Hardship? I thought you said hardcase.

Looking back on it, admitting in court to supplying a gun used in an armed robbery probably wasn’t the best way to gain the sympathy of the NCAA in applying for a waiver to play early.

Some say… he was the tenth-best* offensive coordinator in the SEC last year.

Matt Hayes says he’s already the sixth-best head coach in the Big 12, which is high praise indeed (“The SEC is the nation’s best conference. The Big 12 has the nation’s best coaches.”).

All we know is… he’s called The Weis!

Matt, allow me to give you a clue here.  If Weis were as good a coach as you describe him to be, he wouldn’t be coaching at a sinkhole like Kansas now.

*based on last year’s SEC total offense standings

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It’s a SEC conspiracy!

It seems my post on this season’s SEC East schedules has set a few teeth on edge (or, more appropriately, ruffled some feathers) at the fine South Carolina blog Garnet and Black Attack.

… But the 2012 schedule, however, was the creation of the league officials to suit their purposes in breaking Mizzou and Texas A&M into the league. In light of how well Georgia did in 2011 – and was projected to do in 2012 – the SEC should have kept Georgia-Alabama; it certainly would have been the marquee East-West cross-division game of the season, and would have balanced out the newly-created LSU-South Carolina game. Between the Dawgs and the Tide, however, somebody got a pass from the boys in Birmingham – arguably both, since the defending NC Tide shouldn’t have received any breaks either. In fact, the front office guys could not have failed to notice that UGA will have only played one of the Alabama-Arkansas-LSU trifecta just three times from ’09 to ’12 [LSU and Arkie in 2009 and Arkie in 2010]. In the same period [2009-2012], however, South Carolina, Florida and Tennessee have each turned the trick 6 times and Vandy 5; only lowly UK (3) has been sheltered as much as UGA – and never two years straight…

Three quick things in response to that.  First, as a Georgia fan looking at the weakest home schedule in years, I would have loved for the Dawgs to have taken on Alabama in Athens than Ole Miss.  But – this leads to my second point – had that happened, Georgia would have gotten screwed on the scheduling front by forfeiting the second leg of its home-and-home with the Rebel Black Bears.  For better or worse, that was a game Georgia expected to play.

Third, and most importantly, when did SEC cross-division scheduling become all about Alabama, Arkansas and LSU?  Historically speaking, Georgia’s permanent West opponent has been more formidable than South Carolina’s.  Shouldn’t that matter?  I’d say yes, although it does come in handy stoking the indignation when you can point to three East schools playing last year’s trinity in the West more often than Georgia has in the past three seasons because each of the three had one of Alabama, Arkansas or LSU as its permanent division opponent.  (Besides, what’s with the ’09 cutoff, anyway?  You don’t think it’s a convenient way of dodging the fact that Georgia played both Alabama and LSU in 2008, do you?  Naaaaah.)

Look, it’s nature of the beast and all that.  There’s always going to be an ebb and flow when you don’t play every conference team in a season.  The problem in 2012 isn’t that the fix was in at the SEC office.  It’s that the SEC office fixed the conference schedule at eight games.  There are only two cross-divisional games this season and if you’re one of the East teams which has one of the current big three in the West as a permanent opponent, you’re going to be at a disadvantage.  And it’s a disadvantage that will continue if the conference sticks with an eight-game schedule (assuming that nothing changes in the character of the Western programs, of course).

If you think that’s unfair, the solution isn’t to rejigger the schedule every season in hopes of getting matchups which reflect teams’ strength from the season before, à la the NFL.  It’s to be pushing for a nine-game conference schedule, so that the odds of your divisional rivals playing the better teams in the other division improve.

You’ve got to spend money to lose money.

Man, Rutgers athletics are expensive (h/t Brad Wolverton).

… Rutgers funneled $28.5 million from the university budget and student fees into sports, the most among 54 U.S. public universities in the biggest football conferences, based on data compiled by Bloomberg for the fiscal year ended last June. It was at least the second straight year at the top of the list for the state university of New Jersey, despite cost-cutting after lawmakers and faculty protested that academics were losing out.

That basically happened as a result of the football program’s slide last season.

Fiscal 2011 included the first losing football season in six years. Ticket sales for all sports, led by football, plunged by $3.1 million; contributions fell $1.5 million; and income from royalties and licensing declined $477,558. The lost revenue more than offset the spending reductions Pernetti was making.

Revenue Shortfall

Pernetti squeezed athletic administration salaries 12 percent by negotiating lower pay for new employees and shifting responsibilities of people who left or retired to remaining workers. He reduced travel costs 21 percent. And he lowered fundraising, marketing and promotion expenses 24 percent by using more e-mail.

Pernetti still needed $9 million from student athletics fees and $19.4 million from the Rutgers general budget, according to the school’s report. The total worked out to $969 a student, more than three times the average among the 54 universities.

You want to know what’s sad?  Coach Schiano’s departure to the NFL turned out to be a cost-saving boon, as the school chose to promote an assistant who will make more than $1 million/year less.  You know what’s even sadder?  That Rutgers’ AD thinks the next Big East TV contract is going to “at least” double in revenue.  Oy.

If you’re interested, there’s an interactive chart here where you can see how Georgia stacks up against other public schools in raising funds outside of the athletic department.

Nobody loves us, PAWWWWL.

Mississippi State blog lists the ten most hated people, places and things in the SEC and half the list comes out of the state of Alabama.

If you can’t kick a mid-major conference when it’s down, when can you?

Say what you will, this is pretty funny.

Somebody’s bound to lock up bowl eligibility, right?  Although that championship game could turn out to be a real nail biter.