Is Georgia pinching pennies with its S&C program?

David Ching posts some data which suggests that’s the case, although the purse strings seem to have been loosened some this year.

But here’s what I see:  out of eleven programs from last season reporting data, Joe Tereshinski made less as the head S&C coach than all but one of his peers.  The Florida coach made more than twice as much; Alabama’s and LSU’s coaches made nearly double.  And as for assistant pay, Georgia ranked dead last.

Here’s what’s gotten better:  “… Georgia’s three remaining strength assistants, Armstrong, Thomas and Gilbert, combine to make $260,000. That’s $70,539 more than UGA spent on five assistants last year.”  So there’s that.

Maybe it doesn’t matter too much.  But I do find it weird where this program sees fit to save a few bucks here and there – and in the context of the revenue the football program generates, this is just a few bucks.  I suspect Georgia was the only place last season where its head coach had to resort to this:

… Tereshinski, Gray and former strength assistant Clay Walker were among the Georgia staffers to whom Richt paid bowl bonuses out of his own pocket — unknowingly an NCAA violation, which Georgia self-reported last year — when UGA in December 2009 cited “difficult economic conditions being experienced by the University” in refusing to make those traditional bonus payments.

Nice.

(By the way, it looks like ‘Bama runs afoul of the new NCAA rule limiting S&C staffs to five total coaches.  Can Nick Saban roster manage coaches like he does players?  Stay tuned.)

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Wednesday morning buffet

The chafing dishes have been refilled.

• Everybody’s been focusing on Gary Pinkel’s “mammoth” comment, but I think the more interesting news from Seth’s post is that the Missouri coach is still hedging his bet on whether James Franklin will be ready when Georgia comes to town.
• Chris Low thinks it would be better to base the composition of a playoff field on the BCS standings than on a selection committee, “… because it’s farfetched to think you could truly find enough qualified people, who didn’t have a dog in the fight, to serve on a selection committee.”  Did somebody have a meeting about dropping the Coaches Poll that I missed?
• The future’s so bright at Auburn, Gene Chizik has to wear shades.  Or at least he will, once he figures out exactly how bright that is.
• Not surprisingly, Mark Richt doesn’t think much of Steve Spurrier’s divisional champ proposal.
• The rejiggered SEC is trying to figure out how it meshes with the bowls.
• The BCS looks like it’s going to adopt a fan-friendly format.  Not:  One commissioner, who is against semifinal games being played on campus, said: “The NCAA [men’s basketball] tournament doesn’t have campus games, do they?”
• Even if you don’t care about the NFL (I don’t), you might be interested in this article about how its metamorphosis into a pass-happy league is affecting the value it puts on certain positions, because of the impact that may have on the college game.

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UPDATE:  Regarding the likely rejection of playing the semi-finals at on-campus sites, Brian Cook offers some excellent snark here.

“When did our job as a university become supporting the hospitality industry in certain states?”

If there’s one surprising theme emerging from the BCS negotiations, it’s that the conference commissioners sound more and more ready to throw the major bowls under the bus.  As Pete Thamel puts it,

WHO IS GOING TO LOSE OUT? The bowls. It is just a matter of how much. The B.C.S. bowl games have virtually no shot at hosting a national title game. If they are squeezed out of being involved in the semifinals, they will spiral into irrelevancy.

That’s one helluva sea change.  Why is it happening?  You only get one guess.

… One of the dirty secrets of many bowl games is that almost nothing is cheap. The industry, in this case represented by Sugar Bowl Inc., long ago learned how to squeeze every last penny out of college football. That includes charging even the stars of the show exorbitant prices for tickets.

How about a couple of free ones for the players to give to their parents or girlfriends or high school coaches? Please. The Sugar Bowl instead charged LSU $350 a seat, full price, for every last player request. Total cost: $254,800 on the players alone.

Oh, and the Tiger Marching Band, the one that is contractually obligated to attend bowl week and provide halftime entertainment? With bowls, not even the band gets in free. LSU had to buy tickets for every clarinetist, flutist, tuba player and majorette. Some of the seats, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate, just held the tuba.

That added up to 529 tickets, almost all full price. The bill for the student band to sit was $182,830.

That’s $182,830 to get into a venue and give a free show to all the other paying customers.

All in all, the “2012 BCS Complimentary Tickets” document obtained by Yahoo! Sports detailed most of what would wind up being a $526,924 bill LSU owed the Sugar Bowl just for tickets.  [Emphasis added.]

In a debate that’s over money and nothing else, the big bowls look like the guy who killed the goose with the golden eggs.  They’re a luxury that the commissioners and athletic directors are no longer convinced they can afford.  Or should afford.

“The Fiesta thing, to me, was, ‘Hey, that’s our money,’ ” said one major athletic director. “That’s college football’s money.”

I don’t know if this is the legacy that Thamel refers to when he writes “… the meeting rooms are filled with alpha males who realize their legacies are tied to what will be determined in the next 10 weeks”, but it sure sounds like it may very well be John Junker’s legacy to his bowl peers.  And they’ve got nobody to blame for that but themselves.

Somewhere, Jimmy Sexton is grinning.

And the plans for Kirby Smart’s next raise are probably in the works now, too.

LSU is finalizing a new contract for defensive coordinator John Chavis that would pay him an average of $1.1 million over the next three years and make him one of the highest paid assistant coaches in college football.

If McGarity hasn’t sewn up Grantham’s new deal yet, I bet he wishes he had.