Technical Tidbits 6/18

Cade is out for the next couple of weeks preparing to declare his intent to run for president in 2016, so in the meantime you're stuck with the rest of us for your morning link dumps. We'll try to keep our #takes hot in his absence.

To update you on the story in yesterday's Tidbits about the early signing period being voted on, that vote happened on Wednesday, and the decision was made to table the idea for now and return to it next year. So, for anyone wondering how such a rule would affect Georgia Tech's recruiting situation this year -- false alarm. You may now return to your regularly-scheduled thoughts and opinions.

In the latest of brilliant NCAA recruiting violations, it turns out that pickup basketball games are off-limits too. I, for one, am very happy that such activities are outlawed. That's how it all starts, right? Players get offered to play a little game of one-on-one, and next thing you know, there's cash flying around everywhere and illegal benefits as far as the eye can see. Basketball is just a gateway sport, you know.

On a more serious note, Pitt's star WR Tyler Boyd is in a very, very bad situation...although just how bad it is hasn't yet been determined. Boyd is facing a series of charges stemming from a DUI he recently was charged with, but discussions I've seen actually suggest that he might face minimal punishment. You can read the alleged story of what happened in this reddit comment, which lays out how such seemingly harsh penalties might amount to nearly nothing. As for how this affects Georgia Tech, it's highly unlikely that Boyd would be ineligible, given that the two teams' meeting in Atlanta is Game 6 for Pittsburgh. Boyd would have to receive at least a 6-game suspension to miss that contest, but a slightly smaller suspension could cause him to miss games against Virginia Tech and/or Virginia. Boyd is one of Pittsburgh's top two offensive weapons (along with RB James Connor), and his absence for a conference game could affect Georgia Tech's chances of winning the Coastal Division.

USA Today recently released its preseason Bowl projections, which are, admittedly, pretty silly on the whole. (There were a number of media outlets last year that predicted Georgia Tech would miss a bowl game altogether. That went...okay.) These predictions are no less silly, and in fact are pretty ridiculous on the whole, if you ask me. They predict Georgia Tech to return to Nashville for the Music City Bowl against Tennessee, which, honestly, I won't fault. It's a low prediction (somewhere between #3 and #6 in the ACC), but not a ludicrous one. What is maybe a little more ludicrous are the ideas of a Miami-Florida matchup in the Independence Bowl, a Texas A&M-Texas matchup in the Texas Bowl (as if there were any other name it could take on at that point), and the fact that Notre Dame is one of the four teams in the College Football Playoff. Take all preseason Bowl projections with more than a few grains of salt, but this deserves a full-on can of Morton's.

Finally, the AJC's Ken Sugiura recently caught up with true freshman ATH Christian Campbell, who expressed his admiration for QB Justin Thomas, as well as his desire to take over the starting QB job when Thomas graduates. Included was information on the style of car that Campbell drives, as well as a very candid answer on why he picked Georgia Tech over Cal.

So, pick-up basketball games are off-limits in recruiting, it seems. You good with that? If those are illegal, what else should be? If you wrote the book, what would be out-of-bounds in recruiting?