Name that caption, Virtual Bert edition

Interesting story, weird pic.

(Photo: Walt Beazley, Razorbacks Communications)

Bloop and beep in the comments.

Always hate it when a narrative is ruined.

Chip Towers reports that Greyson Lambert isn’t transferring to Georgia to be closer to his girlfriend.

All kinds of ways to spend money

Here’s a really good piece on how the money comes in and goes out at Mississippi State, which just celebrated a record year for earnings.

MSU’s athletic department reported a record “profit” of $7.8 million for the academic school year (profit is in quotation marks because technically it’s a non-profit we’re looking at here), but even that’s misleading when you consider how the money is being spent.

So where does all the money go? Most of the $62,275,111, the revenue taken in by MSU from all avenues this year, goes right back into the university.

Stricklin paid out $20.1 million in coaching salaries across all sports in 2014-15, and roughly $10 million of MSU’s annual athletic budget cover scholarship money for student-athletes.

“We pay the university for every student-athlete,” said Stricklin. “Every football player that’s on full scholarship, it’s not just ‘Hey, come here for free,’ the athletic department is writing a check back to the university for that. Our scholarship budget this year, including the extra miscellaneous figure for cost of attendance, will be close to $10 million. So the new money from the SEC, that’s about equal to our scholarship bill is on an annual basis.”

That may look like a real outlay to the athletic department, but to the school?  Hardly.  Sure, there are some marginal expenses incurred, but it’s not like MSU is having to spend every scholarship dollar it receives on actual costs.  There’s “profit” in there, too.

Unlike, say, the coaching salaries.  But they’ll never be able to afford to compensate the kids, right?

“We’re going to get that trophy back in our locker room.”

Unlike some of the fan base, it doesn’t sound like Kolton Houston’s ready to see an end to the Georgia-Georgia Tech series.

Tuesday morning buffet

Buffet away, dudes and dudines.

• Roll Bama Roll continues its look at SEC scheduling here and here. (Note in the first link which school comes up with the easiest schedule of the 2007-2014 era.)
• Just because the AJ-C hired Seth Emerson doesn’t mean it’s quit click-baiting Georgia folks.
• The Mountain West is peeved that Army-Navy won’t move their game.
• That public university president gig isn’t bad.  (It’s even better for the private ones.)
• In case you hadn’t noticed, the SEC is ridiculously loaded at the running back position this season.
• And given this, that’s probably a good thing.
• So, how good was Vegas calling the SEC last season?
• Mike Slive takes a victory lap with Stewart Mandel.
• Mississippi State will require student-athletes to take monthly online classes before receiving part of their cost of attendance scholarships.
• Oops.
• “If redshirt senior Trip Thurman, a 10-game starter at guard last year, can’t overcome a nagging shoulder injury within the next several weeks, the 2015 Gators will have 12 linemen without any starts at the college level.”  Gulp.
• Looks like Andy Staples agrees with me about the importance of the Georgia-Missouri game.

Travel is power.

So, after reading the news that Mississippi State is traveling to UMass to play a game next season, it dawns on me that there’s a much simpler way to define which P5 conference schools are legitimate powers and which aren’t than Stewart Mandel’s “give me 100 Montanans and a feudal order” approach.

It boils down to one simple rule:  there are those schools that have to schedule road games with mid-majors and those that don’t.  Call it the “come to me, son of Jor-El!” rule.

Market power is the coin of the realm, to put it in Mandel’s vernacular.  All the rest is commentary.

25,000,000

The first full month I operated this blog, I averaged 98 hits a day.  (No, that wasn’t family and friends.)  So if you’d have walked up to me back then and said one day I’d see the GTP counter turn twenty five million, I’m sure I would have blinked and said something profound like, “er, what?”.

Needless to say, I’m immensely gratified, albeit more than a little surprised, to have pulled that off here.  It’s a blink of an eye for some of the big blogs out there, but it’s a pretty good showing for a small fish in a small pond.

I couldn’t have done it without you guys showing up and showing up again.  (And clicking on the occasional ad while you’re here, too.)  I appreciate every one of you who visits, whether you share your wisdom in the comments section, or just stop by to read what’s on my mind.  Hope you’ll keep coming back.

Thank you.  Really.