Somebody’s gotta pay.

Booster fees have been on the rise at Florida.

The biggest complaint is the increase in booster fees during the worst economy of our lifetimes. For many ticket holders, the booster fee has about doubled since 2007.

Clarke’s per seat fee increased from $125 to $250. Some seats that carried a $400 fee six years ago are now $1,000. The fee in the Touchdown Terrace, a section in the north end zone that comes with a pre-game buffet, was $1,200. Now it’s $2,200.

The fan complaints in the story aren’t much of a surprise.  But check out the reason the athletic department gives for the increases.

Gator football spokesman Steve McClain said the final numbers aren’t in, but ticket sales overall are slightly ahead of last year’s pace as of the Tuesday deadline. He said the jump in booster fees is largely the result of tuition increases, which have driven the cost of athletic scholarships up by $3 million since 2008, and other costs.

It’s always something.  But it’s worth keeping in mind in this era of less public funding for higher education, leaving schools – and their athletic departments – to fend for themselves more and more.

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Another grayshirt story

I know it doesn’t involve a high-profile recruit and the kid is totally on board with the move, but I have to say I’m a bit surprised Tide Nation isn’t all over this:

… the football team picked up a grayshirt commitment from Naples (FL) Barron Collier defensive lineman Brady Pallante. As a grayshirt commit, Pallante will pay his way through school during the 2014-15 scholastic year—during which time he cannot participate in team activities—before joining the team on full scholarship for the 2015 season. If it makes it easier, just consider him the first commitment for the 2015 class, and one who’ll get a head start on the academic side of things.

It’s all on the up and up, so I don’t have a problem with it.  But then again, I’m not a fanatic on the subject.

Postponing the inevitable

Everyone realizes what a mess the SEC has made of scheduling since expansion to fourteen schools.  Take seven team-divisions and one permanent cross-divisional rival, toss in a dose of ad hoc scheduling these first two seasons that have led to steady complaints about unbalanced schedules for contending teams and even Les Miles sounds like he’s coming around to the only logical solution to the problem:

Miles even said he wouldn’t be staunchly opposed to going to nine conference games down the road.

“I’m for doing whatever we can to make it balanced for all teams,” he said.

If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect that Mike Slive deliberately made a hash of he first two schedules just to break down the coaches’ resistance to a nine-game conference format.  Actually, now that I think about it, maybe that’s not so farfetched after all.

Lesson learned.

For a guy whose career as a football coach is in tatters, whose actions took his school into a probationary period in which it’s still suffering, Jim Tressel is remarkably at peace with Tatgate.

Although it might have ultimately cost Tressel his coaching career — he also received a five-year show-cause penalty in the NCAA’s sanctions, which would result in penalties for any NCAA school that hires him as coach within that time window — he did not express regret for failing to report his players’ violations.

“If my fault is on the loyalty side, I’ll take it,” Tressel said.

Tressel said OSU’s violations were a result of “personal decisions” made by his players.

“Sometimes they’re the right decisions, and sometimes they’re the wrong,” Tressel said.

Not that the distinction matters, evidently.  ‘Cause he’s a loyal guy.

Jesus, think that “show cause” penalty was justified?  An AD would have to be a certified moron to hire Tressel to run a football program again.  Ever.

Insourcing

As I like to say, some posts just write themselves.