Tuesday morning buffet

Indulge yourselves.

• Fun Bryan McClendon stat:  A true freshman has led the Bulldogs in rushing in three of his four seasons as the Bulldogs’ running backs coach.
• One of the O’Bannon defendants had licensing agreements with more than 80 former college athletes from 1995 to 2010.  Does the NCAA pay attention to anything it says is important to it?
• ACC Network?  Not with Raycom sitting out there holding rights that nobody seems to be in a big hurry to buy back.
• Only at Southern Cal – “Porn Star Attempts Recruiting DT to USC”
• Does Georgia have a shot at hosting College Game Day this season?
• “Why wouldn’t you want to make money?”:  helpful advice for Minnesota’s beer sales problem.
• Two signing periods, or just an earlier NLI signing date?

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Oh, it’s on now.

This financial aggression will not stand, man.

The Big Ten Conference’s financial supremacy was on display again Wednesday when the league’s latest federal tax return reported record revenue and the largest single-year compensation figure ever for a conference commissioner.

You can feel the egos seething, can’t you?

The Big Ten, which increased its annual revenue by more than $50 million in 2012, had total revenue that was $42 million more than the Southeastern Conference reported for a fiscal year ending Aug. 31, 2012.

The tax return, provided by the Big Ten Conference in response to a request from USA TODAY Sports, showed commissioner Jim Delany being credited with more than $2.8 million in compensation for the 2011 calendar year.

In case you’re wondering, yeah, that’s about $1.2 million more than Slive received.

Gee, I guess we know what one hot topic in Destin will be now.

Spreading the wealth

Jon Solomon has a typically good piece out tracing revenue increases in D-1 athletics since 2005 and tracking those against increases in spending on salaries and scholarships over the same time.  The results shouldn’t be that surprising to you.

Seventy-one percent of the public BCS schools experienced higher expense increases on coaches/staff pay than scholarship costs over the past seven years. Meanwhile, 60 percent of non-BCS schools spent a higher rate on scholarship costs, illustrating the haves vs. have-nots debate.

Among athletics departments that reported at least $35 million in total revenue last year, 67 percent saw higher increases on coach/staff pay. That number was 40 percent for schools with less than $35 million. The figure stayed at 40 percent even for the 35 schools under $10 million in athletic revenue last year.

The explanation for that is about what you’d expect, too.

Scholarship costs can be a function of how fully funded an athletics department is and how fast a university raises tuition. Since many wealthier schools are fully funded in sports they offer, new revenue goes elsewhere, often to employees and facilities. The analysis suggests that’s happening with many lower-resourced schools, too.

According to the NCAA, salaries/benefits make up 34 percent of athletics department costs. That’s followed by scholarships (15 percent) and facilities (14 percent).

But here’s something interesting.

There were many schools with higher spending rates on scholarships than salaries. Although they tend to be lower-resourced universities, examples of wealthy schools with a higher rate of scholarship costs include Ohio State, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Iowa and Georgia.

Solomon’s compiled a chart of all the schools here.  Georgia’s revenues since ’05 have only increased by about one-third (the lowest rate of increase of the eleven SEC schools listed, by the way), but salaries and scholly costs have increased about twice as fast, with the latter rate of increase being just slightly more than what the coaches got.

I suspect Solomon’s analysis explains much about Georgia’s spending.  Tuition hikes are behind the scholarship spending, which makes that something the school has no control over, while salary increases are part of life in the SEC these days.  And the slowed rate of revenue growth may have something to do with McGarity’s relative frugality on the salary front.

It’ll be worth revisiting these numbers in a few years after the revenue streams from the new broadcast deal and the new postseason deals have kicked in.

Content is king.

There’s a reason ESPN charges all that money to watch.  We want to pay it.

The risk for distributors is losing subscribers who will leave to find live sports provided by a competitor. More than one-third of consumers would cancel their pay TV service if they lost ESPN, the top cable channel for viewer loyalty, according to a 2012 survey by Lazard Capital Markets.

Even in an a la carte era, that’s not going to change.

Pilson said he thinks bundling will probably become the subject of a Congressional inquiry over the next five years. The New York Times recently reported government intervention doesn’t seem likely since the Federal Communications Commission has ensured telecommunication companies can compete in the TV business and empowered programmers in negotiations with cable distributors.

“Over a period of time, I think we can expect all cable bills to go up,” Pilson said. “There seems to be a public acceptance of (higher) bills right now. I think cable is viewed as a necessity in most homes.”

When it comes to sports programming, we live in a whatever the market will bear world.  And the content providers know it.

Tuesday morning buffet

Lots of goodies to sample today.

• Seriously, why did it take so long to figure out Tommie Frazier belongs in the College Football Hall of Fame?
• Georgia’s new young alumni ticket deal is off to a fast start… which probably means students had better start showing up at games.
• Rodney Garner, staying in touch.
• Not just no, but “Oh, hell no.”
• Kolton Houston is the subject of next Sunday’s ESPN’s “Between The Lines”.  I hope his situation gets plenty of attention from it.
• One way you know the preseason is really underway – Paul Myerberg’s previews have started.  Hooray!
• President Obama plays to the crowd at Ohio State.
• I wouldn’t count on much, but if you’re interested in Matthew Thomas’ options after announcing he doesn’t want to go to FSU, John Infante has the info.
• Rumor has it that ESPN and the SEC will split the profits from the SEC Network 50/50.
• This, on the other hand, bites.

O’Bannon and Econ 101

Any time I see an editorial on college athletics mention Adam Smith, I’m gonna toss a nod in its direction.  And this is a particularly good point made in response to the Jim Delanys of the world:

O’Bannon’s response to the NCAA may be the most powerful case ever assembled against the association’s propaganda machine. Among other things, it systematically dismantles the NCAA’s argument that the vast majority of its members lose money on sports. In fact, most Division I schools are not caught in an expensive arms race for coaches and athletic facilities. They have simply obscured the profitability of their football and basketball programs with accounting tricks, such as shifting revenue from sports concessions to the food service budget.

The NCAA advances these false claims of poverty so it can argue that its member schools can’t possibly afford to spend more money on sports, much less pay their athletes. O’Bannon’s lawyers put the lie to this, too, invoking foundational truths of economics dating to Adam Smith and David Ricardo: “Redistributing rents does not change true economic costs. It simply takes money from one person or group and shifts it to another.” Translation: Paying athletes wouldn’t result in schools spending additional money on sports. They would just spend less of it on coaches and facilities and more on students.

It’s not so much that I’m at the point where I want to see the schools cut checks to players as I am wanting to hear the O’Bannon defendants admit they’re FOS.

Hey, look at the neat straw man Jim Delany built!

The man whose rapier-like wit has been directed at the likes of Karl Benson turns on the charm with the O’Bannon plaintiffs.

When asked his response to high-profile athletes such as Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel producing more jersey sales and revenue for their schools because of their play, Delany cited A&M’s storied history (founded in 1876).

“If Johnny Manziel was playing arena football tomorrow, what is his uniform worth?” Delany said.

Gee, Jimbo, I don’t know.  Maybe we should ask Kevin Ware about that.  Or any other athlete in any other sporting venue who’s allowed to make a buck off his or her name.  Or maybe we could ask some of these good folks.  I’m sure somebody could come up with a number for you, not that you’re willing to pay a penny of it.

By the way, the NCAA just announced it turned a nifty $71 million dollar profit – “surplus”, as the organization prefers to call it – last year, in large part based on the nearly $709 million it earned from television and marketing rights fees.  Sounds like they’ll need it to pay for all that lawyering coming up, per Delany.

Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany is preparing for a fight in the Ed O’Bannon antitrust lawsuit that could alter the college athletics amateurism model.

Delany told reporters on Wednesday that he’s not expecting a settlement in the case, which began in 2009 over the NCAA’s profits from the likeness of former athletes. Delany believes the case — which could cut into the conference’s multibillion-dollar television revenue streams — will likely “go all the way.”

“There should be no compromise on it,” Delany said.

Suck it, Manziel.

Everything you need to know about the current state of big-time college athletics, in one sentence.

I mean, this says it all.

Major-college athletics departments increased the amount of money they generate by nearly $385 million in 2012, but they increased operational spending by more than $665 million, a USA TODAY Sports analysis finds.

There ain’t enough money in the world to make that math work.  It’s just that the geniuses running the game haven’t come to grips with that yet.  Which is why we’re not done with conference realignment and postseason issues.  Not even close.

Don’t stay in school, kids!

I’m having a hard time understanding the hard-on the press has gotten recently about star college players going pro as soon as possible.  There was the Lattimore injury which led to a bunch of discussions about whether Clowney ought to sit this year out to preserve his big pay day in the 2014 draft, for instance.

Now it’s Matt Barkley falling to the fourth round of the draft.  Matt Hayes wants us to believe That Changes Everything.  And you know why?  Because an agent told him so.  No shit:

“The days of players coming back for the love of the game or winning a national championship are over,” said one NFL agent.

My first thought upon reading that – well, actually my second thought, as my first was why an agent thought it was prudent to give that quote without allowing a name to be attached – was to wonder whether somebody’s been paying attention.  This past draft was chock full of juniors who elected to leave early, many of whom left teams with legitimate chances to challenge for a national title.  Nor is that anything particularly new.

There have been and will always be players who go to college to get ready to play on the next level and leave as soon as they have a shot at a pay day.  (Same with agents who want more clients.)  Just as there have been and will always be those like Aaron Murray and Jake Matthews, who, contrary to Mr. Anonymous, do get something out of the college experience and choose to stay, regardless of what happens to the Matt Barkleys of the draft.

The only thing that seems to be different these days is that the press is more willing to call into question a kid’s judgment for not doing everything he can do to take the money and run.  That strikes me as a funny way to cover a sport.

Tuesday morning buffet

Mercifully, it’s a Tebow-free buffet.

• “The cool thing is I would’ve beat the crap out of my body and now I don’t have to,” Pollack said. “I couldn’t do what (David) Greene has done and be an insurance guy. I have to have football in me and it’s in my blood. If I weren’t doing this I’d be coaching.”
• Here’s a suggestion to let current players serve on the selection committee.  Would they be paid for that?
• David Greene likes what he sees out of Georgia’s offense.
• How bad was Auburn’s offensive line last season?  This bad:  “Ball carriers got back to the line of scrimmage less than 80% of the time…”
• Fighting the NCAA – it’s not just for Jerry Tarkanian anymore.
• Athlon ranks the SEC running backs, and Georgia finds itself with #1 and #4 on the list.
• Before you ask yourself what kids like Bray and Geathers were thinking by leaving school early for the NFL draft, consider that they could have taken steps to keep the option of returning to college after the draft, but chose not to do so.
• Tech fans, the AJ-C has your consolation for the lousy draft right here.
• Mark Schlabach’s preseason top 25 list (I know, I know) is ordered by which teams have the easiest path to an undefeated season, which is how you get Ohio State at number one and Louisville fourth.
• Or if you’d prefer to look at another man’s win projections for next season’s top 25, here you go.