If he had to do it over again…

Agent Muschamp never would have gone with the decided schematic advantage.

Will Muschamp expressed some regret about his time at Florida when he was introduced as South Carolina’s new football coach.

Apparently, much of that regret has to do with former Gators offensive coordinator and Cleveland Browns assistant Kurt Roper.

Roper was pegged to be the Gamecocks’ offensive coordinator and served in the same capacity for the Gators under Muschamp in his final season in 2014,

If Muschamp had made that move sooner, he believes he could still potentially be at Florida.

“I feel like, if I’d hired Kurt in my first year at Florida,” Muschamp told Sirius XM College Sports Nation. “I’d probably still be there. That’s the confidence I have in him moving forward. I think he’s just an outstanding football coach.”

And in Boom’s eyes, Roper’s better than ever!  Why?

“Up-tempo, on the ball, he’s got some new ideas from working in the NFL this year that I’m excited about as well,” Muschamp said.

Yeah, that’s a guarantee of success right there.

As the swallows return to Capistrano…

… so, too, does Todd Grantham seek out his annual offseason leverage for a salary bump.

If you need further proof that the people running college football are morons…

Meet the mother of all buyout provisions.

The real MVP in this situation is Sumlin’s agent Trace Armstrong, who convinced Texas A&M in November 2013 to guarantee the entirety of a six-year, $30 million deal and then convinced university officials to agree to a condition that the entirety of his buyout would have to be paid within 60 days of a potential firing. Had LSU gone through with firing Les Miles, Miles would have been owed $16 million. That buyout would have been payable over eight years, making it far more tolerable than a lump sum. Sumlin has extra protection because if he is fired after the ’16 campaign, A&M would have two months to pay him $15 million.  [Emphasis added.]

Now that’s job security.  TAMU’s 2012 win over Alabama has to be the most expensive victory in the history of college football.

How many more years?

I’m sure this will get spun as a sign of hope for college football’s future, but it’s hard to get excited about it.

Home attendance at major college football games declined for the fifth straight year, though the rate at which crowds decreased has slowed.

Football Bowl Subdivision attendance for home games averaged 43,288 fans per game, down less than 1 percent from 43,483 in 2014, according to a CBS Sports analysis of NCAA attendance data. Crowds declined by 4 percent in 2014.

This year may offer some hope of stabilization for the industry, which in recent years has seen fans stay home due to ticket prices, inconvenience and the comfort of watching on high-definition televisions.

Still, this year’s average was again the lowest since the FBS drew 42,631 per game in 2000. Attendance stayed below 46,000 for the seventh straight season since it peaked at 46,456 in 2008.

A lot has happened in the last fifteen years – conference realignment, massive television contracts and the attendant conference networks, scheduling more attuned to a broadcast audience, etc. – the gist of which has been to favor cash flow to athletic departments and to work against live attendance.  I don’t see better Wifi and louder piped in music doing much to stop the bleeding.

Which leads to this depressing thought:  at what point do schools say fuck it, and go all in on television?  By that, I don’t mean they close the stadium gates, but rather, simply focus all their marketing decisions on what maximizes broadcast revenues.  And, believe me, if you think that’s bad now, there’s a lot more they could do if they chose to.

As a kicker, when it happens, they’ll blame it on us for not supporting the sport the way it needed.

Robert Nkemdiche, Delta musician

The Ole Miss defensive tackle made an on-stage appearance with one of his brothers at Clarksdale, Mississippi’s Ground Zero Blues Club.  As a lover of all things Clarksdale, I’m down with that.

Fabris Pool nudge

Just a friendly reminder that bowl games start tomorrow, so don’t forget to sign up and start picking.

How bare is the cupboard?

According to this website, Kirby Smart walks in the door at Georgia to find more talent waiting for him than any other new head coach in the country, including Southern Cal’s Clay Helton.

Smart was the coordinator of a lot of great defenses at Alabama, and he will take over a unit with several productive players next season. The Bulldogs ranked No. 14 in our overall defense grades this season, and while star outside linebackers Leonard Floyd and Jordan Jenkins will depart, there is a lot of returning talent.

The entire secondary will be back, led by cornerbacks Malkom Parrish and Aaron Davis, and there are several young linebackers who earned positive grades on limited snaps this season, including Roquan Smith, Natrez Patrick and Davin Bellamy (who recorded an impressive 16 total pressures, including four sacks). Nose tackle Trenton Thompson looks like a potential 2016 breakout player after grading very well as a true freshman.

The offense will require more work, but the Bulldogs’ three top-graded linemen return along with playmaking wide receiver Terry Godwin, and the running back tandem of Nick Chubb (No. 5 in PFF grades last year, who missed most of this season due to injury) and Sony Michel (No. 40 in PFF grades this year) should be one of the best in college football.

Richt is third on the list, by the way, so he’s traded down.  Boom isn’t in the top five, which shouldn’t come as any surprise.

(h/t)

“We didn’t envision this when he came on campus.”

Baker Mayfield continues to be screwed by a program that never even gave him a scholarship.

The school that needed that unrecruited walk-on to bail them out would not let go. In fact, Texas Tech has more control over an All-America caliber quarterback — more than 24 months in the team’s rear-view mirror — than anyone except perhaps Mayfield’s parents.

The NCAA, the conference, and the school — specifically coach Kliff Kingsbury — would not sign off on Mayfield getting a fourth year of eligibility in 2017. The Red Raiders did not provide him with the opportunity to use a one-time transfer exception. Oh sure, they can hide behind Big 12 and NCAA rules, but the fact remains.

By not signing off on waiving Mayfield’s redshirt year after he transferred to Oklahoma in 2014, none of them agreed to do the right thing.

Because Texas Tech refused to grant the exception, Mayfield’s career at Oklahoma will come to an end after next season.  That’s fair, right?

Evidently the conference thinks so.

The Big 12 faculty athletic representatives who denied an appeal in May won’t so much as reveal the vote totals against Mayfield’s request. All we know is that it was a majority, at least 6-4 against.

Those FARs are supposed to be a moral conscious of fair treatment of the student-athlete. In this case, they’re hiding behind their votes.

As with most cases like this, the right thing to do gets lost in the crossfire. No doubt, Big 12 and NCAA officials are worried an exemption for Mayfield will open some sort of loophole — except that none of us can remember many unrecruited walk-ons becoming All-Americans.

Yeah, can’t set any precedents that might favor student-athletes.  That way lies madness.

“Skipping college is attractive for three reasons: money, fame and momentum.”

For all of you who like to bullshit about the options available to high school football and basketball players, this is what a free market choice looks like for a talented athlete.

If you think the NCAA really wants to face a similar threat to its money making enterprises, I don’t know what to tell you.  Sure, the NBA and the NFL enable the schools, but they’re more than happy to take advantage of the situation.