Another day, another SEC coach making bank

Meet the conference’s newest member of the $4 million a year club.

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UPDATE:  Who says you get what you pay for?

SEC records of $4M club: Saban 95-25, Miles 63-29, McElwain 7-2, Malzahn 14-11, Freeze/Sumlin 17-15, Mullen 26-30, Jones 10-14, Bielema 7-17

— Chris Low (@ClowESPN) March 25, 2016

An ESPN narrative we can all support.

For more than one reason, I am so down with this train of thought.

As he continues to reshape his image in Tuscaloosa, it feels like only a matter of time until Kiffin gets the call he’s looking for. After all, every radioactive element has a half-life; maybe we’ve reached Kiffin’s.

Saban will turn 65 years old this season and with his longtime defensive coordinator Kirby Smart now the head coach at Georgia, it’s unclear who Alabama would turn to in the event of his retirement. Former offensive coordinator Jim McElwain was a fan favorite after leading Colorado State to back-to-back bowl games in 2013-14, but now he’s at Florida for the foreseeable future. So does that leave Kiffin as the in-house candidate to replace Saban? If not now, then what about a few years from now, when he’s fully in tune with Saban’s process?

Junior as Saban’s successor?  One can only hope.

I think PAWWWLLL should start pushing this immediately.  Maybe a Herbstreit tweet is in order, too.

Run with this, WWL peeps.  The world needs the Laner in Tuscaloosa.

We’re not on a need-to-know basis. Why?

But McGarity doesn’t keep those journals anymore. He told me he quit doing it once he realized such recordings are subject to Georgia’s – as well as Florida’s – open records, or “sunshine” laws.

In fact, McGarity claims he doesn’t write anything down anymore, via pen or digital key stroke. He said he conducts as much of UGA’s athletics business as he possibly can “verbally,” so that there’s no record of it.

— Chip Towers, AJ-C, March 24, 2016

You know, it’s funny.  We’ve had a couple of spirited debates at the blog this week about politically-related matters.  The one in response to the religious liberty bill that’s awaiting its fate with the governor, even though our discussion wandered far afield from the issue I posted about and even though some of you have been fairly heated in the bill’s defense or on the other side… well, that one hasn’t bothered me, because while I disagree on the policy, I can certainly understand and respect why some passionately advocate for the bill’s passage.

It’s the change to Georgia’s Open Records law and the reaction from many of you to it that has me scratching my head this morning.  I mean, here’s something that passes in the 23rd hour with little or no debate to speak of and gives a narrowly tailored break to a special interest.  Regardless of where you line up on the political spectrum, from avowed libertarian to Bernie Sanders’ staunchest supporter, by itself, that’s the kind of stuff that should get your hackles up.

Instead, many of you appear to be full-throated supporters of the rule change, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why, other than perhaps from a knee-jerkish coach good/media bad perspective.  But I’d like to understand.  So for those of you who think the longer delay is a great thing for Georgia football, I’ve got a few questions for which I’d like to hear your answers.

Start with this one:  how does this change in the law help the football program win?  Or, to put it more crudely, if you thought Georgia was going to win, say, nine games this season, how many more wins this year do you see this new reporting delay adding?

I realize by starting there, I’m contributing to the fiction that this is about the football team and Kirby Smart’s recruiting efforts.  I’m not the one selling that.  Georgia’s lawmakers are.

“It’s a similar subject that, from what I understand, came to light through Kirby Smart at UGA,” Krause said in a phone interview with The Telegraph. “It had to do with football teams or athletic departments that are recruiting people in state of Georgia. They had a (shorter) window where the documents were not yet public, but other states had 90 days.”

Chip Towers has a rebuttal to that…

I see that some fans are applauding this as a move that is somehow going to “level the playing field” with Alabama and Auburn and some of the Bulldogs’ other rivals in football. Ehrhart actually asserted as much. But I fail to see how this bill could possibly have an effect on anything that happens on the football field.

Just so you know, here’s how we generally utilize public-record laws in the course of doing our jobs covering UGA athletics. At regular intervals, we ask Georgia for:

• Documentation of any NCAA rules violations committed by any of their sports programs;
• Copies of any new employment contracts or salary actions;
• Copies of any new game contracts they might have made in football or other sports.

Yes, occasionally, we’ll ask for some kind of specific information like we did last month with regard to recruiting travel. All that happened there was it became apparent in December and January that Smart was traveling a lot by private jet and occasionally by helicopter to recruit and conduct UGA football business.

Somebody at the office asked the simple question, “I wonder what that costs?” So we asked Georgia.

And Georgia dutifully complied by producing the receipts and expense outlays. The public had a right to know. And certainly UGA Hartman Fund donors, who give athletics in the neighborhood of $22 million to $24 million a year for the right to buy season football tickets, had a right to know that the Bulldogs had run up more than $550,000 in private-air expenses since Smart came on board.

How in the world any of that could have prevented Georgia or will prevent Georgia from winning one football game is beyond me.

One thing I’ve never asked for, and I’m guessing nobody else does either, is for a list of recruits planning to make official visits on a given weekend. That was the assertion of Ehrhart in one of his comments on the need for this legislation. If ever we’ve wanted to know who is visiting UGA, we ask the recruits themselves. I suspect everyone else does, too.

… and while that’s all fine, it, too, skirts the question.  Kirby Smart is just the face they put on this bill to make the medicine go down smoothly.  The real beneficiary is Georgia’s athletic department and its athletic director, which leads me to my second question for you happy people.  If you haven’t been content with Greg McGarity’s management of Georgia athletics, how is allowing him to cloak his actions for any extended length of time a good thing?

There’s a third question worth considering, although maybe it’s just something that comes from me having a blogger’s perspective on this.  Sure, this new law will put a damper on any would-be Pork Rind Jimmys in our midst, but what exactly do you expect the professional media will do in response?  If a story worth investigating comes up, are reporters simply going to look at each other, shrug and say, “well, boys, I guess we’ll have to wait ninety days before we can do anything”?

Hardly likely.  Instead, they’ll do what the media does.  They’ll find other avenues from which to dig out the story.  And it’s worth remembering that there will be more stories.  You don’t go to the General Assembly to ask for help like this unless you know there will be more stories that you want to keep under wraps as long as you can.  (And it’s the Watergate-era in me, I suppose, that makes me believe the coverup is always worse than the original misstep.) So what exactly is being gained here, other than to inconvenience people you don’t like?  Is that really worth giving up finding out on a timely basis – or maybe even at all – about something that matters to you?

I’d like to understand what I’m missing here, especially since the folks who passed the law don’t seem to have given that much thought.  Help me out in the comments, those of you who think this is the best thing for Georgia football since Erk Russell.  (Yes, I know I exaggerate.  A little.)

Tales from the class of 2016, expanded version

You may not have heard, but Georgia’s adding another offensive lineman to this year’s class, Sean Fogarty, an offensive lineman transferring from Savannah State.

I’m not sure what my favorite part of his story is – that his transfer may be held up because of a waiver issue (PAWWLLL!!!), or that he sounds like that guy who sits near you in that section at Sanford with this:

“I grew up loving Georgia,” Fogarty said. “I’ve been to a lot of games, and my uncle has season tickets near the sky box area. We’re really passionate about it, and I’d get mad when they lost.”

I only wish he had taken the time there to blame Bobo.

Welcome aboard, Sean.  It sounds like you’ll fit right in.

Friday morning buffet

Anyone hungry?

• Another day, another athletic department in trouble with the Feds for something gender-based.
• If anyone at Tennessee had a sense of humor, they’d let Fulmer present this award.
• Jacob Eason, third-teamer.
• Evidently we’re now at a point when Jim Harbaugh’s had enough “feuds” on Twitter that they can be ranked.
• That probably explains why I’ve become jaded about stories like this.
• I guess this stands as the highlight of Dylan Thompson’s career.
• You a parent who’s worried about football and brain injury?  Well, Bruce Arians has some advice for you:  “people who say ‘I won’t let my son play it’ are fools.”  I guess that ends that discussion.
• John Theus played through a rough season, physically speaking, last year.
• And here’s a PSA (i.e., I have no financial interest in this) for those of you looking to find accommodations in Athens for G-Day.  Rent Like a Champion is a site that bills itself as a sort of “Airbnb, but with a primary focus on college football games”.  G-Day listings are here.  (BTW, if anyone uses the site, please report back here on your experience.)