Something needs to change at Tennessee

After reading most of the blog posts, I think I won't hand out a Best of the SEC bloggers award for today. Instead, I think the Britton Colquitt situation at Tennessee deserves a bit more exposure.

Lawvol at Gate 21 has written a stern and comprehensive critique of Philip Fulmer's "disciplinary" actions. This is a great post which you should read in it's entirety, but here is the crux of the biscuit:

While I have been a pro-Fulmer voice for a very long time, if this sort of trend continues, that voice will change — not due to Fulmer’s performance on the field, but due to his inability to control his players while off the field. I am not willing to have the University of Tennessee and its reputation denigrated by a bunch of young men who apparently feel that the law does not apply to them.

Winning is not that important…

Furthermore, in my opinion, the penalty imposed by Coach Fulmer on Colquitt — while substantial — is not enough. I understand Fulmer’s desire to temper his discipline with mercy, but Colquitt has proven that he does not understand his mistakes. He has already been given more second-chances than anyone should receive. I understand that his family has a long tradition at the University of Tennessee, and that they have been wonderful supporters of the program.

Lawvol is exactly right. It isn't as if Colquitt is a first-time offender, or was just committing a one-off offense that most people were guilty of in college whether or not they were caught. The fact of the matter is that there has to be a point, a line, a barrier -- something -- that defines where behavior becomes so unacceptable that the only fitting punishment is dismissal from the team. Britton Colquitt would seem to have exceeded this threshold by a wide margin with this latest debacle.

Volwalk at Third Saturday in Blogtober is sick and tired of this crap:

Like Ghost, I believe Fulmer is a good, moral man, but where does this crap stop? This just tells me how important Coach Cutcliffe was on and OFF the field. I believe he was THE LAW around the Tennessee football facilities when he was there.

I believe it is time for Phillip Fulmer to go. The man has done great things in Knoxville, and I will always have respect for him and for what he has brought to Knoxville…but it’s time. Time for SEC Championships, time for consistent Top 10 rankings, time for the police blotter to be quiet in Knoxville…and I don’t think Coach Fulmer can bring any of these things anymore. I know there are Tennessee fans who are going to disagree with me, probably some on this blog site will say I am 100% wrong, and if so thats ok with me.

I am not a Tennessee fan, and I am reluctant to agree with his conclusion that Fulmer should be dismissed. But I do think the AD should have a conversation with Fulmer about how much damage the perception of his lack of severe punishment for severe transgressions is doing to the Volunteer football program. And make no mistake, it is. Parents do not want to send their children to programs where scofflaws run amok with only mild consequences. It gives one the feeling that the football program is like an old boys club or a corrupt police department that would rather cover up and make lawbreaking go away than face the reality that too many of the players are simply not held accountable for their lawlessness by the athletic department.

It's bad for Tennessee, bad for Fulmer, and bad for the kids. The AD at Tennessee needs to have a "come to Jesus" meeting with Fulmer, and express (hopefully) his dissatisfaction with the perception that Tennessee is a lawless program bereft of even the most rudimentary discipline, and that players must commit major felonies to have any chance at all to be actually dismissed from the team. It's an image that Tennessee needs to begin shedding, and that right soon.

Best of the SEC - Weekend Edition

And the nominees are:

• Settling the Big 10/1 vs. SEC debate The Power T argues that the SEC thumps the Big Ten, and gives some ... interesting reasons why.
• Snake Oil: More On Over-signing Pete Holiday tries to sort out the whole Alabama oversigning thing with impressive reasoning and sound logic.
• Gutsy Losses and Moral Victories: How Many is Enough? Outstanding, honest and factual look at the state of Georgia basketball by MaconDawg.

And the winner is MaconDawg at Dawg Sports.

Folks, this is everything a great blog post should be. MaconDawg strikes exactly the right tone in discussing the pros and cons of Dennis Felton's coaching career at Georgia so far. Dennis Felton has done a lot of good things at Georgia, but he can no longer duck the fact that he is responsible for the problems he now has:

Let's get this out of the way right now: Dennis Felton is in fact to blame for the majority of the "bad luck" that has befallen his team this season. I'm a firm believer that you cannot expect a coach to cook dinner unless you let him shop for the groceries. But when a coach routinely whips up cheezewhiz on crackers with shrimp flavored Ramen, he has to take the heat for it. I was willing to give Felton the benefit of the doubt when he was kicking Jim Harrick's players off the team.

He is exactly right. Felton is responsible for bringing in Takais Brown and Mike Mercer. They were his best players, and either they were so badly behaved or he is so stringent that they are off the team, a casualty of discipline that has been the only meaningful hallmark of Felton's tenure so far except for tough defense.

I understand that a coach can only do so much when it comes to evaluating players. Sometimes, they all make mistakes. But I think MaconDawg is right to wonder about what he calls "a rash of reactive discipline." His conclusion:

Today's Tennessee game was a gutsy performance by a team that was outmanned and outgunned but refused to back down. I think that we'll see some more of those performances this season. But we don't go to Stegeman Coliseum to see gutsy losing basketball. And Dennis Felton has yet to show that he can do much other than deliver gutsy losses. 5 years in, the guts are keeping him from getting fired. However "the state of the program" is going to remain a topic of discussion as long as the losses keep coming as part of the package.

Gutsy losses are great for the first year or three of a new coach. But after five years, some hard questions should be asked. I personally like Dennis Felton a lot, and hope he brings Georgia back from this mire of irrelevance in which they are currently entrapped. But sooner rather than later, Felton had better produce some tangible results, or the next giant sucking sound we could be hearing in Athens is Felton's career headed down the drain. Herrick is long gone, and he is out on that limb all by himself, saw in hand.

May this be the last word on the subject

Pete Holiday at Fanhouse has produced this response to the now-protracted debate about Alabama's oversigning of players. As we have noted, this has been a very passionate, and lately, downright nasty debate between Alabama fans and, essentially, Michigan fans lead by Cook. Lots of pixels have been darkened in angry invective, which makes it all the more appropriate that Pete's commentary has a nice, calm, reasoned tone in spite of putting down Cook for his ... uh, rather purple prose.

But once we're past the Fanhouse Baby, Pete gets to the point:

The crux of Brian's argument is that if, come August, a team has more than 85 players who should be getting football scholarships, the overage will need to be unceremoniously dumped to come within the NCAA's limitations. This is an undeniable fact. Brian would have you believe that makes him right and everyone else stupid, but there's more to it than that. First, it's a hypothetical situation which has not yet come to pass and is far from a certainty. Second, there's a lot of room for reasonable people to differ on "who should be getting [a] football scholarship[]."

The responding posts by Alabama bloggers tend to focus how the 86+ scholarshipped class will not come to pass. One factor for which Brian did not originally account was non-athletic scholarships. He attempts to dismiss this by asserting: "Anyone on scholarship and on the football team counts against the 85 limit."

This, of course, is false. Take, for example, Bryant Scholarship players (the Bryant scholarship is given to sons and daughters of his former players), as demonstrated quite clearly by The Capstone Report (whose author continues to butcher my last name) by simply citing the NCAA rule. The gist of it is this: non-athletic scholarships don't count until "the student athlete engages in varsity intercollegiate competition." So, with all due respect to Mr. Cook, he needs to take another read through the NCAA Bylaws.

Pete's essential argument boils down to the same one I made earlier, only fleshed out considerably. I said, "Let's wait and see what happens," and Pete is saying not only that, but, "Here are some of the ways Alabama could get around the problem of having to dismiss qualified players." That makes a lot of sense, and I know at UK we have been able to offer some of our players scholarships in other sports, academic, or hardship scholarships. All of these are perfectly valid and not at all a sign of abuse, scofflaw, or moral or ethical turpitude.

I think Pete is exactly right in his analysis. Brian is correct in asserting that this is a situation where abuse and unethical behavior are certainly a possibility, but he seems to be saying that there is no ethical way out of this situation. That seems patently false to me, and surely Brian is smart enough to know better. If he isn't, well, at least Holiday is attempting to enlighten him.

Alabama grabs a generous mittenful of the Deadly Yellow Snow ...

Great googly-moogly! This Brian Cook vs. the Alabama Blogger Universe has truly reached the point of a genuine throwdown. There are so many posts on this subject that I simply must look at as many as possible before my fingers fall off.

By the way, the "Best of the Day" will be back tomorrow. I'm running low on time today.

OK, into the breach. First, we have His Blognificance, Orson Swindle at EDSBS noting the dustup for the second time this week, and linking to OutsideTheSidelines post at RBR:

Roll Bama Roll responds to Brian Cook’s slam of Alabama’s 4732 scholarship class this year. Many insults are paid to Brian’s hair, but as someone with an NHL-worthy playoff beard right now, we can’t say shit other than Brian is oversimplifying the case a bit (Alabama skoolz, represent!), but he’s not totally wrong here.

What is the whole hair thing about, anyway? So Brian looks like I did in 1975 -- at least he still has hair, unlike yours truly.

So, perhaps understandably, Brian Cook responds from his own blog, MgoBlog, rather than Fanhouse where he started the dustup. He decides, for whatever reason, to expand his scorn to the entire SEC rather than just Alabama:

There are two separate issues here.

Issue #1. Alabama is unlikely to actually have the nation's top recruiting class because a large chunk of it isn't going to get to campus. This is an irritation I have with the guru rating services and not an issue with Alabama per se. The best example of this phenomenon was Auburn's class last year, thirty-strong and top-ten on signing day but reduced by a third by the time fall practice rolled around and decidedly not top-ten.

This is indisputable. We even looked up the numbers last year. SEC teams often sign guys with little or no chance to qualify, and their swollen classes end up looking better than they actually are. The average SEC team experiences an attrition rate double that of the average Big Ten team, but this is not accounted for.

Does this remind anyone of the famous Jim Delaney letter to Big Ten fans? That's where Delaney essentially suggests that Big Ten schools were simply too good for many of the recruits that wind up in the SEC:

I love speed and the SEC has great speed, especially on the defensive line, but there are appropriate balances when mixing academics and athletics. Each school, as well as each conference, simply must do what fits their mission regardless of what a recruiting service recommends. I wish we had six teams among the top 10 recruiting classes every year, but winning our way requires some discipline and restraint with the recruitment process. Not every athlete fits athletically, academically or socially at every university. Fortunately, we have been able to balance our athletic and academic mission so that we can compete successfully and keep faith with our academic standards.

Brian Cook took up that cause in this post, and Senator Blutarsky at Get the Picture had some fun with what Brian had to say:

The rest of Brian’s post, which purports to be an examination of the “ethical obligations” schools have with regard to educating their recruits, reminds me of that famous quote from Bismarck about sausages: “To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.” Anyone who wants to watch college football without being consumed by doubt over the academic standing of the kids suiting up needs to become a fan of the Ivy League, fast.

For the rest of us, the issue isn’t (or shouldn’t be) whether some kids are admitted to college with lesser academic credentials, or that somehow these same kids are able to progress towards a degree once in school. We know that happens at all D-1 schools, and for a variety of reasons, like legacies, financial contributions, affirmative action, athletics, etc.

Uh huh. The current debate is essentially a belated and expanded continuation of the one started by Delaney's letter, with Cook and MGoBlog carrying the water for him. Not that Cook's original Fanhouse post pointed this out, because that was all about Saban and Alabama, but with his recent comments Cook has now expanded it to include the earlier debate.

Meanwhile, Roll Bama Roll isn't quite done yet. Todd at RBR decides he needs a crack at Brian Cook to go along with OTS's earlier remarks:

I won't bother with Issue #1 since it's a personal beef between Cook and the recruiting services, and I couldn't care less about how or why he thinks Alabama shouldn't be considered the #1 recruiting class in the nation until the fall. But Issue #2? Fuck you. He can blather on and on about OTS's "voodoo math" and moronic points since OTS called him out on his haircut (and in this very post I've already referred to him as a "dick") and therefor name calling is fair game, but this is where he's a gigantic ass that should shut his whore mouth:

I could do without all the gratuitous profanity from both bloggers, and the whole "hair" thing as well. Personally, I think #1 is kind of important, and there was a lot more there for my interests that perhaps for Todd's. I reject the condescending argument that essentially boils down to "The SEC is better because it sets low academic standards so they can sign better athletes." That is wrong on so many levels. First of all, if the Big Ten places their academic standards so as to exclude more people from joining it's hallowed halls and getting an education, I'm not sure that's something to be particularly proud of. Second, the Big Ten may think of itself as the Ivy League, but it isn't. What this boils down to is just more excuse-making for a brand of football who's time has largely come and gone.

But on his second point, Brian Cook and I are in far more agreement than disagreement:

The fucking point is that fucking Alabama is going to kick kids off the fucking team for no fucking reason. The point is not that violating the NCAA's made-up limit is evil. The NCAA limit is there because the NCAA would like you to not kick kids off the fucking team, but for various reasons the rule's pretty easy to skate around. The issue is not 32 > 25. The issue is that 70 + 32 > 85.

I'm not sure he's right about the reasoning for the rule, but I agree that kids should not be kicked off the team if they are offered a scholarship, accept it and qualify for it. We have had this discussion around UK circles (albeit for the basketball team -- we never have to worry about a surfeit of talent in football), and I am firmly on Cook's side of the argument. If Alabama does wind up withdrawing scholarships from qualified players just to bring on a better player, that is a real problem, and they should be ashamed.

But before we get into all this bitterness and foul language, shouldn't we wait for that nefarious event to happen? Bobby Petrino did just this very thing a player a few years back, only he did it before the player actually made it to campus. In other words, he just blithely broke his word to another young man who had committed to a scholarship offer because he found someone better. That is just plain unethical.

Moving right along, Third Saturday in Blogtober has a few words for Brian, and the most relevant point he makes is this:

But what I do want to hit on is the fact that Brian is guilty of the same thing he’s often called out members of the MSM for over at MGoBlog. Knowing not of which he speaks. Brian has no clue how many players Bama signed aren’t going to qualify, no matter how many hacks he references. Even if he did know, he makes it out like it would be the school’s fault for the player not having the grades.

This is a fair point, and one, I think, Brian Cook would have done well to consider. If Alabama engages in unethical conduct by getting rid of players who came in good faith, fully qualified, then he has a right to scream to high heaven. But the truth of the matter is, attrition due to grades, injury, lawbreaking, etc. are unfortunately routine and the high probability is that at least 15%-25% of not only Alabama's class, but of other large classes all around the USA, will wind up not qualifying for one reason or another completely unrelated to how well they play.

Why take on this issue now? The only reason I can figure is that he wants to make a partisan case, an excuse, really, for the fact that the Big Ten has failed so miserably against the SEC, and continues to look like maybe the third or fourth best football conference in the land. I could be wrong. He'd probably tell me I'm wrong. I don't care. That's what I think, this is my damn blog, and ... there you go!

Finally, the Tide Druid weighs in and says it's all about getting licks in on Saban, and basically says that Cook is no better than the World Wide Leader in that regard:

When you’ve been fed the ESPN spin that Saban is worse than Bobby Knight himself, it is probably a natural urge to take a pot shot at Saban to make your new coach look better. Of course, it could just be due to the fact that Saban used to coach at Michigan State.

I don't know, I suppose he could be right. Who knows what loathing lurks in the hearts of bitter rivals, and sometimes a coach that you hated at your rival carries the burden of that hatred with him forever and ever, amen. Still, if Cook is just trying to gig Saban, why is he whacking on the whole SEC at the same time?

Finally, Nico at Roll Bama Roll decides it's time for everyone to chill:

Okay everybody. Calm down. Bama fans calm down. Michigan fans calm down. This has turned into a parade of ridiculousness on both sides. I don't have time to fully address this right now since I'm about to go out of town for the rest of the day, but suffice it to say that I think both sides have escalated this well beyond where it should be. It's okay to disagree but I don't like the personal attacks and I don't like the generalizations about people because of their place of origin. This has all gone way too far.

I think he's right. When the ugly language comes out, it's time to pull ourselves back in to rational debate, not wild invective. It befits neither side of the argument to descend into complete emotional chaos over this, and cooler heads need to prevail.

Best of the SEC Blogs: Valentines Day Edition

OK, the SEC blogs were busy on Valentine's day -- maybe it was their significant other's gift to them to be able to freely blog for a day, who knows. The nominees for Best of the SEC Bloggers for today are:

• Lawvol at Gate 21 for this post recalling legendary SEC broadcasters.
• OutsideTheSidelines at Roll Bama Roll for his fisking of Brian Cook's Saban abuse.
• Vince Gagliano at Orange and Blue Hue for this great post examining how Florida State will handle the academic cheating scandal which has beset them.
• Jerry Hinnen at The Joe Cribbs Car Wash for his defense of Brian Cook's position attacking Alabama's Nick Saban for oversigning players.
  

And the winner is:

Jerry Hinnen at the Joe Cribbs Car Wash. Jerry makes a very strong argument against the Alabama argument (Jerry's an Auburn fan, so who can blame him?). Earlier I lauded the reasoning of the Alabama bloggers against Cook, but this is a fine defense of Cook's position, arguably better than Cook's own. Here is a taste:

Brian's obviously not a fan of oversigning, but it's the heartlessness of Saban potentially stripping kids of their scholarships that's his essential point--a point completely lost on the Alabama bloggers who have responded to it. One of them is the Fanhouse's resident Tide supporter and thrower of stones in glass houses Pete Holiday, who blithely asserts that "academic disqualification, medical problems, early entries, team dismissals for rules violations" should solve Alabama's numbers issues (nevermind that draft entries for the year in question are long since past or that assuming six guys have horrific injuries or break rules really does make an ass out of U and me) while completely ignoring the whole, you know, guys getting their scholarship jacked thing. Even after a commenter helpfully reminds Holiday of the potential for cuts, Holiday reverts back to a no-more-than-25-in-a-class mantra, which is certainly true and all, but doesn't change the fact that Alabama has, according to Gayle, "70 non-seniors" on the roster and that 70 + 25 does not, in fact, equal 85. (In that comment Holiday also says "Spring enrollments are the only ones you need cap room for, and I don't think Alabama is anticipating having any of those" ... despite the fact that Gayle said two Tide signees had enrolled in January. Did he even read the article in question?)

Strong stuff. Hinnen goes on to assail OutsideTheSidelines' post at Roll Bama Roll, noting for the record that RBR is an excellent blog (no doubt) and that the scholarships have not been revoked yet. And in a final twist, perhaps not having a chance to read my admonition about making sure your coach is in order before assailing others, adds this:

UPDATE: Cripes. Perhaps before posting I should make sure in the future that nothing developed on the Auburn newswire late the previous evening that might make me look like a giant hypocrite. For the record: if Tubby pushed these guys out rather than having them simply decide to leave--one of them according to Marshall is about to graduate already, so at least he won't need the scholly in the fall--it's just not defensible. Likewise, the attitude of some Auburn fans in the comments that it's a good thing for Tubby to "rid the team of weight that is not performing" is, well, nauseating. I wish Daniels, Shrader, Miller, and Ferguson the best and really, really, really hope this is a decision they genuinely wanted to make, a decision that hopefully won't hurt an education they actually want. I'm not confident that's the case.

Heh. That always tough to recover from, Jerry. Good luck with that.

Runner up: Lawvol at Gate 21. What an excellent post he had today. Here is a taste:

Larry Munson is one of the few remaining patriarchs of the golden age of college sports radio broadcasting. He has been broadcasting Georgia games since 1966. Up until the last season, he had missed only one football game in that time. This past year, due to debilitating arthritis and back problems -which made travel, and at times even walking, extremely difficult for the 85 year old — Munson only broadcast home games from Athens, leaving the road games to younger men. Mississippi State’s salty and sarcastic Jack Cristil has been at it even longer than Munson, having begun his stint behind the microphone in 1953. Up until 2006, Max Falkenstein of Kansas had been broadcasting for an unbelievable 60 consecutive years. Falkenstein had been broadcasting so long that, when dubious clip of him calling the final game of Kansas’ last undefeated basketball season appeared on the internet, that I’m sure some thought it was some probably thought it was authentic … despite the fact the game was played in 1909. This select band of broadcasters served as the eyes for fans all across the country, and in their heyday every school had its own “voice” which was as unmistakable as the mascot and the school colors.

Awesome post, Lawvol.

Worst of the SEC Blogs for Thursday

As you know, I rarely write Kentucky-related posts on here. I am a UK fan, but I do try to cover the SEC fairly honestly. I admit my bias, and unlike many in the mainstream media, I don't pretend to be able to put it aside and be completely dispassionate. Instead, I just try to stay away from the school for which I have a partisan affiliation. But sometimes it is impossible, and this is such a time.

I am very rarely surprised to read anything in the blogsophere. Sometimes you have people lose it. Sometimes, people just spew stream of consciousness crap. But this one really floored me. It starts with an article by Lexington Herald-Leader sportswriter John Clay about a Kentucky fan who goes to school at Vandy, and was sitting in the front row of the student section. His name is Eric Delong, and he was focused on a number of times by the ESPN cameras as he was the only guy in blue sitting in the front part of the Vandy student section. Clay writes this about his plight:

DeLong had arrived three hours early for his front-row seat, stood outside Memorial Gym for 90 minutes before the doors finally opened before tipoff, then sprinted to that prime position near mid-court where he was quickly enveloped by Commodore supporters.

"One of my friends -- well, he's not really a friend, just someone I play basketball with -- tried to physically remove me from my seat," said DeLong. "I didn't like that very much."

Then, somehow, his cell phone number was distributed and, as Vandy started using the Cats as a speed bag, DeLong received upwards of 65 text messages.

"My mom's not going to like that," he said. "The bill goes to her."

OK, I admit I think the fans were classless, but they are kids, so we have to give them a bit of a break here. They should certainly not have run up the charges on his phone by texting him, but I have seen and even participated in worse pranks in college, so I think his mom is just going to have to suck it up and tell her son to be more judicious about who he gives his cell number to. All that is fine, and I think we can say it pretty much falls under the rubric of, "the college experience." What floored me was the response from the blog, "Who ya With." To begin:

I hate this kid and I have never met him. This Douche is all that is wrong with Vandy athletics wrapped up in a gay little blue package. His name is Eric Delong and he was the faggot who wore his Kentucky shirt in the front row of the Vandy student section on Wednesday.

Well, let's see, where to begin? How is this a problem for Vandy athletics? Would you have them enforce a dress code on students, and require that they bow down and cheer for the university they matriculate to whether or not it is their favorite team on the floor? Not only that, isn't the fact that he was being abused by Vandy fans sufficient punishment without having aspersions cast on his sexuality by a Vanderbilt blogger? To continue:

I remember watching the game and thinking, "Oh well he is a Freshman who grew up in KY and still has allegiances." I as many others understand that it may take a little time to become a full blown Dores fan, but this queer is a fucking Junior. By that time your allegiance should be to the University you attend, not some team you grew up cheering for. I demand that this person transfer from the university or at least be shamed by the others living in Southerland House to do so. He does have a Facebook page and WYW would turn their heads to any public shamming you deem necessary.

Remember, this guy is a JUNIOR, and there is no place for him at the University we love.

I have no words for this drivel that I can print. I went to Western Kentucky, but nobody ever suggested I should be thrown out of school because I wore Kentucky clothing. Not only that, half of the student body were Kentucky fans. Comes now Mr. Jesus Quintana with the recommendation that Delong should leave because after three years at Vanderbilt, he is still a Kentucky fan. Then again, maybe it's all just a poor attempt at sarcasm and old farts like me just can't see it. It's possible (hey WYW, I'm offering you a way out here!).

I wonder if Mr. Quintana is so quick to change all his allegiances? He certainly seems to demand that others be. And to think, all this time I thought college campuses were all about free thinking, tolerance and rejection of the doctrinaire. Who knew?

'Bama responds to Brian Cook; Gators undone by Tigers

Yesterday, I noted in my runner-up for the best post of the day two dueling diatribes by Fanhouse authors Brian Cook and Pete Holiday.

OutsideTheSidelines, who blogs for Roll Bama Roll, takes dead aim at Brian Cook's piece. I know it's a shock, and maybe it's just me, but I don't detect a whole lot of love emanating from RBR over Cook's accusations against Nick Saban. But anyway, here is a taste:

In the blogosphere, you tend to get a bit accustomed to running across drivel masqueraded as legitimate commentary, but occasionally something comes up that simply takes the cake. Today I ran across one of those pieces. It seems Brian Cook, a Michigan blogger -- and no I'm not sure how in the hell he feels qualified to discuss Alabama football on that basis -- isn't too big of a fan of our latest recruiting class. In this piece of analytical garbage, if it even deserves that high of acclaim, he labels Saban a "Snake Oil Salesman," essentially states that our class is very overrated due to over-signing, and bemoans the practice of over-signing itself.

OTS goes on to analyze Cook's piece, and I think he really puts the screws to him. I don't know Brian Cook, but I will venture a bit of advice -- when you attack another team's head coach for doing something, make damn sure your coach isn't doing the same thing. Otherwise you will lose, and not just the argument, but credibility as well. Credibility is the coin of the realm in the Blogosphere, and in this blogger's humble opinion, Cook just went on a spending spree. But in the larger sense, since Big 10 and SEC fans aren't exactly on the best of terms these days, perhaps he made up for it in the eyes of Michigan fans.

But lest we be guilty of representing only one side of the argument, His Blognificance Orson Swindle has weighed in on the debate:

Nick Saban can’t count. Or worse yet, he can: Brian is shocked, shocked! in finding out that again, an SEC school has signed more recruits than they can possibly put on scholarship. Even more shocked, shocking! is the fact that it’s Nick Saban, an old hand at juggling massive signing classes: greyshirts, JUCO guys, and the old reliable: forcing people off the team because you want to put another player in his place. It’s not quite as bad as Brian paints it…but it’s cold, opportunistic roster manipulation more often seen at the NFL level. Meaning: bad.

With all due respect to Orson, I don't think his argument is quite as compelling from a reasoning standpoint, but he is correct to condemn "opportunistic roster manipulation," especially forcing people off the team because you want to replace them. If that happens at Alabama, I think it should be roundly condemned by all. We will have to wait and see about that, but either way, you still have the fact that other coaches are doing this also, and why is it bad at 'Bama and not at other schools?

Finally, I think we have to note that Florida suffered a surprising defeat at the hands of a resurgent LSU. After John Brady was rudely dismissed from his head coaching job, the Tigers have been playing much better under Butch Pierre. Geaux Tuscaloosa has the LSU side:

Congratulations to the Tiger basketball team and to Butch Pierre for the biggest win of the season last night. Granted, Florida is not a national power this year, but they're still a good team, likely headed to the NCAA tournament, and we beat them in their own house by a convincing 85-73 score. Only 6 players scored points, but 5 were in double figures, with 3 getting 19 points or more.

From the Gator side, we have Mlmintampa at Alligator Army:

Young teams are supposed to lose three of four. But no team should allow an opponent to shoot 59%, when their average in conference play was 39%. Or allow them to score 23 points more than their season average.

LSU played extremely well, so I don't want to take anything away from them. However, I've seen intramural teams play better defense than the Gators did tonight. There was no focus or effort on the defensive end and Florida was never able to build any momentum. This is now three of four games the Gators have lost where they looked completely lost at several points in the game. Against Arkansas it was understandable. That was a road game against a NBA-sized team. The Tennessee loss was fine too because of the quick road turn around and UF's lack of depth. But there was no excuse tonight.

I have already warned Gator fans about the problems with Florida's defense. Florida is a very good offensive team, but they play defense very poorly. I'm sure Donovan will be working hard on that.

Still, the gators seem poised for another invite to the NCAA tournament if they don't have any really bad losses between here and the SEC tournament, or they do well there. They aren't likely to get a high seed, but they will still get in in my opinion. But they do have work to do.