“Todd Grantham had his reasons.”

Evidently none of which involved five million large ones.  Guaranteed.

Premium beverages for premium people

Arkansas is applying for a liquor license to sell beer at Razorback – to some folks, anyway.

Arkansas will add its name to the growing list of college selling alcoholic beverages at football stadiums beginning this fall. According to a report from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, the school will begin selling beer and wine to club seat holders at Razorback Stadium this fall, pending the approval of a liquor license from the state.

While the selling part is new, keeping the devil’s beverage away from the hoi polloi is SOP in the SEC.

While the Southeastern Conference does not allow the sale of alcohol in non-premium seating in the SEC, skybox and club seating patrons have been allowed to have alcoholic drinks at seven other SEC stadiums for years. Both Alabama and Auburn allow premium seat holders to bring in their own alcohol.

Maybe rich folks hold their likker better.

In any event, the article notes that twenty schools across the country now sell beer and wine to non-premium seat holders.  I bet that changes in the SEC over the next ten years.  It’s just another revenue stream that doesn’t need to go a-wastin’.

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Consider the source

Mike Leach, Hugh Freeze, Rich Rodriguez – the media’s go-to guys on what’s wrong with the new substitution rule proposal the NCAA dropped on everyone yesterday.  No question they were all pretty eloquent expressing their dissent, but if you’re gonna check the temperature of no-huddle gurus who are feeling put upon with restrictions from above, why not go to the guy who’s actually got experience in that department?

Since coming to Georgia, Richt has all but ditched the fast break offense he made famous at Florida State because, he says, the league’s officials don’t allow him to go fast enough to make it worthwhile. SEC officials are required to pause for 12-14 seconds between each play, and that’s not going to change despite Richt’s arguments, Gaston said.

“He doesn’t agree with it, but he knows what we’re doing,” Gaston said.

The mandatory pause is to allow the officiating crew to get in position, Gaston said. Richt argued that the officials should put the ball in play as soon as they are set, regardless of how much time has elapsed, but Gaston said that would provide the offense an unfair advantage.

“Mark Richt would eat their lunch,” he said. “He would go straight to the ball and snap it. He’d get in 100 plays. We have about half the coaches who think we go too fast and about half who think we go too slow so we must be in about the right spot.”

At least Gaston was more honest about his motives than the NCAA Football Rules Committee is with that safety bullshit.

Funny, but at the time, I don’t remember anyone rushing to Richt’s side in that fight.  Or even willing to give him a public platform to express his point.  Maybe everyone else thought players were safer then.

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

UPDATE:  And I thought I was just kidding about this yesterday.

Bielema is a non-voting member of the rules committee. Saban was an attendee for the 90-minute "rules discussion" portion of the meeting.

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) February 13, 2014

Forget Michael Sam. What about Myron Rolle?

What does it say that college football, warts and all, is more comfortable with a person of great character than the NFL is?

Thursday morning buffet

If you’re facing the same weather conditions I am, it’s not like you’ve got anything better to do right now than to slip into the buffet line.

• Sorry, Missouri, but you just got the KC Joyner kiss of death.
• Stewart Mandel throws in the towel on oversigning.
• Clowney says he might have stayed in Columbia for his senior year if he were paid enough to support his family.  Now he tells ’em.
• The NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors hopes to have a new management structure in place by August.
• Here’s a coach who’s on his eighth job in eight years.
• It turns out that among all the Vols who were arrested at that wild party last weekend, a man who identified himself as an assistant strength coach for Tennessee’s football team was handcuffed and put in the back of a squad car when he tried to intervene.
• “An online survey by a group of Canadian researchers suggests that Internet trolls are more likely than others to show signs of sadism, psychopathy and “Machiavellianism”: a disregard for morality and tendency to manipulate or exploit others.”
• The NLRB held its first hearing yesterday on the Northwestern players’ move to be certified as a union.

If you can’t beat StubHub…

Georgia Tech is considering offering tickets to the Clemson game in some form of an auction.

Georgia Tech’s marquee game on the 2014 home schedule will be its Nov. 15 game against ACC rival Clemson.

The athletic department is considering an auction-style sales format to maximize revenue from the game.

“I think the growth of the secondary ticket market has spurred this, as people have seen a third party profiting significantly on high-demand games and saying, ‘Well, you know what? We sure could use those resources,’” Tech athletic director Mike Bobinski said.

It’s the logical thing to do if every dollar is precious.

Tech staffers have been in contact with counterparts at Northwestern, which sold single-game tickets for two premium games last season using a version of a “Dutch auction” suggested by Northwestern economists. Every dollar counts at Tech, which continually struggles to break even financially and doesn’t fully fund scholarships for its track, cross country and swimming teams.

Tech doesn’t fully fund buyouts, either.  (Which adds a slight touch of irony to this, don’t you think?)

Here’s how it worked at another school.

At Northwestern, the school sold single-game tickets for its games against Ohio State and Michigan using a modified auction. It established prices for three different tiers of seats and then lowered the prices based on demand until that tier sold out. Ticket buyers who purchased at a higher price were refunded the difference between their price and the final, lowest price. There was also a “floor price” that the school wouldn’t go below to avoid selling for less than what season-ticket holders paid.

Those going in at a higher price “are not going to feel like they got burned,” Northwestern assistant athletic director Ryan Chenault said. “The benefit, too, is if you jump in early, you get the better seats.”

Chenault would not provide sales figures, but noted that the final sales price for sideline tickets for the Ohio State game was about $190. The Michigan tickets sold for more than $100. As a comparison, the 2012 game against Nebraska, Northwestern’s highest ticket price was $70.

Chenault said there wasn’t much pushback from fans as marketers were proactive in explaining the auction. It was also pitched as an added benefit for season-ticket holders, as they could secure tickets for those premium games and avoid the auction.

“It makes (season tickets) a lot more attractive,” Chenault said.

As we all know, Tech already uses premium pricing for its more attractive home games.  This is another wrinkle to keep that extra dollar out of the market and in the hands of the school.  Hard to blame it for that.