A couple of more detailed notes from last night at Macon Touchdown Club:
1. NCAA investigation that led to vacating ACC Championship was started under claim that a student had his cell phone paid by someone. Student was able to produce records of his mother paying all his cell phone bills. So when that lead dried up, instead of saying "glad we got that cleared up" - the NCAA went on to perform a fishing expedition by interviewing EVERY player one-on-one, where they found the jacket and hat gift. The rest is history....
2. While at Navy, CPJ was contacted by Nebraska the weekend before the Army/Navy game. They asked him to interview for the head coach job on Monday in ATL. He told them out of respect to Navy and its players, he wouldn't be free until after the game. An hour after the call Osborn himself called and said they couldn't wait and were gonna move on. GT called the next day and said they'd wait a week to interview. The rest is history...
3. He confirmed what we all know at this point, payers are getting paid already by the big teams. Said a top notch D-lineman is gonna run $200k! He feels the only way paying players doesn't get out of hand is if every college player gets paid the same amount. Otherwise, recruiting visits will just become discussions about what sponsors each school will be able to line up to pay the player. He thinks theres a good chance of another realignment over paying players. Said big programs will split off and smaller low budget schools would be left out, thus hurting schools like Mercer who schedule paid games against bigger schools to fund their athletics.
4. At the time CPJ retired, Duke had (has?) 6x the recruiting staff of GT. just damn!
5. He had lunch with a prominent SEC coach recently who complained about two other SEC schools who were "cheating". Someone yelled out "hows Saban doing" and he said it wasn't him. I'm thinking it was Gus, cheaters were probably Alabama and UGA I'd guess.
6. Lastly, he said he was contacted by numerous P5 schools for head coaching jobs while at GT but declined. Said it'd take a very special situation to draw him back in and that Susan is happy doing what they're doing now and being able to see his daughter perform out west.