Lowell George would have been 73 today. Instead, he passed away when he was 34, sad to say.
Anyway, here’s a clip from better times — Little Feat, with the help of a few friends, playing “Dixie Chicken”. Enjoy.
Daily Archives: April 13, 2018
“I believe we won some games because of our fans. I really do.”
Nice thoughts from Pittman and McGee here.
It’s cool to be appreciated.
Filed under Georgia Football
“Everybody wants to talk about the quarterback position.”
“We don’t have that problem now with Stetson, and John Seter, and some other guys, Sam Vaughn,” Smart said. “We have plenty of guys to rep and I think Stetson has done a really good job of honing in, picking up the offense, along with Justin and Jake.
“I think all those guys feed off each other. They have done a tremendous job.”
Smart then took an opportunity to point out that the public usually keys in on the signal callers.
“Everybody wants to talk about the quarterback position,” Smart said. “Nobody says anything the corner, nobody says anything about the competition going on at right tackle, or the competition going on at guard. They just want to talk about the quarterback position.”
Fromm is coming off a freshman season in which he completed 181-of-291 passes for 2,615 yards, 24 touchdowns, and seven interceptions, adding three touchdowns on the ground. Like Fromm a year ago, Fields has enrolled early with the mindset of competing for immediate playing time.
“Both those kids are working extremely hard,” Smart said. “Stetson included to make three. I am very pleased with the progress those guys have made. They are very good leaders, each one in his own right. They are both athletes. People don’t give Jake enough credit, he was able to do things with his feet last year that hurt people.”
Kirby needs a bumper sticker that says, “Ask Me About My Third String Quarterback”.
Filed under Georgia Football
BREAKING: Paid lobbyist lobbies on behalf of his client.
You will be shocked, shocked to learn that Tom McMillen, president and CEO of the LEAD1 Association, the lobbying arm of College Sports, Inc., which lobbies Congress on behalf of athletic departments, has a few thoughts he’d like to share about why the Olympic model would be bad for college athletics. The whole thing is pretty much a joke. This may be the funniest line:
And finally, there is concern about the execution of such a program. How do student-athletes balance their education demands with their appearances (for) endorsements.
In the immortal word of Clay Davis, sheeee-it. If there’s any concern, it’s how student-athletes balance their athletic demands with those endorsement appearances. I mean, you wouldn’t want your star player rushing to make a plane to fly across the country to play a game now, would you?
Today, in broadcasting
You may have heard ESPN has breathlessly released The Next Big Thing.
ESPN+ is the most aggressive step to date by ESPN to recapture the consumers that are dropping its channels along with the rest of their pay TV subscriptions.
For $4.99 a month, the new service will give users the kind of all-you-can-watch buffet they have enjoyed on Netflix and other streaming video platforms, but with live sporting events.Pitaro previewed ESPN+ last week at the ESPN Technology Center, where visitors are greeted by a message on the wall that reads “Where Innovation Takes The Field.” The streaming service, a top priority at the facility over the last eight months, is kicking off what Pitaro called an “era of innovation” at the company.
ESPN+ subscribers will have on-demand access to thousands of live events, including Major League Baseball, NHL hockey, collegiate sports, Major League Soccer, boxing, PGA golf, Grand Slam tennis events and even cricket. It will also offer the entire library of ESPN’s critically acclaimed “30 for 30” sports documentaries and new exclusive original programming that includes a weekly basketball analysis show hosted by retired Los Angeles Laker great Kobe Bryant.
The programs and live events will have commercials…
Such a deal. It’s really a balancing act for Mickey.
Pitaro, who became president of ESPN last month after the sudden resignation of John Skipper, is careful to emphasize that the new service is not a replacement for the cable and satellite subscriptions that still bring in about $8 billion annually.
“We are really doing this as a service that is complementary and additive and not competitive with the pay TV business,” he said. “What you see on linear [TV] will not make its way on the subscription service. And what’s on the subscription service will not be on television.”
Therein lies the balancing act that Pitaro has to perform with ESPN+. He needs to push ESPN further into the digital TV future while preserving the traditional cable and satellite model that continues to make a substantial profit, even though it eroded.
Good luck with that, fella, because it really seems like all the big monetization is coming up front.
The first result of the marriage of a tech startup and legacy content provider is a newly updated ESPN app and the ESPN+ subscription option, which arrived nearly two years after it was originally announced. Disney hopes that consumers will pay $4.99 a month, or $50 for a year, to access a long list of games and other content to which it has the rights but is not showing on the channels for which cable subscribers pay roughly $8 or $9 a month through their cable bills.
Many of those games were already available, however, as part of a digital channel known as ESPN3 that will live on, according to the company. ESPN has long had an app, called WatchESPN, that offered live streams of all of its channels as well as many ESPN3 games it was not airing on its TV stations. ESPN+ bundles many of those streams it offered to subscribers in WatchESPN with other previously free services and some niche sports and original programming for a fee, and offers that service in the same app as streaming versions of ESPN channels available only to cable subscribers.
”Those subscribers are already paying more than $100 a year for ESPN content,” BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield said in a telephone interview. “Now, they’re being asked to pay another $60 a year for the least compelling parts of that content.”
To reiterate, such a deal.
Meanwhile, Jim Delany’s gig running a broadcast network took a hit.
Unfortunately for Big Jim, Comcast doesn’t roll over like the Sun Belt Conference.
Comcast will drop the Big Ten Network from its cable television system in states where there are no teams in the conference.
The Big Ten Network will remain available on Comcast Xfinity in Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Comcast is not available in Nebraska and Iowa.
Note that New York is missing there — the raison d’etre for adding a pathetic Rutgers athletic program to the conference in the first place. Nice how that’s working out. It’s also nice to see that the Big Ten apparently couldn’t care less about making sure folks in Nebraska and Iowa who are Comcast subscribers can get Comcast to watch their teams. Jim probably thinks if those folks want it badly enough, they can just move to New Jersey.
Filed under Big Ten Football, ESPN Is The Devil
Vegas still ❤ the Dawgs.
This may explain some of the mentality Kirby is trying to adjust this spring.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we fans have to humble ourselves.
Filed under Georgia Football, What's Bet In Vegas Stays In Vegas
Falling up
Jesus, what nets you a big raise these days.
Ray Anderson will continue as Arizona State athletic director through September 2022 under terms of a three-year contract extension.
Anderson, 64, signed a five-year contract as ASU Vice President for Athletics that was due to expire in February 2019. He now will continue through at least the 2021-22 school year with an annual base salary of $800,000 that took effect in July 2017.
… Anderson made $642,600 per year in base salary under his original contract. He also is eligible for numerous academic and athletic performance bonuses that could potentially double his annual salary.
In 2016-17, Anderson earned $462,178 in bonuses — $112,208 based on athletic performance and $349,970 for academic performance such as Academic Progress Rate and athlete grade point average.
Aside from the ludicrousness of getting a bonus for student-athletes’ academic performance when they don’t, the athletic performance he’s being rewarded for is what, exactly?
ASU football, men’s basketball and baseball had losing seasons in 2016-17. Football and men’s basketball improved this school year although Anderson made a football coaching change and created a new leadership model for that sport.
ASU’s 2016-17 Directors’ Cup finish for overall athletic department on-field success was the lowest ever (No. 43).
Evidently, he’s on a roll. With Herm Edwards’ coaching stint off to a blazing start, to boot.
And some of you wonder where they can come up with the money to pay players.
Filed under General Idiocy, It's Just Bidness
“You have anointed him as the returner next year. I have not.”
Sounds like Kirby is having to do some head adjustments this spring.
Take Mecole Hardman, for example.
Just a couple of days ago, receiver and return specialist Mecole Hardman was talking about how close he was to returning a touchdown last season. He vowed to take one, or more, to the end zone in 2018.
Head coach Kirby Smart was asked a similar question about Hardman Thursday. Smart, however, didn’t have the same sort of optimistic take. Smart revealed a text message exchange he had with former return specialist Isaiah McKenzie, Georgia’s leading overall return (six) and punt return (five) touchdown scorer in program history, concerning Hardman on this subject.
In essence, Smart, through McKenzie, put Hardman on notice.
“Isaiah McKenzie texts me every week and said, ‘Coach, if I had that much room I’d have seven touchdowns,’ ” Smart said. “So he was calling Mecole out, not me.”
That is some well-played “just sayin'” there. Just sayin’.
Filed under Georgia Football
Get The Picture 