That sound you hear is Edward R. Murrow rolling over in his grave.

I just want to say that if this is what passes for journalism these days, I’m fine with being labelled a mere blogger.

Actual question a reporter asked Winston's attorney https://t.co/MiI2kEBV96

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) December 5, 2013

Just awful.  Although I will grant you that Clay Travis probably wishes he’d have asked that question.

***************************************************************************

UPDATE:  Second place prize goes to whomever thought it was important to interview these morons.

These FSU students ran up to the courthouse in support of Winston #WCTV http://t.co/I6JLpiZg6D—
Garin Flowers (@GarinFlowers) December 05, 2013

Advertisement

Pick your poison.

For those of you bitching about Richt electing to leave some of the upcoming bowl practices on the table, it turns out there’s something of a tough choice facing him of which you probably weren’t aware.

As a result of a recent rule change for FBS programs, many staffs could face a choice in the coming days between time spent recruiting future players or coaching current ones.

(Photo by Philip Williams/UGA Sports Communications)

Georgia has chosen recruiting.

The Bulldogs will not use their full allotment of 15 allowable bowl practices this year, according to UGA coach Mark Richt, and one of the reasons is the NCAA’s move to recently extend the postseason recruiting dead period to a full month.

The upcoming dead period (during which no in-person contact with recruits is allowed) will coincide with winter holidays, bowl season and the AFCA coaches convention, lasting from Dec. 16, 2013 through Jan 15, 2014. (View the NCAA’s full FBS recruiting calendar here)

So after the regular season concluded Saturday, Richt wasted little time, meeting Monday with assistants and “Making sure that we’re going to get everybody in the right spots that they need to be in between now and the dead period.”

UGA coaches have been on the road recruiting this week and it should largely stay that way next week as well, even though the Bulldogs will have learned their bowl opponent by Sunday at the latest.

Basically, new recruiting restrictions in January means Georgia’s staff will spend the coming week making up that time. So formal bowl preparation in Athens will be on hold while that happens.

So, a couple of questions for those of you who previously objected to Richt not utilizing the full number of bowl practices:  (1) which of bowl practice or recruiting would you prioritize and why and (2) if you picked recruiting, why does that have a higher priority for you than the players’ preparation for finals?

UGA on CBS

Believe it or not, Georgia appeared on CBS more times this season than Alabama did.

SEC on CBS Ratings in 2013

Game	Rating	Result
Alabama at Texas A&M	8.6	Alabama, 49-42
Alabama at Auburn	8.2	Auburn, 34-28
LSU at Alabama	6.9	Alabama, 38-17
Texas A&M at LSU	4.7	LSU, 34-10
LSU at Georgia	4.6	Georgia, 44-41
Auburn at Texas A&M	4.2	Auburn, 45-41
Georgia at Tennessee	3.5	Georgia, 34-31 (OT)
Georgia at Auburn	3.4	Auburn, 43-38
Florida at LSU	3.1	LSU, 17-6
Georgia vs. Florida	3.1	Georgia, 23-20
Arkansas at LSU	3.1	LSU, 31-27
Mississippi State at Texas A&M	2.9	Texas A&M, 51-41
Tennessee at Florida	2.8	Florida, 31-17
Tennessee at Alabama	2.6	Alabama, 45-10
Georgia at Vanderbilt	1.5	Vanderbilt, 31-27

Start the drill.

Progress of a sort, I suppose:

Since the Tennessee game, the Bulldogs allowed 10 second-half touchdowns in seven games — half of those coming when opponent scoring started at the 50-yard line or closer because of errors by Georgia’s offense or special teams. In the last month of the regular season, the Bulldogs allowed seven second-half points to both Georgia Tech and Kentucky, zero to Appalachian State and 16 to Auburn, although the final six came on a 73-yard Ricardo Louis touchdown catch for the game-winning score after Bulldogs safeties Josh Harvey-Clemons and Tray Matthews failed to bat down an off-target pass.

So the theme in the first half of the season was that the defense finished slowly and the second half of the year saw the opposite.  If it’s not a conditioning question – and it’s hard to see how that’s the case given the comebacks – what’s it going to take to get the defense to play a complete game against a decent opponent?

I’m not asking rhetorically.  I’d like to hear what you think.  And let’s keep it off replace the coaches, because (a) that drum’s already been beaten here plenty and (b) Richt ain’t listening anyway.  So tell me how you’d fix things.

The “market” for college coaches, “like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

Jimmy Sexton nods approvingly, says to himself, “my work is done here”.

“I’d rather have the problem of too much money than too little.”

Brian Cook pointed me towards this New York Times wankfest of Jim Delany’s business acumen that I somehow had missed.  Again, Delany always seems to come across to me as a college football version of Jed Clampett, but I’m also fascinated by what everyone now sees as his primary mission.

James Duderstadt, who was president at Michigan from 1988 to 1996, said he worried that the needs of the network had superseded the mission of higher education. “Jim’s role in this is that he is responsible for the Big Ten Network,” he said. “The danger is that the presidents have not challenged that it decouples from the longstanding academic relationships and could destroy something of great value.”

Even the new kid on the block knows which way the winds blow these days.

As Mr. Delany negotiates new subscription rates for the Big Ten Network, Ms. Hermann, the athletic director at Rutgers, knows her objective. “We have to make our contribution to the Big Ten,” she said, “and get cable companies to pay for the Big Ten Network out here.”

Delany is unapologetic about this, and why shouldn’t he be?  It’s what the people paying him to do a job want.

While tuition at schools in the Big Ten and around the country has grown, most athletic department budgets remain separate from central administration. The influx in cash goes mostly to cover stadium improvements, new training facilities and rising salaries for coaches. In many states, coaches are now the highest-paid state employees. Mr. Delany made nearly $3 million in 2011.

“The hypocrisy is that money that’s generated makes a few people very, very rich,” Mr. Duderstadt said. “Athletic directors, coaches, assistant coaches, commissioners, too. But institutions are not winning and student-athletes get very little.”

Mr. Delany counters that those TV revenues paid for athletic scholarships worth $150 million last year in the Big Ten. Others question the value of scholarships for big-time football and basketball players, considering that the graduation rate for football players is 58 percent, and for basketball players, 47 percent; many also argue that these athletes should be paid, in light of the huge revenue they generate.

Too bad players don’t have a say in hiring conference commissioners.  You might hear something other than odes to amateurism being sung by those enriching themselves under the current arrangement.

Thursday morning buffet

Get in line.

• Only three SEC schools made it through the regular season without an injury to their starting quarterback.
• Here we go – jumping on Alabama’s defensive woes against spread attacks.
• My favorite part of Bill Connelly’s advanced box score from the Georgia-Georgia Tech game?  “Projected Pt. Margin: Georgia Tech +3.0 | Actual Pt. Margin: Georgia +7“.  But, coaching!
• Here’s a shocker:  “Every public Division I university in Alabama experienced athletic spending per college athlete grow at a faster rate than academic spending per student from 2007 to 2011…”
• Is an Iron Bowl rematch a feature, or a bug?
• Great story on Tim Worley, including this quote from Worley about one-time roommate Bill Goldberg:  “He’s one of those people who would give you the shirt off his back. But when you heard he was going into wrestling, you’d say, ‘I figured something like that.'”
• Even if this isn’t a fair comparison, it’s not helping Boom that it’s being made in the first place.
• Kliff Kingsbury on his game day attire:  “If you look good, you feel good. If you feel good, you play good.”