I love the smell of capitulation in the morning.

Bill Hancock, tower of Jello.

“We had healthy discussions with a lot of people who love college football and we concluded that making these changes would be the right thing to do for our fans.” said Hancock.

“We tried to do something special with New Year’s Eve, even when it fell on a weekday. But after studying this to see if it worked, we think we can do better.  These adjustments will allow more people to experience the games they enjoy so much.  For these four years, our previous call is reversed.”

Translation:  ESPN was pissed off that our stubbornness was bleeding viewership and we had no choice but to give in.

If you want to know where the CFP is headed, just listen to what Hancock guarantees will happen and figure on the opposite instead.

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Today, in stats you weren’t expecting…

I give up.  I no longer know what to think about Georgia’s offensive line’s performance last season.

These @SEC teams had the best Pass Block Efficiency grades in 2015:
1) Alabama
2) @FootballAU
3) @FootballUGA pic.twitter.com/udeczBiU9J

— PFF College Football (@PFF_College) July 28, 2016

Raise your hand if you thought you’d see that.  Of course, maybe nobody in the conference could pass block worth a flip, but that sure seems to make it harder to lay all the blame on the o-line for the inconsistent play at quarterback last season.

So… you think TV timeouts suck?

The next time I find myself sitting through one of those interminable dead stretches when they’re pitching Buicks and shitty cell phone service on CBS or ESPN while I’m sitting in the hot sun twiddling my thumbs, this will probably be going through my head:

“One thing is experience,” Kaaya said. “You don’t really know how the rhythm of the game goes. One thing that really shocked me at first was all the TV timeouts. It seemed like every time my freshman year when we’re about to go out on the field, I’m feeling good, I’m feeling warmed up and there’s a TV timeout right before I’m about to go out and we have to wait five minutes.”

Five minutes?  Seems longer than that, sometimes.  But I can definitely sympathize, brother.

It’s just a passer rating, dog.

Man, this may be the harshest thing Marc Weiszer has ever written about Matthew Stafford’s Georgia career:

Georgia’s Matthew Stafford in 2006 ranked 86th in the nation in passing efficiency with seven touchdowns and 13 interceptions. One spot behind him was Georgia Tech’s Reggie Ball.

Talk about your measure of greatness.

It takes a left tackle to raise a quarterback?

Perhaps you disagree, but at least on paper, I see Ole Miss’ Chad Kelly as the best quarterback Georgia will face this season.  So I got a little excited when I saw this blurb:

Does QB Chad Kelly have enough talent around him to reach or exceed last year’s numbers?

“He has enough at the skill position, but what he has at left tackle is a big question mark and could greatly impact his game. Kelly was much better the second half of last season. [Emphasis added.] His turnovers were down, his decisions were better, and he ran the ball more. Two things happened: He grew into his position, and he added a potential No. 1 overall pick at left tackle in Laremy Tunsil. Tunsil, suspended for the first seven games last year, is now gone, and the starter could be a redshirt freshman or true freshman.

“Laquon Treadwell is gone, but the Rebels have recruited well and have guys I think will make plays at wide receiver that most folks haven’t heard about yet. Kelly will be more poised and comfortable, but they’re going to have to do some things to buy him time until they become settled at left tackle.”

Great, hunh?  Except when I pulled up Kelly’s game log from last season, that’s not the story his passer rating told.  To start with, his most impressive performance of the season may have come in game three (mid-suspension, in other words) against Alabama, against whom he averaged more than ten yards per attempt and racked up a 171.35 rating, sixteen points higher than his season average.

Tunsil’s first game back was against Texas A&M and that may have been Kelly’s worst game of 2015.  He wasn’t particularly stellar against Auburn the following week.  In those two games combined, he threw five interceptions.  He did have some good games down the stretch, particularly against Arkansas (although Ole Miss lost) and Oklahoma State, but overall, I don’t see the dramatic improvement claimed in the above quote, either.

Now that being said, if Ole Miss starts a true freshman at left tackle, that may indeed pose a problem, but I don’t see where Laremy Tunsil made Chad Kelly what he was last season.

His Precious

If this isn’t the most distilled essence of the core value of every fiber of Greg McGarity’s being, I don’t know what is.

Last year, Georgia and every other SEC school received $32.7 million as part of its annual payout. It was $31.2 million the prior year. Back in 2009, it was only $11 million per school. This year’s payout won’t be announced until next month, but it’s again expected to be a record amount.

So what’s the need to continue to charge the student fee at all?

“If I’ve got a $3 million hole there, I’ve either got to cut $3 million out of my budget (or do something else). So it’s a huge part of our revenue source,” McGarity said.

But UGA also projects that – even after increasing spending on football and the indoor athletic facility – it will have more than $63 million in its reserve fund at the end of this fiscal year. Couldn’t the student fee be waived and the $3 million be made up for by dipping into the reserve fund?

“That’d be like you or me going into our 401k,” McGarity said. “We don’t want to do that.”[Emphasis added.]

All these years, and it turns out the Georgia Way is just like funding somebody’s retirement.  I keed, I keed (I hope), but it’s worth pointing this out as a retort:

The student fees result in the second-largest known subsidy of any SEC school, according to USA Today. Auburn, which receives a $4.3 million subsidy, is the only one with more. (Vanderbilt’s numbers, as a private school, are not known.) Six SEC schools don’t receive a subsidy at all.

Allow Mr. Rainy Day to respond.

Student attendance has actually been a frustration for many at Georgia. They often don’t sell out their 16,000 allotment. When Scates was on the board he helped organize a Young Alumni program, allowing recently graduated students to buy up some of those unsold student tickets.

So what about finding $3 million somewhere else and letting in students for free for football games?

“That’s 16,000 seats right there,” McGarity said. “You can’t be all things to all people. Our financial model has to work.”

That’s right. You don’t mess with the reserve fund, peeps. Besides, you’ve got to train these kids early to recognize their true utility to Georgia athletics.  Teach a student to pay a mandatory athletic fee, and you make a wallet for life.  Or something.

I know I’m repeating myself here, but who in the world at Georgia thinks it’s a good idea for McGarity to explain himself in public?