The AJ-C does the open records request shuffle and discovers that Georgia has agreed to lay out some serious bread to attract the kind of opposition every school with national title aspirations looks for: a D-1 cupcake. North Texas, come on down!
Georgia will pay North Texas $975,000 to open the 2013 football season in Sanford Stadium — the most UGA has ever guaranteed a visiting team and the latest example of the rising cost of scheduling anticipated easy victories.
According to the contract between UGA and North Texas, obtained by the Journal-Constitution under open-records laws, the teams are to play on Aug. 31, 2013.
Don’t feel too bad about that number. Damon Evans puts it in perspective for you.
“The thing we’ve stayed away from is, we have not hit the million-dollar mark [in buying such games],” Evans said. “975,000 looks better than a million.”
Sure does. Thanks for that.
It’s a good thing all that SEC TV money is getting ready to drown every program in the conference. A good thing for the Sun Belt Conference, as well.
In Tennessee, they’re not using it to bring in high-caliber competition, but to pay for Junior’s impulsiveness.
Tennessee’s athletic department will owe head football strength and conditioning coach Mark Smith more than $300,000 if it can’t prove it has justified cause to fire him, according to a memorandum of understanding acquired by the News Sentinel on Monday.
Smith is under strict review by coach Lane Kiffin and is not expected to be retained – if the two parties can come to a mutual parting. That, however, could prove to be a challenge considering the financial implications.
Smith agreed to a two-year deal in the memo that would pay him $190,000 this year and $200,000 in 2010. Smith signed the agreement Jan. 12. It went into effect Jan. 1.
If UT fires Smith, it would have to pay the remainder of the agreement if it could not prove one of the following: acts of gross misconduct; conduct of such an inappropriate nature thereby bringing the university into public disrepute; or failure of Smith to negotiate in good faith to execute the employment agreement within a reasonable amount of time.
Good luck with that.
This is a perfect example of why I think everyone who sells the story that the Laner’s antics are all part of a master plan – including Kiffin himself and the man who’s looking like the runaway candidate to be named national athletic director of the year, Mike Hamilton – is full of it. Junior rushed into this hire for one reason. He wanted to tweak Spurrier. Now he and Tennessee deal with the consequences of a bad hire, for a mere $300K. That’s just pocket change these days, right?
The sad thing is that nobody clad in orange will learn anything from this. Unless Junior doesn’t start winning. Then they’ll come back and lay all of his sins at his feet (and Hamilton’s too, most likely). And find somebody else to slobber over.
Get The Picture 