“The expenses are not going down.”

Look, contrary to what some of you might think, it’s not as if I take great pleasure in ragging on Greg McGarity’s financial acumen.  But it’s hard to suffer in silence when my bullshit detector’s raging over comments like this one, about raising ticket prices:

“We have limited ways to generate revenue,” McGarity said at a UGA Athletic Association board of director’s meeting. “Unless we have increases in SEC money, which we don’t know, nobody knows what the TV network is going to generate but that’s [ticket sales] our really only other revenue source that we have.”

Reality, in the form of USA Today’s handy NCAA Finances chart, tells a different story.  If you click on the Georgia tab, you’ll see a steady increase in income over the last nine years:

• 2013:  $98,120,889
• 2012:  $91,670,613
• 2011:  $92,341,067
• 2010:  $89,735,934
• 2009:  $83,507,796
• 2008:  $85,554,395
• 2007:  $78,364,621
• 2006:  $79,237,929
• 2005:  $68,787,384

That’s a thirty million dollar increase in annual revenue over that period, an almost 43% increase. (With a big ass recession smack dab in the middle, don’t forget.)  If that’s limited, I’d love to see McGarity’s definition of wide open.  And can we please stop with the “nobody knows what the TV network is going to generate” stuff?  Don’t tell me you’ve uprooted decades of conference tradition because you think there’s a good chance you’ll lose money on it.  Next we’ll be hearing that the school can’t expect any money from playoff expansion.

Yes, expenses have gone up during that same period, and at a greater clip than revenues – from $44,933,055 to $96,904,626.  Some of that can be chalked up to a rapid rise in coaching expenses – SEC, baby! – but there’s been an astounding increase in spending on buildings/grounds, from $2,242,329 to $24,566,189.  I doubt all of that can be attributed to football, but since that’s where guys like Hobie Jones are…

Hobie Jones, a Georgia alumni and lawyer living in Peachtree City, has been going to games since he was 7 years old and said he has not missed a home game in six years.

Jones said that an increase in ticket prices would not affect him.

“I would go either way,” Jones said.

… that’s where McGarity plans on getting the money from.  Thanks, Hobie!

That being said, I admit it could be worse.

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UPDATE:  Oh, yeah. This reminded me of something else in the McGarity piece…

Wow, that’s a ton for a non-conference game. RT @MurrayRGJ: Source says Nevada's payout for Texas A&M game is $1.5M.

— Bryan Fischer (@BryanDFischer) June 5, 2014

While the rationale for the move is largely economic, there is a football aspect to the increase, as Georgia looks to position itself as a controlling player in non-conference scheduling. Georgia pays teams who are not in their conference to come to Athens and play. McGarity estimates that UGA makes about 2.25 million dollars per home game. An increase in this number would allow UGA more room to be creative in scheduling, as it would have access to more money to lure teams to Sanford Stadium.

In other words, the cost of scheduling non-conference opponents who will accept one game offers is rising.  So we ticket buyers gotta pay for that.