It’s money that I love.

You can sense the offseason negotiations are gonna be fun.

Georgia athletics director Greg McGarity was unaware of any interview, as of Tuesday morning. Bobo’s contract says that he must notify McGarity of any upcoming discussions about another job.

Bobo signed a new three-year deal after last season that pays him $575,000 annually. So could he get another raise if another school comes after him? McGarity said he and head coach Mark Richt typically discuss raises for assistants a couple weeks after the season.

“I think we made a strong commitment last year. So it’s not like the institution hasn’t stepped up,” McGarity said, then added: “That’s a conversation for Mark and myself later.”

If you’ll recall, the institution had to get pushed a wee bit by Bobo’s agent last year.

Bobo’s name has surfaced as a head coaching candidate at Southern Miss and, according to his agent, he is drawing interest for other jobs as well. Even if Bobo declines the overtures, it would likely result in an enhanced financial agreement from UGA.

Russ Campbell, the Birmingham-based attorney who acts as Bobo’s agent, confirmed that his client is being considered for jobs but declined to discuss specifics.

“I can tell you that he’s getting some long overdue consideration,” said Campbell, who was in California with Sonny Dykes, who was being introduced as the California Bears’ head coach on Thursday. “It’s unbelievable what Mike has done at Georgia; his track record speaks for itself. People are finally starting to notice.”

People are starting to notice?  Well, maybe they should pay for Bobo’s raise.  Probably before paying for an IPF, though.

Seriously, he had to see this coming a long way off.

If Bobo haz a crayon, what’s everybody else holding?

Not trying to be overly snarky here, but is there any other coach on the staff that would say something like this about the defense or special teams?

“There was definitely a lull there, the Missouri and Vanderbilt games, but you’ve got to give those guys credit,” Bobo said. “There was an adjustment period there that we had to go through. The Missouri game we pretty much stayed aggressive but we kind of turned the ball over a little bit, some timing issues. We tried to slow it down a little bit in the Vanderbilt game and didn’t have the results that way either and had to go back to the drawing board and the guys responded and answered and came back and played well the rest of the year.”

I was critical of Bobo a few years back after the loss at Auburn in 2010 for not game planning/play calling in the context of what Georgia needed to do to win:

… Bobo’s responsibility isn’t simply to make sure his offense scores a bunch of points.  It’s to make sure that it scores more points than the other team does.  And there lies the rub about his success as a coordinator.  Context is a bitch when your team goes 6-6.

Context in this case is supplied in this Ben Dukes post about Georgia’s defense.  Blame it on a coordinator whose NFL experience left him ill-prepared for the college spread attack, or blame it on personnel shortcomings which arose as a natural result of a scheme change, but the fact is that Georgia’s defense had a hard time all season with offenses that ran the ball out of spread/option schemes.  If you’re Bobo, maybe you can tell yourself mid-year that your defense will get better as it climbs the learning curve, but by the time the last two games of the year rolled around, it should have been obvious that wasn’t going to happen.  Georgia’s defense needed every bit of help it could get from their offensive mates.

Gee, that last sentence has an echo, doesn’t it?  The thing is, I believe the lesson’s being learned.  Bobo not only had a similar challenge this season, but he had to face it with one hand tied behind his back at times.  (Think about Murray’s surrounding cast in the Missouri and Vanderbilt games and realize the amount of adjusting and scrubbing the playbook that Bobo had to attempt to fashion something that his quarterback could trust and run with all the green players surrounding him.)  As he acknowledges, there was a lull, but the offense did catch a needed second wind after that.

It wasn’t always pretty – injuries and an inconsistent offensive line made sure of that – but I do have the sense that Bobo is calling plays based on his surroundings much more than he used to.  Sure, you’d like to think that the defense and special teams can hold up their end of the bargain, but you can’t count on it.  Bobo’s coming around on that.  And that’s making for a more effective offense.

Tuesday morning buffet

Clearing the decks, filling the chafing dishes…

• Is Brendan Langley looking at a chance for some redemption in the bowl game?
• At least 12 bowl games have peddled deep-discount seats on Groupon, LivingSocial or Goldstar in recent years.
• “Ball and McClendon managed, and so did Georgia’s offense.”
• Breaking down Auburn’s rushing attack.
• ESPN does a Gator Bowl roundtable with its Georgia and Nebraska bloggers.  It doesn’t sound like they have much more of a grasp on what’s gonna happen than we do.
• How come nobody told me Nick Marshall has a football playing cousin named Quez Mahoganey?
• So did Corch want to hire Chad Morris or not?
• For Mike Bobo, “Interviewing elsewhere could lead to another boost in salary, if not taking over a program of his own.”  Either way, it sounds like Greg McGarity will probably have to raise the budget for the coaching staff.
• Of course they did.

GTP: 2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

About 1,000,000 people visit the Seattle Space Needle every year. This blog was viewed about 4,100,000 times in 2013. If it were the Space Needle, it would take about 4 years for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

He said it, not me.

Paul Johnson, on the bizarrely disastrous play call that led to the last score of yesterday’s Music City Bowl:

… Paul Johnson called a reverse pass by sub receiver Corey Dennis, who wound up fumbling the ball into the end zone for an Ole Miss safety. Johnson said afterward he’d been waiting to call that play because he “knew it would work.” He also said: “If it works, I’m a genius. If it doesn’t, I’m a dumbass.”

Well, if he’s waiting for somebody to argue with him, he’ll be waiting for a while.

It’s all turned to ashes for Mark Bradley, hasn’t it?