Greasing the skids for 2018

The ’18 home schedule, while not as sad as next year’s, is shaping up nicely for that coming title run.

As reported by ESPN’s Brett McMurphy on Wednesday, Middle Tennessee has been added as a home game for the Bulldogs during the 2018 campaign.

The Blue Raiders are 8-4 this season, and they will play Hawaii in the Hawaii Bowl on Saturday. Georgia has played Middle Tennessee just once before, with the Bulldogs winning 29-10 in 2003. The Bulldogs’ nonconference schedule for 2018 also includes Murray State, Massachusetts and Georgia Tech.

With any luck, we might see ten wins that season.

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Boy, you’d figure if anybody out there would be at the forefront of decrying the move by players to skip playing in postseason games to get an early start on a pro career, it would be Nick Saban.

Eh, not so much.

Alabama coach Nick Saban weighed in on players skipping bowls during interview with #ESPN pic.twitter.com/X70nRLUIkG

— Mark Schlabach (@Mark_Schlabach) December 21, 2016

Then again, who knows better about making business decisions than he does?

Play like he means it.

How are you supposed to play on the defensive line, Julian Rochester?

“Coach Rocker, he said you have to learn how to play pissed off,” Rochester said. “At that position you have to learn he’s coming after you and you’re going to go at him. So once you learn how to fight every play and never give up, even when you’re tired, you’re down and out – even if you don’t know the play, just hit somebody. Once you instill those in your brain you’ll be successful.”

I don’t think the man has to work very hard on selling that advice.

What’s the use of gettin’ sober…

Texas’ wins total didn’t increase from 2015 to 2016, but its beer drinking did — by a lot.

Alcohol sales spiked more than 70 percent during the 2016 season compared to the previous year as Texas generated $3.1 million in revenue from beer, wine and liquor sold at football games.

Thereby proving that mediocrity is a thirsty state of affairs.

“It was a very ‘un-Georgia’ thing to do.”

Let’s just say that when it comes to being an early enrollee in Georgia’s 2017 class, DeAngelo Gibbs is the un-Toneil Carter.

“He’s had a pretty nice little honeymoon.”

Hell’s bells, is there anything more amusing than Houston Nutt passing judgment on Bret Bielema?

Makes you wonder what Pork Rind Jimmy’s up to these days.

92.8

One of the weirder things about Georgia, 2016 edition — not necessarily a short list, I know — is that in the opener, the defense held Mitch Trubisky, who is getting all sorts of wows from NFL talent evaluators these days, to his second lowest passer rating of the season.

Which isn’t to say the pass defense didn’t have its moments in other games, but generally speaking, the better passers it faced didn’t have off days against the Dawgs.  Except Trubisky.  Sure, there was a bit of luck involved, like a blown deep throw to a wide open receiver that should have been led to a touchdown, but overall, it was a very good day for the secondary.

What I can’t figure out is if that was a sign of things to come, or just a random blip signifying little.  Georgia did finish fifth in the conference in defensive passer rating, but that was a slide from first the year before.  And as well as the secondary performed in the opener, it wasn’t so hot in the end game.

Then again, maybe this is more of an issue of getting the right personnel in to run a good system.

“The athletes are not a property of the university.”

Good piece from Pete Thamel exploring the decision of players like Fournette and McCaffrey to pass on playing in bowl games in an era when there doesn’t seem to be an end to expanding the pool.  And why is that?  C’mon, you know why.

That corporate sprawl offered another reminder—if you needed one—just how much cash is at stake. There’s a reason ESPN televises 38 of the 41 games and owns and operates 13 of them. There’s a reason that 27 of the 41 bowl games didn’t exist 30 years ago.

In a suite high above FAU Stadium during the second quarter, American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco recalled his time as an executive at CBS when they televised an Indiana-Butler game in 2012 that ended in an overtime upset of the No. 1 Hoosiers. Aresco was thrilled until he saw the Gildan New Mexico Bowl—between Arizona and Nevada—crush it in the ratings by 1.9 to 1.5. “That’s when I realized,” he said, “football had become king.”

If you’re ESPN, December is berry, berry good to you.

But bowl games have undeniably become the December background noise at your company holiday party, your December treadmill sprints and those cold nights when the Potato Bowl is more comforting than leaving the couch. Americans like watching football, as evidence by the 2015 Russell Athletic Bowl—between non-traditional powers Baylor and North Carolina—doing the same rating (2.6) as the top-rated regular season college basketball (UNC-Duke) last year. The December bowl orgy is annually one of the most flush ratings runs for ESPN every year…

Forget school spirit.  What about us couch potatoes on a cold weekday night needing the kind of fix only the Boca Raton Bowl can provide?

So, remember, kids — at least those rare and few of you gifted enough to have a chance to play on Sundays while being relegated to a lower-tier exhibition game for one last hurrah — if you’re not motivated to stick around for your teammates and dear old U, do it for all the college football junkies out there.  Otherwise, we’ll be stuck watching meaningless regular season college basketball games.  The horror!

ESPN and its advertisers are counting on you.  Don’t let them down.

More help for the reserve fund on the way

Kirby’s gotten more support staff.  So has Greg McGarity.

News from WVU: Senior Associate AD Matt Borman, the executive director of the MAC, is leaving. He'll be Executive Associate AD at Georgia.

— Mike Casazza (@mikecasazza) December 21, 2016

Who’s this Borman fella? Welp,

Borman is WVU's chief fundraiser, was also seen as one of AD Shane Lyons' top confidants. The MAC has had a bit of turnover in recent years.

— Mike Casazza (@mikecasazza) December 21, 2016

Butts-Mehre is always looking for new and creative ways to separate donors from a few more dollars.  You guys can expect to hear from Mr. Borman soon enough.

(h/t)