By Will Miles
Mullen, Recruiting and SEC Media Days
Dan Mullen was asked about recruiting at SEC Media Days, specifically the lack of success he’s had keeping high-level recruits from Florida away from Alabama. Here was his response:
“Nick’s been there a long time and has done a good job of building a consistent program and consistency within his program. I guess the short answer of that is — I mean, there’s — nobody asked my opinion on ratings. So maybe I’d rate everybody differently on who we go after and who we want, that way.”
Now, this is disingenuous. Mullen went after just about every 5-star player that Saban plucked out of Florida. But the outrage by some fans and media about this is just goofy. Mullen knows as well as you or I how important the recruiting rankings are, and that they are mostly accurate. I mean, he has to face better recruiting programs (LSU, Georgia, Alabama) every year. Perhaps not coincidently, Mullen is 2-5 against those teams.
But I’m not sure what people want Mullen to say here. “Yeah, you’re right. Nick’s really kicking my butt.” I’m sure that would go over really well with the fan base. Besides, it doesn’t make any sense to roll over your own players with a bus when it isn’t necessary.
Mullen is trying to sell that team that they have a chance to compete at a high level. He’s trying to help them get the stench of the 3-game losing streak to end 2020 out of their nose. It just isn’t productive to go out and admit that your main competition for where you want to go is loaded and you’re at a disadvantage, even if it’s true.
I’ve been as critical as anybody about Mullen’s recruiting. I don’t think it’s good enough to win consistently and the 2022 class looks to be just about the same as the previous four. But I also don’t want a coach who ever admits defeat even when things aren’t going his way.
That’s how you get some mopey dude at the dais talking about death threats.
Mullen and his “erratic” 2020 defense
The one place where a little bit of truth might have been useful is when Mullen was asked about his defense.
Now, the question came across as “why was your defense terrible last year?” and so I get why Mullen was a little bit defensive. I also understand – using the same logic as above – why he chose to instead say the defense was inconsistent rather than bad.
But let’s be honest, we all saw that defense. And while there is usefulness to defending the way you evaluate your players, I think there’s also usefulness in putting the pressure squarely where it should be: on defensive coordinator Todd Grantham.
If my email, Twitter, Facebook or family are any indication, Florida fans have had enough of the Grantham experiment. You aren’t going to be able to convince us that the defense last year was anything but terrible, or even an anomaly. Indeed, I wrote about this last week and the 2018 defense wasn’t any better.
Instead, a response that he likes the players he has and expects Grantham to show significant improvement this year would have been a welcome alternative to saying that the stats don’t tell the real story. He didn’t have to throw any of his players under the bus to answer this one honestly.
He just had to put his DC on notice.
Quarterback Competition?
My memory is that at every SEC Media Day thus far, Dan Mullen had been committed to a QB. That was true in 2019 and 2020, but actually wasn’t true in 2018, as he still had an open competition between Feleipe Franks, Kyle Trask and his shiny new recruit, Emory Jones.
It has been assumed all offseason that now is Jones’ time to shine. After all, he waited his turn and Mullen has often deferred to experience with his QBs, even when he’s had elite guys at the position. Tyler Russell went down in the opener in 2013 and Dak Prescott played well in his absence, but Russell still got a fair amount of playing time when he came back from his injury.
That’s what makes Mullen suggested the QB spot is an open competition so interesting. Perhaps it’s just a motivational ploy. Perhaps it’s the way you have to be these days because of the transfer portal. Perhaps he just wants Anthony Richardson to think he can be the starter so that he prepares like the starter. Given that he’s one injury away and Jones is expected to run the ball a lot, that could mean lots of playing time even if Jones is the starter.
But perhaps the job is more open than we might have thought. The backup QB is always the most popular guy in the room, but we were all surprised when it was Kyle Trask, and not Jones, who came in against Kentucky in 2019 when Franks went down. And with the recruiting deficiencies, Mullen is going to have to offset his lack of depth and high-end talent with elite QB play.
If Richardson is proving that he has the ability to be that elite guy, you have to play him, right? Or maybe I’m just reading too much into a comment that was basically meant to communicate that everyone always competes for their position at all times.
Georgia, Florida and the SEC East
Mullen definitely did get one thing wrong. When asked about the prevailing wisdom that Florida would finish behind Georgia, he quipped, “isn’t that what they said last year?”
Well, no, it isn’t. Florida was picked by the SEC media to win last year, for many of the reasons that Florida isn’t going to be picked this year. Last season, Georgia had to play Auburn and Alabama while Florida got Ole Miss and LSU. That evened out a fair amount considering Florida got Texas A&M and Arkansas in the added games while Georgia got the Razorbacks and Mississippi State, but the fact remains, the Alabama game was an assumed loss.
That’s where Florida is this year. Week 3 against Alabama is a huge opportunity, but the Gators are going to be huge underdogs. That means that Florida can beat Georgia and still has zero margin for error to win the east. We saw how important that Georgia loss to Alabama was last season when both the Gators and Bulldogs finished 8-2 on the season, but Florida went to Atlanta because of their head-to-head victory.
With all that Florida lost off of last year’s team and the emergence of J.T. Daniels at the end of last season, Florida is going to be an underdog. If Daniels flops and Jones turns out to be a revelation, maybe that changes by Halloween, but the media has been pretty fair to Florida recently.
SEC better top-to-bottom than 2008?
Mullen made the suggestion that the SEC is better top-to-bottom now than it was in 2008. That’s a pretty bold statement.
That 2008 Gators team was one of the best that’s ever been assembled. Despite the loss to Ole Miss, they had a generational talent at QB and WR and guys who would end up getting drafted all over the field. Alabama was building into what it would become. Yes, the Tide were a year away, but that would have been a championship team most years. Georgia went its customary 10-3 under Mark Richt, a solid team but an underperforming one (they started the year ranked #1). South Carolina struggled a little bit, but still had Steve Spurrier at the helm. And the only team under .500 in the entire SEC East was Tennessee, with both Kentucky and Vanderbilt going 7-6 for the year.
I think you can make the argument that the SEC West is better top-to-bottom. Bama is obviously a juggernaut, LSU is solid, Texas A&M is building something significant and Auburn is almost always a top-20 program.
But the bottoms of the SEC East at Vanderbilt, Kentucky, South Carolina, Missouri and Tennessee mean that the east is a race between Georgia and Florida every year before the ball is ever kicked off. I don’t think you can say that about 2008.
Bowman eligible
I didn’t know this was news, but Mullen announced Demarkcus Bowman was going to be eligible for 2021.
If that was ever in doubt, that’s huge news for Florida because the Gators haven’t been able to run the ball for two years now. Some of that is due to the offensive line certainly, but a lot of it is due to running backs who are good, but not home-run threats.
With Emory Jones running more read-option plays, Bowman and Jones could be a lethal combination considering they both have the ability to take the ball to the house. You’re not going to be able to cheat like you could last year when nobody cared if Kyle Trask kept the ball and moseyed on around the corner.
I’d just assumed that Bowman was eligible because these days everyone who transfers is eligible. But it’s good that Mullen has clarified and now we know what to expect. I still think guys like Malik Davis are going to have an impact on the season, probably larger than we realize. And running back is also the position where injuries and wear-and-tear are huge concerns, so even if Bowman is Heisman-worthy from a talent perspective, you’d want to keep him fresh for the big-time games.
But Florida is going to need Bowman to be everything his recruiting ranking says he can be to truly compete in those games.
Sankey wants federal NIL law
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey used SEC Media Days as a place to again stump for a federal name, image and likeness (NIL) law. Sankey’s point is that because the NIL laws are state-based, there are different rules in different places, which makes it impossible to have a level playing field.
But I find it incredibly hypocritical that Sankey is essentially asking for the federal government to come in and pass legislation to override regulations written and applied by the NCAA. Instead, he should ask the NCAA to roll back its archaic rules about not allowing players to profit off of their names.
This seems to be the case with a lot of things these days in our society. Whenever something isn’t right, we go to the highest level possible for a solution rather than looking in the mirror and controlling what we can control.
Sankey is the most powerful commissioner in the most powerful conference in the country. His decision to move the season forward last year is the reason there was a season, despite the flip-flopping by the Big Ten and Pac-12. He has the ability to spearhead change in a way nobody else does.
But instead, he’ll try to leave that to federal legislators because the NCAA is so incompetent that it can’t just eliminate its own regulations to allow the free market to work.
Emmert suggesting deregulation of college sports
Sankey did take some shots at the NCAA in his time at SEC Media Day, and not all too coincidently, NCAA president Mark Emmert came out ahead of it suggesting that college sports need to be deregulated.
Anybody who read the Supreme Court decision in NCAA vs. Alston knows that the NCAA as it is currently constituted is an untenable organization. Justice Kavanaugh went so far as to single out the NCAA as the only organization allowed to act in the way that it does, a clear signal that future legal battles are futile even if the Alston case didn’t directly impact paying players.
But there’s a lot of hand wringing about something that really should be pretty simple. The suggestion I made a few years ago was that the NCAA should treat paying players like colleges treat ownership of inventions in research labs. The researcher gets a percentage of royalties but the University gets some as well because they provide the lawyers and pay filing and upkeep fees associated with patents.
The deregulation Emmert is suggesting is just counteracting regulation that his organization has put in place. Getting rid of it shouldn’t be that hard, but it is because if they completely deregulate, a bunch of sports that don’t make any money are going to go away and perhaps more importantly, Mark Emmert won’t be needed any more.
I still think the biggest risk in all of this is that the NCAA is going to try half-measures and players are going to get taken advantage of. Because they only have four years of eligibility, they’re going to look out for themselves rather than athletes who come after them. Because schools (and the NCAA) can look at the long game, they’ll be able to negotiate favorable deals, even in a deregulated environment.
Michigan jersey deal
That exact thing was my first thought when I heard about the Michigan jersey deal that was announced up in Ann Arbor.
MDen, the official merchandiser for Michigan Sports, is going to put players’ names on the backs of jerseys and is going to compensate them for that. Sounds great, right? After all, we all weren’t buying #15 jerseys in 2007 and 2008 because of Dee Webb.
But if you dive a little bit deeper, you see where I might have some concern. According to reports, each player will make the same amount per jersey and so will be compensated better the more jerseys they sell. Again, sounds great, right?
But who negotiated that fee for each jersey sold? Why shouldn’t an elite player be able to charge more? And why wouldn’t an elite player opt-out and have a blue and gold jersey with his name on it but no Michigan logos that you can buy at your local Dick’s Sporting Goods?
The point is that Michigan seems to have decided – in coordination with MDen – what the players’ endorsements are worth rather than the players themselves. This is a restriction of their earning potential, just with the veneer of a fair market because they’re getting paid something.
The result is that a players’ union is going to be coming. And that may mean a strike in the future as College Football becomes much more like the professional one.
COVID and the 2021 season
Sankey is also committed to playing all games this year, or at least holding all teams responsible for playing games this season.
He basically said what most people are thinking about Covid at this point: the vaccine is out there and widely available, pretty darn effective and so you can choose not to get it but if you do, the conference isn’t going to make any special accommodations for you. You’re going to forfeit.
The argument last year was that officials and coaches were susceptible, which was true. That isn’t true anymore as the vaccine is available and N95 masks are also widely available. And while the vaccine has not prevented all breakthrough infections, it does appear to have significantly reduced the severity of those breakthrough infections.
But beyond that, I actually think there’s a discussion to be had about whether they should test players for Covid at all, irregardless of vaccination status.
According to the CDC’s website as of July 21, 2021, 598,624 people have been classified as a “death involving Covid” in the US in 2020 or 2021. Of those, 2,446 have been between the ages of 18-29. That is certainly more than have died of the flu (151) but is less than from pneumonia (2,652).
The vast majority (475,000 or 80%) of deaths have come in age brackets above 65, and the CDC says that 91% of those from 65-74 and 87% of those 74+ have received at least one vaccine dose. Combine that with the fact that outside of coaches, these players are only going to be interacting with other college-aged kids, and the risk of massive transmission to at-risk populations is incredibly limited.
I wrote about my worries about Covid on March 21, 2020 based on the data so I’m not a denier. I had Covid in March of this year, before I was eligible for the vaccine up here in Pennsylvania, and I wouldn’t wish that horror on my worst enemy. I recognize that many of us know people who have been severely impacted by the disease, including some of us who’ve lost loved ones. I’m also incredibly pro-vaccine.
But I do worry that in our desire to have things “normal”, we are applying a broad set of rules to everyone that would be better applied to different people based on age and pre-existing conditions; that we are basing decisions not on facts or data, but rather on emotion, anecdotes and fear. The NCAA – and the SEC – can do what they want to do as far as vaccine requirements for players. And the “everybody needs to do their part” aspect of the argument does appeal to me.
But so does the idea that medical records and decisions should be a choice made between a doctor and a patient, not a conference and a player.