I just don’t see the point of spring football.  I know a lot of you out there like it because, after all, it’s FOOTBALL and it can tide you over a bit until fall.

But, from a team standpoint, it makes little sense to me.  I’ve seen too many guys destroy their careers by suffering horrible injuries in meaningless spring scrimmages.  I’ve seen guys who are entrenched starters with nothing to gain go out there and suffer broken bones.  For what?

Perhaps it is good for the younger guys who don’t have a chance to play, but it seems to me that this is what we used to have with Freshman Football.  I’m not so sure spring isn’t more for the coaches than for the players.  Otherwise, what would they do between Signing Day and summer camp?  Besides Twittering, I mean.

I’m sure the rest of you have opinions on this.  What do you think?

…is underway.

I like Memphis to win it.

UPDATE: …uh, never mind!

Baylor’s Robert Griffen is the most athletic quarterback in the history of college football and one of the game’s rising stars.  Check out his Q&A with Bruce Feldman here.

I’m really curious to see how he progresses in Year 2 of Art Briles’ offense.  Should be outstanding.

So now Tennessee has landed the nation’s No. 1-rated recruit, running back Bryce Brown.

I think Brown is a talent who could one day contend for the Heisman.

HOWEVER.

The baggage this kid brings with him to Knoxville is tremendous and his presence would have been treacherous to any program–hence the fact that most schools wanted nothing to do with him by the time signing day rolled around.

Furthermore, let’s keep it real.  This kid is NOT an Adrian Peterson-type of talent.  I’d be shocked if he had a huge freshman season.  Remember, he played high school in Kansas, against a very low level of competition.  He will take time to adjust.  Let’s also not forget that the sole reason he was ranked the top player in the country by Rivals was his performance in an All-Star game. 

So, color me skeptical about his immediate impact, though I do think he will eventually be very good. 

And finally, I think this is another bad move by the King of the Offseason, Lane Kiffin.  The short term prestige of landing the nation’s top recruit could result in some long-term pain for the program down the road.  But Kiffin seems to have no problem pushing the envelope when it comes to NCAA regulations.  Luckily, Kiffin does have a veteran staff around him to help keep Brown and his entourage in order.  But make no mistake, it’s a gamble that could come back to haunt the Vols.

Lane Kiffin might need his own dedicated blog, the way this is going.  We might have to call him the ‘King of the Offseason’ as he is the only thing making news these days.

Kiffin told (recruit Alshon) Jeffrey that if he chose the Gamecocks, he would end up pumping gas for the rest of his life like all the other players from that state who had gone to South Carolina.

Classy.

Someone once asked me if Kiffin pissed in my cornflakes, given all the attention he gets from me.  A better question is:  Who pissed in Kiffin’s cornflakes?  Here’s a guy who was nurtured at the knee of some of football’s best coaches and used those connections to start his own career, yet judging by the way he acts and the size of the chip on his shoulder, you’d think he hailed from the slums of Mumbai.

Tennessee head coach Lane Kiffin must think that if he does things exactly as they were done when he was a low-level assistant at USC, then similar success will surely take root in Knoxville.

Accordingly,  he has relented in allowing his staff to follow a practice first used at USC in 2002, then transferred to Ole Miss in 2005 with Ed Orgeron, now the Volunteer defensive line coach.

Of course, I’m talking about the ritual of coaches ripping off their shirts in front of players while getting the team to engage in war-like chants.  It is supposed to excite the players and make them feel like the coaches are just, ya know, so crazy.  This time, it was with recruits at Tennessee’s Junior Day.  (No word yet on Tennessee’s pending move to Cardinal and Gold, nor the decision to have the Volunteer cheerleaders wear white turtleneck sweaters).

The reaction:

“That coach said they get real fired up on special teams and yelled for everybody to ‘Get up, get on your feet, and get fired up about special teams.’ Then this other coach ripped off his shirt Superman style. It was crazy.”

…

By now, three or four coaches had their shirts ripped off.” Smith said around 10 Tennessee players, including All-America defensive back Eric Berry of Atlanta and quarterback Jonathan Crompton, ran down from behind the recruits to meet the coaches on the floor. “Eric and the rest of the players were chanting ‘U-T, wild boys … U-T, wild boys … U-T wild boys.’” This time, prospects left their seats and joined the celebration. “We were all jumping up and down together, it was cool,” McCoy said.

This rather bizarre ceremony actually started with former USC assistant coach Kennedy Pola back in 2002.  He commandeered a special teams meeting, tore off his shirt, divided the room into two groups and had them chanting back and forth (‘S-C, Wild Bunch…S-C, Wild Bunch’), shirts twirling in the air.  I can’t link it for you, but I was there to see it first hand.

At the time, it was a pretty neat thing and it quickly became a tradition for the special teams meeting–and sometimes full team meetings–to start up like that every week.

When Orgeron became head coach at Ole Miss, he continued the practice.  Of course, no one in the SEC knew about it, so it helped him earn a rather peculiar reputation.  In fact, he got it from Pola, whose Samoan background gave it a wilder, indigenous feel.  I’m not sure it has been improved upon since.

Another difference between then and now is that while Pete Carroll and Orgeron took off their shirts and got down and dirty, Kiffin apparently found that beneath him:

All four of the players said they never saw Lane Kiffin lose his shirt. “He was on the side, just watching and smiling,” Vogler said.

Maybe, deep down, Kiffin realizes the truth: Seven years later, this practice has jumped the shark.

Check out this great article from Rivals.com that compares player heights, weights and 40 times when measured as recruits and how they later were measured at the NFL combine.

It reveals several fantastic myths that abound around college football and recruiting.

First, there is the nostrum that guys get faster as they get bigger.  You hear this nonsense from college strength coaches all the time (bigger! stronger!  faster!).  Of course, strength coaches are always going to claim that guys will get faster as they go through their programs.  That’s how they justify their employment.  But in the end, it’s just basic physics.  Players grow naturally to a point before their size and speed hit a plateau, then growth must be manufactured.  In college, they put on extra muscle or bad weight and tend to get slower, not faster.  Let’s not forget, too, that guys get beat up on college and that’s another reason they lose speed.  Of course, when they get to the NFL, many ‘slow’ college guys are suddenly blazing fast again because they are now playing with guys who are even more beat up.

Second, the high school recruiting camps and combines where guys are measured are complete jokes.  Players stand on their tiptoes and get hooked up on their 40 times by corrupt recruiting hacks with quick stopwatch thumbs.  It’s tainted by hype and salesmen who have an interest in over-promoting these kids.

Later, they get into college and then sports information directors play with their heights and weights.  At USC, adding up to 1.5 inches was standard operating procedure.  So, we go through the shenanigans of high school, then college and THEN we get somewhat of a clearer picture at the combine, but even that might not be accurate, as the 40 times there are also suspect–see the weird combination of hand times and electronic times that are implemented.  As this article notes, every 40 time measured on the list was NOT run in the same conditions as at the Indianapolis combine, so naturally there is going to be some major deviance.

This is why the only reliable indicator of speed, strength or athleticism is to find if a player has a track mark in his past.

Despite this article, we are now about to embark upon another round of recruiting hype.  Kudos to Rivals for pointing this out, as it doesn’t make its profession look especially accurate.