Big 12 championship – it’s not us; it’s you.

Big 12 commissioner attributes conference’s decision to back off holding a championship game to ratings/attendance concerns over other conferences’ championship games rather than acknowledging the stupidity of such a game for a conference with a round robin regular season schedule.

A dollar here, a dollar there… and pretty soon you’re talking about a real headache for McGarity.

Yesterday’s discussion about Georgia’s spending got off the beaten track a wee bit with an argument over the merits of Cam Cameron’s career, so let me try making my point another way.

In 2014, LSU will pay its offensive coaching staff over $3 million.

In case you’re wondering, the last time LSU finished higher than Georgia in total offense was the 2007 season.

Victim of life’s circumstances

You’d think with all the freelancing the NCAA does with its rules and regs these days, Kolton Houston’s situation didn’t have to come down to this.

Thursday morning buffet

Get ’em while they’re hot.

• Are the NCAA natives getting restless about Mark Emmert’s leadership?  This article would indicate so.
• John Feinstein thinks Mike Krzyzewski has the answer for the NCAA’s problems:  there should be three separate organizations, not one, running college sports.  Oy, vey.
• Athens, Tennessee Chamber of Commerce invites Nick Saban to give a speech at its annual dinner.  A certain part of the Vol fan base objects.  But it’s worth noting that Saban’s on track to outdraw last year’s speaker by a margin of about 4-1.  That speaker?  Phil Fulmer.
• As the Big Ten allegedly pursues a 20-school conference strategy, John Pennington points out why there’s little to suggest that’ll succeed over the long haul.
• Smart Football takes a look at one of my favorite developments in offensive strategy, packaged plays.
• David Ching tracks 70 players from Georgia whom ESPN ranked as top-10 in-state prospects between 2006 and 2012.  The results, as they say, may surprise you.
• Greg McGarity is working hard on overriding those new NCAA recruiting guidelines.
• But if that doesn’t work, Gentry Estes is confident “Georgia’s football program will do what it needs to do to keep up”.  (Although he offers no specifics as to why that’s so.)

A program’s gotta do what a program’s gotta do.

Marc Weiszer has a great post up about something that hasn’t gotten much attention – the number of top-rated JUCO signees in Georgia’s most recent recruiting class.

The late addition of defensive lineman Toby Johnson to Georgia’s signing class on Tuesday gave the Bulldogs four players ranked among Rivals.com’s top 25 junior college prospects, more than any other team in the nation.

Auburn has three and Ole Miss, Oklahoma and Kansas two each.

Johnson from Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College is ranked No. 8. Receiver Jonathon Rumph from Holmes (Miss.) Community College is No. 9, safety Shaquille Fluker from East Mississippi Community College is No. 22 and nose guard Chris Mayes from Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College is No. 25. Georgia also signed safety Kennar Johnson from Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Georgia had only two junior college players on its roster last year—nose guard John Jenkins and offensive lineman Mark Beard.

The Bulldogs added just one junior college player in each of its four previous signing classes: Beard in 2012, Jenkins in 2011, safety Jakar Hamilton in 2010 and kicker Brandon Bogotay in 2009.

That’s obviously a big change in signing tactics.  And it’s made all the more interesting by something else Weiszer notes.

This wave of junior college players came after a clause was put in Richt’s contract last year saying that “the recruitment of junior college student-athletes will be kept to a minimum, as determined by Richt and the Athletic Director.”

Clearly, Richt and Greg McGarity determined that the Bulldogs needed to tap into help this time around from the junior college ranks.

That may be our first clear sign that Georgia football has entered a post-Michael Adams era.

Envy and jealousy: come on in, the water’s fine!

As Kyle King takes his farewell tour at Dawg Sports, I thought this brief comment about the new “Recreation and Wellness Center” being constructed on the Plains might be a source of amusement for a man who hates Auburn with a passion:

So Auburn did took the next logical step and built…  a 45 person, tiger-paw-shaped hot tub that is bound to have the most disease-ridden water in Alabama – no small feat – within days of entering into service.

Not a bad takedown, if I say so myself.

Great moments in sports marketing

Florida Atlantic sells the naming rights for its stadium to a multi-national private prison corporation that describes itself as the “world’s leading provider of correctional, detention, and community reentry services.”

Shockingly, it’s getting pushback.  I don’t know why.  Personally, I think “Owlcatraz” kicks ass.

I bet their no pass-out policy’s a bitch, though.

You got to spend money to make championships, a final observation.

I’m not sure everyone completely groks the point I’m trying to make in my recent series of posts about the new NCAA recruiting regime and how Georgia is currently facing it.  I’m not arguing that Butts-Mehre needs to import the Process and turn itself into Tuscaloosa East.  Nor am I arguing that Greg McGarity should morph into some slightly less profligate, more sensible version of Mike Hamilton.

What I am saying is that there seem to be two realities bearing down the road to remaining a dominant player in the SEC – and, yes, Virginia, a team that’s played in back-to-back SECCGs qualifies as such – and programs that choose to disregard them do so at their own peril.  More and more money continues to flow into conference schools’ coffers, and since the major labor costs (the players) are controlled, there are only so many places to direct the tsunami.  The new recruiting regime, like it or not, presents such an opportunity.  Kevin Steele is very good at exactly what Alabama wants from the position he just filled; spending the money given the context of the times makes sense to the folks running the ‘Bama athletic department.  Greg McGarity isn’t convinced about the wisdom of a decision like that.

Who knows, maybe he’s right.  But here’s the thing, as I mentioned before.  The conference is already well into an arms race when it comes to assistant coaching contracts and Georgia’s taken its sweet time recognizing that reality.  The school has been lucky that Mark Richt is an attractive head coach to work for, but in this day and age, loyalty only goes so far.

Let me illustrate my concern with the latest example of Gawd’s way of letting us know that the SEC has too much money.

Cameron to receive $600K in 2013, $1.3 million in 2014, $1.5 million in 2015 — an average of $1.13 million per year.

— Jeremy Fowler (@JFowlerCBS) February 20, 2013

That’s Cam Cameron, who has managed to parlay being fired from his last offensive coordinator job into being hired by his good friend to run the same offensive scheme that LSU has run for years, give or take a little Crowton craziness.  But not just merely hired.  In 2014, Cameron, who hasn’t coached in college in over a decade, will become the highest paid offensive coordinator in the SEC.  (Unless another school does something even farther out there, of course.)

That’s all well and good, you may say.  LSU’s business is its own.  But if you’re Greg McGarity, here’s the question you’ve got to be asking yourself today:  if Cam Cameron is worth a three-year, $3.4 million contract, how much is Mike Bobo worth?

Now I’m not arguing that’s fair, or that it’s not crazy.  I think Cameron’s contract borders on the ridiculous.  But that doesn’t change that it’s reality.  And as much as McGarity may resist, it’s something he’ll have to factor into his dealings with an assistant coach who’s directed one of the top ten offenses in college and is an excellent recruiter.  Sure, Bobo has reason to be loyal to his alma mater and the man who gave him a real shot.  But how long are you going to keep him on the farm, so to speak, once he’s seen contracts like Cameron’s out there?

In terms of coping financially with the world as it is, the new era of recruiting being ushered in isn’t really much different.  And if you can’t undo the rules change (McGarity’s first choice), ignoring the consequences in favor of a prettier bottom line may seem like the prudent thing to do in the short term, but if it turns out that devoting more resources in this area has legs, Georgia’s going to be playing catch up.  Again.  And not just with Alabama.

So the choice isn’t saying Saban or Bust! today.  It’s simply being proactive to the extent of keeping your options open, as opposed to taking a knee-jerk, OMG, my precious profit margin! approach to the situation.  That’s all I’m asking for here.

Is there such a thing as a meteor investigation?

Po’ Donna Shalala.  Her school gets hit with the dreaded “lack of institutional control” notice by the NCAA (insert your pot-calling-kettle-black joke here) and in the end, the best she can come up with is a we’ve suffered enough defense.

She is good enough to remind us in the very first paragraph of her statement about what her school considers “harsh sanctions”.

We have already self-imposed a bowl ban for an unprecedented two-year period, forfeited the opportunity to participate in an ACC championship game, and withheld student-athletes from competition.

Major props, Donna!  Your team posted a 7-5 record last season and along the way lost to every ranked team it played, including the FSU squad it would have faced again in the ACCCG.  No doubt the postseason you sacrificed would have been truly epic.

If you read her statement carefully, there’s no denial that the school is guilty of some things.  Just not the most salacious ones.

Despite their efforts over two and a half years, the NCAA enforcement staff could not find evidence of prostitution, expensive cars for players, expensive dinners paid for by boosters, player bounty payments, rampant alcohol and drug use, or the alleged hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gifts given to student-athletes…

Hey, now that’s a relief.

But the rest of what’s there is clearly offered in the hope that enough anger can be stirred up against the NCAA’s botched investigation to deflect any further attention to what did happen with Shapiro.  Not that Shalala doesn’t have a point.

Many of the charges brought forth are based on the word of a man who made a fortune by lying. The NCAA enforcement staff acknowledged to the University that if Nevin Shapiro, a convicted con man, said something more than once, it considered the allegation “corroborated”…

Lewis Carroll had higher standards than the NCAA, it seems.  But here’s the problem with all that righteous indignation:  if it was so bad for the NCAA to associate itself with Shapiro, how was it any better for Miami to do so?

Shalala concludes with an appeal for fairness:  “We trust that the Committee on Infractions will provide the fairness and integrity missing during the investigative process.”  How about the Committee sanctioning both Miami and Emmert?

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Okay, it’s already obvious I’m going to be able to mine the NCAA’s Miami debacle for plenty of chuckles.  Let’s start with Nevin Shapiro’s attorney’s babe in the woods act.

“Had I realized I was dealing with, what is in my opinion … such an incompetent regulatory institution, I would have never allowed Mr. Shapiro to have had any type of contact with the NCAA — period,” Perez wrote in a text message to AP.

Welcome to the party, girlfriend.  I’m pretty sure the feeling is mutual.