“There was no national search.”

Seth Emerson, on the search for Mark Richt’s successor, suggests that the school was flexible — just not in the way you might have thought.

… Georgia was worried that Smart, the prodigal son, was going to get away (probably to South Carolina), so he was the clear choice when the decision was made to move on from Richt. In fact, it may have spurred the decision to fire Richt. It’s very possible that if Steve Spurrier decided not to retire, that Richt might have been Georgia’s coach this year. [Emphasis added.]

Seth’s not one to troll, ordinarily, but if by some chance that’s what he’s doing there, that’s some high grade stuff indeed.  Either way, nicely played.

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“With this job comes criticism. I’m accepting of that.”

Smart may indeed be.  But is Greg McGarity?

Perhaps that’s why he paid that search firm the big bucks.

“We’d sure like to have him back, but you never know.”

Man, if you can’t get healthy playing only once in the three weeks leading up to the Georgia game, when can you?

“I really don’t know what awaits for us.”

Holy cow.  I had no idea things have gotten to this point.

Earlier this week, Georgia players held what receiver Michael Chigbu called “just a little small talk,” minus the coaches. Chigbu wouldn’t go into details.

“The season’s not going how we want it,” said Chigbu, a sophomore.

But after reading related comments from Jeb Blazevich, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Blazevich said he once heard a coach – during the recruiting process – who summed it up this way: Eighty percent of the team follows what the rest does: Ten percent will be the hard-working leaders who don’t treat a bye week like a week off. The other 10 percent does.

Perhaps one benefit of the Vanderbilt loss, Blazevich opined, is that the right 10 percent will be followed.

“We’re trying to be the loudest ones, drown out these guys, weed these guys out,” Blazevich said. “And then we have everybody on board on the same page.”

The troubling word there is “perhaps”.  As in, we may not see a fix until next season.

Shit.  I hope I’m not about to head to my third depressing Florida game in a row.  But I’m starting to brace myself for that possibility.  Mentally speaking, this Georgia team is not in a good place right now.

Life in Bill Connelly’s statistical dog house

Currently, Georgia stands 67th in Bill’s S&P+ rankings.  You know that gets you?  According to Bill’s statistical profile, a 5-7 regular season, as the Dawgs go 1-4 down the stretch.

I can hear the siren sounds of Greg McGarity already:  nowhere to go but up, Dawgnation!  Renew those season tickets today!

That’s why they pay them the little bucks.

Those of you who don’t appreciate the nuance of the argument some of us make in favor of letting student-athletes’ compensation be reached in the context of an open market ought to give this article a peek.  In it, the author posits what such compensation might look like at college football’s twenty most profitable programs if revenues were shared in a manner similar to how they’re distributed in the NFL.

We calculated the Fair Market Value of college football players at the 20 most profitable programs using data provided by the Department of Education. Using the NFL’s most recent collective bargaining agreement in which the players receive a minimum of 47% of all revenue, each school’s football revenue was split between the school and the athletes with the players’ share divided evenly among the 85 scholarship players.

Using this method, we can estimate that the average college football player at the University of Texas is worth $671,173 per year (up from $622,104 last year) based on the program’s $121.4 million in annual football revenue. That is more than $130,000 ahead of any other school, with the University of Alabama second, at $536,485 per year. Overall, the average Football Bowl Subdivision (Division I-A) player is worth $163,869 per year (up from $149,569 a year ago) with the average football team taking in more than $29 million in revenue each year.

At $479,506 per player, Georgia is sixth on the list.  It would be kind of amusing to watch Greg McGarity’s hand shake as he signed those checks, no?

I’m not pointing this out to advocate that Georgia should be showing its kids that kind of money.  It does, however, provide some contextual rebutting to the argument that paying tuition, room and board and a COA stipend is more than fair treatment.  At least some of you should better understand why some student-athletes say what they do about the money rolling in to the big programs.

One other thing worth mentioning is something Johnny Manziel brought up a few years ago.  Isn’t there a point on the financial scale where student-athlete compensation hits a sweet spot such that players’ incentive to leave school early for the NFL for the promise of a real paycheck is significantly reduced?  Wouldn’t that be a good thing if you’re a college football fan?

Eason and the bye week

Kirby Smart mentioned during this week’s SEC coaches’ teleconference that his freshman quarterback’s got a lengthy to-do list in the two weeks before the Cocktail Party, but also went on to offer some praise.

He also snapped a streak of five-straight games with an interception against the Commodores. That could be a product of Eason’s growth when it comes to knowing what he is looking at pre and post snap, which can be quite difficult for a young quarterback in the SEC.

“He’s really gotten better where he’s more proficient at telling you what the coverage was after the play because these teams don’t just line up and make it easy for you,” Smart said. “They make it as complicated as they can. Most of them do a good job of confusing young quarterbacks.

That’s good, because Eason will need to summon every bit of proficiency he’s got when he faces Florida’s pass defense.

The Gators are the SEC’s top passing defense, allowing just 132.8 yards per game. The unit has allowed only four touchdowns compared to an SEC-leading 10 interceptions on the season.

Yikes.

SEC cornerbacks allowing the lowest QB Rating on passes thrown their way
Quincy Wilson, UF, 0.4
Tre White, LSU, 23.6
John Gibson, MIZ, 28.2

— PFF College Football (@PFF_College) October 18, 2016

0.4?  Double yikes.

“There’s a score every hundred yards.”

Give Kirby Smart credit for one thing:  if there was an area of performance worthy of individual players being called out publicly, it was special teams in the Vanderbilt game, but Smart didn’t go there.

“A lot of those things affected the outcome of that game. To say that it’s doom and gloom and everything’s bad over three or four situations that happened, that’s not what I’m going to do as a coach. I’m going to coach what we got to improve on and focus on that.”

Then again, maybe he felt like there simply wasn’t enough time to go through and list everyone’s names.

UGA and CTE

I don’t know about you, but I find this report showing that Georgia has had more confirmed cases of CTE reported than any other program in the country but one disturbing.  I don’t mean that in the sense that there’s something specifically bad going on in Athens that’s the cause for that, but, rather, simply this:

“This information is being released to raise awareness that CTE is not just an issue for professional football players,” said Chris Nowinski, co-founder and CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation. “The data should not be interpreted to say that players from these schools are at greater risk than other college players. Instead, the data shows the widespread reach of this disease, and the commitment by the alumni and their families of these schools to support CTE research by participating in brain donation.”

Courson is one of the best in the biz at what he does.  Whatever sins you might want to lob in Mark Richt’s direction, not caring about his players’ health wasn’t one of them.  Yet here we are.  That’s both a little sad and a little scary.

When you’ve got that hammer, everything looks like a nail.

At some point in time I fully expect Dan Wetzel to opine that an expanded college football playoff is the key to curing cancer.