Worth their while

Why the Kickoff Classic in Atlanta instead of another home game in 2016?

Do you really have to ask?

Georgia will get a $4 million guarantee for playing North Carolina in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game in 2016 as well as complimentary hotel accommodations and $50,000 in a scholarship donation back to the university, according to a term sheet for the game obtained from UGA in an open records request.

And most of us will have the privilege of paying more for tickets.  A lot more.

The school will get 42,921 tickets for the game from Peach Bowl, Inc., ranging in price from $50 for student seats to $205 for a “super suite” ticket. More than 23,000 tickets are priced at $85 on the upper level.

Kinda feels traditional, doesn’t it?

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UPDATE:  Ticket price breakdown.

Ticket prices for Georgia-North Carolina in Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game in 2016 from UGA allotment. pic.twitter.com/jhg2KxXzDf

— Marc Weiszer (@marcweiszer) February 20, 2015

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You’re starting to freak me out, man.

Bryan McClendon gets his second raise of the offseason.

Butts-Mehre, I don’t even know you anymore.

Now that’s some recruiting service.

The NCAA has slapped Florida with a Level II recruiting violation finding about Joker Phillips breaking the bump rule with a recruit.  (The report doesn’t mention Phillips by name, but it’s not exactly tough to figure out he’s the subject of the violation.)

Phillips was canned and the Gators receive no other penalty, so that’s water under the bridge.  However, you need to check out some of the findings of fact.

From page 3:

The assistant coach was acquainted with an individual who works for a recruiting service that tracks high school prospective student-athletes (“recruiting service reporter”). They have known each other since approximately 2008, when the assistant coach was employed at another FBS institution. They maintained contact through the years. From January 1 through January 22, 2014, the assistant coach and recruiting service reporter exchanged 17 telephone calls. On January 23, 2014, the day the assistant coach committed the violation, they exchanged six calls between 12:41 p.m. and 10:26 p.m.

From page 3-4:

On January 18, 2014, the recruiting service reporter sent a text message to the assistant coach. It stated that the recruiting service reporter was with the 7-on-7 coach and that they wanted to discuss possible prep school options for the prospect. The assistant coach called the recruiting service reporter, who handed the phone to the 7-on-7 coach. They had a short conversation. The assistant coach informed the 7-on-7 coach, whom he believed to be the prospect’s high school coach, that he would be in the 7-on-7 coach’s area later that week and they could discuss the prep school issue further at that time.

From page 4:

The night before his arrival, the assistant coach and recruiting service reporter spoke by phone. During their conversation, the assistant coach confirmed that he was flying in the next day to see the prospect and conduct other business. When he landed just after noon, the assistant coach received a text message from the recruiting service reporter. The assistant coach phoned the recruiting service reporter shortly thereafter, they spoke about directions to the prospect’s school and the recruiting service reporter offered to lead him there. The recruiting service reporter had previously contacted the prospect about coming by to get an update on his recruitment. The assistant coach and recruiting service reporter met at a hotel and, in separate cars with the recruiting service reporter leading, proceeded to the prospect’s school.

The prospect’s high school operated in more than one location. The assistant coach and recruiting service reporter initially drove to the wrong campus. When they realized they were in the wrong location, the recruiting service reporter phoned the prospect and found out where he was. The assistant coach and recruiting service reporter then drove to that location. Prior to their arrival, the recruiting service provider informed the assistant coach that the prospect would be waiting outside.  [Emphasis added.]

From page 5:

In his interviews during the investigation, the prospect stated that the recruiting service reporter had texted him earlier in the day on January 23 to tell him that the recruiting service reporter would be bringing “a surprise” and “a special somebody” with him to the prospect’s school.

So, what do we call the “recruiting service reporter” here?  Bird dog, pimp, enabler, what?  Or was he just being helpful so he could give his subscribers some real inside info?

Joker knew what he was doing and deserved the consequences.  But I’d be real curious to know what became of Joker Number Two.

“These things build a reputation.”

The coaching reaction to what Bobby Petrino pulled on South Carolina high school running back Matt Colburn just before signing day is about what you’d expect, but there’s one little part worth highlighting.

What should recruits do to avoid this? According to a recruiting coordinator for a staff that competes for talent with Louisville, the growing trend is just another example of fading amateurism.

“My first reaction when I heard about [Colburn] had nothing to do with Louisville or with Coach Petrino. It was that now more and more people are starting to understand that college football is a business that affects a lot of people’s lives on both sides. But the onus is on the university. At the end of the day, that’s a binding contract that affects someone’s life from that point moving forward.”

If you’re a coach pulling down major bucks, amateurism is nothing more than a means to an end, the end being to assemble the roster you think best suits your opportunity to win as many games as you can.  There is no romance to it; you can’t afford to be romantic about it.  You push the envelope as much as the rules allow (you also push to make sure the rules don’t change to your detriment, but that’s for another post one day) because that’s what serves your narrow interests best.  And if the school really cared otherwise, you wouldn’t be getting paid so much, or at least not for the same thing.

I’m not saying this to defend Bobby Petrino.  He’s far from the only well-paid gentleman using tactics like this to manage his roster.  But those of you who believe that amateurism covers a lot of sins in college football’s name, why does it always seem to be the schools and their representatives who aren’t on the side of the angels?

Luck

No, not Oliver Luck.  Turnover luck.

I spent a morning pulling TOM data on the last five years to see if there was a pattern or edge I could find that I could use for predicting future team win behavior. Here are the bullets I found that I will post on and feature in the 2015 digital preview magazines coming out soon.

1. The greater the turnover margin, positive and negative, the more likely and greater the regular season win change in the forthcoming season

2. Turnover margin is very random.  Few teams can sustain a high or lower level of annual TOM.

3. Each team is ranked and patterned into predictive pools of trends.  Teams with high and low TOMs the previous season have very high likelihoods of regular season win total changes.

As for his second point, check out the chart in this post from Bartoo:

… It always makes me laugh when someone calling a game ‘predicts’ anything about the winner and the turnover battle.  We all know winning the turnover battle wins a lot of football games.  Each coaching staff emphasizes it and coaches the hell out of the turnover battle.  Offense and defense.

However, it is not so easy to predict.  The results over the last 5 years are all over the board.  There are a lot of teams with top coaching staffs at the top of the five year rankings, but it is difficult to have great results every year.

The teams in light green are the eight FBS teams that have had a positive TO margin each of the last five seasons.  The teams in light red, those are the eight that have had a negative TO margin each of the last five years.  The other 107 teams have had a mix of results.

The Oregon Ducks, the no. 1 ranked team in five year TO margin is the only team to have a double digit TO margin in four of the last five years.  Northern Illinois and Georgia are the only other teams to hit positive double digits three of the last five seasons.  [Emphasis added.]

You’ve only got eight teams out of 120 that have managed positive turnover margin in each of the last five seasons and eight that have done the same on the negative side.  That strikes me as evidence that there’s some degree of randomness in the system.

And Georgia would have joined that first group, but for the disaster that was 2013, with its green defense and Aaron Murray having to carry the offense on his shoulders much of the season.  Given what we’ve had to say about the coaching brain trust over the last five years, how much of that would you attribute to coaching and how much to statistical noise?

Friday morning buffet

Cold day, warm buffet.

• Here’s a look at what Trent Thompson might bring to the table.  (By the way, can we stop with the “Ray Drew was a bust” crap?)
• Bill Connelly drops his big ass spread sheet of 2014 receiving stats on us.  And, no, you won’t find any of Georgia’s guys lurking near the top of the list.
• Regardless of where you think the truth may lie between Jameis Winston and the woman who claims he raped her, the idea of students gathering on FSU’s campus to celebrate Winston by calling her names ought to be a head shaker.
• The Big Ten supports an early signing period, but with a caveat from a number of its head coaches that it should be accompanied by the implementation of early official visits.
• Another tax front to open with collegiate athletic departments? (h/t Hogbody)
• Turnover at South Carolina:  “… at least 36 percent of the Gamecocks scholarship roster will be first-year players. Including players who redshirted last season, 39 of the 85 players on the team will have never played a snap for South Carolina.”
• The spread spreads – from high school.
• “It’s a big deal to be the first to offer.”

“How do you talk your way out of this one?”

NCAA, when the likes of Matt Hayes are scoring uncontested layups on your ass, you’ve got a problem.