Opting Out

BiffTannen said:

and there are millions of dollars on the line for those teams and yourself

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Why would any unpaid student athlete give a shit how much money is on the line for the NCAA/their undergrad school? Not trying to argue your premise about him quitting on teams but that part stood out

I won’t go as far as Biff but I do have mixed emotions about Newman and rooting for a guy who was too good for Wake because he had about one good season. Then I remember watching him lead us to wins against State 2x, UNC, and Duke and I am appreciative. At least Clawson won’t lack for cautionary tales in the future.

PhDeac said:

Remember when experts were projecting Newman to be a Day 1 or 2 QB? Hell your team thought Newman could lead them to a national championship.

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Did they? They brought in another quarterback right after. Maybe they just felt he was worth a single year scholarship.
Do we think any of our grad transfers are going to lead us to a national championship?

Tobacco Road said:

Did they? They brought in another quarterback right after. Maybe they just felt he was worth a single year scholarship.
Do we think any of our grad transfers are going to lead us to a national championship?

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Oh shit since there are no grad transfers to lead Wake Forest to a national championship I guess that means no grad transfers ever could for UGA. Sound logic there

deacon14 said:

Why would any unpaid student athlete give a shit how much money is on the line for the NCAA/their undergrad school? Not trying to argue your premise about him quitting on teams but that part stood out

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I’m sure that Jamie knew how much was being entrusted to him when he committed to Georgia with a bunch of 4 and 5 star receivers, running backs, and offensive linemen. If he looks at college football as a business decision for himself, then surely he realizes it’s business to Wake Forest and Georgia and it’s respective coaches.

BiffTannen said:

I’m sure that Jamie knew how much was being entrusted to him when he committed to Georgia with a bunch of 4 and 5 star receivers, running backs, and offensive linemen. If he looks at college football as a business decision for himself, then surely he realizes it’s business to Wake Forest and Georgia and it’s respective coaches.

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So your answer is that because playing college football can potentially make him NFL money down the road, he should put a major priority on maximizing NCAA football profits for his school?

I can understand caring about the team winning for the people that recruited you/your teammates etc, but you’re losing me when you say that their decision making should consider the profits that they get no part in

deacon14 said:

Oh shit since there are no grad transfers to lead Wake Forest to a national championship I guess that means no grad transfers ever could for UGA. Sound logic there

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Huh?
UGA offering Newman a scholarship doesn’t necessarily mean they thought he was leading anyone to a championship. It just means they thought he was worth a scholarship. That’s my point.

Tobacco Road said:

Huh?
UGA offering Newman a scholarship doesn’t necessarily mean they thought he was leading anyone to a championship. It just means they thought he was worth a scholarship. That’s my point.

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You brought up that we don’t expect our grad transfers to win us a natty. I pointed out that things work a little differently between Wake Football and UGA Football.

That UGA team was among like 8 teams with a reasonable chance to win a National championship. They offered Newman to (most likely) be their starting QB. So yeah, that’s what they expected from him.

You aren’t getting it.

Tobacco Road said:

You aren’t getting it.

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I mean the only other thing I even see in your posts is that they also brought in JT Daniels, so maybe they didn’t expect Newman to be the starter. That seems like massively rewriting history to me, considering most public perception last preseason expected Newman to be the starter until he opted out. But whatever, this is a pointless conversation

Not sure what the argument is here but Georgia just had six draft picks in the fist three rounds of the NFL draft. If you transfer into Georgia with the expectation that your the likely starting quarterback, then you‘re competing against Alabama for the SEC Championship and a spot in the CFP.

deacon14 said:

I mean the only other thing I even see in your posts is that they also brought in JT Daniels, so maybe they didn’t expect Newman to be the starter. That seems like massively rewriting history to me, considering most public perception last preseason expected Newman to be the starter until he opted out. But whatever, this is a pointless conversation

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Georgia started a walk on until late November when JT Daniels was healthy enough to finally start his first game.

So Biff, what’s your take on why Jamie opted out? Was he really scared of losing the starting job?

BiffTannen said:

It takes a special kind of jackass to quit on two teams in nine months when they have both basically handed you the keys to their program and there are millions of dollars on the line for those teams and yourself. There is no doubt that factored into the draft day decision of 32 teams who don’t need a quitter in their quarterback room.

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Yep

wakelaw13 said:

So Biff, what’s your take on why Jamie opted out? Was he really scared of losing the starting job?

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Nobody’s every come out with the the inside story as far as I know. My thought is that Jamie’s people were in his ear and they all decided that he was better off not playing another down of college football. They were obviously incredibly wrong.

Maybe Jamie Newman goes on to be a decent NFL quarterback. Obviously the odds are big time against that for every single guy who comes out of college. But, he has fucked up the last year or so in such a monumental way and every NFL coach and GM has watched it. How in the world could Clawson or Kirby tell an NFL GM that Jamie Newman is a stand up guy and that they should definitely draft him after he fucked both of them over ?

06deacon said:

Sorry they inconvenienced your football watching from the couch last fall

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Well I suppose it's football watching from the couch and the stands that allows us to spend millions of dollars on educations for guys to audition for the NFL for a couple of years. I bet our AD isn't thrilled with our inability to keep our best players on the roster.

This debate has been silly since it started last summer. In the end we have an increasing number of dudes who gave up becoming Wake Forest legends (for whatever that is worth) and will never play another meaningful game in their lives all for absolutely no benefit. The fact anyone is even entertaining the idea that Sage sat out because he was scared of COVID is hilarious and scary at the same time. He was either still hurt or felt Newman leaving hurt his chances of having a successful year and decided to sit out. I don't know whether playing this year would have helped him any, but if he believed it would have Sage would have played. To think otherwise is to ignore how pretty much every college student, not to mention student-athlete lives in reality (not in all the propaganda photos the University puts out of masked students).

Losing players like Dortch, Newman, Sage, Walker is brutal and is not helping us grow the program or put butts in stands. And contrary to "board wisdom" that does kind of matter.

For Dortch, people made the argument, "Well its not like he was going to get any taller," for why he left after his RS-sophmore year, for Sage I've seen people say its not like he was going to get faster, which isn't exactly true, but Sage could have put more tape out there showing his ability to get separation. Guys that leave that early are not allowing themselves the benefit of showing their evolution through the seasons. More games, more tape, less question marks. Seriously though, Sage was a RS-Sophomore, he could have come back and played 3 more seasons if he wanted. Of course he wasn't going to, but no one forced him to enter the draft this year.

And I know I am going to get shit for this, but how do you take a whole season off to prepare for a pro-day and not get a better 40 time? Mike Mamula showed you could hack the combine in an off-season.

3 years in a row WF loses its most exciting offensive player(s), and that player does not (immediately, anyway) play meaningful snaps in the NFL

Sage's worst decision was running the 40 while still hurt - it's not good to not have a 40 time, but it's worse to have a slow 40 time

At least Sage got to be on ESPN when his brother got drafted. (The one who decided to play football)