August 30, 2022
Like a melting popsicle revealing a cheap balsa stick, the summer season melts into Labor Day and Professional Amateur Football returns to us filled with hope and anticipation for every fan of Alabama and maybe Georgia and possibly Ohio State.
The rest of us are just an abandoned ice cream truck of States, Techs, and Capitol One Bowl Week stadium fillers.
And we love it all.
Good Day Grover Pickers!
It’s time to pick again and find out who among us is the All time Super Genius Forever.
Our reigning Super Genius is COMMIT TO THE G. He won the Grover Picks. His team won the National Championship. He was proclaimed the Greatest and Smartest Person on Earth.
Yay for the UGA-lovers.
Since that great moment for UGA and COMMIT TO THE G, here’s what you missed…
Is Crypto Scary?
Michigan State and coach Mel Tucker became the first college program to offer an NFT. The idea is that fans for the Spartans can create a crypto wallet and buy digital thingies in exchange for real or imagined money. Go here and buy yours: https://www.spartynft.com
The Collective Is The New Independence
If your school does not have an NIL collective, you are toast. Montana State and Grambling, FCS schools, both have NIL collectives.
Here are the top 8 Collectives according to On3 Sports:
- Spyre Sports Group (Tennessee) – goal of $25,000,000 annually
- John Ruiz (Miami) – Miami finally figured out that ‘Boatload of Cash” is not just a cliche, but a reality, in Coral Gables.
- The Fund (Texas A&M) – No Official Funders. No Publicity. IYKYK (Jimbo and Saban both know)
- Division Street (Oregon) – “Division Street” is pronounced “Nike”
- Gator Collective (Florida) – sounds like a Brazilian soccer club. They make a point to share how many of their athletes help their mothers.
- BLVD LLC (USC) – An actual professional marketing group in LA that now happens to rep young, talented athletes in LA. Unstoppable.
- The Foundation (Ohio State) – Cardale Jones runs this. Goal is $13,000,000
- The Matador Club (Texas Tech)- just gave 100 football players one-year $25,000 NIL deals
See more at https://www.on3.com/nil/news/on3s-top-20-most-ambitious-nil-collectives/
If you are an athlete looking for a deal go here: https://www.nilnetwork.com/2021/06/nil-digital-marketplaces/
You will find a variety of scam artists and professional marketers that will hook you up with some walking around money in exchange for proclaiming your love for auto dealerships, air conditioning, buffalo wings, dentists, fireworks, and chicken fingers.
General Booty
NIL also means athletes can fundraise for causes, as Oklahoma QB General Booty is doing with General Booty T-shirts. Proceeds support a children’s hospital. Get your here: https://mtjn.org
Be A Good Boy
Bad Boy Mowers, a company the bills itself as “Classic. American. Muscle.”, with a factory in the Ozarks, and that makes zero-turn mowers approved by Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and George Jones, is now the title sponsor of the Pinstripe Bowl that is played in Yankee Stadium in New York City.
Portal
According to College Gameday, 45% of starting D1 quarterbacks this season are transfers from other schools. If you can name Oklahoma’s offensive starters from last season, then you can name the USC offensive starters this season. 35% of all other D1 transfers went to Ole Miss.
Harbaugh Is A Good Person?
Count on Jim Harbaugh to keep it real and old school. Michigan started the fall semester with 88 scholarship players on the roster. The rules allow only 85. This is not the first time the Harbaugh has started the year by yanking scholarships after the semester starts. Don’t let this bother you. It’s a business.
And here’s what is next….
Thursday’s Games
PITT v WVU The Backyard Brawl
JT Daniels has been announced as West Virginia’s starting quarterback. The former USC and Georgia starter faces off against former USC teammate Kedon Slovis, the new Pitt Panther QB.
Consider the raging pride one must feel if you get a scholarship to play QB at USC in Los Angeles. That’s as Big Man on Campus as it gets.
Now consider being the idiot walking into practice one day trying to convince anyone in LA that these two hot-shot, can’t miss, Heisman candidate QBs, JT and Kedon, would soon face off as opposing starting QBs for West Virginia and Pittsburgh.
Everyone at the Brawl will be angry about something- steel prices, furniture rental prices, which cousin will ask me to go steady at the kegger, why Michael Keaton is not considered the best Batman- but Kedon and JT will share a special shattered dream and varying levels of hope and depression.
Penn State v Purdue
This is why the Big10 is inferior to the SEC. The SEC version of this game is Florida vs Mississippi State. With the Gators and Bulldogs, I have no idea what will happen, but it will be weird and entertaining and sound like cowbells and smell like sweat, privilege and desperation.
The Nittany Lions vs the Boilermakers is merely the 3:00pm Thursday breakout session at a dental floss conference.
Friday Games
Indiana vs Illinois
Every fan of this game, whether a Hoosier or an Illini, whether watching in person, on Big10 Network, or pirating it online from Khazakhstan, regardless of age or social standing, has eaten an entire box of doughnuts while bowling.
Saturday Games
UNC v App State
The Mountaineers have been practicing for this game since 2019. It’s the biggest thing to happen in Boone since Billy McCuskey spilled two bales of weed in the Appalachian Ski Mountain parking lot in February 2015.
Arkansas v Cincinnati
Whompin’ Season. The Bearcats aren’t ready for this.
Actual Arkansas Coach Sam Pittman Quote from Press Conference this week: “”Some guys bring iced tea, and some guys bring liquor. You just gotta figure out what they’re bringing.”
The Razorbacks are bringing a whompin’ stick.
Georgia v Oregon
A stakes game. UGA wins, Stetson Bennet becomes a Heisman frontrunner and the remnants of the PAC12 gently fold into the Big12 to live out a meaningless football existence until the playoff expands.
If the Ducks win in Atlanta, they get to join the Big10 immediately, have access to $72 million /year from the conference, and become a major force in American culture for the next 75 years, and will be granted the option to wear Puma cleats instead of Nike.
Utah v Florida- The Urban Myer Shame Bowl
You can’t tell me the SEC is the bully power league and the Pac12 stinks and then expect me to believe that Utah is flying across country to an actual swamp and will somehow beat the Gators.
Yet, Florida is a home underdog in a non-conference game to at team other than Miami or FSU for the first time since 1972. The loser of the game has to admit they thought Urban Myer was a good idea AND keep his photo in their media guide for 2 more years. The winner can deny and move on.
Ohio State v Notre Dame
All it took for Notre Dame to emerge as a lovable underdog was Brian Kelly moving to LSU and Ohio State being Ohio State.
Sunday Football
LSU v FSU
One team won’t recover from this loss. The Noles handled Duquesne last week, but that monumental victory only holds up if FSU plays well again.
An FSU loss means the Seminoles are officially the Nebraska of the ACC, with no hope to ever improve.
An LSU loss means the Brian Kelly era is a failure, he can’t recruit, he doesn’t fit, and LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey should take over play calling duties immediately.
Happy Picking,
The Commissioner
The Grover Picks 