Skull Session: Ohio State, Alabama and Georgia Rule College Football, E.J. Liddell is Extremely Versatile, and Dawand Jones Doesn't Love the Turf

By Kevin Harrish on February 8, 2022 at 6:15 am
Dawand Jones is big in today's skull session.
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Joe Burrow is out here giving advice that will make every dad in America smile.

Parents everywhere are already clamoring for their kids to be more like Joe.

... maybe a little too literally.

Word of the Day: Agog.

 STARS MATTER. It doesn't take an expert to just glance at college football over the past few years and realize that only a few teams have all the talent, but the actual numbers are pretty damn mindblowing.

(Note: you can substitute "Georgia" with "Ohio State" in any of these bullets because Georgia and Ohio State both had 36 top-100 players this year)

Last year, Georgia and Alabama had a total of 76 Top 100 players from the 247 Composite Rankings.

Meanwhile, 107 other FBS teams had a total of 75 Top 100 players. This includes the entire Group of Five and nearly two-thirds of the Power Five. The teams are listed in the comments.

  • Georgia (36) and Alabama (40) had as many Top 100 players as the Big Ten (76), and more than the ACC (57) and Pac-12 (52).
  • Georgia, Alabama, and Ohio State (36) individually had more than the Big XII (32).
  • Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson (22), and LSU (22) individually had more than the Group of Five (18). Texas A&M also had 18.
  • The CFP national champion with the least Top 100 players was 2016 Clemson (16).
  • All 18 Group of Five players transferred there from the Power Five.
  • The following players began their careers at Georgia, Alabama, or Ohio State before transferring:
  • Georgia (6): Netori Johnson (Middle Tennessee State), Cade Mays (Tennessee), Brenton Cox (Florida), Luke Ford (Illinois), Otis Reese (Ole Miss), Tyrique Stevenson (Miami)
  • Alabama (4): Ben Davis (Texas), VanDarius Cowan (West Virginia), Tyrell Shavers (San Diego State), Ishmael Sopsher (USC)
  • Ohio State (5): Tate Martell (UNLV), Jaelen Gill (Boston College), Jameson Williams (Alabama), Mookie Cooper (Missouri), Tyreke Johnson (Nebraska)

Feels like you can go ahead and reserve three spots in next season's College Football Playoff. And the fourth will just be your standard rotational sacrificial lamb serving as a tune-up game for the No. 1 seed.

This probably isn't really good for the sport in the long run, but it's extremely good for my team so at the end of the day, I'm not really all that mad about it!

 SWISS ARMY KNIFE. E.J. Liddell might not be the best player in the country (though I'm certainly not ruling that out), but the dude is absolutely, undeniably the most versatile.

In fact, he might be the most consistently versatile player we've seen at the college level in quite a while. He's out here putting up numbers that we haven't seen in 13 years.

 

 BIG THANOS DISAPPROVES. Dawand Jones found out about Ohio State's new turf design just like the rest of us (actually, after me, since I got that privileged embargoed release a few hours early), and his reaction was pretty much the same as the rest of us, too.

I think it's extremely hilarious that Ohio State just solicited thousands of fan designs for a faux contest only for them to pretty much just do their own thing and use none of those fan designs for the actual turf. It's deliciously on brand.

 THE BEARD IS BACK. If you've been consistently bad at your job for nearly a decade and are feeling down about yourself, let Lovie Smith serve as inspiration to you.

I know they weren't going after the same job or whatever, but it absolutely rules that Jim Harbaugh spent nearly a month soliciting his services across the NFL only to get repeatedly turned down while *Lovie Smith* gets a job after going 17-39 at his last stop.

 SONG OF THE DAY. "Avril 14" by Apex Twin.

 NOT STICKING TO SPORTS. A Las Vegas casino tracks down a tourist who won $229,000 without knowing... The salary ignorance that keeps many workers underpaid... A fugitive on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list is caught in Mexico after almost 16 years on the run... Why everything online is suddenly cringe...

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