument is that one group should be free to make as much as they can get and another group shouldn't when both groups are needed to generate the revenue in the first place then you aren't a capitalist which means you aren't a conservative. A Fire-Eater maybe but not a conservative.
Bold take. I commend you for trying to discuss a delicate topic reasonably. True or not? I have no idea. Never thought of that. My frame of reference is completely different than most southerners. I was raised up north a long time ago. My 1st little league coach was an AA man. Very gregarious and friendly guy. He yelled "UGADAD, left field" and I popped off the bench and sprinted to LF. I was 8. He coached me, treated me well and I liked him. I was also raised by a veteran serviceman. They say there are no atheists (or racists ) in foxholes.
But "interesting" (what I said) and "isn't hard to understand"(what you said) are two different things. If you read between the lines my inference was the same understanding as you. AL O (vs UGA O) appealed more to Burton. Understandable as you stated. The timing confirmed what Burton thought the UGA O would be in '22. With all the mouths to feed in the UGA offense I expect balance, substitutions and the ball to be spread around. Not conducive to 1 player running up stats (except possibly at QB)
Whatever the media is doing, they spin everything for clicks (controversy) and to perpetuate sellable content. CKS is a straight shooter guy that seems to be well liked by all his players. He seems to want to develop every young man to their fullest potential. On and off the field. No one can have a problem with that. If anyone has a problem with CKS or UGA THAT would be a mystery to me. Who would you rather your son be around from 18-22? Smart, Saban, Richt or Spurrier, Mullen or Kiffin?
NIL is a complicated issue but here to stay. IF people want a level playing field in CFB there needs to be guard rails.
I agree that the media is liberal and pushes information with a liberal slant.
@UGADad20
Look at the history. UGA won the SEC in 2002 and 2005. They parlayed that into recruiting 1st round picks at QB (Matt Stafford), RB (Knowshon Moreno) and WR (A.J. Green). Since then:
0 1st (or 2nd, 3rd, 4th) round picks at QB
0 1st round picks at WR or TE (and only a few 2nd rounders ... remember TE Ben Watson was a Duke transfer)
2 1st round picks at RB (Todd Gurley, Sony Michel) plus Nick Chubb, D'Andre Swift and James Cook in the 2nd
Yes, UGA has put a lot of players in the NFL since Jim Donnan got the talent train rolling in the mid-90s but most of those have been defensive players. Which made the decision to hire CKS to build a championship program based on defense to be a smart one. But CKS hasn't made getting offensive players the touches needed to be high draft picks a priority. Not just at QB, WR and TE: UGA hasn't even had a 1000 yard rusher since Swift in 2019, and even that was merely 1200 yards in a 14 game season.
Until that changes, people need to stop it with the "outraged why big time offensive recruits don't commit to UGA!" thing. The kids who grew up UGA fans are still going to come if CKS will have them. But the kids who are hoping for big NFL contracts have no basis for believing that going to Athens is the way to get one. If CKS wants to change that state of affairs, then that has to start on the field this upcoming Saturday. Otherwise CKS is going to have to focus his offensive recruiting on a mix of in-state kids plus out of state kids that don't view themselves as future 1st or 2nd round NFL draft picks (yes such kids do exist).
And yes, the media - starting with the bloggers on this very site - need just make it plain: big time offensive recruits aren't going to come until they see UGA players win awards and get drafted high. Instead the media is allowing folks to attack the kids instead of pointing out that these kids are just making appropriate decisions based on the information in front of them. Arch Manning was never going to come to a program that has produced two starting NFL QBs in the past 60 years. And as for Justice Haynes, the RB position has been devalued. This means that you are either going to get your big contract on your rookie deal like Alabama's 1st round picks Josh Jacobs and Najee Harris did or you aren't going to get it at all. His father Verron Haynes had a 7 year career in the NFL and won a Super Bowl but didn't make much money because he entered the NFL as a 5th round pick. Alabama is the only school left that still produces 1st round pick tailbacks with any regularity, which makes it the obvious destination for anyone who wants more than basically the NFL minimum for 4-6 years and then on to life after football.
First guardrails are not even about money. They are about rules. W/o rules it is a complete free for all with no chance of a level playing field.
With guardrails/rules you can have a level playing field. At least everyone knows what rules of the game are. Now IF NC State really wanted to have more than 1 Top 10 finish since 1892 they would make the financial commitment that other schools are making to program building. Any school could've hired Jimbo Fisher for more $$ than aTm did and set to building a program. Hire the right people, improve the facilities, start to win games, start the cycle. It takes a financial commitment like successful programs are making. Deion Sanders is doing it at Jackson State.
You make a point that UGA is a defense first school. Times are changing. Does UGA try to change with them. Hiring Monken says they are trying to. Should fans be satisfied being a defensive school? UGA was a 10 win /yr school under Richt. People weren't satisfied with that. That wasn't good enough. UGA made changes and won a championship.
What happened pre-CKS is irrelevant to the UGA program going forward. If you aren't improving you are falling behind. UGA has gotten big time offensive recruits on the OL and at RB. Pickens was a big time recruit. Had he not gotten hurt he may have been 1st rd. Burton was a pretty big time recruit. So they can be had.
Are offensive skill position recruits stat hungry? Probably. Aren't all players? Offensive and defensive? CKS has recruited depth that demands some playing time along with development or they transfer w/o sitting out. So he has to play multiple players at WR, RB, on the OL, at TE to keep people in the program. I like that for young developmental players. It give UGA players a better chance to survive CFB w/o being "used up" physically after 4 years. But that more than anything restricts individual offensive stats. And that puts UGA behind others vis a vis players generating individual stats.
Might it be a time for a change offensively? I think it is already happening BUT offensive productivity is very dependent on the QB position. It will be important to UGA's ongoing success recruiting offensive players for Beck and/or BVG to 1) stay at UGA and 2) expand the offense.
BTW, I never expressed "outrage" at the struggles UGA has had recruiting offensive players. With the talent "w/in 5 hrs of Atlanta" (CKS) , and the success of the UGA program it is difficult to believe that UGA struggles at all to attract offensive talent. IMO it made MORE sense for Arch to pick UGA over TX. Better protected , better skill players around him, better D to give the O more possessions, stable coach, better competition, SEC. 15 players drafted in '21. TX has not had 15 players drafted in 5(?) years. The Mannings wanted to dictate Arch's development phase, when he starts, how many passes he throws/game, etc etc. Sark said "yes!" CKS said "he has to earn everything".
If 2/3 are fodder for the 1/3 it is because 1/3 are working harder and investing more. That's were the guard rails are needed.