This has potential.
I’m totally convinced that, for years, Tuberville was the anonymous coach who would take digs at his SEC peers in those annual pieces in Athlon. He’s got nothing to lose now, so, boy, would I love to hear him dish it out on television.
Instead, all we’ll probably get is whining about Auburn’s 2004 season.
Georgia’s athletic department may not be working as hard as we’d like to achieve excellence on the field, but nobody there is sleeping on working the refs.
That’s where I believe there is a disconnect between what we do here at DawgNation and what UGA would have us do. We’re too negative, they say. We don’t draw enough attention to what the Bulldogs are doing well.
For instance, the folks at UGA have been on me for a while to draw some positive attention to the fact that the Bulldogs finished 15th as a program in the in the Learfield NACDA Directors’ Cup standings for the 2016-17 academic year. They feel that hasn’t been put that in proper context.
… Here at DawgNation, we’ve been accused by UGA – and a few fans, here and there– of being too negative. But it’s my contention that we’re merely reflecting the negative sentiment that’s already out there. We hear about it in our email inboxes and read in comments sections here and on other fan sites.
McGarity can “First Word” the subject to death, but in another year of football mediocrity, the vast majority of Georgia’s fan base isn’t going to get pumped about a top 15 finish in the Directors’ Cup standings. More significantly, you can’t have it both ways, fellas. If you count on the fan base’s apathy regarding any program that isn’t football — and you do — then don’t start whining when we don’t get excited about anything outside of football.
The irony of it all is McGarity was brought here seven years ago from Florida – where he served in a No. 2 role for 18 years – for the express purpose of seeing that Georgia closed the gap on the Gators. Instead it has only widened.
Even more importantly, consider that what generates fan enthusiasm isn’t the media pushing Greg McGarity’s spin on Georgia athletics. It’s results on the field, pure and simple. Butts-Mehre, get your priorities straight, and maybe you won’t have to worry about what Chip Towers writes.
Filed under Georgia Football, Media Punditry/Foibles
According to this database, Greg McGarity’s total compensation package ranks thirteenth among all athletic directors in the SEC. In years when Jay Jacobs earns his contracted bonus, McGarity drops to dead last.
When it comes to the reserve fund, at least the man puts his money where his mouth is.
Filed under Georgia Football, It's Just Bidness, SEC Football
Filed under SEC Football
Seth Emerson did some more digging into The Advocate’s story about how Georgia leads the conference in spending on support staff and finds that all may not be as it seems.
The figures The Advocate cites come from 2015-16 NCAA financial reports that give a box with a single support staff figure that isn’t broken down further. That’s where The Advocate got the $4.4 million.
According to a source who spoke with Emerson, it seems the NCAA double-dipped on their figures because of the coaching change that happened in Athens in the middle of the 2015-16 academic year.
“That year, Mark Richt was fired, and the resulting turnover saw much of his support staff leave. That included the strength and conditioning coordinator and his four staffers, and quality control coaches that Jeremy Pruitt had helped bring in,” Emerson said. “So Kirby Smart then came aboard and hired his own strength and conditioning staff, along with other quality control staffers. And the NCAA figures, it appear, counts both Richt and Smart’s support staffs.”
According to Emerson, when you count the six-month salaries of each coach’s staff, Georgia would likely clock in at around half of the $4.4 million figure originally cited, although it’s difficult to tell for sure. That would put UGA roughly in line with Florida and Ole Miss, with the increase in support staff that’s occurred during the 2016-17 academic year possibly putting it in the top 5 of the SEC.
I suppose you can look at this in two ways. Assuming that Georgia had to pay off the existing contracts on all the support staffers and coaches who were let go in the transition, the total expenditure reported to the NCAA is technically accurate. But as a reflection of the current commitment to paying support staff, it’s overstated.
The good news is that anyone worried about what the original story might have meant for the reserve fund can rest easier now.
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UPDATE: Marc Weiszer has more details.
Filed under Georgia Football, It's Just Bidness
This is interesting, on several levels:
Georgia may soon be getting its next version of Isaiah McKenzie from the junior college ranks.
Ahkil Crumpton, a wide receiver out of Los Angeles Valley College, stands at 5-foot-8 and posts a 4.49 40-yard dash time. He has proven to be a weapon both on special teams and with the wide receiver corps. On Tuesday, Crumpton announced he plans to join the Georgia football program after receiving an offer over a month ago on June 5.
… Crumpton collected 690 kickoff return yards and three touchdowns in 2016 on 16 opportunities. The 43.1 yards-per-return average on kickoffs in culmination with the 314 punt return yards gives the Los Angeles-area specialist the top return mark in college football regardless of level, according to Clayborne.
Prior to landing in the junior college ranks, Crumpton, who attended West Catholic High School in Philadelphia, committed to Temple in 2015.
He’s got some skills, then, although I’m not sure what Georgia’s interest says about Smart’s confidence in his current options in the return game. (Then, again, if you’re all about competition making everyone better, the more, the merrier.)
The other intriguing part of the offer is what it says about Georgia’s roster plans. Note that the header to Butt’s story is posed as a question. Here’s why:
It is possible for Georgia to blueshirt Crumpton and use the scholarship toward the 2018 class, according to Los Angeles Valley College recruiting coordinator CJ Clayborne. The same practice was used on National Signing Day when East Mecklenburg (NC) place-kicker David Marvin announced he was accepting a scholarship to UGA.
“If Georgia doesn’t trip him, go out to see him or all of that jazz, they can blueshirt him as soon as he gets on campus,” Clayborne said. “They can send that scholarship over to the next class. It’s a common practice.”
Clayborne said Crumpton will report to Georgia on July 30 after his final class needed to earn his associate’s degree is sent over to Georgia from Los Angeles Valley. The Bulldogs are tentatively set to begin their preseason practice on July 31, according to a report by The Advocate.
Clayborne indicated the pledge to Georgia has been a completed deal for nearly a month but that Crumpton opted to hold the announcement until he knew his final summer course would be finalized.
That clearly sounds to me like Smart is still counting numbers in a tight game to 85. The reason for that? Weiszer suggests a possibility with this quote:
“I don’t know if they’re going to blueshirt him or they have a number now but he’s on scholarship,” Los Angeles Valley recruiting coordinator C.J. Clayborne said. “He had a bunch of offers on the West Coast. He ain’t going to turn down money to go walk-on yet.”
Clayborne said he had not talked to Georgia wide receivers coach James Coley for a few days.
“There might have been an issue with another player maybe not making grades or whatever they’re doing on that end of it,” head coach Matt White said. “It was a good fit for him.”
This sounds like a matter of when, not if, then. If someone from the 2017 class doesn’t make the grades — and, remember, Smart is still sweating it down to the wire on two signees — then he’s got a slot to fill. However, should both make it in, then Crumpton gets blueshirted and still gets in the door now.
Anyway you look at it, Smart deserves credit for squeezing every drop out of his roster that he can manage. We’ve come a long way from the days of being under 70 players on scholarship, baby.
By the way, is it too soon to make a Beyond Crumpton joke?
Filed under Georgia Football
Dig in.
As we all know, and as we’re constantly reminded by several commenters here, Georgia is on a three-game losing streak against Florida. So here’s my question for those of you who continue to point the finger at the venue as an underlying cause for underachievement in the series: what would Georgia’s record in those three games be had the series been played on a home-and-home basis?
Let’s assume that Gainesville would have hosted the 2014 and 2016 meetings and Athens would have been the site for the 2015 game. (After all, that fits in with another narrative about how playing the Gators home and home would make for a better schedule in odd-numbered seasons.) If playing away is bad news for the Dawgs, it would seem logical to assume two out-of-state losses right off the bat, which leaves me wondering if starting Bauta in between the hedges would have made any difference in the other game.
In other words, I think we’d still be staring at an 0-3 record in a home-and-home scenario. What am I missing here?
Filed under Gators, Gators..., Georgia Football
Tyler Dawgden makes good sense in comparing the freshman seasons of Matt Stafford and Jacob Eason, but there’s another data point that I think is worth considering in making that comparison: completion percentage.
In 2006, Stafford completed 52.7% of his pass attempts. That was 90th out of the 101 quarterbacks who averaged at least 14 attempts per game. Eason’s completion percentage last year was 55.1%. That ranked 94th out of 100. More relevantly, a 55.1% completion percentage in 2006 would have ranked 78th.
I think to some extent that tells us there’s been a change in emphasis on completion percentage at Georgia. For years, Richt’s focus for his quarterbacks was more on things like avoiding interceptions and having a credible mid-level to deep passing game. Look at the completion percentage of Richt’s first four starting quarterbacks: David Greene only had one season out of four when he completed at least 60% of his attempts; DJ Shockley’s percentage in 2005 was 55.8%; Stafford never cracked 60% until his third season; Joe Cox hit 55.9% as a starter in 2009.
It changed after that. Aaron Murray topped the 60% completion mark in three of his four years (and just missed going four-for-four). Hutson Mason set a record with his 67.9% completion ratio. Even the much-maligned Greyson Lambert managed to complete more than 63% of his throws.
The trend, then, has been towards a higher completion rate. That’s a trend that was interrupted last year and I don’t think it’s because Kirby Smart wanted to turn the clock back to 2004. Eason does deserve credit as a true freshman for not throwing a lot of picks, relatively speaking, but his 6.6 yards per attempt tells you that he had a hard time stretching the field to go along with that completion rate. Simply stated, that can’t be the story in 2017 if Georgia is going to take a step up in the conference.
Filed under Georgia Football, Stats Geek!
Get The Picture 