A green quarterback? How could the head coach allow that to happen?

We get the occasional observation here – okay, it’s mainly from trolls – castigating Mark Richt for going into a season without having an experienced quarterback.  Well, care to take a stab at who South Carolina’s leading returning passer is?

That would be Pharoah Cooper, a receiver.  He had eight tosses to his credit in 2014.

Clearly, this means that Steve Spurrier doesn’t know what he’s doing.  Or else, that he’s like every other college football coach who has to deal with key starters running out of eligibility.

Nah, forget that.  He’s obviously an idiot.

The NCAA and common sense

Sometimes, it’s not an oxymoron.

The NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports recommended extensive changes to the NCAA’s drug-testing policies when it convened in mid-December in Indianapolis.

The committee’s recommendations, which will be further developed into a formal legislative proposal, were twofold: first, strengthen the NCAA drug-testing program for performance-enhancing substances; second, development of a shared model of deterrence for recreational drug use (e.g. marijuana, alcohol and opiates) with a focus on educational programs instead of a traditional testing model. Under this approach the responsibility for deterrence will be shared between the NCAA and member schools. Use of recreational drugs should absolutely be discouraged, the committee members said; but because they do not provide a competitive advantage, alternative approaches to testing should be developed.

I suspect this approach was spurred by the suspension of Oregon’s Darren Carrington before the national title game, but whatever works.

It raises an interesting question with regard to the home team, though.  What happens if the NCAA proposes something that is less stringent than Georgia’s recreational drug policy?  Remember, we’re the institution on a mission to bring the rest of the college football world up to the standards of the Georgia Way.  Would the school stand firm if the rest of D-1 adopted a uniform drug policy that was less harsh?

I’m not sure I want to hear the answer to that.

If you believe Greg McGarity, Georgia just had a helluva year.

Why?  ‘Cause he pays on performance, by Gawd.

So as it stands now, the total salary for the nine assistant coaches has increased from $3.22 million in 2014 to $4.445 million.

Last year Georgia’s assistant coaches ranked 13th nationally in salary pool, according to the USA Today database. The new salaries would push Georgia to fourth nationally, although that’s not yet accounting for changes at other schools.

I didn’t expect Schottenheimer to make as much as some people were projecting, because schools generally don’t pay as much for their offensive coordinators as they do their defensive ones, but he’s not exactly being treated shabbily at $950K/year.

Only three offensive coordinators in 2014 were paid more nationally. LSU’s Cam Cameron made $1.32 million, Clemson’s Chad Morris (now SMU head coach) $1.3 million and Arizona State’s Mike Norvell $902,000, according to USA Today. Schottenheimer, who will work under a three-year contract, came to Georgia after three years as offensive coordinator for the St. Louis Rams.

Emerson notes that Pruitt’s new salary would place him tied for third nationally on last year’s list.  So there’s that.

McClendon and Rocker both got their expected salary increases, but the real surprise is that Georgia is paying its new offensive line coach Rob Sale $400,000 a year.  That’s a helluva jump for a guy coming from McNeese State (and $100K more than Friend was paid).  Mark Richt must have really, really wanted Rob Sale on his staff.

Well, either that or McNeese State kicked some righteous ass last season.

Now go earn your money, guys.

Just how important is Georgia’s 2015 recruiting class?

I’m not asking that question in a “oh, gosh, can Georgia finish in the top three in recruiting rankings?” sense.  I’m talking about the only sense we should really care about in the short-term, namely, how much of a contribution can the next class make to a successful 2015 season?

Per Ed Aschoff, start here:

Georgia: I took some heat for writing on Monday that the Bulldogs might be a quarterback away from taking the SEC and making a legitimate playoff run. I stand by that, and still believe that the Bulldogs have enough pieces in place to be the top SEC at the end of 2015. Nick Chubb is the league’s top returning running back and will be a Heisman Trophy candidate, while the defense is stacked at linebacker and in the secondary. There’s work to be done along a defensive line that lacks adequate depth, but a loaded D-line class is on the way. With a host of talent coming back on both sides and a more than manageable schedule, Georgia has no choice but to be the East favorite.

As I noted in today’s Buffet, Weiszer points out that Georgia’s gone two straight seasons with almost no undergraduate defections – and this year’s will be replaced by Chubb – which means there is decent depth in key areas.  But the defensive line isn’t one of those.  And when Aschoff points out that “a loaded D-line class is on the way”, you have to wonder if what’s coming in is really going to be able to make any sort of significant contribution to a position that had its weak moments against the run in 2014.

But then you read something like this and reflect that maybe there’s something to what Aschoff writes.

He doesn’t mention other immediate needs, like wide receiver and secondary, but those are other areas where Georgia appears to be loading up with this next class.  I expect some of those kids to slot in to the two-deep pretty quickly.

Anyway, the dead period is over, so I thought I’d give y’all the chance to spend some time discussing what you’d like to see happen in the next month for Georgia on the recruiting front.  Have at it in the comments.

‘No One Knows How to Pay for It’

The biggest problem with paying student-athletes for cost of attendance isn’t the damage it could do to the NCAA’s hoary amateurism model.

It’s that either the schools don’t trust themselves (or perhaps more accurately, don’t want to make the effort) on how to deal with that…

“There is a rationale that athletes should receive more of the pie,” said Michael Cross, athletic director at Bradley University, an Illinois institution that competes in the Missouri Valley Conference. “But the problem is that no one knows how to pay for it except in some limited cases.”

… or the schools don’t trust each other.

But because there is considerable leeway and subjectivity in how schools determine their cost-of-attendance figures, there are concerns in the college athletics community about how this will affect recruiting. Even before a vote has been taken on the basic proposal to expand athletic scholarships to cover the cost of attendance, the SEC has offered an amendment to the proposal that would require schools to regularly file a report to the NCAA about any unusual expenses they may be covering for any athlete.

“What you don’t want is a student, a player being recruited to two universities, to say, ‘That the university down there is offering me more than you are,'” South Carolina President Harris Pastides, a member of both the NCAA’s and Division I’s top governing boards, told USA TODAY Sports. “Or if they are (offering more), you want the coach over here to be able to say, ‘Look that’s calculated as the full cost of attendance and so what we’re offering you may not be the exact same amount … but both schools actually are playing by the same rules.”

America, this is why college athletics needs an antitrust exemption, so we can return to the purer days of schools screwing over student-athletes instead of their own administrators and each other.  That’s what amateurism is all about.  Won’t you join the NCAA in its mission?  Write your Congressperson today!

“I think we focus too much on [bowl] attendance.”

Football Bowl Association executive director Wright Waters said that because, as you can probably guess, overall bowl attendance is down for the fifth straight year.  And Waters thinks that really shouldn’t matter too much in the vast scheme of things.

“I’m not saying it’s not important. But some of our bowl games exist purely for the experience, and I think that’s where we probably need to focus as much as anything.

“I don’t think you can have a discussion about the health of bowls and limit it to attendance and payouts and ratings. If the attendance is down 4 percent and that’s the same as the regular season, I think it just speaks to the larger issue that we’ve got to get our arms around as an industry.”

He’s right, but not for any of those reasons.  He’s right because of this:

Even though ticket demand remained relatively low for many bowls, millions of viewers keep watching them. ESPN’s New Year’s Eve audience averaged 7.1 million viewers, up from 4.6 million the date in 2013 with far less-attractive games.

Even ESPN has some tinkering around the edges to do, though.

However, the Fiesta’s audience of 7.4 million was its lowest in Nielsen records and the Orange’s 8.9 million viewership was one of its lowest on record. The Peach dropped 43 percent by moving from primetime to an afternoon kickoff on Dec. 31.

So much for that Boise State national audience.  Or Georgia Tech’s, for that matter.

This is just so much wishful thinking on Waters’ part.

This postseason marked the first time many conferences had more control over bowl matchups. Ticket allotments that schools are required to purchase from bowls were significantly reduced in new contracts.

“I think we got into a situation where the bowls were largely dependent on the teams for ticket sales,” Waters said. “I think you’ve got to see bowls getting back in the business of selling the two conferences in their game and go back to the old way of really marketing it locally.”

Good luck with that, fellas.  The conferences and Mickey ain’t going for that anymore.

Thursday morning buffet

Food for thought…

• “Urban Meyer, God, and Running Up the Score”.  (h/t Reservoir Dawg)
• And while we’re on the subject, Craig James is so Craig James.
• If you’re a Georgia fan who’s frustrated with Mark Richt, Kirk Ferentz is here to remind you things could be so much more frustrating.
• I don’t really understand what “intrinsic values” means, but according to this, Georgia has a lot of ’em.
• More advanced stats love for Georgia.
• Meet the new SEC meme.
• From 2009-12, the Bulldogs had 11 underclassmen enter the draft.  In the past two seasons, that number totals one.
• If you’re interested, here’s a list of the SEC players leaving early for the NFL.
• And here’s a pretty cool stats site I stumbled upon yesterday, thanks to The Wiz of Odds.