Presented without comment.
Filed under Urban Meyer Points and Stares
It sounds like the fan base isn’t on the same page with Greg McGarity when it comes to scheduling strategy. This notice went out this morning:
2012 GEORGIA FOOTBALL TICKETS
Beginning Tuesday, May 1st, the University of Georgia Athletic Association will offer William C. Hartman Jr. Fund patrons an additional opportunity to purchase tickets to three home football games and single non-renewable season tickets.
There is no order limit to the following games as all tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis and assigned based on cumulative priority points to qualifying Hartman Fund patrons:
Season tickets (single-non renewable) $280 each
” Single non-renewable season tickets may not be adjacent and will not be assigned with your renewable season tickets
September 1 Buffalo Athens $45 each
September 15 Florida Atlantic Athens $45 each
September 22 Vanderbilt Athens $45 each
The deadline to order tickets to these games is Tuesday, May 15, 2012.
Orders may be placed through the UGA Ticket Office online at www.georgiadogs.com by selecting the “buy tickets button” in the top right corner of the page. Select season renewals and then sign into your patron account and select football ticket sales option. Orders may also be submitted via phone by calling 877-542-1231 (M-F, 8am-4:30pm) or at the Butts/Mehre Ticket Office Window.
All renewable season tickets, as well as single game tickets to the aforementioned games ordered by March 31 will be filled. Priority requirements will be released on www.georgiadogs.com as soon as they are determined.
No doubt we’ll hear the economy blamed for drop in demand. I wonder how many years they’ll try to get away with that excuse.
Filed under Georgia Football
As of next season, the Western Athletic Conference will be down to two members, Idaho and New Mexico State, which means it won’t be a conference at all. This isn’t a development that snuck up on us.
… The league never recovered from the formation of the Mountain West in 1999, which robbed the WAC of its heart and soul in Utah and B.Y.U., among others. The WAC tried to balance out those losses by adding Louisiana Tech, Nevada and Boise State, but with hindsight, it’s clear that the WAC was slapping a Band-Aid on a fatal wound.
The WAC has been on its last legs since 2000; all conference expansion has done is speed up the process, placing the WAC in hospice care as its teams scattered to the Mountain West, Sun Belt and Conference USA…
One of the last schools standing will probably have to head back to the friendly confines of FCS football. It won’t exactly be a commercial powerhouse in its new setting, either.
… Begin with Idaho, which, if I had to wager a prediction today, will be forced to step back down to the F.C.S. as a result of the WAC’s demise. The Kibbie Dome, the Vandals’ home field, is by a large margin the smallest stadium in the F.B.S — 6,000 seats smaller than Bowling Green’s stadium.
Idaho’s stadium is also only the sixth-largest in the 13-team Big Sky Conference, where the Vandals played from 1963-95. This looks like Idaho’s landing spot in 2013, unless the program can exist as an F.B.S. Independent while searching for a new conference affiliation. [Emphasis added.]
Just to make it clear, we’re talking about a program with a facility which is modest by even lower division standards and which only has a future on the level it currently operates if it’s willing to become an even bigger punching bag than it’s already been. Idaho’s got no business being a FBS school, in other words.
And yet Idaho is exactly the kind of program which Orrin Hatch thinks is worthy of receiving largesse from the more successful. Makes zero sense.
Filed under It's Not Easy Being A Mid-Major, Political Wankery
Man, SOD is putting on the full-court press when it comes to excuse making. Here’s what he laid on Holly Anderson:
“We’re not there yet,” Dooley told SI.com, tracing the scars on the Volunteers left by Fulmer’s ousting and Lane Kiffin’s subsequent bolting. ”But all those anchors are in the past. Between three head coaches in three years, five strength coaches in that short time, a change in the presidential level, a change at the athletic director level, the NCAA cloud hanging over our program, and of course all the attrition. It put us in a challenging position, but the good news is, that’s a thing of the past…”
And if all those changes aren’t enough to making you feel sorry for the man, there’s the litany of bad luck from last season that Tony Barnhart recounts in this piece that’s as eminently predictable as you’d expect.
Dooley’s got his injured players back. He’s got more depth. He’s got assistant coaches with whom he claims he’s more simpatico. And the schedule is softer, to boot. So how many wins does Tennessee have to notch this season for SOD to puff his chest out and proclaim that the Vols are back?
Filed under Because Nothing Sucks Like A Big Orange
John Pennington looks at what’s coming on the horizon in this state, football-wise, and sees potential in Georgia State’s move to FBS football (and Georgia Southern’s attempt to do the same) to upset the status quo on the recruiting front.
Each February, more SEC football signees come from the state of Georgia than from any other state in the Union. That includes Florida, despite the fact that the Sunshine State produces more NFL-caliber talent year-in and year-out than the Peach State does. The explanation for that is pretty simple:
FBS Schools in Florida: Florida, Florida State, Miami, South Florida, Central Florida, Florida Atlantic, and Florida International.
FBS Schools in Georgia: Georgia and Georgia Tech.
It’s easier for SEC schools like South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Alabama and Auburn to target Georgia kids because — face it — they can’t all stay in state. That’s the reason Missouri is now aiming at Georgia and Atlanta, too.
Ah, but things could get a bit tougher in the years ahead for all those schools who mine Georgia for talent. And don’t laugh too hard when you read this: Georgia State is moving to the FBS level this season and Georgia Southern is taking steps toward such a move down the road.
He raises some valid points there, but leaves out one which I think is relevant: Georgia Tech isn’t an attractive option to most high-profile in state recruits. Take a look at Scout’s Georgia database for the 2012 class. The Jackets signed one four-star recruit this year. Here’s the list of schools which equaled or bettered Tech’s results: Alabama (5); Auburn (3); South Carolina (2); FSU (1); LSU (1); Miami (1); Stanford (1); Tennessee (1); Virginia (1). That’s a total of sixteen, which is twice as many in state players as Georgia Tech signed total.
No, you don’t expect a school to sign them all, and, yes, Alabama is on a different plane than Georgia Tech is when it comes to what it offers to a top-ranked high school player, but that’s still a lot of bleeding.
My point here isn’t to mock Georgia Tech, believe it or not. As this post shows, over the last decade, Tech’s done a credible job getting in state players in its program to the next level.
Its no surprise that Georgia and Georgia Tech have signed the most players (28) from the Peach State to go on to be drafted after Scout.com started raking players in 2002.
That should be the basis for a well-honed sales pitch, but the reality is that Georgia Tech has become a less likely destination for the state’s best since Gailey’s best recruiting class. Here’s what the numbers look like for Tech’s four-star signees (per Scout) over the five classes leading up to this year:
If high-end talent is the lifeblood of any successful major college football program, that’s a disturbing trend if you’re a Georgia Tech fan. And while it’s hard to see a newbie Georgia State program playing in the Sun Belt being a credible threat, you do have to wonder how much damage it could do to Tech’s recruiting with lower profile talent if it had someone more dynamic than Bill Curry running the show.
That’s where I see Georgia State (and Georgia Southern, too, if it gets that far) playing into what Pennington suggests. By my count, thirty schools outside of Georgia signed kids from this state with three-star ratings in their 2012 classes, and they didn’t all sign with Alabama. There’s some hay to be made, particularly if Georgia Tech isn’t up to the harvesting.
I haven’t said anything about Georgia so far. Here’s the four- and five-star signee numbers over the last six classes:
Georgia has different concerns in recruiting than Tech does, as those numbers make clear. Georgia State isn’t likely to become as big a threat to Georgia’s in state efforts as Nick Saban already is. (Per Legge, Alabama signed only five players from Georgia before Nick Saban became head coach and have signed 25 players since.) Richt has to fight hard with other major programs for the élite talent – and if you’re into trends, it’s a good one that he’s already got commitments from four four-star Georgia high schoolers for the 2013 class – while Paul Johnson is looking at getting squeezed at the top and from below if Georgia State becomes a credible recruiting option.
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