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 
Someone should tell Joe Barton that this is how capitalism works:
The teams with the money have to fork it over to the teams with the empty schedule slot and a weak defense. Both teams benefit from this exchange.
That sounds to me like a rational allocation of scarce resources. Not only do weaker teams get a nice chunk of change, but the teams that are willing to get pummeled by the big boys will get a leg up on their peers in the Sun Belt.
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When you look at the ’13 schedule, it looks very similar to the one we just played…
‘Bama and LSU from the west, and Clemson (AZ St.), App. St. (Central Mich.), North Texas (Southern), and Yech.
I’m never a big fan of scheduling cupcakes, but that should be a pretty good schedule.
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Global War on Lane (GWOL) Crisis of the Day (COD) Piece:
Weight Room, Green Zone, Knoxville – 2 June 2009:
Since Destin, Lane has been holed up the Weight Room day and night. Some say it’s for a two-fold purpose: Lane hiding out from the Destin embarassment or Lane staring at the Strength and Conditioning Coach keeping him under “strict review.” Probably both.
Lane’s “strict review” scenario is because Human Resources told Lane he has to build up a case to show the S & C guy the door without having to pay him $300,000.00.
Lane is used to giving severance packages of one-way Greyhound Bus tickets to places like Pahokee or Columbia for those he fires. HR never had a problem with that. $300,000.00 they got a problem with.
On top of it all, Head Coach Pat Summit told Lane that if he keeps on keeping on, he’s going to foul up the entire system of checks and balances if the $300,000.00 has to be paid just because it’s another in the long line of knee jerk responses from Lane. She told him that even Bruce Pearl with his shirt off and a “T” painted on his sweaty chest looks like a refined diplomat compared to Lane.
Way back when, when Lane opened up his all-out harrassment and interdiction fire to wing his brethren SEC Head Coaches, Lane thought he was needling Spurrier to hire Spurrier’s S & C guy away but it now feels to Lane like The Ransom of Red Chief from the kudzu. Lane had no idea what kudzu even was until he moved down here. Lane thinks maybe he should never screw around with Spurrier again.
In a contemplative, non-entertaining moment, Lane averts his eyes from “strict review,” of the S & C guy and also thinks, “Now I know how Al Davis feels.”
Lane shakes it off, turns to the S & C guy, points, stares and then yells at him, “Wipe the sweat off the bench press bench. That’s another Secondary Violation! And soon, I’ll have enough to terminate you for cause and you’ll get no money!”
The S & C guy decked out in his All-Vol Orange outfit smirks at Lane, points at him, stares him in the eye and says, “If I offended anybody, I’m sorry but that’s not a violation of club rules anyway.”
Lane goes back to staring at the S & C guy, pointing at him every now and then, keeping him under “strict review,” like HR said to do.
In the meantime, the football players wonder Where in the World is Lane?
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