To what should be nobody’s surprise, Michael Adams thinks Georgia spends enough money on its football program, thank you very much.
Adams is comfortable with what UGA has done to provide the football program with the financial means to success. He made the point when asked about the renewed confidence in the direction of the team.
“Winning helps everything,” he said, with a laugh. “I think there’s confidence in the building blocks that are in place here. Look at the facilities, look at the practice fields, look at the stadium additions, look at what we’ve done to be competitive with assistant coaches. (We) may not be the top in every little category, but across the board I’m not sure anybody provides any more total support than we do. … One of the things I’m proud about is you build great programs brick-by-brick and stone-by-stone over a period of time.”
Of course, it would be helpful if everyone else running a football program saw things the same way.
The subject of regulating the staff size of football programs – in other words, the amount of off-field, quality-control type coaches – has been a hot one recently. Adams said he proposed limiting the non-coaching staff positions “in certain sports,” but it was voted down.
“I haven’t changed my view,” Adams said. “It’s all about balance. You don’t control this. But you manage it. You can’t control it all, but you can manage it, and we’ll see where some of it goes.
The problem is that Nick Saban doesn’t have time for Adams’ shit. He sees the NCAA’s liberalization of the recruiting rules and is off to the races. You can almost sense the glee in Tuscaloosa over Steele’s hire (if Saban lets anybody show that). As Scarbinsky lays it out,
Steele was known as one of the best in the business in that area while he was coaching. He was one of the first assistants Saban hired at Alabama in 2007, and he was a big part of building and running Saban’s recruiting machine.
That machine got up and running so quickly and effectively that, at the end of its first full year of operation, it landed the 2008 class that, with its full body of work complete, has to be judged one of the best in modern history.
Imagine how well Steele will be able to keep the talent flowing into Tuscaloosa now that he doesn’t have to worry about actual coaching.
This is the door the NCAA opened in January when the Division I board of directors, as part of a sweeping package of reforms, eliminated the rules defining recruiting coordination functions that must be performed only by a head or assistant coach.
In theory, programs will be allowed to hire an entire staff, beyond the coaching staff, to do nothing but recruit on campus, to send out the unlimited number of calls, texts, mailings, etc., to prospects that the new rules also will allow. On-field coaches will remain the only off-campus recruiters.
He goes on to note that “(i)n practice, not many programs beyond Alabama will be able to hire someone the caliber of Steele to direct those efforts.” True, but don’t forget about the programs that could afford to hire someone like Steele, but choose not to do so because they are run by folks who think they’ve already authorized enough spending.
And remember that the next time you want to bitch about Saban coming into Georgia and signing away a couple of high-profile recruits from Richt.
