Seriously, things at FSU have gotten to the point where it’s beyond me to engage in mockery.
And I mean this sincerely – if Herbstreit was shaking his head/wagging his finger in Mark Richt’s direction, he’s got some ‘splaining to do now if he can’t bring himself to point that same finger in the direction of Tallahassee.
Filed under Crime and Punishment
Clowney claims Nick Saban put him to sleep during his recruiting visit.
Also, Nick Saban is short.
Filed under Nick Saban Rules, Recruiting
On Bruce Feldman’s list of top five underachieving college football programs, that is. (It’s his response to Mandel’s list from the other day.)
To be fair, his criticism extends well beyond the Richt era. (Amusingly, Mandel disagrees with him, mainly because of the program’s performance under Richt. Even better, he’s still whining about our criticism over his stupid “kings” rankings.)
Definitely worth a listen.
Filed under Georgia Football, Media Punditry/Foibles
In the last year, UAB shelled out more money to consultants ($546,869) to shut down and then reopen its football program than it did to its football coach ($500,000).
Which makes you wonder why the school feels the need to ask fans to make pledges to support the program – or, perhaps more accurately, why it would expect fans to hand over a blank check to do so.
Filed under It's Not Easy Being A Mid-Major
Those of you who swore the end of your love for college football the moment student-athletes were paid… well, in the face of this news…
A rare occurrence is going to happen soon: Current college athletes are going to be paid for commercialized use of their image and likeness. About 400-450 current college football and men’s basketball players made claims in the Electronic Arts and NCAA video game settlements, according to Leonard Aragon, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
Assuming the video game settlement is approved July 16 by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken, there will be active players cashing checks because their image was used in video games. Court documents show that a player could receive between $74 and $6,700 depending on the frequency and use of his image in the games. The maximum number could still increase. Current players make up less than 3 percent of the claims since many of them never appeared in the games.
… can the rest of us have your tickets?
Filed under It's Just Bidness, The NCAA
You may have heard recently that ESPN is cutting the cords with some of its high-priced talent, like Keith Olbermann and Bill Simmons. It’s not because the WWL has a problem with their work.
It’s just the result of some good old-fashioned cost cutting. There’s a piece up at the Wall Street Journal about ESPN’s bottom line, and while I don’t subscribe to the WSJ, I did run across a couple of tweets that get the message across.
That tension between on-line video service and cable broadcast service ain’t going away, and you can see how ESPN is rapidly moving to a spot twixt a rock and a hard place. How rapidly? Well…
That’s not a positive trend. And it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out what’ll eventually come if ESPN keeps taking the hit.
You may not care about the loss of Olbermann or Simmons. (I don’t.) But you are kidding yourself if you think it stops there. If enough bleeding occurs, sooner or later that will impact rights fees.
Nobody – at least nobody dependent on conference broadcast network revenues – is going to like it when the 800-pound gorilla goes on a diet. But I’m sure Greg Sankey is on the mother as I type this.
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UPDATE: Speaking of Sankey, David Wunderlich sees one silver lining for the SEC in the approaching dark cloud.
If traditional pay TV collapses in the future, the SEC won’t be stuck with expensive studios and broadcast equipment to liquidate and contracts with talent to buy out. Its institutions will have to deal with a loss of revenue, but so will everyone else, and the conference won’t have to worry about writing off the considerable losses that winding down a TV network would mean. I’m sure that Greg Sankey is a good person to be running an athletic conference, but I don’t see anything in his background that suggests he’s the person to figure out the future of broadcasting where to date all others have failed.
That’s a fair point. It’s also worth pondering whether further conference expansion is such a great idea right now. We’ll see how pleased Jim Delany is with Rutgers and Maryland if the BTN business model falls apart.
Filed under ESPN Is The Devil
Judging from the comments in this article, it sounds like the big marketing push over COA disparities is yet to become a thing.
Eh, wait ’til Saban hires some dude for his support staff to promote Alabama’s stipend pitch. Next thing you know, recruits will be bitching about how all these programs are behaving like telemarketers.
Filed under Recruiting
Today’s half-empty/half-full Georgia moment is brought to you by Bovada, which just posted odds on teams making this season’s college football playoffs. The envelope, please.
Alabama – 7/4
Auburn – 3/1
Baylor – 4/1
Clemson – 9/2
Florida State – 3/1
Georgia – 4/1
LSU – 11/2
Michigan State – 11/2
Notre Dame – 6/1
Ohio State – 2/5
Oklahoma – 8/1
Oregon – 3/1
TCU – 7/5
UCLA – 6/1
USC – 3/1
Georgia’s on the list, which is good. But it’s only got the eighth-best odds, which isn’t so good.
Then again, there are three SEC West teams on that sucker, and we know that ain’t happening.
Get The Picture 