Brock Vandagriff

QB1 Room

By: Robert Craft

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

It’s about that time in Athens, Ga. You can smell it in the air. We’re weeks away from the Georgia Bulldogs padding up for preseason camp.

For the first time in 41 years, Kirby Smart and company will be starting the 2022 NCAAF season as the defending national champions.

There are certainly a lot of questions to answer, and competitions to be had.

Losing a record 15 players to the NFL Draft creates uncertainty at some key positions.

However, several starters on offense, as well as a couple of key leaders on the defensive side of the football, will help ease any concerns.

I’ll take the time to provide a preview of the quarterback group in red and black.

Stetson Bennett returns after leading Georgia to the National Championship in 2021.

Starting 12 of 15 games including each of the last 11, Bennett threw for 2,862 yards and 29 touchdowns on 185-of-287 passing.

There were times where he didn’t look great – turn on the tape from Florida (10-of-19, 161 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions) or the SEC Championship Game against Alabama (29-of-48, 340 yards, three touchdowns, two interceptions).

However, there were also times that he was spectacular. Bennett tied the program record for touchdowns in a single game with five scores in the first half alone against UAB.

The Blackshear, Ga. native threw three touchdowns over Kentucky in a top-15 SEC Game of the Week. He didn’t throw a single interception in that game or their game against Auburn.

Two touchdowns against Missouri and four against Georgia Tech with 255 yards in both contests helped the Bulldogs finish the regular season undefeated.

Then, of course, there were the Playoffs when Bennett earned Offensive MVP of the Orange Bowl against Michigan and the CFP Championship Game against Alabama, combining for 537 yards, five touchdowns and no interceptions.

So, like lots of quarterbacks, Bennett has lots of good that comes with the occasional bad. You just have to be able to help him out and put him in good situations.

Because Bennett isn’t perfect and because he wasn’t the highest-rated recruit, some question Kirby Smart’s decision to stick with him.

Carson Beck seems to have solidified himself as the backup. Beck, a four-star and the No. 16 quarterback in the Class of 2020, threw for 274 yards during Georgia’s G-Day spring scrimmage.

Beck was awarded Mr. Football in the state of Florida for 2018 after leading Mandarin High School to a Class 8A state championship.

Brock Vandagriff also offers a talented option off the bench. A former five-star and the No. 4-ranked quarterback in the Class of 2021 from right down the road in Bogart, Ga.,

Vandagriff has the ability to make plays with both his arms and his legs. Georgia fans have been calling for a player like that for quite some time.

Finally, Gunner Stockton is the fresh face in the quarterback room. He’s just a freshman, don’t expect to see him often.

He’ll be busy learning the playbook and running the scout team.

Bennett elected to return for another year with the Bulldogs, which is a large reason why I rank the Dawg’s quarterback room the very best in the SEC.

QB1?

By: Jeff Doke

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

On early signing day this year, the University of Georgia once again racked up some serious commitments.

The Dawgs are currently the #3 recruiting class for the year, behind Texas A&M and Alabama.

The majority of the top signees were on the defensive side of the ball – including the much-heralded Marvin Jones, Jr. – but arguably the top prospect was five-star in-state QB Gunner Stockton.

Normally, a top-rated signal-caller signing with your school would be cause for hope, if not outright celebration. For Georgia fans in the Kirby Smart era, it’s cause for measured concern.

The University of Georgia has had five 5-star quarterback commits in their locker room since Kirby Smart took over between the hedges in in December of 2015; Jacob Eason, Justin Fields, JT Daniels, Brock Vandagriff, and the previously mentioned Stockton.

For someone not familiar with UGA football, this statistic looks amazing. One would think that the offense over the last six seasons would have been stellar. While the Dawgs have put up decent offensive numbers – and have improved every year over the last three – they haven’t been coming from those highly-touted players.

To a large number of UGA fans, therein lies the greatest concern they have with Coach Smart.

The story of Jake Fromm is well known in Georgia lore. He took over for the injured Eason in 2017 and never looked back, taking the Dawgs to the National Championship Game.

Eason would transfer after that season. In 2018, Fromm held off the advances of Fields (and the cries from Dawg Nation to give Fields more snaps), contributing significantly to the latter’s transfer to Ohio State.

One four-star dispensing of two five-stars. One must wonder if history is repeating itself and must worry if it can repeat itself again in the future.

JT Daniels was supposed to be the starter this year. Coach Smart said it multiple times in the offseason, and the fact that Daniels was healthy had many mentioning him in early Heisman talk.

Alas, he didn’t stay healthy, and his status as starter was brief. Stetson Bennett’s performance has been well-documented for both good and bad throughout the year, and the fact that with Daniels and Vandagriff on the sidelines leads many to question Coach Smart’s decision process when it comes to his field generals.

Regardless of what happens in the Michigan matchup in the Orange Bowl and beyond, Coach Smart will have some big decisions to make for 2022.

With the arrival of Stockton, Daniels and Bennett still having a year of eligibility left, and Vandagriff and Carson Beck still on scholarship, the Georgia Quarterback room will be a crowded one.

With the NCAA installing a one-time limit on the transfer portal, and Bennett’s well-documented love of all things red & black, you would expect “The Mailman” and JT to still be around next year unless they decide to test the waters in the NFL draft.

Honestly, I don’t see either of them doing so after this season. Do Beck and Vandagriff hang around? Hard to say.

Don’t get me wrong; I love what Kirby Smart has done for football at UGA. I love what Stetson Bennett has done this year, save for the SEC Championship, obviously. The fact that our quarterback situation is an embarrassment of riches is a problem that 99.44% of all CFB programs would love to have.

Kirby Smart knows how to recruit quarterbacks. He has shown it multiple times in his tenure in the Classic City and continues to show it with the rising 2022 class of recruits.

To me, the big question that I really don’t want to ask is “why?”

And it’s a question I’m fine with not having the answer to.

 

Looks Like Me

By: Robert Craft

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

College athletes across the country began raking in money for their name, image and likeness (NIL) July 1st.

Who’s set to earn the most money? We may never know as some players are keeping the details of their deals with companies entirely private.

Most fans assume the biggest earners will be college football players, but that may not be the case. Social media outlets like TikTok and Instagram may be a determining factor in the marketability of a player in other college sports.

Local businesses in sports-crazy college towns will contribute heavily and if a player secures multiple deals from companies big and small, they will become a presence in their city, and still scrape in some decent royalty cash. Let’s take a look at some of the early winners in NIL.

  1. Olivia Dunne, LSU Gymnast: Dunne, an All-American gymnast is a social media BEAST. She has 5.1 million Twitter followers, 400,000 TikTok followers and 1.2 Instagram followers. Dunne is projected to make over one million dollars a year off NIL.
  2. Hanna and Haley Cavinder (twins) Fresno State Basketball: The Cavinders have over four million followers on TikTok and Instagram. The estimated annual gross income for social media influencers is about 80 cents per follower, you do the math, this is a sports magazine.
  3. D’Eriq King, Miami Football: King signed a couple deals with College Hunks Hauling Junk and Murphy Auto Group that total around $200,000. King and McKenzie Milton partnered on a NIL platform called Dreamfield as well, whose contributions are unknown.
  4. Hercy Miller, Tennessee State, Basketball:  Miller is the son of rapper Master P. Hercy Miller signed a two-million-dollar deal with Web Apps America, and that’s just for right now.
  5. Brock Vandagriff, Georgia Football:  Vandagriff signed a big money deal with Onward Reserve, a men’s apparel company. Vandagriff was one of five players to sign with Onward Reserve, the identities of the other four are yet to be known.
  6. Spencer Rattler, Oklahoma Football: Rattler signed a deal with Raising Cane’s, a Louisiana based restaurant franchise with locations across the country. Rattler promised to share his NIL profits with underprivileged communities this season.
  7. Lexi Sun, Nebraska Volleyball: Sun signed an undisclosed deal with Ren, a volleyball apparel company.
  8. Trey Knox and Blue, Arkansas, Football: Knox and Blue (a Siberian Husky) signed a deal with PetSmart, which operates 1,650 stores in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Also, notably, more than 4,000 college athletes have partnered with Yoke Gaming, an app that allows fans to pay to play video games with them on stream.

Welcome to the new world of college athletics. It’s going to be hard (actually impossible) to enforce NIL violations, but it is about time that young athletes get the chance to earn money for themselves and their families!

Another interesting benefit to explore is that college athletes will be granted direct work experience in the line of a professional athlete, and isn’t that a great reason to go to college?

This will avoid athletes from signing predatory marketing deals their first year in the bigs and allow them to strategize marketing platforms for their NIL alongside their playmaker marketability.

In my opinion, it’s going to be crazy unsettling and it will take a couple years to get a handle on all this in the leagues. I wonder why this step in the right direction took so long for the NCAA to make.

Jason Bishop Show with Kipp Branch January 25

Jason Bishop Show with Kipp Branch January 25
/