SB nation/Godfrey article

[Cabo32]

http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2014/4/10/5594348/college-football-bag-man-interview

buddy on mine(om fan) just texted me this, pretty cool read..let me know if the link works..Uploading for the cellular device

[GrassOfDWS]

Should we all speculate now who the guy is and what school he represents or later?

[thedawg]

Im gonna say that all 14 schools have numerous guys like the one interviewed...

[cristilmethod]

Should we all speculate now who the guy is and what school he represents or later?

That's easy. He represents all 14 of us

[GrassOfDWS]

Im gonna say that all 14 schools have numerous guys like the one interviewed...

Yes they do. And the people who claim their school is super squeaky clean are as delusional as they come or just flat out lying.

[GrassOfDWS]

That's easy. He represents all 14 of us

I see what you did there. I just want to laugh at people on each school's message board when they start saying the guy is this dude from that school. That will be fun to watch.

[dawgs]

it gets harder and harder to not get disillusioned with college athletics. we have like 5 of these guys. bama and lsu and auburn have 100.

[Cabo32]

Yes they do. And the people who claim their school is super squeaky clean are as delusional as they come or just flat out lying.

Yep, completely agree. It happens everywhere, and its not going to stop anytime soon.

[msstate7]

it gets harder and harder to not get disillusioned with college athletics. we have like 5 of these guys. bama and lsu and auburn have 100.

I hardly ever agree with you, but on this you're spot on

[RossDawg82]

I would like to be a bag man for MSU. Where do I sign up for this?

[starkvegasdawg]

Here's the big question in all of this? How many more games will Redmond be suspended after Bracky picks himself up off the floor after reading this article?

[blacklistedbully]

Author is a grad of Ole Miss and lives in Nashville. I think we can safely assume the bagman he interviewed was not from MSU or LSU.

[Esmerelda Villalobos]

There was an instate rival. It is Bama/Au or Ut/Vandy. That is all it could be. My money is bamer. Vandy doesnt have the #1 player at any position visit and Id say it is rare that UT does either.

[blacklistedbully]

There was an instate rival. It is Bama/Au or Ut/Vandy. That is all it could be. My money is bamer. Vandy doesnt have the #1 player at any position visit and Id say it is rare that UT does either.

Could easily be Ole Miss, with us being the school with the "asshole down south" who he believes tried to set him up. That would make sense, given this bagman seemed to feel he could trust Godfrey to keep his identity secret. And we know Ole Miss did have the #1 player visit them, in fact more than one #1 at his position. He also says they were sure they couldn't get him, but paid anyway to project the image and get a rep that could help them with other recruits.

I have a hard time believing any SEC school's bagman would give this kind of all-access to a graduate of Ole Miss, unless it was somebody who knew and trusted Godfrey 100%. I say it's Ole Miss' bagman.

[LiterallyPolice]

Regardless of who the bagman is.... what a great article. Props to Godfrey. It would be easy for him to paint the whole process as "evil", but he does a good job of presenting both sides of the story.

I love the ending with the Bartender.

[esplanade91]

it gets harder and harder to not get disillusioned with college athletics. we have like 5 of these guys. bama and lsu and auburn have 100.

+1. And by that I mean if I ever have any disposable income, I'll gladly become a bag man.

ETA: It's sad when you realize that this is what's putting a choke hold on college athletics to a point. Sure, MSU is as good or better than it's ever been, same for the SEC, but as a general sports fan it sucks. We have 5 (for the sake of conversation, who really knows) and LSU and Alabama have 100, but USM has 0.... And there's a clear drop off of USM's on the field productivity from when this was at least a tame process. It's full blown, and you can point to USM and say "this is exactly when this ritual got out of control."

USM is another hypothetical. It can be any other non-AQ that peformed well from the time the BCS started to now.

[codeDawg]

The existence of this stuff is why changes in benefits at the college level are necessary. Putting rules disallowing almost all benefits just pushes them underground and into the hands of seedy individuals who do get money for their "rap label" or whatever because they have influence with a 16 or 17 year old kid.

All this stuff needs to come above board. He's right about "if you cap it at $40K, somebody else will pay $40K..." to a point, but schools, boosters, and bagmen only have so many resources and so much willingness to give.

What world does that put us in? Probably one where MSU, UM, and other smaller schools are second tier. Well, guess what. We already are. The Alabamas, LSUs, and Florida States of the world out recruit us because their players get more benefits now both allowed and not allowed. Why not just live in a world where the kids get what they get according to manageable, enforceable rules instead of under the guise of amateurism and under the table dealings?

The world of college athletics is going to change significantly over the next 10-15 years. We should all be working to figure out how to make that a positive change rather than fighting to keep it the same.

[Esmerelda Villalobos]

Godfrey is the only rebel I think that is welcome here. That guy is awesome.

[Bully13]

Good read. Prolly om Bagman. I think the jab about paying croots not to visit was a jab at us since they always accuse us of that

[Todd4State]

I think this is a propaganda piece disguised as a well written article.

The reason I say it's a propaganda piece is because when you have an article like this, now you can say "see- everyone is doing this. This is how is works." He does this by saying that the bag man is from an anonymous school, although there are clues that this bag man is most likely from Ole Miss, and we know that the writer has sympathies to Ole Miss, so again more than likely he would have the potential to most likely access a bag man from that school as opposed to say, Auburn.

When you put out something that says that "everyone is cheating" then what happens is it curbs accusations of cheating because then people believe that their school also has a smoking gun somewhere, and I think this also may encourage someone to get into the recruiting game and then what may happen is you have a situation similar as to what happened to Political Hack. Someone may naively assume that it's all good in the underworld of recruiting and then something happens that gets the person into trouble.

Ole Miss wants things to run as smoothly as possible in the underworld of recruiting- and when people don't speak up about it, it hurts their efforts. It's very interesting to me that this comes out not during 2011, not when they were recruiting Nkemdiche, but a year where we have the lead for most recruits in the state of Mississippi.

The other thing is if there is one thing that Ole Miss is proud of, it's their recruiting system. There was nothing in the article that I haven't heard Ole Miss fans brag about in the past. Finding a player's Mother, uncle, friend- AKA "champion", using high school coaches loyal to them, talking about high schools that are sympathetic to them, etc. So this article coming from an Ole Miss person isn't surprising at all.

The one thing I found funny was the part about their bag man being sworn to secrecy and not talking about being bag men. Yeah- see Scott Lindsey. However, I guess they learned a lesson after that after he was exposed during the Army AA debacle.

[Bully13]

Not to mention the fact that no body from another school would trust an om fan on this

[GrassOfDWS]

Accordingly, all the other conversations I had with different bag men representing different SEC programs over a two-month span surrounding National Signing Day didn't happen either.

Went back and reread this. My guess is Godfrey used quotes from all the Bag Men he interviewed.

[Todd4State]

Went back and reread this. My guess is Godfrey used quotes from all the Bag Men he interviewed.

He probably did so to protect Ole Miss. He's not stupid. And no one wants to be "the guy" that takes down their school.

I suspect that he mainly talked to the Ole Miss bag man who probably got him the contacts for the other two bag men.

[codeDawg]

Guys, if you don't think this and more isn't going on at every school in the SEC, and most other conferences for that matter, I don't know what to tell you. Some folks are more organized and sophisticated than others, but this is real life. Even at MSU.

[Natedogg33]

Why would anyone affiliated with a school, other than Ole Miss, talk to Godfrey, on the record or off the record, about this subject? I mean, why would a person or a couple people, lay it out there to show and tell how it's done? There's nothing stated that we all didn't think or know. But it is the first time I've seen it written.
I'm in agreeance with Todd, this is a propaganda piece or a justification of his squads ways. By his basic definition of a "bagman" they do their job and keep their mouth shut. Take personal satisfaction if they score, but don't spike the ball. A guy from Auburn or Vandy or Tennessee wouldn't get anything out of talking to Godfrey about this.
My conspiracy theory mind thinks that maybe the heat has been turned up in Oxford. Maybe he's trying to smoke some other folks out.

[State82]

Why would anyone affiliated with a school, other than Ole Miss, talk to Godfrey, on the record or off the record, about this subject? I mean, why would a person or a couple people, lay it out there to show and tell how it's done? There's nothing stated that we all didn't think or know. But it is the first time I've seen it written.
I'm in agreeance with Todd, this is a propaganda piece or a justification of his squads ways. By his basic definition of a "bagman" they do their job and keep their mouth shut. Take personal satisfaction if they score, but don't spike the ball. A guy from Auburn or Vandy or Tennessee wouldn't get anything out of talking to Godfrey about this.
My conspiracy theory mind thinks that maybe the heat has been turned up in Oxford. Maybe he's trying to smoke some other folks out.

Bingo. What Natedogg & Todd said is spot on. As clandestine and covert as these guys are (and they are everywhere) there is no way, no way a group of them, even individually, would sit down and spill the beans to some random blog hack on something like this. They are way too smart for that. I call BS. Not BS on what happens, because it obviously does (and ours are rank amateurs compared to many) but that he got a group of them to agree to this "report". One maybe, but not a group. Guess who the one is. Now, the way they all go about it probably parallels this story fairly well.

[Coach34]

And why was it so easy for Godfrey to talk to the "Bagmen"? Perhaps because he knew a few at OM?

That shit goes on everywhere though. Some just do a better job of it than others.

[mullenite]

Why is this news? Pretty interesting but not news. Everyone knows bag men exist for all schools and some of us know them personally. It is what it is.

[Todd4State]

Guys, if you don't think this and more isn't going on at every school in the SEC, and most other conferences for that matter, I don't know what to tell you. Some folks are more organized and sophisticated than others, but this is real life. Even at MSU.

I don't deny it happens, and I haven't seen anyone else deny that it happens. But I don't think it should be glorified or justified no matter what the morality issues are because the reality is even if you are helping out a poor family, you are still breaking the rules. That's what the article seems to be doing in a way. You know- you can be Joe Fan that really helps the team but you're this secret agent that has contact with the players. And if they're poor, you're helping them out by giving them money.

This is something that I know happens, but I don't need to know happens.

[Todd4State]

And why was it so easy for Godfrey to talk to the "Bagmen"? Perhaps because he knew a few at OM?

That shit goes on everywhere though. Some just do a better job of it than others.

"Better" as in have compliance directors with some balls and not trying to be Barney Fife?

[BulldogBear]

And why was it so easy for Godfrey to talk to the "Bagmen"? Perhaps because he knew a few at OM?

That shit goes on everywhere though. Some just do a better job of it than others.


Maybe he interviewed himself? He's the bagman? ;)

[Bo Darville]

This a well written article by Godfrey. The guy is an a-hole and his stuff is usually horrible. It's normally full of grammatical errors and his attempts to be funny/witty/sarcastic/cool usually make him look stupid because he fails at it. This shows Godfrey has some talent when he cuts the elementary school cool and focuses on being a writer. One of his only articles I've ever been able to get through. Well done Godfrey. Keep it up.