Must not see TV

In an act of remarkable subtlety, the company that produces the Auburn football coaches program announces that it will not produce a program following the Iron Bowl.

Boy, are they going to regret that call if Auburn pulls off the upset.

(h/t TSK)

How much is a groundswell worth, anyway?

I’m sure you’re a surprised as I am to learn that Bill Hancock has been named the executive director of Son-of-BCS.

Which begs the question – given the man’s effortless ability to pump out gallons of swill about the postseason, how long before he backtracks on this?

What has changed that now it seems like at the very least you guys will take this under serious consideration or more serious consideration?
“Oh that’s a good question. I think about this a lot and I think we have to be careful to read too much into what’s happening here. This is very preliminary and we are a long way from making any kind of decisions and I do not sense any groundswell for a large – that being 8 or 16 team playoff…”

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ESPN – we’ve made it what it is today.

Which is rich as shit:

But Disney is grateful for those $6.1 billion in affiliate fees from ESPN that help stabilize revenues each quarter. Ad revenues at ESPN, now $3.3 billion, can fluctuate depending on the economy (total ESPN revenues, including the networks, magazine and website, are $10.3 billion). Affiliate fees, paid by cable companies to channel owners each month, have steadily grown 8% annually at ESPN in recent years. ESPN and ESPN2 are both in more than 100 million homes and command $5.13 and $0.68 per month, according to SNL Kagan. The next highest among widely available channels are TNT at $1.18 and Disney Channel at $0.99 says Kagan. The average fee for basic cable channels is $0.26.

ESPN is worth $40 billion according to a research report this summer from Wunderlich or barely ten times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $3.9 billion. Disney as a whole is currently worth $84 billion (Hearst owns a 20% stake in ESPN with Disney owning the rest).

That is some serious market clout.

Be grateful that we dodged a bullet that Michael Eisner fired, though.

He told the New York Times when the merger was announced, “We know that when we lay Mickey Mouse or Goofy on top of products, we get pretty creative stuff.” Eisner added. “ESPN has the potential to be that kind of brand. ABC has never had our resources, and we haven’t had ESPN. Put the two together and who knows what we get.”

How ’bout Lou Holtz and Goofy?  Or Mickey as ESPN’s Game Day guest picker?  (Or regular panel picker, for that matter?)

Although I have to admit that Minnie Mouse might make a better sideline reporter than some of the folks the WWL trots out.

Snapshot: first thoughts on Georgia Southern

Okay, other than the fact that they cut block like demons, what else do you know about this week’s opponent?  Here are a few tidbits to consider:

• GSU is currently ranked sixth in the FCS.  Georgia is the only D-1 team the Eagles face this season.
• GSU is ninth in total offense in the FCS.  Given the offense run, it won’t surprise you to find that it breaks down to first in rushing and, well, somewhere south of fifty in passing.  (They’ve only attempted 65 passes all season.)
• On defense, the Eagles are good, but not as good:  18th.  (30th against the run and 28th against the pass.)
• Sagarin lists GSU 92nd, with a strength of schedule ranking of 180.  That power ranking is better than three teams Georgia has played this season:  Kentucky, Florida Atlantic and Buffalo.  (Before you ask, Sagarin ranks Auburn 84th.)  That doesn’t necessarily mean that Southern is substantially better than those teams, but it likely means that it’s not substantially inferior to them.

One last thing, at least for the moment – being ranked sixth and tied for the lead in the Southern Conference, the Eagles are a lock for the outsized FCS playoffs.  Does that mean they’re going to rest some of their key players in a meaningless bout against a D-1 opponent?  Judging from this story, that seems unlikely.

Wear and tear

Ivan Maisel finds a pattern.

When an offense goes up-tempo, the defense pays the price. Not just the opposing defense, either. The defenses at Arizona and No. 2 Oregon are playing 82 and 76 plays, respectively, per game. The wear-and-tear is exacting a toll in mid-November. The Ducks are playing freshmen on their defensive line, and Arizona is playing four walk-ons and two true freshmen on its defense. They are playing because that’s who’s healthy.

Two teams strike me as a small sample size, so I headed over to cfbstats.com to see if there was anything to Maisel’s point on a larger scale.  The list of defensive play numbers is here, and yeah, you’ll find a lot of schools running spread, hurry-up offenses populating the lower part of that list.  (You’ll also find a lot of teams with crappy defenses populating the lower part of that list.  But I digress.)  So maybe he has a point.

But, wait a minute.  Here’s something Groo wrote in his Auburn wrap-up that may have you wondering where the happy medium is in this story:

I’ve seen a bit of talk about leaving the defensive starters in so long. Yes, there’s the risk of injury, but that would be my only concern. If you have an opportunity for a shutout, I’m not going to complain about making a little extra effort to keep it going. But there’s a more important reason for leaving them in. If Georgia has a chance in the SEC championship game, it’s going to be a physical game every bit as demanding on the defense as the Florida game was. The defense needs to be conditioned to play at top form all four quarters, and it’s not helping them to sit. I expect we’ll see them play longer than we’d expect against Georgia Southern also. If you want to see an excellent defense not used to finishing games, look at Bama over the past two weeks.

Hmm.  Is it possible that Georgia’s the happy medium here?  The Dawgs are playing almost 67 defensive snaps a game, which is certainly a lot fewer than the teams Maisel cites and is the third-fewest number in the SEC.  (By the way, there’s a pretty consistent correlation between the conference’s best defenses and the number of plays defended.)  But because of the way many of Georgia’s games have played out this season, its starters have been on the field for a significant majority of those snaps.  It’s also worth remembering that certain of those starters were suspended early and needed those snaps to shake off the rust.  Maybe that’s something else that’s paying off later in the season.

Given the scholarship numbers Georgia chose to play with this year, there’s certainly been a little luck in dodging the injury bullet.  But the coaching staff perhaps deserves a little credit here for managing the defensive depth well.  (Maybe the S&C folks should take a bow, too.)  Post suspension, the only game I can recall where Grantham had to press a walk-on into service was against Kentucky when Rambo got dinged up for a few plays and Connor Norman subbed for him.  And at this point, it’s a stretch to call Norman a mere walk-on, if you want to be fair about it.  Other than that, if Grantham’s played a freshman it’s been because he wanted to, not because he had to.

The $64,000 question is will that pay off at the SECCG?  Stay tuned.

For love and money

The only thing that surprises me about this story is that in the wake of The Blind Side it hadn’t happened sooner.