Guys, I feel bad again. I wasn’t able to write again last week as I was traveling again, and then life got in the way. But in the mean time, Mark Long spouted off about entitlement, college basketball has been in madness, and one of my favorite country music artists, Chris Janson, had his single, “Buy Me a Boat”, went to number one on iTunes.
Heckuva week off.
Let’s look into this past week.
Coach Speak and Entitlement
This past week AP writer Mark Long spoke to 1010XL out of Jacksonville last Tuesday and called Gators head coach Jim McElwain, “a used car salesman”, saying “Right now, to me, he’s a used car salesman and I have a hard time believing anything he says because I don’t find him genuine.”
What spawned that ridiculous answer of a coach he has met probably five times? An answer by McElwain that he didn’t know Will Grier took the first snap of the first practice.
Yes. Mark Long is upset that Jim McElwain did not want to expound on the fact that Will Grier took the first snap in a practice round that ultimately was part of a warm-up routine in his FIRST practice as head coach.
Now, did Jim McElwain know who took the first snap? Absolutely.
Is McElwain entitled to tell you that? Hell no. Why? Because the media would make a big deal out of something that should not be a big deal – yet, at least.
Everyone that attended the first practice (Mark Long did not), knew that Grier took the first snap and ran with that. Does that mean that he is the starter? No, not at all. It is the first practice with a new coach in a new offense – it is the first day.
The reason he acted like he didn’t know who started was to avoid people naming a meaningless starter and risking the attention being shifted away from a quarterback battle to a starter vs. back-up situation.
Often times, certain people believe that they should be entitled to all available information – like Mark Long, in this case. Jim McElwain’s responsibility is to run a football program; Mark Long’s responsibility is to report the news, heck, even break news. If you are un-happy with an answer a coach gives you, don’t complain on the radio, realize that you are not entitled to all answers, and go find answers.
Spokespeople for all brands tell you the information that they want you to hear, and if you are dissatisfied with the answer, go find an answer, but do not whine on the radio about a coach that gives you more access than Will Muschamp did, while using their facilities, wireless internet, and gives you food, about something that is as juvenile as who took the first snap in the first practice in a rep that wasn’t even real.
If you have such an issue with McElwain, Mark, go ask for a transfer.
Recruiting the State of Florida
According to Rivals.com, the Florida Gators offered 60 total players from the state of Florida in 2014 and 56 in 2013. For 2016, Jim McElwain has already offered 64 with 11 months left of recruiting. It is obvious: Jim McElwain wants to win with players from the state of Florida.
Florida is widely considered — along with California and Texas — to the be the biggest hotbed of recruiting talent in the country, so winning the state should equal wins on the football field.
Winning the state is something Will Muschamp never did, and that is a reason why he is no longer the head coach at Florida.
NFL Veteran Combine
This past Sunday, the NFL held a “combine” for 105 NFL veterans (over 1,700 applied). It included big names like Michael Bush, Felix Jones, Adam Carriker, and Michael Sam, along with a number of others.
Two big points on this “combine”.
- How greedy is the NFL? The NFL required these players to pay $400 and pay for their own accommodations for the event – something they don’t do for college players. The NFL generates about $9.5 billion a year. Interesting that they made players pay.
- Most players ran 40-yard dashes and many running backs didn’t score well and it became a big deal on social media. Michael Bush ran a 4.91, Felix Jones ran a 4.85, and Cierre Wood ran a 4.92 – but I think this is probably more like actual playing speed in the NFL. Hear me out. Most college players train for three months, everyday, to prepare for the draft, and that is simply not how they practice in the NFL. I would imagine that if you tested most players that ran a 4.4 at the combine one month later, they would be in the 4.5 range. And I bet, if these players got back into football after being out for a little while, they would increase their numbers. I guess I just hate combine numbers and how much they mean….
Must Read Articles of the Week
- Joseph Hudak | How an Unknown and Unsigned Chris Janson Dominated iTunes
- Lawrence Wight | The Apostate
- Hillel Aron | The Last Freeway
- John Mooallem | Death, Redesigned
- Daniel Miller | The Spectacular Rise and Surprising Exit of a Hollywood Executive
- Tom Vanderbilt | Inside the Mad, Mad World of TripAdvisor
Song of the Week
I introduced y’all to Blackberry Smoke about seven months ago, but I wanted to make sure that you all remembered them.
Blackberry Smoke is going to have more rugged sound, and are going to be similar to “The Charlie Daniels Band”, “The Marshall Tucker Band”, “Shooter Jennings”, and more recently, the Zac Brown Band and Eric Church
Mark was asked a question in that interview an is entitled to his opinion, its juvenille to rant about another man’s opinion however you disagree. Disagree with his point don’t complain about his reasoning. You sound as bitter as he does about McElwain.
Daniel Thompson was responding to what he believes was another man’s [Mark Long] unwarranted, and rather silly criticism of a coach based on said coach not answering a question the way Long would have liked. And [not an] he is entitled to his opinion. It’s [not its] juvenile to rant about another man’s opinion however you disagree. You sound as bitter as he does about Mr. Long’s silly criticism.
Or am I being too on the nose in pointing out your obvious hypocrisy?
Daniel is that you under an alias? LOL
I enjoy your writing, just like it better when it’s more about the point and not the person.
Short sided interjections from some show that a fool is considered wise until he presses the send button. Oh it’s He [not And he] when starting a new sentence, though I appreciate the patrolling from the grammar police.
*sigh* Starting a sentence with a conjunction [such as “and” in this case] is more than acceptable when the writing an informal text as long as they [the conjunctions] are used sparingly to keep the text from becoming choppy. Posts on a website, I think by all accounts would be considered informal. The conjunction used was also implemented only once to begin a sentence, so that would qualify as ‘sparingly’ I assume. I hate that you made me give a full-on grammar lesson here, thus making you look like a bigger moron than you’re previous errors have proven you to be and forcing me to become a pretentious troll, but I could not resist the figurative meatball you lobbed over the plate. I also apologize to any other reader that has sadly stumbled upon this back-and-forth. I should also point out that your response shows you completely missed the point of my post. Perhaps I was not quite on the nose enough for the likes of you. Maybe this will help: You whined about the author of this article doing the exact same thing that you did in your post. Hopefully that was clear, simple, and free of the satirical cloud that loomed over my previous post enough for you to wrap your head around. Enjoy responding back to this with some other would-be-witty retort that turns out to be merely snark. I have wasted enough time and will not be reading.
(YAWN) are these guys serious?! Can we please remove the trolls . Some ppl live miserable lives with these back and forth’s. Which professor is going to tell us how to spell {ppl] correctly?
Three words come to mind “SCREW MARK LONG”
Mark needs punched right in the nose. And you “subtle” gator… Daniels entitled to his opinion and to write his articles how he sees fit. Stop whining about the writing and go read another site if you got problems here….Oh and try to be more subtle next time you want to throw a temper tantrum! hahahaha
Two things Daniel,
1) I had no idea about the number of offers we gave out to Florida players under Champ.. The top 50 should be automatic offers, so it’s hard to believe we only found roughly 10 other kids to offer in state.
2) I was so stoked to see Chris Jansen rise up the charts like that on iTunes. I love his music and have heard great things about his live performances.. unfortunately I have not seen him in person yet. But I actually listen to the Bobby Bones show up here in Durham every morning and afternoon and I’m pretty sure that’s who played “Buy Me a Boat” on the radio for the first time. That song should get him signed to a label pretty quickly, if it hasn’t already.
I don’t think you can automatically offer the top 50 kids. You have to be careful with offering instate kids early unless you’re ready to take them.
Well AS you would know better than me so I’ll go with you on that one and retract my comment about automatic offers lol
Maybe the numbers are misleading and don’t really mean a whole lot, but it just doesn’t seem right that Mac’s already surpased Champ’s amount of offers to in-state kids with almost an entire year left. Good, bad, or indifferent Mac seems to be putting an emphasis on Florida kids.
Mac is looking for instate kids first before offering out of state kids. I would agree that Mac is a lot more focused on the instate kids.
As someone who spent two decades as a news reporter AND someone who watched every single one of the Gator pressers (for football and basketball, at least), I see Long’s point. Not sure I would have gone so far as to write a column about it, though. But as a reporter, what you need is a straight answer to your question, not some aw shucks routine that. Regarding who took the first snap, all he needs to say is that someone had to be first, and that it signifies nothing. Don’t get me wrong — love the new coach and staff. Think they’re going to be dynamite.