For Georgia, one good thing about the COA stipend

… it’s not gonna ding the reserve fund too badly, relatively speaking.

Tennessee’s COA – calculated by the Office of Financial Aid for all students using the Independent Student Allowance method – is $5,666 per year (not counting summer school). That’s $4002 in miscellaneous expenses and $1664 in transportation.

That is $80 more than the next SEC institution – Auburn ($5586). But it is almost $3900 more than Georgia ($1,798), which is on the low end of the SEC spectrum. These numbers are either last year’s figures or projected for the upcoming fiscal year according to information from various websites.

In the SEC, only three schools are over $5000, three schools are in the $4000s, six are in the $3000s and two are below $3000 – Georgia and Vanderbilt ($2,730).

I bet nobody realized what a great deal it is to live in Athens.  Todd Gurley made more than that paltry $1,798 with his trusty Sharpie.

Now you can understand why Morehead and McGarity want the SEC to adopt the Georgia Way as a uniform standard.  And why nobody in the conference is going to listen.

Knives are being sharpened on the recruiting trail as you read this.  And Jeremy Pruitt wonders in which direction he should point a finger.

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Reason #28416 you shouldn’t believe their math

Auburn – you know, the Auburn that supposedly is losing money running its athletic department – is about to spend somewhere between $70 and $120 million upgrading Jordan-Hare Stadium.

Starting with a $14 million scoreboard.

Welp, spring practice is about to be sprung.

So, after the post-spring break drug tests (I keed, I keed… I hope), what are you expecting to learn starting with tomorrow’s first practice?

A few things on my list:

• Life on offense after Bobo.  How much is Schottenheimer really going to live up to Richt’s “if it ain’t broke” expectations?
• The quarterback battle.  It’s clear there’s going to be one.  How soon do any of this year’s candidates separate from the pack?
• Center.  After all the stability Georgia has had at that position over the last several seasons, yeah, it’s a little nerve-wracking to know a new face will be manning the spot.
• Who’s the third wide receiver?  Maybe I should be wondering about #2 as well, as Scott-Wesley never really showed much last year coming back from his injury.  But assuming Georgia intends to continue with a heavy use of three wideout sets, Brian McClendon has to find the next guy.
• Jeremy Pruitt’s mad scientist act gets its second run.  He’s got a challenge getting creative with making sure his three best defensive players, all outside linebackers, see the field as much as possible.  But he’ll tinker again with the secondary, because… well, because that’s what he does.  There’s also a lot of mixing and matching to do on the defensive line, a task that will certainly go into fall practice when some more key bodies arrive.  And don’t forget replacing two starters at inside linebacker.

Whew!  That’s enough for a start.  When’s G-Day, anyway?

More cowbell, please.

It’s no secret ESPN wants the CFP to move the semifinals off New Year’s Eve to a more broadcast friendly January 2, and that the CFP folks are resisting the push.

So what happens if ESPN is correct in its concern about the ratings?  I mean, it’s not just the date that may be an issue.

Of course, even if the semifinals were to move to Jan. 2 — or somehow stay on New Year’s Day — the numbers would be hard pressed to match last year. The Rose Bowl (14.8, 28.2M) and Sugar (15.2, 28.3M) bowls were the highest-rated and most-watched college football games since 2010, topping the previous four BCS championship games. A confluence of factors led the strong numbers, including the novelty of the playoffs and the high-profile nature of participants Alabama, Florida State, Ohio State and Oregon. Those will be difficult to replicate next season, regardless of the schedule.

I expect the “high-profile nature” of those games to repeat – that’s kind of the whole point to the structure of the CFP –  but the novelty issue is obviously a different story.  At some point the same people who felt the need to juice up college football’s postseason from the BCS to the CFP will get the shakes again, and then what?  They’ll probably give in to the WWL on no longer competing with the ball dropping on Times Square (and why not, since this is about garnering a more broad-based national audience, anyway), but when even that doesn’t fix things, they’ll have little choice but to choose to take the next step.

When you’ve got postseason fever, there’s only one cure.

Fun times: back in court with O’Bannon

The NCAA has a lot on its plate today.

The Ed O’Bannon class-action antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA reaches another milestone Tuesday, when the sides engage in oral argument before a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

It’s part of a busy day on the court — and in the courts — for the NCAA. The association will be starting its Division I men’s basketball tournament in Dayton, Ohio, and participating in oral argument in the appeal of another significant legal case: The state of New Jersey’s bid to legalize sports betting there.

There’s probably a metaphor in there about the current state of collegiate athletics, but I don’t have the energy to fish it out.

That being said, there’s bound to be a little something today that’ll give the 9th Circuit panel hearing the NCAA’s appeal a chuckle.

In disagreeing with Wilken’s ruling that would allow some payments for players, the NCAA wrote, “The court’s alternative would blur the line between amateur college sports and their professional counterparts and thereby deprive athletes of a genuine choice between the two endeavors.”

“That sentence bears re-reading,” lawyers for the Shawne Alston cost-of-attendance plaintiffs wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief. “In (the NCAA’s) view, it is the athletes that are going to be harmed because of the district court’s ruling. That contention likely does not pass the laugh-test, let alone provide a bulwark against antitrust liability.”

College athletes, of course, could “refuse the ‘minor’ payment at issue should they find it unpalatable (as unlikely as that may be),” the Alston plaintiffs wrote. Why college athletes, if given a choice, would turn down money is a head scratcher…

That must be why the NCAA wants the NBA to raise its age limit to 20, to give kids a genuine-r choice.

I’m guessing this is something about which Stacey Osburn has no comment.

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UPDATE:  Since this was mentioned in the comments, feel free to watch.