Of all the things I could think to credit Chip Kelly about…

… the deployment of Georgia’s defensive front isn’t something that readily comes to mind.  Go figure.

An AD’s gotta do what an AD’s gotta do. Even when the AD shouldn’t.

Interesting tidbit from David Ching:

However, some attendance increases could generously be described as misleading.

For instance, Akron’s average home attendance improved by 9,232 per game in 2017, but that was hardly the result of enthusiasm over Terry Bowden having led the Zips to a 7-7 record and a spot in the Cheribundi Tart Cherry Boca Raton Bowl.

The Akron Beacon Journal in 2015 reported on the school’s practice of buying up thousands of its own tickets every other season to comply with a 2002 NCAA stipulation that all football programs average 15,000 paid or actual attendance over a two-year period in order to remain in Division I.

As a result, Akron’s attendance yo-yos wildly on an annual basis. The Zips’ reported average attendances over the last six seasons: 19,569 (2017), 10,337 (2016), 18,098 (2015), 9,170 (2014), 17,850 (2013) and 9,275 (2012).

They really need to start culling some teams from the D-1 herd.

By the way, if you’re wondering who’s paying for that…

With the university subsidizing the football operations by about $8 million, it’s not good that fans and their much-needed cash are staying away from games.

That has forced the university — already making annual debt payments of $4.3 million on the stadium — to dip deeper into its own pocket to drive up attendance artificially.

College football makes some people do stupid things.  It’s worse when the stupid ones are the administrators.

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Adventures in cord-cutting, a continuing series

I promised a follow-up about how my self-weaning off Dish Network and into the world of streaming went after a full season of college football.

The answer:  pretty good, and when you factor in the cost savings, even better.

I had a fairly robust satellite TV package, along with a relatively slow internet service account with Mindspring.  Between the two, I was spending roughly $200/month for a package that included ESPN, Fox Sports and the SEC Network.  I had service issues with both providers and that motivated me to make changes more than anything.

Here’s what I replaced them with:

• A Comcast/Xfinity bundle that gave me basic cable, high-speed internet service and HBO, for $70/month.
• Sony Playstation VUE, that gave me access to ESPN and Fox Sports, at a cost of $29.99/month.  A package including the SEC Network was an additional $5/month.

While I had to sign a three-year deal with Comcast to get the advantageous pricing, that decision looks better in the aftermath of the FCC ditching net neutrality.  Sony pulled a jerk move, bumping the cost of VUE another $10/month less than sixty days after I signed up.  The good thing about the streaming services like VUE is that you can sign up on a month-to-month basis, which made it easy to jump to Hulu’s new live TV service, which also costs $39.99/month, but gives you access to its library at no extra charge.  Hulu includes the SEC Network as part of its service, so that at least saved the added expense during football season.

Hulu is a bit of a pain to navigate, but everything I wanted to watch could be found with a little digging.  There’s also 30-day archive access to events, so I was able to watch the Rose Bowl broadcast when I got back from California.  (No, I didn’t feel the same way about the national championship broadcast.)

The one thing I miss from Dish is that it was very easy to jump between two stations you were watching at the same time, something that came in handy on a Saturday afternoon.  Moving from one game to another is clunkier on Hulu.  But that’s a relatively small price to pay for the overall improvement.

I would recommend finding the highest speed broadband access you can swing.  In addition to Hulu, I’ve also got Netflix and Amazon Prime for general entertainment.  I haven’t had a single issue with buffering the entire time since I’ve switched.

So, to sum up, my service problems, which were slow broadband and weather-related issues with satellite service, have disappeared, and I’m saving about $75 a month on TV and internet, combined.  Not too shabby.

One other non-television related matter to share:  if you have Comcast broadband service, you might want to check into their new cellphone service, Xfinity Mobile, which was recently introduced.  There is no access fee and unlimited text and calls are free.  The only thing you pay for is data, and there are two plans to choose from — a $12/gig option and an unlimited data $45 option.  (You can change on the fly.)  Best of all, it’s on Verizon’s network, which is what I had before, so I have the same service, but dropped my cellphone bill by about $65/month.

I can’t say it’s perfect, but it’s definitely good enough that I have no regrets making the move.  And the money savings are sweet.

The best preseason happy talk

… is the preseason happy talk that comes from the mouths of Georgia’s rivals.

Those Gators are gonna be awesome this year, I tells ‘ya.  ‘Cause nobody else has hard preseason workouts.

Musical palate cleanser, just like Pagliacci did edition

Here’s another clip I’d never seen before until just recently (h/t) — Smokey Robinson on Daryl Hall’s Live from Daryl’s House, performing “Tears of a Clown”.

As the old TV ad went, “that’s Smokey!”  Very fine…