This financial aggression will not stand, man.

Well, now.

Big Ten distribution $52 million pic.twitter.com/AcVMOiVJPk

— angelique (@chengelis) June 21, 2018

If you don’t think Greg Sankey’s hearing about this from some of his presidents/athletic directors, you’re dreaming.

“… the NCAA’s inconsistent and ridiculous definition of amateurism.”

One thing I argue in response to those of you who adamantly oppose paying student-athletes is that they’re already being paid.  Here are a few examples of what I mean by that:

• Cost of attendance provides players between $5,000 and $10,000 per year just for being … athletes.
• Bowl gifts — typically capped at $550 — are nothing more than rewards for playing football. Men’s and women’s Final Four participants have their own gift suites to enjoy. Sports Business Daily reported basketball players who win their regular-season conference, conference tournament and NCAA Tournament could get $4,000 worth of gifts.
• All three military academies (Army, Navy, Air Force) routinely pay salaries to cadets in service to the country.
• Olympic stipends allowed by the NCAA range from the modest to the extravagant. Texas swimmer Joseph Schooling was paid $753,000 for his home country of Singapore for winning Olympic gold.
• Schools are allowed to pay five-figure insurance premiums of their NFL Draft prospects.
• One anonymous coach told me last year a player at his school could accumulate $96,000 legally over the course of his career.

Any way you want to slice it, that’s getting paid to play.  To paraphrase the old joke, we’re just haggling over the fee.

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The LSU game, and a factual tidbit that may matter

Given the public reaction, I may be something of an outlier on this, but count me in the group that sees the LSU game as Georgia’s biggest road challenge of the 2018 season.  LSU may have questions about the head coach and its quarterback, but overall, it’s still got plenty of talent and one of the most intimidating home environments in college football.

That being said, Pete Fiutak lays out an interesting factoid that may very well turn out to be the key to the game.

The Tigers opened up the 2014 season with a tough win over a Wisconsin ground game that cranked out 268 rushing yards and three scores. Since then, the program is 0-10 when giving up two bills, including the 285 allowed in the 37-7 loss to Mississippi State, and the 206 given up to Troy in the stunner.

Florida came close – running for 194 yards and averaging over five yards per carry – in the too-tight 17-16 loss, and Auburn ran well, too – but lost. Both games were battles, though.

If there’s a team that’s built for 200+ rushing yards in a game, it’s Georgia.

The best laid mini-plans

I, like many of you, got this offer in my emails yesterday.

A package, I assume, that’s been put together thanks to ticket returns from the visitors… which says all you need to say about Georgia Tech fans’ wishes and hopes for the upcoming season.  Chantastic!

“We wanted to be responsive to our fans.”

The header’s a pretty good tip this isn’t about Georgia football.  It seems UNLV is making a fan-friendly gesture (h/t calderw) in hopes it’ll lure some bodies through the door.

Some tickets for UNLV football this fall will include unlimited concession items in an initiative university officials believe is unique in college athletics. They also say it’s a tremendous value.

The three-game “Eat All You Can Plan,” which will provide boundless hot dogs, popcorn, nachos and soda, costs $79. While all-you-can-eat promotions are common at Major League Baseball stadiums, it is not prominent on a college football Saturday.

The games are Sept. 8 against UTEP; Nov. 3 against Fresno State; Nov. 24 in the Fremont Cannon rivalry game against UNR.

“It’s a great way for your family to enjoy first-class entertainment and create a memory for an affordable price,” said Desiree Reed-Francois, UNLV’s athletic director.

What a novel idea.  It inspired three rapid thoughts on my part, one right after the other:

1.   How cool would it be to do something similar at some of the cupcake games at Sanford Stadium?
2.   Then again, can you imagine the nightmare at Sanford concession stands that would entail from offering that to thousands of Georgia fans?
3.   Then again, charging for the concessions – never actually serving the concessions because of massive delivery bottlenecks =     moar profit!

I think I may be on to something here, Greg.

Matt Hinton’s top 100

Thought this would make for a good jumping off point for a blog discussion:

Random preseason exercise I've come to enjoy: Top 100 Players. pic.twitter.com/41FhF23ipm

— Matt Hinton (@MattRHinton) June 20, 2018

Some random thoughts:

• This is the year of the defensive lineman.  Ten — count ’em, ten — of the top twelve Hinton lists play on the DL.
• How sorry do you feel for ACC offensive linemen?  Clemson has four of those ten defensive linemen.  Sheesh.
• Tua ahead of Jake.  Sigh.
• As Matt himself notes, that Kyler Murray ranking seems a little aggressive at this point.
• Florida Atlantic has three players on that list.  Florida has none.  Ouchy ouch.

And here’s how the SEC shows out:

• Alabama:  7
• Georgia:  4
• Auburn, TAMU:  3
• LSU, MSU:  2
• Kentucky, Missouri, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee:  1
• Arkansas, Florida, Vanderbilt:  0

No, élite talent isn’t everything.  Depth matters, too.  But every great program has its fair share of top-end players who elevate.  I suspect there’s a reasonable (not the same thing as exact) amount of correlation between the order of that list and how the conference shakes out this season.  Your thoughts?

The latest in competitive advantage

This one’s right in the NCAA’s wheelhouse.

Georgia reported an NCAA violation involving its men’s basketball program in February.

At issue: Extra benefits worth about $30 total.

A player’s father received vouchers for complimentary meals—three valued at $9.99 each—from what Georgia described as “an unidentified booster,” when the booster handed the vouchers to the father during a game. The father then gave his wife and son the meal passes.

The date of the violation, details of which were obtained by the Athens Banner-Herald Thursday in an open records, was listed as Feb. 5.

The player involved and game the violation took place wasn’t specified. Georgia had home games Jan. 30 against Florida and Jan. 23 against Arkansas.

The father stopped in the press area and received a meal before being asked to leave by a school staff member. The mother and son went to the hospitality room.

Fortunately, it’s only a Level III violation, so McGarity didn’t feel the need to immolate the athletic department over it.  Then again, Fox is already gone, so maybe he felt like Georgia had already made the necessary sacrifice.