In the revolving door locker room era of college football, coaches have to deal with NIL, the transfer portal, and traditional recruiting and development all at once. Some have done it well, as evidenced in a few places like Athens and in Oxford, and others, well…
I have no insight into Kirby Smart’s inner offices and conversations he has with players, but it can’t be said enough that luring Beck back for another year and dipping in to the portal to get Rashada was a crucial move for the Bulldogs. If you don’t agree, look at what’s happening around the college football world:
- FSU went from CFP contender to laughing stock of the ACC with one critically bad QB decision
- Oklahoma had a chance to put themselves firmly in the Top 10 with a win against Tennessee, but lost Gabriel last season to the portal, and it became clear that Venables’ plan was for Gabriel to mentor Jackson Arnold to start this season, whether Gabriel left or not. That didn’t pan out well on Saturday, as Arnold was pulled after a night of complete ineptitude.
- Auburn is just being Auburn, with Freeze opting to start Hank Brown over Thorne in the wake of Auburn’s loss to Cal, which only got worse as Auburn lost to Arkansas, which was being lead by a far better transfer quarterback that’s currently pulling Sam Pittman’s butt out of the frying pan this year.
I’m sure there’s more examples out there, but the debacle in Auburn is quite the spectacle to behold. And now that Freeze has apparently but his burner phone behind him and cleansed his soul by coaching at Liberty, it can’t keep the ghosts of players past from rejoicing in his public depantsing.
Honestly, I can’t think of a better partnership between two entities than Freeze and Auburn. And with Oklahoma allowing Tennessee fans to be on absolute berserk mode right now, I’m believing that Venables deserves a bit of a public ass beating as well. To make things better, they are colliding this weekend for a showdown of incompetency.
It’s so bad, even the SEC Network had to go back and adjust their social media graphics for the upcoming game.
Good times. Should be a great game to hedge bet on who plays and when under center.