Gosh darn it, this is so cute. Greg McGarity thinks he needs to explain to us why he’s keeping the Georgia-Florida game in Jacksonville.
“We’ve got to do a better job of explaining the finances of that whole deal,” McGarity said. “Right now, there’s a segment of our fan base that wants to go home-and-home. There’s a segment that may want to go to Atlanta, but I go to Atlanta there’s 72,000 seats. We have 84,000 in Jacksonville.”
Georgia nets about $2.4 million a year playing Florida in Jacksonville, McGarity said, which means nearly $5 million every two years. If Georgia-Florida was home-and-home that would mean $3 million every two years because that is about what Georgia nets for home SEC games. It could also cost about $250,000 in expenses for chartered flights and hotel to play a game in Gainesville while expenses in Jacksonville are defrayed as part of the arrangement…
“From a financial standpoint, it’s a huge deal for us. A $2 million swing over a two-year period is hard to make up in other areas.”
It’s about the money? Gee, Greg, I think we already knew that.
Get The Picture 
Dawg fans won’t get a home game, but on our death beds, we will receive total consciousness. So we’ve got that going for us…which is nice.
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Got to love a good hate on Gmac thread. To hell with the factual data.
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I guess I’m not getting your point. Isn’t the money the factual data?
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Many will ignore that and just choose to bash Gmac…no matter what. Carry on…
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So, you think McGarity is above criticism? Especially when it comes to how he handles PR?
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WOOSH!
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Senator, to some, he’s now above any criticism whatsoever because he decided to change football coaches.
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He did not disclose his son works for the Jacksonville Sports council.
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I understand it has to work financially, the current structure does, but I hope we assign value to the intangibles as well. It would have to swing to being more than a little negative on dollars before I would abandon such a unique, special tradition in CFB. So while it is great that it works for the “almighty dollar” folks, being a $250K loss wouldn’t justify a change to a home and home arrangement to me.
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Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, Mac.
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I agree with you Mac – having this special game is part of what makes UGA special
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So after all it had nothing to do about South Georgia fan base or the good time by UGA students at St. Simon’s. Those were the old supposed incentives. It’s all about money and if Ms. Belcher is accurate, keeping his son’s position in Jax. Sounds like FIFA , Fire ADGM.
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Google Alex McGarity you will find him on the staff. He is not a decision maker buy he is on staff. He was staff for the Taxslayer Bowl too. I am in favor of keeping the game in Jacksonville. I do find it interesting that Alex works there although he did grown up in Gainesville.
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And it’s not even about giving the football team a bit of an advantage of a real home team and more fun for the fans plus the feeling of defending a real and near enough home turf. Disgusting.
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Where exactly is the edge from a home and home? You could make a case for that change giving FU an edge but I see none for UGA. And since it is on equal footing now, the only thing disgusting would be giving up the WLOOCP. You honestly seem confused about this whole situation, not one thing in your comment is true. The longitude and latitude have nothing to do with “defending the turf”. If our team doesn’t want to compete 100% in JAX, we are sending the wrong people down there. Location should be no issue to the players, this is all about whiny fans.
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I like the game being in Jax. It’s not the location of the game that has caused us to crap the bed down there since ’91. Those who whine about the supposed advantage Florida has seem to forget that it didn’t help the turds too much until Georgia decided to hire Goff instead of Spurrier.
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$1,000,000 per year divided by 42,000 Georgia tickets = $23.81 per
We spend that much long before we’ve reached our destination, where we will get gouged, again.
I’ve been to the game in Jacksonville at least 30 times, and every single time, win or lose, I’ve felt like I was abused – especially in the city of Jacksonville.
Obviously, I love going down there, but damn…
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Any town on a HIGH demand weekend/event can make you feel abused. Ever bothered to book at room in Athens while AU is in town on a football weekend? Compared to a wednesday in April.
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Heck, book a room for the Southern University game weekend in Athens, they will break it off in you. For that matter; I went to Athens on Feb 13th, it happened to be parent’s weekend at a couple of sororities. The cheapest decent room I could find was $179 for the night. Try and get a room for a graduation weekend. Athens hotels never miss an opportunity to gouge alumni and fans.
Jacksonville is no different than anywhere else and they don’t take any more advantage of Georgia fans than our very own beloved Athens does. If folks don’t like the treatment or price of going to the game in Jax, they should stay home and watch.
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Dooley won consistently in Jax. Location has nothing to do with winning or losing. Jacksonville is a fun tradition. If you don’t prefer it, stay home, watch at a friend’s house or go to a bar. There are lots of options with clean restrooms, great food and very little expense. Personally, I never go but I do not want the game to move.
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I’ve been to every GA/FL game since it moved back in Jax in ’96. Also averaged missing less than one game a year since ’95. I’ll say this: Home field advantage has come a long way. Simply, it’s harder to win in opponents stadiums now. The A/V systems, expanded capacities and fans/coaches who understand the impact the crowd can have on a team have changed the game. Playing at home matters. That we NEVER play our biggest conference rival at home is concerning. But I love the Cocktail party, too.
What I fail to see is how the powers that be can’t come up with something that does all that. Go on a 4-year rotation of Jax/Athens/Jax/Gainesville and repeat. You still make more money than home and home every year (though not as much as you would in Jax constantly — I get that). But, every class would have the chance to play in two cocktail parties, go to their rival’s campus once and play their rival at home once. When they came to town, it would be bananas because it was so rare. People would be more eager than ever to go to Jax because it wasn’t every year. It opens both schools up to the TaxSlayer Bowls as a viable option our fans might actually travel to when we don’t play there that season.
It doesn’t seem that hard. By Greg’s math, over a 4 year period, with my recommendation, we’d make about $7.55 million, but give Athens and Gainesville a boost and get a special home game. Going to Jax, we’d make about about $9.6 going to Jax. So we’re talking about a difference of $500K per year.
But here’s the kicker. We miss out on scheduling opportunities that this could help us with. We struggle to find viable home and homes with non-conf. opponents that we want to play. When we have Florida at home, that gives us a year that we can make up money and/or better our schedule in two ways:
We could schedule someone like NC State, UVa or VaTech, a team within reasonable driving distance for our fans and play them AT their stadium the year we play Florida at home. We don’t lose the home game, because we’re getting an ‘extra’ home game that year. The year before or the year after, we’re getting a big-time home game that we don’t have to pay for. That equals $3 million. So, with that 1 FREE game, you’d make up the difference of current scheduling for your four years and the what the trip to Gainesville cost you.
You could just schedule a patsy in those years, and actually have a season in which you had 8 home games, or two years in a row in which you had 7. You might pay up to $1 mil for your opponent, but it’s extra money because you never have 8 home games or 7 two years in a row. This year we have 6, for instance.
This would be awesome.
Okay, I’ll stop making sense now.
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Makes lots of sense to me. It is moronic that we never play one of our 3 biggest rivals Between the Hedges. No, come to think of it, moronic is a gross understatement.
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Why is it that you never hear Texas/OU complain about that in the Red River Classic? This game is special and the envy of a lot of teams.
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Not only do they not whine about it, they use it as a plus in recruiting. I don’t know of any fans that would whine about this other than UGA fans, although FU fans were whining to Spurrier when he arrived in Gainesville. Maybe SEC fans need to learn a little about the value of traditions and man-up when things don’t go their way.
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If we pulled out of Jax to get an additional home game or a neutral site game in Atlanta every other year, we would be leaving with our tails between our legs. No thanks …
Also, for those who didn’t have the pain of attending the game in ’95, I can tell you I never want to see Jort Nation in Athens ever again. Why should we want to play the Gators in Gainesville? Gainesville is worse than Jacksonville with about 32,000 fewer seats for Georgia fans.
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Makes sense to me SD, but my greatest concern with it is if we ever do go to a nine game conference schedule plus having to play the gnats home and home we are screwed on SEC schedule. Currently every other year we only get 3 home SEC games. Think about a year playing 6 conference games on road, would be a miler for program.
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Sorry , killer schedule.
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I’m a season ticket holder who makes the long trek to Athens from Savannah every weekend except the reprieve I get on Halloween so I may be a bit biased but on the flip side I was born in 1987 so Jacksonville has meant nothing but devastation to me as it pertains to the Dawgs. With that said, I think it is crazy to even consider moving the game from Jacksonville. CBS reserves this game years in advance, not because it’s always the best matchup but because it’s one of the most unique games in the country.
I’ll never understand the fan base at UGA. We collectively cry foul and howl tradition when a coach agrees to change the uniforms for a game but then a large part of the fan base wants to move one of the last two great neutral site rivalry games in the country because of some perceived disadvantage that has only been evident since 1990. Not to mention some of the greatest games, plays, and/or memories in Georgia history have happened on the banks of the St. John’s River. I worked in Oklahoma City for a couple of years and you don’t see Oklahoma crying when they lose to Texas, they just drive the 3.5 hours from Norman to Dallas and play and cheer to win the next year. Besides, if anyone doesn’t remember, the last home and home with Florida didn’t exactly work out for us all that well anyway.
But on second thought, “The Eighth Largest Alternating House Party” does have a good ring to it.
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