Chip Towers raises an interesting point:
Saturday’s loss to Georgia Tech was not costly just to Georgia. It was also costly — literally — to the SEC.
Had the Bulldogs beaten the Yellow Jackets, they would have been in line for an “access,” or major bowl (formerly known as BCS bowl. A lot of projections had Georgia going to either Chick-fil-A Peach or Orange Bowls, which are part of the College Football Playoff rotation. That would have come with a $4 million guarantee.
Mississippi State’s loss to Ole Miss also will cost the conference some bucks, as will a loss by Missouri to Alabama in Saturday’s SEC Championship game.
According to a report on FoxSports.com, each team in the playoff receives $6 million for the conference and each team in an “access bowl” earns $4 million for the conference, so the SEC could have been looking at a $16 million payday. Now Alabama is the SEC’s only hope for the $6 million playoff spot.
Mississippi State likely will still receive an access bowl bid and a $4 million payday. Georgia’s hopes of an access bowl were effectively extinguished with its loss to Georgia Tech, so no $4 million payday there.
Now that’s the kind of on-the-field decision making by a head coach that’ll get B-M’s attention. And not in a good way.
Get The Picture 
I hope that squib kick decision burns in Richt’s craw for a long time. I want him to remember it the next time he has that temptation for a “safe” play.
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Me, too. I hope this kick-off screw-up gets as much publicity as possible and that CMR reads about it, sees it on TV and hears about it from McGarity and everybody else who is greedy at B-M. I hope Slive himself calls CMR to discuss how that stupid pooch kick-off cost the conference money. But most of all, I hope that Mac and all the rest of the Richt apologist crowd on this blog who are in denial about why Georgia lost the Tech game read about it over and over until it is burned into their brains how FOS they are when they deny obvious CMR screw-ups like this. Some of them are STILL trying to pin the loss on Mason throwing a pick in OT. Hell, Mason WON the game with a great drive until CMR threw it away with a stupid end of game decision.
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I like the players attitudes (well, from the two non-Mason locker room interviews I heard): they blamed it on not scoring TDs early and “giving Tech hope,” thus learning the more important lesson that the best way to beat Tech is not letting the game get close in the 4th quarter in the first place.
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Who’s in denial about it? It was a piss poor decision at a critical moment. I, too, hope he never forgets, but I hope the memory of it makes him an even better coach.
And maybe I need to catch up on my reading here, but I don’t recall anyone blaming Mason (tonight except maybe he himself).
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No, DW. Reread the posts. Immediately after the game some haters were bashing Mason on this very blog. Others on other blogs, too. The apologists were also blaming the 2 freshmen backs saying the early game fumbles were the cause of losing the Tech game. Look, in any football game you can point to countless plays in that game and say that’s what won or lost a game. But when you are at the end, with a 3 point lead and 18 seconds to go–that’s when CMR made his monumental screw-up that lost a game his team had come back and scored a late TD to win. Then on top of the squib kick, Richt called a TO (Tech had none) allegedly ti “ice” the kicker, that in reality HELPED Tech because they wouldn’t have been able to get lined up and make the kick in time. 2 gallactically stupid decisions in the span of less than 30 seconds.
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“to” not “ti”
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I still can’t believe he did it knowing his 1st significant victory (The Hobnail Boot) was caused by the exact same dumb decision by Phat Phil.
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significant victory? what would that be. didnt you see the long list of games we have lost?
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Well played, sir
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Your point is correct nevertheless, sir. CMR won the 2001 Georgia-UT game when Fulmer made the exact same mistake that CMR made in the Tech game last Saturday. You would think, of all people, that CMR wouldn’t make the same mistake himself. But, nooooooo. Georgia lost a game where the Dawgs took a 3 point lead with 18 SECONDs left on the clock. No amount of time left on the clock is safe when Mark Richt is making the decisions. It ain’t over until the clock is at “00.”
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Squib kicks are like prevent defenses. Nobody notices them until they backfire. Sometimes kicking it deep doesn’t work so well either. Anyone remember this:
If we kick it deep vs. tech and they return it for 6 everybody would be screaming that we should have squib kicked it. Other than having a kicker that can kick it out of the back of the end zone every time, there isn’t a perfect answer.
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Except that Tech hadn’t done anything on any of the previous returns (and twice they started on the 7 yard line following a KO); and Tech’s offense isn’t built to cover 60 yards in 18 seconds. A deep ball was the percentage play.
I defended the naked bootleg against SC, but not this one. The squib kick was a bad call, and poorly executed.
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I agree. Even if the odds for all teams say to squib kick it, you have to look at the two teams and the game being played. GA Tech is #33 in the country averaging 22.6 yards per kick return. UGA is #35 in allowing opponents returns of 19.6 yards per kick return. Against Tech, we were covering kicks better than our average. Their long return of the day was 18 yards. Their second longest was returning the squib kick 16 yards.
What we were struggling with all day long was Tech’s running game. So, instead of using our strength (kick coverage) against their weakness (kick return) and set up their weakness (passing to move the ball 50 yards in 18 seconds), we negated both our strength and their weakness and set them up in a much stronger position of having to move the ball only 20 yards, which they were able to do with a run/pass option.
I also thought that the passing call in the USC game was defensible, though not ideal. The problems were Mason’s grounding penalty and Morgan’s unlikely miss. In this case, Richt did everything he could to set up Tech as well as he possibly could have.
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The fact that you had to go back 20 years tells me that there IS an answer that is more perfect. And that answer is not to squib it. Especially to a team whose 5th option is to throw the ball.
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Um… Virginia hadn’t done anything returning kicks all day against Ray Goff’s squad either in the ’95 Peach Bowl. Stuff happens. It’s football.
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Goff happens. But hopefully never again.
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Hey Derek,
You play the odds… The odds of returning a kick 90+ yards are much greater than running one play of 20 yards that gets you in field goal position. The decision by Richt is indefensible. Richt said say himself.
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I’m a Disney Dawg through and through, but even was say WTF? when we squib kicked it. Tech hadn’t had a good return all day. Just play the percentages and hope for the best.
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$4 million for the Peach Bowl?! ATL’s hotel/motel tax must be pretty steep to afford that payout AND the Falcons new stadium. No wonder they couldn’t afford to keep the Braves.
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Good Lord, people. The Peach is in the playoff rotation, it will host a playoff game every three years. The Peach Bowl matters now. This news didn’t break yesterday. It is on the same level as the Sugar, Rose, Orange, Fiesta and (now) the Cotton Bowl. Money is coming from much more than hotel/motel taxes on this one.
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Most folks don’t give a flying fuck about the bowl rotation, or have time to comb through the money trail. But thanks for the chastising:-)
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I saw one projection of the Dawgs playing Maryland?!? Wtf…and not miracle 10-2 Maryland but 7-5 per usual Maryland. So I sweated out 5 in a row for tenn, was disgusted & pissed for fla, watched total road domination w/o the worlds best player for Mizzou & Arky, saw a dissapointing but not surprising loss to tek, got all jubilant & stuff after/during the barn, watched clempson get delt with in the 4th, etc etc… For Maryland??
Hmph..doesn’t hardly seem worth it if it comes to that.
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Would you rather the Turtles or Wisconsin in the “new” Citrus Bowl which I think is the previous Capitol One. I saw this forecast at The Sporting News. If aOSU were to lose the B1G Title Game though, which it is favored to do, maybe the Dawgs play the Ohio team.
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I think Wisconsin in that scenero but I’m also growing tired of the Wisc-Neb-Mich St rotation. Remember Purdue? They were cute…now tOSU would be cool. Or how bout a 8-4 USCw…that would be cool too. Who knows, maybe I’m growing hoarnary & impossible to please. Just SOMETHING more interesting than 7-5 Maryland.
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Hey, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Georgia can beat Maryland even with Richt as HC. I’m not so sure about the others mentioned even though Georgia has the better team.
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Given our D’s weakest link is ypc rush D, and Wisconsin has the best RB still healthy in the nation, no I would prefer a disappointing 10-3 season over flirting with giving up 300+ rush yards and ending the year on a 2 game losing streak. Unless Wisconsin can promise to inexplicably sit Gordon in the 2nd half like they did vs LSU.
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I agree Nate. Don’t mind Orlando, cause its warmer and more to do if we make the trip. But please, please give us a good matchup. How about Oklahoma? A Louisville match with CTG would be something. Or maybe Notre Dame. I’d even take Minnesota, before mich st, wisc, neb or maryld.
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Never, ever, ever rely on Richt to win a game Georgia needs to win. Richt does not have 14 years experience, he has one year 14 times.
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Congratulations sir, you just won most ignorant comment of the day
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Come on Brandon. The guy’s lost to Tech twice now. TWICE!!1!!1! Are we supposed to just accept losing to Tech every six or seven years?
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Those games only matter when we lose them, natch.
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I’ve brought this up before. I’m not advocating that B-M fire Richt, but I wonder if the money they’ve lost out on by not getting premiere bowl assignments is starting to concern them. A couple of million here and a couple of million there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
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Isn’t bowl revenue pooled and shared with our brethren in the SEC?
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This^^^ All teams receive equal pay when all is said and done. Obviously, the more teams on bowls, and more importantly, top tier bowls, the better for the league and its individual members.
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Well, actually the SEC is one of the few conferences that weights the bowl split so that the team that actually plays gets more that just a proportionate share, as I understand it.
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That’s what I’m thinking. Vanderbilt is fairly content to let Bama do the heavy lifting as far as revenues are concerned.
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So Vandy is going to Fire Richt? Didn’t see that coming! 😉
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PLOT TWIST
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So the money gets divided 16 ways and the team playing in the game gets two parts, the other teams get one, and the league office gets one. Let’s say we got the Peach…that’s 1/8 of $4 million, or $500k. Say instead we get a $1 million second-tier bowl, so you can subract $125k from that total to get our effective team payout loss.
Now the league take is $6 million less than it could have been with Mississippi State in the playoff and Georgia in the Peach. We get 1/16 of that total, so that’s $375k.
Add them up, and we’re talking $750k in actual lost revenue by Georgia due to the loss to Tech and Mississippi State’s loss to Mississippi. That’s real money, but it is less than one home game against Podunk State University. I’m not sure that moves the needle much.
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Yeah, but they could up Bobo’s pay with it…..
The Peach or Orange would have been nice…playing Maryland, not so much.
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Better Maryland than Nebraska for the third year in a row.
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Looks to me like Ole Miss will make a New Years Six bowl now instead of UGA, so the net loss from the squib is not huge.
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