Longtime college football reporter Schlabach covers it, from Georgia to hotseats to money to, well, all over college football at Macon Touchdown Club visit
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
Each time Mark Schlabach visits the Macon Touchdown Club as the guest speaker, he worries that some of his stock stories or lines will be too familiar.
Familiar doesn’t mean they won’t be enjoyed, and it’s doubtful anybody will get tired of hearing about the time his dog – when Schlabach was a Georgia student - snuck into Sanford Stadium with the band, and then stopped the game when he felt the urge to go between the hedges onto the field.
There has been nothing about if he went, well, on the hedges.
But it’s the unfamiliar, aka new, observations from Schlabach – one of college football’s most veteran and plugged-in reporters at ESPN for a few decades as well as a broad-based prolific author - that keeps peoples’ attention.
He’s finished a book with Georgia football legend David Pollack, who he’s known since the former defensive whiz was in high school.
“I've never met anybody like him,” Schlabach said. “He's never tasted a drop of alcohol. Never had a taste of tobacco. When he was in high school, he saw heard Mia Hamm or somebody on TV say that carbonated drinks are bad for you, so he's not had a carbonated drink since high school. He quit eating sugar 20 years ago.
“He eats nothing but salad and meat and works out like 2 hours a day.”
Schlabach, who lives in Madison with his wife and three children, is off to a so-so- start with prognostications, or, well, guessing.
I spoke to a group of Lake Oconee before the season,” he said. “I told them that .. . Alabama's flying under the radar, Kansas State's going to win the Big 12 - they've already got two losses - and Arch Manning is a legit Heisman candidate.”
The season has not started that way.
He’s long been tired of the hype – of course, most of it coming from the media and slathered on by his co-workers – on Manning.
“ESPN BET … had him the leading Heisman candidate going into the season and he hadn't even started a game yet,” Schlabanch said. “We were at a summit in Bristol. We (he and Ryan McGee) were sitting in the back room, the two old guys, and we were having like a 30-minute breakout session on Arch stories.
“I raised my hand and said, ‘Can we let the kid play a game yet first before we get all this hype?’”
The answer was apparently ‘no.’
Schlabach is a defender of and believer in Alabama’s Kaleb DeBoer, who took an almost impossible job knowing it was an almost impossible job.
“Steve Sarkiasian turned the job down, Dan Lanning turned the job down, Mike Norvell of Florida State turned the job down,” Schlabach said. “Nobody wanted to replace Nick Saban. He took on the challenge and he's paying for it.”
That tale, of course, led to a layup. He talked to an Alabama booster, who said other Alabama booster were naturally antsy.
Booster 1: “Y’all are acting like Auburn fans.”
Booster 2: “Well, dangit, we’re playing like Auburn.”
On Oklahoma QB John Mateer: “I heard (ESPN’s) Rece Davis … and he compared him to Johnny Depp in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ where he’s out on the front of the boat, swashbuckling.
“That’s the kind of guy he is. He’s fearless.”
On Florida and Billy Napier: “I watched that game last week. (Florida) did everything they could possibly do to to lose it. And that's that's been the problem down there, for a while.
“If they don't turn it around, I think it's it's going to be tough, and I hate it because Billy's a good football coach. You know, he can't help … . He didn't tell the kid to spit.”
Tommy Tuberville, a former semi-regular speaker at the Touchdown Club, inspired some predictable chuckles. Schlabach called him when Congress began make its presence known in college sports.
“Two weeks later, I get a phone call from Senator Tubbs,” Schlabach said. “He said, ‘Sorry, I was in Switzerland talking to the Ukrainians about Russia.’”
That was not an intentional punch line, though it got the reaction of an intentional punch line.
“Then the next words out of his mouth were, ‘Man, have they (screwed) up college football, or what?’” Schlabach said. “Right after talking about the Ukrainians.”
Schlabach touched on the money involved in the present and future of college football, the clear and unclear, as well as Heisman candidates, scheduling, playoff probables, coaching situations and how the new world of money affects when coaches will get fired, among the other normal topics, as well as a little Ryder Cup, as one of ESPN’s primary golf reporters.
He had plenty of positives on Georgia and Georgia Tech. He recently re-watched last year’s meeting during the PGA Tour Championship in Atlanta.
“I looked at the screen and Georgia was down 17 to nothing. In the third quarter, I completely forgot they were shut out in the first half, but I sat there and watched that game.
“All the overtimes and everything, and Tech should’ve beat ‘em. Haynes King is an absolute stud.”
He thinks Tech is a legit candidate for het ACC championship game and that the school needs to lock down head coach Brent Key for as long as possible as soon as possible.
Georgia is loaded at wideout, the Bulldogs need to get healthy for Tennessee, and Gunner Stockton is fine, albeit perhaps a little bit tentative early in his career as a starter.
“Somebody told me over the weekend, it's kind of like when Justin Fields was there, he was waiting for the guy to be absolutely wide open before throwing it into a window, or anticipating,” said Schlabach, a Norcross grad. “They love him. The kids in the locker room love him, the coaches love him.
“He can do it.”