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Comments
Good comments !! Agree. And when they transfer to a lower school means more than apt they won’t be playing our Dawgs. And the Dawgs are certainly not alone these things are happening to other teams, I think it’s fair to say even Most teams.
With NIL and the TP no one team will dominate CFB every year or even every other year. Now it’s not Coach vs Coach, or Player vs Player. It’s Wallet vs Wallet. These are such sad times for CFB.
I guess it’s gonna get to where a Hero in CFB will be the player that plays the best but cost the least amount of $$. We can all thank the NCAA for kicking back and Allowing CFB to get to this point. Fat cat lazy scoundrels they are. 😡
These “kids” only know what they want. They don’t know what they need. It’s now a take your ball and go home mentality when things don’t go someone’s way. These “kids” won’t have the slightest idea on how to handle adversity.
Couldn't agree more….sittin here watchin Dan and The Ducks take a azzz whoppin, gezzzz, everytime the the talkin heads tell us how great the Ducks QB is he fumbles or throws a pick…. at least The Ducks have 4 more points than Bama.
No Chamblis next year to face. So you’re saying there’s a chance!
Can we sign Sam Pittman and Todd Monkin out of the portal? Both will be free and are improvements from what we currently have…….
Mendoza is special . Throwing dimes. Runs like a horse when he has to. What a precision run offense. A thing of beauty to watch. Their offense makes ours look like a high school team. They look like we looked against TCU. Those were the days! Everything we’ve accomplished since then seems hard.
@NorthHallDawg Sorry. The reality is that the vast majority of former 4 and 5 star recruits never make money on professional football, and the vast majority of the rest do not make very much. So the idea that a guy should give up hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars during their only opportunity to earn it in return for character building makes no financial sense. It certainly isn't something that we impose on anyone else. Does anyone advise pharmacists, nurses, architects, psychologists, marketers etc. to give up $1 million to build character? So football players are more in need of character development than teachers and lawyers?
@NorthHallDawg Even within the sports context American college football and men's basketball are unique. No other country has its equivalent. Instead their athletes go professional right out of high school and often before they even graduate high school. And sports other than football and basketball even in America? Same. Minor league right out of high school and if you are good enough you skip minor leagues. So foreign athletes as well as American MLB, NHL, tennis, golf etc. athletes have never required the character-building sacrifices that one gets from a Kirby Smart program in the first place. I remember the meltdown over high school basketball players bypassing college for the NBA was supposed to be this big national moral crisis. When one of the savvier basketball players compared himself to tennis and baseball players everyone went quiet. Reason? They all new that Jennifer Capriati went pro in tennis, including a $3 million endorsement deal (and this was an era when pro athletes made a lot less money at age 13 as NBA All-Stars like Scottie Pippen and Dominique Wilkins were getting paid $2-$3 million a year) and was playing at Wimbledon and the French Open by 14.
When college football was losing too many elite prospects to minor league baseball contracts in the 1970s, the NCAA changed their rules to allow athletes to be professionals in baseball but amateurs in other sports. It was a sham. The NCAA should have regulated this back then, long before college football became this massive business with all these power imbalances between big and small schools and between conferences. Instead they allowed kids to get paid illegally all over the sport, recruiting to become a cesspool and made a show of hammering a few schools - almost always southern ones mind you - for publicity purposes.
If stability is what you want, root for UGA to win the Damon Wilson lawsuit. But even that will be the result of the NCAA and universities refusing to deal with the issue and create even more unintended consequences. After all, NIL only came about after the NCAA lost nearly every single federal lawsuit over several decades. The transfer portal happened only because the NCAA knew that they had no chance to win the lawsuit that Tom Mars was going to file. This chaos is only because of the NCAA implementing last minute changes decades too late instead of slowly implementing reforms over time.
I am curious. Did he play much at all at CAL? How did this coach find him? Pretty sure he was a 3 star.
Mendoza was a 2* out of H.S., IU has 18 players on their roster 4* or higher, Oregon has 53. Apparently IU has the right 18, they are the gold standard for 2025-26 can they sustain this level of play thway UGA has is the question, heavy lies the head that wears the crown. Miami is also very good but seems more prone to mistakes and inconsistent play, I'm taking the Hoosiers by 10.
Not a conspiracy theorist, but think the NIL was created by the powers that be under the guise of “helping the players.” It might do that, but the main goal was to stop the AL/UGA/OSU/Clemsons from dominance.
That said, Kirby has stuck mostly to the high school recruit method. As per the article, this is no longer sufficient. Dabo Swinney largely shunned the portal and see where this led? National contender to unranked.
Kirby knew we would be boat raced by IN and this year was content to claim an SEC title and another bonus. Likely same if facing Miam or Oregon
Not a fan of NIL, but until there are changes Kirby must modify his approach or we will be middle of SEC. The top 4 teams on both O and D make us look like high school teams. He has felt the need to stay super conservative to offset talent gaps and to reduce mistakes. Top high school recruits see this and stay away, decommit, or transfer. Especially on Offense. Runs up the middle, backfield passes, physicality and an occasional mid-field pass won’t cut it. When Kirby proudly claims the title of “resilient,” he’s really saying that the team almost always will be on the ropes, playing from behind, trying to catch up and pull out a win at the end. Hardly a formula for dominance or any margin. If we thought it was tough this year, FL, LSU and likely some others with new coaches will also soon be much improved.
Finally, has anybody considered the massive cost of time and resources to make high school recruiting the main method? To be effective you have to start on the blue chips by 9th-10th grade. Countless recruiter trips all over the country for 3 + years, travel costs, hotels, meeting HS coaches, wining and dining players and families, continual communication with all the above. Often to be rebuffed before signing or by transfer. And while mainly focused on this, little time and less budget to evaluate other player sources. I get the part about preferring players that want to be a Dawg and to develop within the program. But NIL has mostly removed that loyalty, so are we not chasing a dream from the past with 16-18 year old guys determining our success?
I’m afraid we either adapt (major) or we become irrelevant.
You make some good points but UGA is a far cry from irrelevant, back to back SEC championship on the heels of two Natty's refutes that completely. We were probably the third best team in the country with an inexperienced team this year, not too shabby, the death of UGA football is greatly exaggerated.
”It achieved that by fielding the oldest roster in the SEC”
Yup, zackly what I been a’sayin…less time and treasure chasing 16 and 17 year old children who cannot spell c o m m I t m e n t, full attention to evaluating 20 and 21 year old men who simply need to learn the playbook and grab some quality strength and conditioning…I HATE it, but that is where our once amateur sport is at now.
WOW. Indiana last night. The most dominant team I've seen since LSU and Joe Burrow in 2019. I'd put that team up against the best Bama team that Saban ever put on the field. Bama wouldn't be able to cover or stop Sarratt, Becker, and the passing game.
The Hoosiers’ ground game was just as dominant, running for 186 yards on 39 carries. Three different running backs picked up at least 40 yards. And these guys were backups.
Indiana had lost two defensive ends to season-ending injuries, including Stephen Daley, the Big Ten leader in tackles for loss. Daniel Ndukwe stepped in and totaled two sacks, forced a fumble and blocked a punt. The Hoosiers forced 10 tackles for loss and sacked Oregon quarterback Dante Moore three times.
The Hoosiers beat Alabama by 35 and Oregon by 34; the previous CFP era record for total margin of victory over a two-game stretch was 55, set by Clemson in 2018-19, which beat Notre Dame 30-3 and Alabama 44-16. The four-team Playoff era wouldn’t have included teams ranked as low as Indiana’s first two opponents — let alone its national title opponent Miami — but the top seed’s dominance thus far has been astounding.
Just a week ago, Oregon shut out 12-1 Big 12 champ Texas Tech.
Maybe the Canes find a way to beat these guys, but I doubt it. I just hope they play them closer than anyone else has…
Indiana blueprint…start with buying yourself Joe Burrow, Justin Jefferson and Ja’mar Chase, sprinkle in a couple of dominant OLinemen and Dlinemen…presto..who needs 18 year old kids with stars and egos?
Actually not saying we were this year irrelevant. But we’ve all seen the massive drop off since the last title year. And we had multiple games that we could (and frankly deserved) to lose.
The main concern is that we could easily become less relevant or irrelevant if we refuse to adapt. FL and LSU WILL be much better very soon, TN, Ole Miss, OK, and even SC won’t be easy outs. And what if TX with Muschamp and other changes improve? AL could regroup as well. What have we done to keep up other than hoping the young players here stay (and develop as planned) and crossing our fingers that the HS recruits at 16-18 don’t bail on signing day? The article highlights also that it’s not just who you sign but what’s left 1-3 years later. Starting underclassmen against JR/SR opponents is usually a mismatch.
A brief opinion also about the offense: am I the only one that sees parallels between how they use Stockton and how they used Jake Fromm? Similar play calls as well? Game manager variants? Is this also what Bobo was talking about recently when he said Stockton had far from reached his ceiling? If so, could it be that the people around him and the very conservative strategy have clipped his wings? If so, perhaps that’s a general dictate that came from Kirby and not Bobo? Bobo called the plays but was he asked to tamp it down to avoid mistakes? Irrespective of this year (water under the bridge) I’m convinced that lack of an explosive offense = inability to win another title. Physicality and resilience aren’t enough anymore.