“There is no lobbying amongst A.D.’s.”

Seth Emerson asks Greg McGarity what’s up with all the noon starts and gets this as an answer:

“I never get any complaints about a 3:30 time start. But we do have an equal amount of complaints for 7:30 games (as noon games), because of the fans that have to drive three and four hours home, we hear about how inconvenient that is for our fans that have to travel back home,” McGarity said. “So it’s one of these situations where 3:30 is perfect but we know we can’t be there (every time).”

I get the equal amount of complaints part fine.  Makes complete sense to me that with as large a fan base as McGarity has to work with, he’s going to have a sizeable contingent of folks from South Georgia and parents with young children on one side of the divide and people who like tailgating or later starts in general on the other.  No way to make everyone happy every week, right?

But from there, his reasoning starts to fall apart.  If it all really comes down to what television, in conjunction with the SEC office, decide, as he argues…

“Once contracts were agreed upon in the beginning years ago, everyone understood the dynamics and rights of the rights holders.”

… that still brings you back to the pesky math that was the subject of my post yesterday.

It’s quite simple, really.  If everyone plays by the same TV rules and athletic directors don’t lobby the SEC office, why is Georgia the only team in the conference with more early starts than the other times, and by a wide margin at that?  If that doesn’t make you suspect a certain degree of bullshit in McGarity’s attempted deflection of responsibility, the claim about no lobbying by ADs certainly should, given the overwhelming number of night games LSU plays.  It’s either that, or accepting at face value what looks like one helluva coincidence.

To me, the logical way to deal with the schism in the Georgia fan base would be to split the baby into an equal number of early and later games (and it wouldn’t bother me to take the weather into account in allocating those; the fewer noon games in September, the better) so that every fan with an opinion on the matter gets treated fairly.  The numbers over the past four seasons would suggest that either the school doesn’t care enough to make the effort or actually prefers loading up the schedule with noon starts.

Either way, what you just heard from the AD was a total dodge of the question.

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Next best thing to being there

Pretty good post-game hype video from Georgia… enjoy.

Oh, so NOW they’re not talking.

Barney Farrar, the dude who came to national attention on NFL draft night when some of Laremy Tunsil’s texts about needing money were exposed, has been placed on administrative leave.  And suddenly, the sounds of silence emanate from Oxford.

Ole Miss athletic director Ross Bjork declined to comment on the situation, as did a university spokesman. Attempts by The Clarion-Ledger to reach Farrar were unsuccessful.

Hugh Freeze wouldn’t comment on the matter Wednesday.

I guess all that’s left to find out is if Farrar turns out to be the scapegoat or the canary in the coal mine.

One minor detail

Boy, some brisket cooking folks (“Grill using medium heat for 1 to ½ hours per pound.”) are gonna be real pissed off at Kroger when they figure out this week’s game is at noon instead of 7:30 PM. Maybe the “Ragin” in Ragin Cajun Beef Brisket refers to how the chef will feel when his tailgating buddies abandon him to head to Sanford Stadium.  Tasty!

If four is good and eight is great, what would sixteen be?

Well, gosh darn it, who among us could have seen this coming?

"Next week's Iron Bowl is going to be the first casualty of the playoff. A game that normally is huge now has 0 implications" @JBradEdwards pic.twitter.com/G9syJ0CEO8

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) November 16, 2016

C’mon, man, what about pride?  You gotta give the Gus Bus some kind of fuel to run on.

Actually this was coming a week ago, as everywhere you turned in the media — including Finebaum’s employer, by the way — you heard the Georgia-Auburn game described not as the next installment of the South’s Oldest Rivalry, but as Auburn’s next stepping stone in its march towards making the CFP.  That narrative worked out well.  Who needs regional rivalries when you’ve got a selection committee bringing the excitement?

The bigger picture isn’t any more attractive.  Just ask Stewart Mandel.

I’ve long believed, and still do, that an eight-team playoff would severely harm the regular season. But four teams was such a relatively modest change I figured it would have only a minimal negative effect, if any. And the first two years bore that out. If anything, it made those regular seasons more compelling.

But the muted impact of last weekend’s upsets was definitely vindication for the old BCS proponents/playoff opponents. I’ve found myself thinking back this week to Nov. 17, 2012, when No. 1 Kansas State (against Baylor) and No. 2 Oregon (against Stanford) both lost on the same night, turning the BCS title race on its head. No. 3 Notre Dame went from possible championship game snub to lone remaining undefeated team. K-State and Oregon were essentially done.

Compare that level of upheaval to the much quieter aftermath of Nov. 12, 2016, when No. 2 Clemson, No. 3 Michigan and No. 4 Washington all lost, and only the Huskies suffered even mild consequences.

But this is the trade-off we accepted by expanding the field to four. Were this the BCS, the No. 5 and 6 teams from last week, Ohio State and Louisville, would move up to Nos. 2 and 3, no questions asked. And if Alabama and Ohio State won out, they would meet in the BCS championship game, albeit with no shortage of hand wringing if the Buckeyes don’t win their division.

But also under that scenario, the only remaining games with national title implications would be the Iron Bowl, the SEC title game and Michigan-Ohio State. As it is, we’ll also be paying close attention to any games involving Clemson, Washington, Louisville, Wisconsin and Penn State, including likely all four conference title games.

If anything, the field widened, not narrowed last weekend.

And we all know there’s only one way to fix a widened field.  Brackets, baby!

@Andy_Staples Why does college football need Cinderella stories?

— Senator Blutarsky (@MummePoll) November 16, 2016

Make college football great again.

I, for one, welcome our new Cinderella stories overlords.

“It’s a quality organization led by a guy that knows what the heck he’s doing.”

Shorter Greg Sankey response to the Florida-LSU scheduling debacle:

Every time Bill Hancock speaks…

The drawback of transparency?

"There would be a risk that the candor would be diminished & we just can't go down that path" @BHancockCFP pic.twitter.com/BdGdhfH7Cf

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) November 16, 2016

… an angel cringes.

Don’t be a drop out.

Okay, so this is not a good look.

A look at the SEC @NCAA Graduation Success Rates (GSR) among football. @HailStateFB 6th overall in SEC, 2nd in @SEC West #HailState pic.twitter.com/EfTqrMWyWl

— Bill Martin (@MSUBillMartin) November 15, 2016

What’s especially troubling about this is that Georgia’s been on a downward trend with regard to GSR for several years now.  Here are the relevant percentages and conference standings:

• 2012-3:  82% (T-1st)
• 2013-4:  75% (5th)
• 2014-5:  73% (7th)

The slide had been slow, but this past year’s drop was anything but.  What’s the cause?  Well, take a look at the methodology.

The graduation-rate data are based on a six-year cohort prescribed by the U.S. Department of Education.

The NCAA developed the Division I Graduation Success Rate in response to college and university presidents who wanted graduation data that more accurately reflect the mobility among all college students today.

Both the Graduation Success Rate and the Academic Success Rate account for the academic outcomes of student-athletes who transfer from one institution to another. The rate compiled using the federal government’s methodology does not count transfers in and counts transfers out as graduation failures.  [Emphasis added.]

The number of ways the 2013 class has affected the program is something.

Is Georgia Tech looking at a buyer’s market for head coaches?

Bud Elliott has a somewhat provocative post up about what the offseason hiring market may look like and suggests some schools have some soul searching in store.

If you’re an AD who has a coach likely to enter 2017 on the hot seat, consider making the move this season.

Schools willing to pull the trigger now have all the leverage. Coaching stars burn hot, but fast. Great success at a mid-major job can be fleeting. Many coaches in this cycle cannot afford to be picky as they try to cash in their stock when it is hottest.

For a coach having success at a lesser school on the backs of a senior-laden roster, it’s time to go.

And for that reason, an average job could be filled in 2016 by a much stronger coach than might be available come 2017, when the market could again go crazy.

Take the ACC, for example.

Virginia Tech, Miami, Syracuse, and Virginia made inspired hires in 2015. Unless the schools who did not make those are very confident in who they have running the show, they should consider making changes now, especially if they are likely to drop the pink slip in 2017 anyway.

Some jobs in the ACC are not top-25 jobs, but are certainly top-45 jobs. And in this market, it’s possible that those teams could land coaches like those typically signed only by top-25 programs. It’s taking advantage of the market to make an upgrade.

If you’re Georgia Tech, and you’re watching Kirby Smart shift Georgia’s recruiting machine into overdrive with the No. 3 class nationally, are you confident Paul Johnson is still the right coach? Or could you swing for the fences with a Chad Morris type?

That’s a tough call for Tech’s new AD.  It’s my understanding that Johnson’s buyout is still pretty steep after this season, but drops significantly in another year.  If Elliott’s right about how things may be shaping up this offseason, what do you do if you’re him?

A healthy quarterback would have never done that.

If you listened to the broadcast of the Auburn game, Gary Danielson pointed out what Sean White did wrong on the key play of the game, Maurice Smith’s pick-six, which was to misread the coverage in the secondary.

For more detail, check out what Kirby Smart had to say about the play for SEC Film Room, which broadcast last night.

Good insight in this clip from SEC Film Room with Kirby Smart. https://t.co/ZIiH8gIP3n

— Senator Blutarsky (@MummePoll) November 17, 2016

Hint:  no mention made of Sean White’s injury.