BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

I’ll eat my hat if Michigan ever actually goes the Georgia Tech assisted suicide route from 60 years ago.

 

Tech's route was from the SEC to independence in football and to the Metro in hoops, right?

 

Something like that. But it left when it tried to abolish the league’s “140 rule” (named for the total limit of football and men’s basketball players allowed to be on scholarship) and got no support. Bobby Dodd contended it put him at a disadvantage because he wouldn’t run off underperforming players to make room for better ones.

https://www.ajc.com/sports/fifty-years-ago-georgia-tech-left-the-sec/07w1mrefY4QgzlmzzSXr9O/

 

The other disadvantage that Dodd faced was Bear Bryant recruiting as many guys as he could grab. He'd recruit guys he had no intention of playing simply to keep them off another team's roster. Probably a big part of his trying to get the 14o rule passed in the first place, along with his reluctance to hurt a kid's future to clear a space for a better recruit later.

 

Close but not quite. Dodd wanted the 140 rule abolished so that he could keep his less talented players around long enough to get a degree. As it was, the other SEC schools would sign up to 45 players a year (the maximum allowed at the time) while the Rambling Wreck was making do with a mere 30-35 new players each year. I get what he was trying for and at the same time those numbers sound comically inflated next to the current caps.

Something I learned going back through this history was that Tech almost rejoined the SEC in 1978. It needed seven yes votes but only got six. Georgia abstained, and Auburn and the Mississippi schools voted no.

 

I don't doubt that graduation was a primary factor for Dodd, that's pretty well known. So was Bryant hoovering up players that he wanted to keep off of other team's rosters.

 

Re: Bobby Dodd and scholarship limits, etc. ... I've never been able to get the details nailed down, but my father-in-law went to Georgia Tech (and took a degree there) on a football scholarship in the WWII years, but what football playing he did was at Presbyterian College as part of his Navy assignment. Lots of the bigger programs back then had "feeder" schools, so perhaps his experience was not so unusual.

About those feeder schools ... My father was offered a football scholarship to one that served UGA back in the late 50s. His high school coaches had sent film all over to try to get their lead running back hooked up, but nothing came of that other than a letter late in the summer (after graduation) instructing my father to come on down and bring $5 for a yearbook. My father never made decisions quick, so he passed and then enlisted in the Army.

 

The time has come for the MAC to add a non-directional Michigan school.

We’ll call you Michigan Heavy.

 

What’s more absurd: Sparty threatening to boycott its game against Michigan, or Michigan threatening to leave the B1G?

 

Prediction: Michigan won’t leave, but Jim Harbaugh will.

 

The Patriots will need a new coach come January.