NCAA college football 2016-17: Official thread

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Spring is in the air, -ichigan and the SEC are fighting, and college kids are getting ready for their future with CTE. It's college football season y'all!

Lovie Smith is now coaching UIUC.

This is going to suck.

It's A-Day! Roll Tide!

(Also, subscribed. )

Gig 'Em, Aggies! We may have had our two best quarterbacks transferred, but Bama-beating, Katy Perry endorsed Trevor Knight has transferred from OU to give us a new QB option. He has been named the starter for our season opener against UCLA.

Didi mention we just hired UCLA's offensive coordinator? Our old OC, Jake Spavital, landed on his feet at Cal. I look forward to many updates from Carl.

Go Cards!

Went to Cal's spring game yesterday and its now very clear who our QB is... his name is "Not Jared Goff".

All 4 of our potential QB1s got about equal playing time, with about 3-4 series each. The presumed starter, Chase Forrest who was Goff's back up last year, looked good in this last 2 series, not so good in this first two. Zach Kline, who transferred away from Cal when Goff was named starter 2 years ago, and just transferred back this year, looked consistent for all of this series, but hardly superstar. True freshman Max Gilliam looks like he could be the QB of the future, but he has an awkward motion that looks way too slow, even though he's able to put good zip and accuracy on the ball. Other than Gilliam, all the older QBs seemed to have a problem with touch on their passes. I know we were spoiled with Goff but these guys couldn't seem to lob it over the top to the WR when they needed to.

One name that I'll put out there for all of you is Melquise Stovall, freshman WR. Playing in the slot, he's not afraid to get tackled, runs amazing routes (juked a safety out of his pants on a double move to get 5 yards past him for a TD), and he's hard to take down despite not being huge. If our QBs can get him the ball he's one name to watch this season and for the next 2-3 as well.

Of course the problem in a scrimmage is "Is the O that good or is the D that bad?" and i'm very worried about the latter. Our RBs were running all over the place. There were at least 2 40+ yard runs, one for over 60 and a TD. I'm not even sure the D had a TFL. We seemed to run more blitz packages than in the past, especially from the secondary, but that only works if you get there and if they can cover the receivers. Of course its only spring and its a scrimmage.

Of course the problem in a scrimmage is "Is the O that good or is the D that bad?"

Not if you're Alabama. Quite the opposite, actually. Nevertheless, I will trust in The Process.

cube wrote:

Lovie Smith is now coaching UIUC.

This is going to suck.

We're Bears fans. You have our condolences.

Grumpicus wrote:
Of course the problem in a scrimmage is "Is the O that good or is the D that bad?"

Not if you're Alabama. Quite the opposite, actually. Nevertheless, I will trust in The Process. ;-)

Yep!!

wifeofmanta wrote:
cube wrote:

Lovie Smith is now coaching UIUC.

This is going to suck.

We're Bears fans. You have our condolences.

Yeah... sorry man...

Grumpicus wrote:
Of course the problem in a scrimmage is "Is the O that good or is the D that bad?"

Not if you're Alabama. Quite the opposite, actually. Nevertheless, I will trust in The Process. ;-)

Don't worry, my friend. We never show our hand at A-Day. You know that.

Did you see Saban? That blazer though.

Made the wife laugh with "What in the blue blazers?!"

Edit: For the rest of you fine folks:

A little Jacob Eason pron, in front of 93+K in Athens.

UpToIsomorphism wrote:

Spring is in the air, -ichigan and the SEC are fighting, and college kids are getting ready for their future with CTE. It's college football season y'all!

It's okay -- you don't have to give "Michigan" the same treatment as modern Jewish writers use when writing "G-d".

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Bama-beating, Katy Perry endorsed Trevor Knight has transferred from OU to give us a new QB option. He has been named the starter for our season opener against UCLA.

Excited for ya'll.
Knight's a good player.
(also the QB transfers are crazy these days)

90K at Georgia spring day, 100K at tOSU? I'm assuming Alabama was close to max as well...

That's insane for a practice. I'd be shocked if more than 1000 showed up at Cal.

Here's my picture.. I Miitomo'd myself into it just to make the other side not look so sad.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/4xZYzno.jpg)

Carlbear95 wrote:

90K at Georgia spring day, 100K at tOSU? I'm assuming Alabama was close to max as well...

We must be getting complacent.

Attendance was announced at 76,212 – up from the 65,175 from last April. The 2011 crowd of 92,310 remains the school record. The Nick Saban statue was unveiled that afternoon.

IMAGE(http://image.al.com/home/bama-media/width480/img/alabamafootball_impact/photo/20153251-mmmain.png)

I have never been to an A-Day game and I'm not ashamed.

Bama's D-Line coach fired/resigns over possible recruiting violation.

Gotta hand it to Bama, they even handle their bad news like champions. Dropping this particular nugget an hour before the NFL draft? That's how you do it.

In all seriousness, manta/wifeofmanta, how serious is this? It appears that Bama self-reported whatever this is, and I know that Saban runs a really tight ship, so I don't foresee this a a huge deal, but am interested in your take(s).

I'm not sure I take any allegations of recruiting violations seriously unless there's a grand jury involved.

At this point, the NCAA rules are so stupidly complex and crazy that pretty much everyone's in violation of something, so unless it's something crazy/involves star players, most of the time self-imposed stuff is more because they want to get rid of the guy rather than real violations.

And usually when it's NCAA imposed, it's because a more important school screwed something up, so someone else needs to be in the news for a while.

After the UNC notice of allegations this week, the NCAA is a joke.

Some more fuel for the NCAA's ongoing investigation of Ole Miss tonight. Get 'em, boys!

And Carl: Congrats on your boy going first overall!

I'm not saying Georgia doesn't have bag men, they probably exist everywhere, but, Dawg fans have always been convinced that the Ole Mi$$ bag men got to Tunsil the week before signing day a few years back when he suddenly flipped from UGA.

Tonight's news has been some pretty good schadenfreude.

Ole Miss has been the most unabashed in paying players since SMU.

Badferret wrote:

I'm not saying Georgia doesn't have bag men, they probably exist everywhere, but, Dawg fans have always been convinced that the Ole Mi$$ bag men got to Tunsil the week before signing day a few years back when he suddenly flipped from UGA.

Tonight's news has been some pretty good schadenfreude.

Yeah, I felt that way at first, until I realized that this was all (probably) the work of Tunsil's skeevy stepfather, then it became un-fun.

Abu5217 wrote:

Bama's D-Line coach fired/resigns over possible recruiting violation.

Gotta hand it to Bama, they even handle their bad news like champions. Dropping this particular nugget an hour before the NFL draft? That's how you do it.

In all seriousness, manta/wifeofmanta, how serious is this? It appears that Bama self-reported whatever this is, and I know that Saban runs a really tight ship, so I don't foresee this a a huge deal, but am interested in your take(s).

I tend to agree with you. No one at work is discussing it when typically those who hate Bama at the office would jump on almost anything.

Abu5217 wrote:

Bama's D-Line coach fired/resigns over possible recruiting violation.

Gotta hand it to Bama, they even handle their bad news like champions. Dropping this particular nugget an hour before the NFL draft? That's how you do it.

In all seriousness, manta/wifeofmanta, how serious is this? It appears that Bama self-reported whatever this is, and I know that Saban runs a really tight ship, so I don't foresee this a a huge deal, but am interested in your take(s).

We'll see, I guess. He was/is our defensive line coach and we had a hell of a line last year. He'll be missed in that aspect. I am interested to find out what he did and would love to know the extent of Saban's knowledge of whatever it was.

I would imagine that the hammer is also about to come down on Ole Miss due to Tunsil's draft day shenanigans.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Ole Miss has been the most unabashed in paying players since SMU.

I went to Ole Miss and am friends with several former basketball and football players. I can attest that this is a true statement.

I was in Oxford from 2002-2006 and every single one of my athlete friends had "company cars" and "paychecks" from jobs they never worked.

Everybody pays something, but at times some teams pay extraordinary amounts, breaking the unspoken social contract.

Holy crap.. the last big 2016 5-star recruit, just committed to Cal. Demetrius Robertson out of Georgia, turned down the likes of Notre Dame, UGa and Georgia Tech to come out west. Dude can play any position other than line and QB.

This coming weeks after Sonny Dykes pulled a major academic turnaround going worst to first in APR in the Pac-12 in 3 years. If one of our QBs can manage to be not horrible, this could get us something great in the next few seasons.

It was quite clear that Robertson was driven by academics. He hung on waiting for Stanford after retaking SATs, etc. Great to see him end up at Cal (even though he would have looked REALLY good in a Notre Dame uniform!). Great to see him make his choice based on academics, too.

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