Today, in moolah

[Ed. — In case some of you snowflakes aren’t tipped off by the header, this post is about your least favorite subject.  Don’t say you weren’t warned.]

Just thought I’d share a little round-up of what’s happening on the economic/player compensation front this past week…

• Eastern Michigan decided to drop four varsity sports in a cost-saving move.  The move affects 58 male student athletes and 25 female student athletes, and will ultimately save about $2.4 million.
• Maybe that’s even true, but it’s worth considering this post on opportunity costs and Title IX. Bottom line is that it’s hard to get a handle on things like this because athletic department bookkeeping is such a murky business.
• I probably scour the Internet more than most folks, so it may be more apparent to me, but I’m seeing more and more of these kinds of opinion pieces cropping up lately.  NCAA, when you’re losing place like the Deseret News…
• “Big-time college football and basketball now produce about $8 billion in annual direct revenue. This is nearly 40 percent more than the entire National Basketball Association (the average NBA player makes $6.2 million).”  Add to that the part of the $16.49 billion in gift income raised by P5 schools in fiscal 2017 that can be attributed to sports and you are talking about some real money.  Real enough for there to be plenty to spread around to the kids who help bring it in.

Smart talk

If you didn’t hear Saturday’s post-practice presser, here you go:

Lot of interesting tidbits there, and by that I don’t mean the Stetson Bennett love.  Biggest surprise I heard was how well the receivers group is progressing.

Bottom line is that he thinks the team has a lot of promise, but a long way to go.

Musical palate cleanser, it was the sixties, man edition

Someone asked me in the comments what I thought about Quicksilver Messenger Service.  My response was that outside of a couple of songs I love, they never really did it for me.  It’s a little strange, in a sense, in that Dino Valenti was a fantastic singer and John Cipollina was a tragically underrated guitarist, but the band’s history was chaotic, to say the least, and that’s probably why they never really developed a lot of traction with me.

Still, there are those two great songs, “Fresh Air”…

… and “What About Me?”.

Too bad they couldn’t keep their shit together.

If you want a good taste of Cipollina’s talent, here’s the band in one of their many re-groupings, in 1975 at Winterland, performing “Fresh Air”.

Dude definitely had some serious chops.

“I’ll say that we are exploring some home-and-homes.”

What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on in Tuscaloosa?

Alabama is negotiating to schedule a home-and-home football series with Notre Dame, The Tuscaloosa News has learned. Alabama is also working on a home-and-home deal with Texas.

The Crimson Tide last participated in an out-of-conference home-and-home series in 2010-11 against Penn State, hosting the Nittany Lions in 2010 and traveling to State College, Pa., in 2011.

UA Director of Athletics Greg Byrne would not confirm the schools are in talks, but did say the athletic department is pursuing future two-game deals that would have Alabama play a game at Bryant-Denny Stadium and also play on the opposing school’s campus.

Before you ask, yes, Saban appears to be on board with the general concept.

Last September, Saban confirmed on his radio show he and Byrne had discussed scheduling future home-and-home series.

“I would like to do that,” he said. “We played Penn State home and home when I was here and it was a good game here, it was a good game there, great crowd and all that. It’s better for our fans if we play at home, I get that.”

This, from the people who have developed the neutral site opener into a science.

It’s nice that Nick gives lip service to what the fans want, aight, (and in his defense, he’s long been in favor of adding a ninth conference game in part because of the fans) but I’m thinking there has to be an ulterior motive here.  I just can’t figure out what it is.  Any suggestions?

Run of luck

This is disappointing.

Georgia freshman defensive back Divaad Wilson announced he suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament during Saturday’s practice.

Wilson made the announcement on his personal Twitter page. This injury will effectively rule him out for the 2018 season…

Smart said Wilson offers great size for the star position, which is where he was working at quite a bit through the first week of spring practice. Smart said the coaching staff liked what it saw after identifying him during the recruiting process.

“We’d watched him play. We had him in for camp over the summer and thought a lot of him,” Smart said. “The biggest thing is he’s 190-195 pounds. He’s that (Maurice) Smith, that Aaron Davis, that star type body. He was picking things up well.”

… Wilson was someone Smart had been excited about through the early going of spring practice.

“That’s disheartening because he had three really good practices,” Smart said. “I was really fired up about him.”

That makes three members of the 2018 class who have to rehab ACL injuries.  (Two occurred before the kids arrived in Athens.)  I hope this doesn’t mean that we’re witnessing some sort of regression to the mean with Georgia’s injury luck from last season.  In any case, this is just another reason you have to recruit like a sumbitch to build enough depth to overcome stuff like this.

At least you’re in good hands, Divaad.

“Makes you think.”

This is legal under NCAA rules (and, nothing wrong with it). Other money going to a recruit or recruit’s family (and, nothing wrong with that, either) can be a federal crime. All because of arbitrary lines drawn by NCAA rules. Makes you think. https://t.co/HEY3026fSd

— Jay Bilas (@JayBilas) March 25, 2018

At least Mr. Mobley will be paying taxes, or some such other clarifying nonsense, right?

What indefensible bullshit.

Rambo’s return

Guess who’s coming to spring practice.

The former Bulldog and NFL safety is serving as an intern this spring, but his role on staff could change.

“There’s a possibility he would be, we hope for him to be a G.A. (graduate assistant) whenever the time’s right,” coach Kirby Smart said Saturday. “Right now, he’s just an intern and he’s in invaluable resource for these kids because he’s a kid that pushed through graduated from the University of Georgia, came from down in South Georgia where a lot of our kids come from.”

He’s got a few examples to share with the class, no doubt.

Moar Process in Athens

Sam Madden is applying for a medical disqualification… which means,

This decision with Madden moves Georgia’s scholarship count, including the recruits who have yet to enroll, to 88.

Vols and Tide, lying together

I have a feeling we’ll be mining the Tennessee coaching change news for weeks.  Now comes a report that Alabama’s assistant AD for strategic planning, at the request of Alabama AD Greg Byrne, sent this letter to John Currie:

Hello John,

My name is Kyle Vasey and I am an assistant AD for strategic planning at Alabama. Greg Byrne asked me to send you some analysis we performed on head coaches recently. You’ll find an excel spreadsheet which ranks head coaches based on a metric we created called: coaching efficiency. This metric is a weighted score which incorporates various factors such as national championships, final AP ranking, overall win percentage, etc. You’ll also find a pdf file which analyzes coaches based on their previous coaching experience: Power 5 Head Coach, Power 5 Assistant Coach, former NFL head coach, etc

I am happy to answer any questions you might have on the data.

Thanks,
Kyle Vasey

So, yeah, Alabama’s athletic department offered assistance with Tennessee’s search for a new football coach.  Why, I have no idea.

And that kind gesture was rewarded by taking Saban’s defensive coordinator.  So much for gratitude.

He’s just here to he’p, mane.

The selflessness of Phil Fulmer knows no bounds.

According to Tennessee President Joe DiPietro’s phone records as part of documents obtained by The Daily Times, Fulmer told prominent Tennessee donor John “Thunder” Thornton “all they would have to do is ask” for him to become the Vols head coach once again.

Thornton told DiPietro in a text message on Nov. 29 about a “long talk” he had with former Alabama athletic director Bill Battle the day before.

Thornton said that talk involved whether or not Fulmer would return to coaching. Thornton’s message said he “doubted it.”

But, Thornton’s talk with Battle prompted him to ask Fulmer, and his message to DiPietro references former athletic director John Currie and booster Jimmy Haslam.

“Bill, Phillip and I hunt and fish a good bit together,” Thornton wrote to DiPietro. “We talked about Bama’s loss Saturday and our search. Bill asked me if Phillip would consider coaching UT. I told him I doubted it because I didn’t think he’d work for Currie. This morning I asked Phillip that question and he replied ‘all they would have to do is ask.’ So, there’s another option for you but probably not one Jim would go along with. Thunder”

DiPietro replied that he was, “surprised by Phillip’s interest in coaching again.”

Thornton then told DiPietro that Fulmer, “was feeling bad for the university that he loves,” and would only return to coaching if it was at Tennessee.

How convenient is it now for Tennessee that Fulmer is the AD?  He doesn’t even need to leave his office to find a head coaching candidate.

Have a great day, Jeremy.