You see ESPN ranking Kirby Smart number one and all I can think about is how different building a roster was back in the 2002 season when you actually developed kids instead of shopping the portal every winter. We landed a five-star tight end the old fahioned way this year bu...
You walk into Sanford Stadium on a Thursday night for fall camp opener and the energy hits different. That first crack of pads echoing off the hedges with the lights on tells you everything you need to know. We don't do the whole "wait and see" thing around here. We reload, we refill, and we remind everybody why this place is the standard. Tennessee State is about to get a rude introduction to what real SEC football looks like under those Thursday night lights. htts://www.on3.com/teams/georgia-bulldogs/
Portal window getting nuked to winter only means one thing for USC: the staff has to nail their evals months before the season even ends. No more spring band-aids. The bagmen are already working silent commits for December.
Everyone ttalking about Bill Connelly's SP+ projections like they tell the whole story needs to remember fall camp is about. I still remember setting up the tailgate in the North Campus lot back in 2021 before we made that run and the energy was electric. Same feeling right now seeing this roster take shape. Connelly can put Texas ahead of us all he wants but watch what happens when our depth starts showing out these next few weeks.
You walk into Sanford Stadium on a Thursday night for fall camp opener and the energy hits different. That first crack of pads echoing off the hedges with the lights on tells you everything you need to know. We don't do the whole "wait and see" thing around here. We reload, we refill, and we remind everybody why this place is the standard. Tennessee State is about to get a rude introduction to what real SEC football looks like under those Thursday night lights. htts://www.on3.com/teams/georgia-bulldogs/
Just saw Bill Connelly's SEC projections have Texas behind Georgia and Alabama again. The disrespect is getting old. Sarkisian has a 62% win rate in conference play since 2023 and the Longhorns finished 2025 ranked 4th in SP+ overall. People keep pointing at the 2026 schedule like it is a gauntlet but Texas draws Texas State and UTEP in non-conference and misses both LSU and Ole Miss from the West. The 12-team playoff means 11-1 gets you in comfortably. Georgia has to replace a ton on defense and Alabama is breaking in a new QB. The path is right there lmao.
You want to talk about option football? I will tell you about option football. I remember sitting in Camp Randall in 1993 watching Brent Moss run the power option out of the I-formation and defenses knew eaxctly what was coming and still could not stop it. That was real football. You lined up, you read the end, you made a decision in half a second and if you guessed wrong a 240 pound fullback was caving your chest in. None of this RPO nonsense where the quarterback throws a screen pass to a guy who used to play receiver at three different schools. The option built this program. Barry Alvarez did not win three Rose Bowls by spreading it out and throwing 40 times a game. He won by pounding the rock, reading the option, and making the other team quit in the fourth quarter. I watch these kids now trying to run zone read and they cannot even execute a simple mesh point without fumbling. Go watch the 1994 Rose Bowl tape and see what real option football looks like.
Bill Connelly's SEC preview has Georgia and Texas in tier one and Florida stuck in that middle tier again. The Gators finished 2025 ranked 44th in SP+ which is fine but not elite. The problem is the gap between Florida and the top of the conference is actually widening. Georgia posted a 28.3 SP+ rating last season while Florida was at 12.1. That is not a talent gap that gets closed in one offseason. The Gators need to show they can hang with the top half of the SEC before anyone starts talkin...
Just saw Bill Connelly's SEC projections have Texas behind Georgia and Alabama again. The disrespect is getting old. Sarkisian has a 62% win rate in conference play since 2023 and the Longhorns finished 2025 ranked 4th in SP+ overall. People keep pointing at the 2026 schedule like it is a gauntlet but Texas draws Texas State and UTEP in non-conference and misses both LSU and Ole Miss from the West. The 12-team playoff means 11-1 gets you in comfortably. Georgia has to replace a ton on defense and Alabama is breaking in a new QB. The path is right there lmao.
Wait so Bill Connelly dropped his SEC preview and ESPN did their coach rankings and I keep seeing the same thing. Texas projected behind Georgia and Alabama again. Sarkisian ranked behind Smart and probably behind some other guys too. And I get it, Georgia has earned the benefit of the doubt. They have the 2021 and 2022 titles and they keep recruiting at an elite level. But at some point the data has to catch up to what is actually happening on the field.
Look at what Texas has done since joining the SEC. The Longhorns went 11-2 in 2024 and followed it up with a 10-3 season in 2025. That is a combined 21-5 record against a schedule that included Alabama Georgia Michigan and the full SEC slate. The program has back to back top 10 finishes for the first time since the early 2000s. And yet the preseason projections still slot Texas behind Georgia every single year like the gap is still the same as it was in 2022.
The thing that nobody wants to talk about is that Georgia has some real questions this season. The Bulldogs are replacing their entire starting secondary and lost their top two pass rushers to the NFL draft. Their offensive line has been inconsistent the last two years and they have a quarterback situation that is still unsettled. Meanwhile Texas returns a veteran offensive line that ranked top 15 nationally in sack rate allowed last season. The skill positions are reloaded with the 5-star QB and the Edge rusher from the 2026 class. The defensive front generated pressure on only 32% of dropbacks last year but the new additions should improve that number.
The SEC is still the best conference in college football and nobody is arguing that. Georgia has been the standard for the last five years and they deserve respect. But the gap between Georgia and Texas has closed significantly and the projections need to reflect that. The Longhorns have a 62% win rate in conference play since joining the SEC which is the same as Georgia over that span. If you look at the SP+ projections from last year Texas actually outperformed their preseason number by about 3 points per game. The program is trending up while Georgia is trying to reload.
I am not saying Texas should be ranked ahead of Georgia in the preseason polls. The Bulldogs have the track record and the benefit of the doubt. But putting Texas at 7 or 8 in the SEC while Georgia is 1 or 2 every year is just lazy. The data says this is a top 3 team in the conference and the gap is closing fast. If the Longhorns can stay healthy in the trenches and the new QB settles in early this could be the year the projections finally catch up to reality.
Remember that ttailgate last season where we grilled for three hours in the rain before the game? That's the kind of commitment that builds a program. The new guys will learn that energy soon enough.
Just saw the news about Sankey digging in on 16 teams. He knows a 24-team playoff means the Big Ten's depth runs the table. We reload every year, so bring on the extra games. The more teams they let in, the more we prove we're the best conference top to bottom.
Just saw that clip about Lane Kiffin already being in a pass-or-fail season. Are you kidding me? He hasn't even coached a game in Death Valley yet and the talking heads have already written the report card. This is exactly what's wrong. There's no patience anymore, no room to build. I remember when a coach got more than one offseason before the wolves came out.
It reminds me of when Curley Hallman was here. That was a disaster you could see from a mile away, but at least they gave him a few years to prove it. Now? The narrative is set before spring practice even ends. It's a circus. They want instant results like you're ordering them off an app. A real program, a culture, that takes time. Look at what Coach Mac built in the late 90s. That foundation took years, but it lasted. This "perfect fit" spring optimism they're selling for other schools is just empty calories.
They're setting Kiffin up to fail with this kind of talk, and for what? Clicks. The whole thing feels cheap. We used to judge a season by whether we beat Bama and won the Sugar Bowl, not by whether some guy on TV thinks a new coach met some arbitrary win total in year one. The pressure they're talking about isn't from our real fans, it's from this manufactured, year-round noise machine that needs a crisis every week.
why is everybody so quick to crown a new sec coach? will stein's "juice" at kentucky is a talking point, but the real test is year-over-year defensive epa improvement.
Calling it now, this team with Alberto Mendoza at QB is gonna remind everyone of the 2014 squad that won the Orange Bowl. That team had a transfer QB who came in and just managed the game perfectly. We're building the exact same identity right now. The pieces are falling into place with a veteran leader who won't turn the ball over and a system that churns out production. Everyone gets obsessed with flashy five-star croots, but our blueprint for winning the Coastal is already written in our own history. We're about to run it back.
You see these stories about Oklahoma State bringing in fifty portal transfers and Colorado with forty three, and you wonder where the grit is supposed to come from. How do you build toughness with a team full of hired guns who haven't bled for the program? It reminds me of our '89 squad that went 8-3, a team full of guys who spent four years in the weight room together, who knew each other's families. That's where real grit is forged. Now it's just a collection of mercenaries chasing the higheest NIL bid, and they expect to develop an identity by fall camp. You can't buy the kind of toughness that wins you a close game in the fourth quarter, the kind we had when we'd line up against Case Western Reserve and you knew every man next to you had been through the same hell for years. This new model is building fantasy teams, not football teams.
Everyone saying turnover margin is just luck is completely wrong. They look at the fumble recoveries and say it's a coin flip, ignoring the entire process that creates those opportunities. For a program like Bowie State Bulldogs, it's the single most important stat we control, and last season finishing with a negative margin cost us at least two games.
People point to the big schools with their five-star athletes forcing picks and think it's pure talent. It's not. It's scheme and discipline. Bowie State Bulldogs's defense ranked near the bottom of the CIAA in passes defended, that's a coaching issue. You don't get interceptions by accident. You get them by being in the right leverage, by disguising coverages, and most importantly, by generating pressure with a four-man rush. We didn't do any of that consistently.
The offense's job is to protect the ball, and a 1.5% interception rate is actually respectable. The problem was we never took it back. You can't win championships losing the turnover battle. Until this spring shows a secondary that attacks the ball and a defensive line that strips it, we're just hoping for luck. And hope is not a strategy.
Why is everybody sleeping on our 2026 class ranking after the latest 247 composite update? We're quietly sitting in the top 25 nationally and have a real shot to finish with our highest ranking ever. The staff is closing on a couple of silent commits that could bump us past a few Big Ten rivals. This is the foundation for finally competing in the East division.
Just saw Mel Kiper's list and he's got Emmanuel Pregnon as one of his favorite O-line prospects. That's huge for us. Our entire line is getting that kind of NFL buzz, which means whoever wins the QB job is gonna have all day to throw. This offense is built in the trenches.
We have multiple guys on Louis Riddick's favorite prospects list for the 2026 draft just proves we're developing NFL talent at an elite level again. Everyone wants to talk about the flashy portal teams buying players, but we're building them from the ground up. Seeing our guys get that kind of national draft buzz in the spring is what this program is about. It's the ultimate validation of our process. While other schools are scrambling to patch holes with transfers every single year, we're consistently putting guys in the league. That's the sustainable model. That's how you stay relevant for championships, not by being a revolving door for mercenaries. Our culture producees professionals. This is the foundation for everything. When high school croots see that path from South Bend to the NFL, they listen. It's why we're sitting at number four in the 2026 class and already in the top group for 2027. The machine is humming, and the so-called experts who sleep on us every offseason are about to get another rude awakening.
