Bigger is better?

It was a relatively quiet week in college football. I mean besides the combine and all of the hype about Marcus Mariota and his quick feet and Jameis Winston and his not so quick feet, and the reminder that RGIII just didn't pan out the way that the combine made people think he would. Besides all that there haven't been too many fun off-season tales to talk about. However, I've found two that I think will suffice. The first is a little on the serious side, and the second is a follow-up to the Winston's Baby Fat that I wrote about last week. So onto the first issue

Florida's Minor Violation

In case you missed it, the beloved NCAA finished up an investigation into the football program at Florida about a recruiting violation from a year ago. It involved Joker Phillips, who many remember as the failed Kentucky head coach, who was an assistant to the team at the time. He apparently conversed with a recruit during the "dead period" which is not allowed and somehow gave him a leg up on the competition. The NCAA must have not realized that it didn't matter when the recruit was spoken to there wasn't much that could be said to bring any recruit to Florida while Muschamp was still the head coach. Regardless of that, when Florida figured it out they suspended Joker on their own and then he resigned due to personal reasons not too long after that. It was determined by everyone's favorite authority figure, the NCAA in case you're lost, that the self-imposed penalties were enough to suffice and they wouldn't be punished any further. 

I mean I get it. I really do. But this was literally one of the smallest recruiting violations that could have ever happened. I mean it's not like he wasn't in the wrong but let's be real here what harm could it really do? The kid is going to pick Florida over an Alabama, Auburn, LSU, or even Ohio State or whatever other team could have come calling, just because Joker Phillips shows up at his school, says hello, and gets his Facebook URL? Come on. Give me a break. The off season is also great for seeing what the NCAA is going to do since they're obviously bored and need someone or something to pick on until the real fun starts again. I know that they had to do something because it is a violation, whether it was a really important and necessary violation or not, it was still a violation. So in order to assert their dominance they must investigate and annoy and eventually punish if they deem it necessary to do so. In this case, I think it's fairly decent, and not like them, to let Florida off. As we've seen with other teams before self-imposed violations don't necessarily mean that it will shake the NCAA (see Miami). However, sometimes even after the NCAA investigates and punishes it doesn't mean that it will stop the team from doing wrong things again (see SMU). More recently teams that self-imposed violations have avoided the swing of the hammer from the NCAA, see Syrcause basketball, so Florida did well to get off the hook. I, personally, don't think that it gave Florida any more of a shot at landing the kid than it did anyone else, but hey, I'm not the NCAA. I still don't understand why college players shouldn't get money when people use their likeness and their signature for monetary gain. There's a lot I don't get about the big business of college football. I love it, but I don't get it.

Lorenzen Strikes Again

So everyone probably has heard of Jared Lorenzen at some point if you like football. He was a larger than average QB once upon a time who played and played well at Kentucky. He defied most of the conventions surrounding how a quarterback should look and weigh, and he had one heck of an arm while he did it. Anyway when the picture of the voluptuous Jameis Winston surfaced, Lorenzen simply couldn't resist having his say about it. He posted this lovely number on his Twitter:

In honor of #FatTuesday I will play "who looks better?" P.S. The answer is obvious. #biggerisbetter #22 pic.twitter.com/2PXjLl9r5K
— jared lorenzen (@JaredLorenzen22) February 17, 2015

I swear this made me laugh so hard when I read it. I've read a lot about Jared Lorenzen and he seems like a cool guy and this sort of affirmed that for me. Picking at Jameis about that photo by a famous fat quarterback is just wonderful. As we all know by now the photo of Jameis isn't exactly true to his measurements and so it's not something to get worked up about. However, I still love this post. It's always nice when you can have a sense of humor about something that most people will despise you over. Anyway just a fun little story to cap the blog this week. Until next I write, see ya football lovers.

Off Season

Ugh, I hate the off season. There's all those headlines that read something like, "Nick Saban declared to be legally Satan" and the others that are like "Gus Malzahn admits to stealing toilet paper for rolling of trees" and people read them and fuss over the comment sections like these stories are realistic or interesting. Then of course there's the articles about what the players are doing in their down time. Hint: most of them are getting arrested. I, for one, just miss not having football to watch on Saturdays. I really feel like there is something missing in my life when I have to wake up and not get ready to watch a game of any sort on a Saturday morning. I'm not saying I don't enjoy the crazy stories of off season tales and woes, plus I'm a pretty big college basketball lover so March Madness is always fun for me, I'm just saying I miss college football. So in order for me to curb my appetite for the sport I'll be addressing some fun articles about the off season that keep us all entertained while we wait patiently for football's return.

Yeldon Overrated?

Anyway I'd like to address this one article that I read on my favorite college football website Saturday Down South about Alabama's own TJ Yeldon. Personally, I loved the kid. He was always a good running back to me. I mean Bama has never been short on good backs, and, while he wasn't Eddie Lacy or Mark Ingram or even Trent Richardson, he was still good. However, this anonymous scout came forward and said that he was "overrated, because he's coming from Alabama". I think this is a tad unfair toward not only Yeldon, who is very good, but toward Alabama as well. I just don't see how people can say in one sentence that Alabama itself is an overrated team and then in the next say that they're the best in the nation. Alabama has this thing about having some of the best players in the country, and they do this year after year. I mean as I mentioned up there they had Mark Ingram, Trent Richardson, and Eddie Lacy all right in a row. Ingram and Lacy are playing professionally and Richardson will be picked up by someone who will use him the right way and let him play because he's still good and he deserves to have that chance. But I digress, anyway the point is that Alabama has good players year after year. It's not fair to say that Bama is overrated because they are who they are. They're a good team every single year. Whether or not they win it all isn't even the discussion, it's that consistently they are one of the best teams in the nation. They're not overrated because being overrated, by definition, would be a team who was ranked high every year and then didn't win. Alabama is not that team. If you want a team that fits that definition well see Oklahoma. Yeldon shouldn't even be in the same sentence with overrated because he proved that he could play with one of the best teams in the country and rack up some serious yards while doing it. I'm not saying he's the best back in the world, because he isn't, but I'm saying that this scout is crazy. Yeldon won't go first in the draft, he won't even be the first back to go, but someone will get him. And that team will be dang lucky because Yeldon is good. He proved that over and over again. For the whole article, and SDS's commentary, go here.

Winston's Baby Fat

I'm only addressing this because I find it hilarious. Earlier last week I saw this picture surface of the Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston: 

He was looking slightly rounder than one would expect a quarterback to be and of course people instantly made fun of him for his physique, which is silly. But that's not why I want to talk about it. The picture itself is a little over a month old, so it's not even of Jameis recently, but it's still hilarious that this is something that is deemed newsworthy during the off season. One of my favorite jokes made about this picture was that he looked like the uncle from your family that swears he can still beat everyone at football. Or that he's basically like Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite. I loved that comparison just because I sort of imagine that's how most quarterbacks are after they're finished with football, "No really I can still throw it 85 yards!" Honestly, it makes me laugh that this was even an issue that people brought up. No one even bothered to do research on it to see if it was recent before they made assumptions that Jameis had just let himself go right here before the combine. The Big Lead did a story on the picture where they contacted a guy at Florida State to see if the picture was recent and why Jameis looked so porkly, you can read it here. I love off season "news" stories. The Bleacher Report is the world's worst for stuff like that. I mean it's all funny reads, but it kinda makes you wonder if they actually ever report on real news. 

Anyway I guess that's all for this one. Until next time football lovers.