Destin, Fla. - The media horde is back, yours truly amongst them, sitting here in the atrium of the Hilton hotel. The athletics directors are convened behind closed doors with the commish (Mike Slive, not Michael Chiklis), while the football and basketball coaches are downstairs, probably discussing how much they love each other.
There should be some actual news to come out of today's meetings, unlike yesterday, which was mostly about setting the groundwork and taking people's temperatures. In case you missed it, here are my stories from day one:
- On roster management, i.e. oversigning and grayshirting, everyone has opinions (though Mark Richt was less eager to provide his), but there remains plenty of disagreement.
- On basketball, there was talk about some fairly drastic changes - getting rid of divisions, re-seeding the tournament by using the RPI - but Mike Slive said after the meetings that he didn't expect any major changes to be voted on this week.
- The A.D.’s will meet with the football and basketball coaches in separate meetings this afternoon. That’s when there might be some real movement on issues.
The most likely tangible result is some vote on basketball: My guess is they will vote again on tournament re-seeding, and there’s a better chance it passes this year. I’ll also be curious if other coaches agree with Mark Fox about getting rid of divisions. But based on Slive’s comments, I’ll be surprised if they do anything more today than just talk about going to a 12-team set-up.
As for football, it would be surprising if they vote on over-signing. Right now it looks like the coaches are on one side, and the presidents are on the other. Some of the presidents are trickling in earlier – South Carolina’s Harris Pasites arrived Tuesday, and Georgia’s Michael Adams is supposed to come in today. So perhaps there will be a meeting of the minds.
The A.D.’s seem to be caught in the middle a bit. Greg McGarity and his coach and president are on the same page, luckily for them. I spoke to another athletics director off the record yesterday, whose coach has not publicly been vocal about the issue, and that A.D. was up front that he thought 25 was a reasonable limit:
If you sign 25 every year, this A.D. stated, and figure in redshirts, that’s 125 players, more than enough to be safe with academic casualties and transfers and get to the overall limit of 85. But this A.D. kind of threw up his hands to say: Can we get the coaches to agree?
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
Hey Seth,
I heard Saban said somethin' kinda funny yesterday as he left the room. Did you hear it?
Yeah, when Saban was done he cracked that it was the best interview he’s ever done because no one asked him about Alabama football. (As in, no questions about the long snapper, turned ankles, etc.)
I’m assuming that’s the “funny” remark to which you were referring. If by chance you meant that another media member followed Saban out and asked a question about over-signing, my understanding is that in fact never happened.
No, that was the one I heard about. Where there any questions about Bama football asked of him? If so, what did the media ask him about?
Thanks. Love all the updates!
Post a Comment