Hey, how ’bout some more Dawg porn?

Tray Matthews, hubba hubba:

One more thing.

Could Grantham actually get away without dropping some Tray Matthews talk to get fans excited?

“He actually knocked two guys out in three scrimmages,” Grantham said. “The only problem is one of them was a defensive guy. …We’ll work on that with him.”

It’s getting to the point where if he doesn’t kill somebody in the Clemson game, we’re gonna be disappointed.

Todd Grantham begs to differ with you, Boom.

To what should be nobody’s surprise, Georgia’s defensive coordinator was asked last night at the UGA Days event in Buckhead what he thought about Will Muschamp’s promise to make Georgia’s winning streak over Florida short-lived.  Grantham’s response was, I thought, fairly muted and expected, but about one area he felt strongly enough to offer a rebuttal.

Muschamp cited the Gators’ turnover issues in last year’s 17-9 Georgia victory and characterized them as self-inflicted.

“Obviously, when you turn the ball over six times, you’re not going to win many games,” Muschamp said. “We fought through a lot of adversity we created for ourselves in the game. It just didn’t work out.”

Grantham took exception to that. He clearly feels the Bulldogs should be given some credit for coming up with the football.

“We actually created six turnovers and we were plus-3 for the game,” Grantham said. “In this league, when you turn the ball over you’re going to have a hard time winning. The last two years we’ve had 62 (takeaways), which is second only to LSU. If we’re plus-1 since I’ve been here we’re right around 92 percent win. It’s a critical point, we emphasize it and we work it every day. It’s a part of the game. You have to protect the football.”

A little professional pride’s showing there.  And Grantham does have a point.  While some part of turnover margin can be chalked up to random luck, such as fumble recoveries – hi, Mayor! – it’s been clear from the get-go that Grantham’s emphasis on putting pressure on opposing quarterbacks hasn’t been mere lip-service.  And that Georgia defense Florida saw played hard, physical football.  That +3 was earned, Boom.

(As an aside, if you need proof of what tends to make AJ-C coverage so obnoxious these days, this piece is a good example.  There’s nothing wrong at all with what Towers wrote, but check out the header and the photo used with his article.  Clearly somebody wanted to give the impression that there was something angry and controversial in what Grantham had to say.  And just as clearly, there wasn’t.  So let me just say to you, nameless editor, you’re an ass.)

Oh, it’s on now.

This financial aggression will not stand, man.

The Big Ten Conference’s financial supremacy was on display again Wednesday when the league’s latest federal tax return reported record revenue and the largest single-year compensation figure ever for a conference commissioner.

You can feel the egos seething, can’t you?

The Big Ten, which increased its annual revenue by more than $50 million in 2012, had total revenue that was $42 million more than the Southeastern Conference reported for a fiscal year ending Aug. 31, 2012.

The tax return, provided by the Big Ten Conference in response to a request from USA TODAY Sports, showed commissioner Jim Delany being credited with more than $2.8 million in compensation for the 2011 calendar year.

In case you’re wondering, yeah, that’s about $1.2 million more than Slive received.

Gee, I guess we know what one hot topic in Destin will be now.

A different view of Florida

I read this analysis of LSU’s 2013 schedule out of interest to see what the beat writer had to say about the Georgia game, but here’s the part that really caught my eye:

5. FLORIDA, Oct. 12 – I’m not saying TCU is better than Florida, but the Tigers get the Gators at home and not in the season opener. The Gators were one of the few teams in the Miles era to out-physical LSU in last year’s victory against the Tigers. But this year they limped out of spring practice and didn’t have enough bodies to close out with a game, opting for a practice instead. The roster is still in transition from the Urban Meyer days. QB Jeff Driskel is mismatched for the offense and the Gators don’t appear to have the passing game up to speed. Leading rusher Mike Gillislee is gone and the defense replaces seven starters, but Florida is still Florida and will show up with excellent athletes, and Coach Will Muschamp’s mentality.

Color me floored.  Not because it’s inaccurate.  Quite the contrary; he hits on every flaw and still gives credit where Florida deserves it.  It’s just that I haven’t seen anyone else in the media look at the Gators as dispassionately.

Florida will be a tough out this year.  But to me the Gators look like a team in transition that used every drop of what they had last year to get to 11 wins (again, Muschamp turned in a good coaching job).  A lot of holes remain and to this point they don’t all seem to have been filled.  So it’s weird for even a short description like that to read so differently from what the media consensus has been.

Spreading the wealth

Jon Solomon has a typically good piece out tracing revenue increases in D-1 athletics since 2005 and tracking those against increases in spending on salaries and scholarships over the same time.  The results shouldn’t be that surprising to you.

Seventy-one percent of the public BCS schools experienced higher expense increases on coaches/staff pay than scholarship costs over the past seven years. Meanwhile, 60 percent of non-BCS schools spent a higher rate on scholarship costs, illustrating the haves vs. have-nots debate.

Among athletics departments that reported at least $35 million in total revenue last year, 67 percent saw higher increases on coach/staff pay. That number was 40 percent for schools with less than $35 million. The figure stayed at 40 percent even for the 35 schools under $10 million in athletic revenue last year.

The explanation for that is about what you’d expect, too.

Scholarship costs can be a function of how fully funded an athletics department is and how fast a university raises tuition. Since many wealthier schools are fully funded in sports they offer, new revenue goes elsewhere, often to employees and facilities. The analysis suggests that’s happening with many lower-resourced schools, too.

According to the NCAA, salaries/benefits make up 34 percent of athletics department costs. That’s followed by scholarships (15 percent) and facilities (14 percent).

But here’s something interesting.

There were many schools with higher spending rates on scholarships than salaries. Although they tend to be lower-resourced universities, examples of wealthy schools with a higher rate of scholarship costs include Ohio State, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Iowa and Georgia.

Solomon’s compiled a chart of all the schools here.  Georgia’s revenues since ’05 have only increased by about one-third (the lowest rate of increase of the eleven SEC schools listed, by the way), but salaries and scholly costs have increased about twice as fast, with the latter rate of increase being just slightly more than what the coaches got.

I suspect Solomon’s analysis explains much about Georgia’s spending.  Tuition hikes are behind the scholarship spending, which makes that something the school has no control over, while salary increases are part of life in the SEC these days.  And the slowed rate of revenue growth may have something to do with McGarity’s relative frugality on the salary front.

It’ll be worth revisiting these numbers in a few years after the revenue streams from the new broadcast deal and the new postseason deals have kicked in.