August 20, 2019
Good Day Grover Pickers,
As the day dawns with the first single ray of the sun splashing on the leaves of the tallest tree, so does another season of football arrive.
The first light is merely a hint at the full day’s sun to come, but it is real light. The night is gone and day is here.
Since February we’ve filled our hours with family, work, hobbies, exercise, Game of Thrones, women’s soccer, men’s basketball, a few tedious novels and more than a few internet rabbit holes.
But, no more.
The day is here. Football returns to us this Saturday night with the same slow warming the sun delivers after a chilly October Friday night. It’s merely one game, but it means there will be more. And soon.
One game, like first light, a signal to turn from your familial duties and chores, return those unreadable novels to the kids’ rooms, cleanse your mind of those lesser sports, and order a fourth flat screen for the ceiling so it’s easier to see when you are lying on the couch.
Good morning, Grover Pickers! It’s football season!
Chuck Prophet, PROGNOSTIG8R, is our current Champion and Super Genius For All Time Throughout All Known Universes For the Year. He has earned two championships, the same number as Eli Manning.
There is a link at the top of the blog that leads to the standings and one that leads to the officefootballpool.com site where you can sign in and make your picks.
We’ll start slowly, with a few facts and questions before a robust dissection of the Biggest Game of the Season, So Far, UF v UM.
Recruiting
USA Today just published a ’story’ about the expense of recruiting guest student/athletes to the Power 5 colleges. It’s a $50 million budget line across the sport. (Here is similar story with cool charts and graphs.)
Wisconsin spends $350k on recruiting, least of any power 5 school. The Badgers have done really well on the field over the last 5 years, too. This is the best bargain in the Power 5.
There are three schools spending more than $2 million per year just to recruit guest students for football
1. Georgia
2. Alabama
3. Tennessee
Two of these teams are challenging for championships. One of these teams is doing it wrong. Anyone wish to volunteer a guess on the laggard in that group?
Coach Speak
How many times will your favorite coach, at any level, say, “Let’s Go!” this season? Is there a magic number of “Let’s Go”s a coach can use before it loses its power? Is “Let’s Go” so much better than, “Come On”, or the hand clap followed by, “That’s OK!”? How does, “Let’s Go” even work? Does the player not realize he is performing poorly, but then, a well timed “Let’s Go!” from a millionaire coach suddenly sparks an Incredible Hulk type of metamorphosis? Is the “Let’s Go” discussed at coaching clinics replete with PowerPoint presentations on the proper implementation of “Let’s Go”? And just where are all these players going?
How much less effective is “Let’s Go!” if it’s not a contraction? Is “Let Us Go!” completely out of the motivational question? Just picture Jim Harbaugh in front of the Maize and Blue helmets crammed into the opening of the tunnel at the Big House. The band hits the first note of “Hail to the Victors” and Harbaugh turns in his khaki pants to the team, at the moment just before the excited Guest Student/Athletes rush the field and he yells, “LET. US. GOOOOO!”
Harbaugh would do that. And this is not limited to coaches, it turns out….
Coach Speak Part 2
Dabo Swinney, the champion Clemson football coach who earns $5.1 million dollars per year at a public university says this about paying the players he coaches:
“But as far as paying players, professionalizing college athletics, that’s where you lose me. I’ll go do something else, because there’s enough entitlement in this world as it is.”
How many people have you ever heard of getting paid $5 million to do anything ‘amateur’?
Dabo, if you mean what you say about not wanting to be in professionalized college athletics, here’s a link you will find useful: https://www.monster.com
Which Teams Stink?
These are the worst 10 teams in college football and each will have an opportunity to fill the last ACC bowl commitment after FSU fails to become bowl eligible for the second time since the dawn of the Reagan administration.
121. UTEP
122. New Mexico
123. New Mexico State
124. San Jose State
125. Old Dominion
126. Bowling Green
127. Rice
128. Central Michigan
129. UMass
130. UConn
FUN FACT: Uconn spends $80,000 MORE per season on recruiting than Wisconsin.
As to NFL teams, it’s hard to judge during the preseason, but of the 32 self-proffered ‘professional’ teams, these appear to be the worst ones….
29. Bengals
30. Washington
31. Cardinals
32. Jets
College Football’s Sesquicentennial
The 1869 matchup between New Jersey (now Princeton) v Rutgers (now ‘Rutgers;) is recognized as the first college football game.
Lou Holtz coached Princeton that first day. The week before the game he did an exclusive interview with Beano Cook and said of the Scarlet Knights, “That’s a great football team. They’re undefeated. We haven’t seen them play, but I hear their quarterback, Tom Brady, is the best in the country. And I’ll tell you this, after we ride the horses all they way over to Brunswick, New Jersey, half my team has to rework their saddles to use as helmets. That’s OK. Winners love adversity. Look, it’s simple. Whichever team wins, Alabama will just claim they won the 1869 National Championship anyway. But we’ll show up and do the best we can. We’re just a bunch of wannabe preachers and 8 sons of wealthy merchants with great attitudes. Let’s Go! ”
How Old is Your Dermatologist?
The Commissioner visited the dermatologist this week. He looked older than last year (the dermatologist looked older, not The Commissioner). If your dermatologist looks older, is that a sign you are seeing a terrible dermatologist? Most of the fun of these visits is trying to guess how old the dermatologist is. Sure, he looks like he’s mid-30s, but the diploma says he graduated college in 1957. Hmmmmmm…….
The Mighty and Renowned Florida Fighting Gators v The Team That Thinks It’s The U
Florida is favored by 7 based mostly on having won their bowl game eight months ago while Miami lost its bowl game 35-3 to a team from a frigid climate, Wisconsin, that spends about $700,000 less on recruiting than UM, which is in freakin’ Miami!
CBS Sports Dennis Dodd reports the Miami coaching staff had a teriffic, impromptu session with former Hurricane coach Jimmy Johnson in Key Largo last February that left the Canes staff in awe and excited. These young coaches want to recapture the uncapturable ‘Culture’ of The U of yesteryear.
In the story, Johnson also told Dodd about all the football folks that he takes fishing every year.
“I’ve had four NFL owners. I’ve had general managers, head coaches. Kliff Kingsbury. I took Urban Meyer and his son fishing. Bret Bielema. Bill Belichick comes almost ever year. He wants to talk football. I want to fish and drink beer.”
Which owners? I assume it’s never been Dan Snyder. First, Dan Snyder doesn’t come across as a guy who can fish or drink beer. Second, and I’m not implying Jimmy Johnson is an evil-doer, but I am saying Dan Snyder is an insufferable twit and if he ever went fishing with Jimmy Johnson on Jimmy’s boat, we would likely never hear nor see Dan Snyder ever again. Would you miss him?
Me neither.
I also note how JJ talks about “general mangers, head coaches”, then mentions Kliff Kingsbury by name, as if the current Arizona Cardinals head coach is not actually a current head coach.
The Commissioner texted with Urban Meyer to find out more about he and his son’s fishing trip with JJ. Urban texted back, “I know about my son, but I did not know about myself and Jimmy also being on the fishing trip at this time. I wish I had. I would have enjoyed fishing, but I’m just not aware of that trip or the whereabouts of Dan Snyder.”
Bret Bielema, no doubt, enjoyed the beer and only caught one fish.
Belichick and Johnson must be quite the fishing pair. I imagine the conversation went like this:
Bill: “Jimmy, if we get six inch splits between the long snapper and the guard on fourth and longer than 9 yards, we found we can net 7.4 more inches on the return. Did you find that to be true in Dallas?”
Jimmy: “Don’t remember. Snappers are just snappers out here, we don’t differentiate long and short. Here’s a Rolling Rock. We’re on to Bahia Honda.”
Tim Tebow will speak to the Florida Gators in the locker room immediately before kickoff. There is a 100% chance that speech ends with, “Let’s Go!”
Happy Picking,
The Commissioner
The Grover Picks 