It seems like yesterday.
Knowledge is still good, peeps.
Daily Archives: July 29, 2018
“None of us like playing the ‘buy’ games, the ‘guarantee’ games.”
Profiles in courage, scheduling edition:
In an interview in ESPN last week, Nick Saban fired a right hook on the chin of college football’s scheduling format.
“Playing a bunch of games that nobody’s interested in is not good for the game,” Saban said on First Take as he lobbied for an expanded conference schedule and Power Five teams playing only Power Five opponents. “Players, when you’ve been playing SEC games, they’re not interested in playing somebody that doesn’t matter.”
Saban’s allies might not be plentiful, but count LSU Deputy Director of Athletics Verge Ausberry as one of them.
“I agree with him,” Ausberry said on my radio show this week. “If the rules change and everybody plays those types of schedules, we’ll play that type of schedule.
Ausberry is a former LSU linebacker (1986-1989) who has worked in the school’s athletic administration for nearly two decades. Among his chief duties is LSU football scheduling…
“I like the big games,” he said. “When I was here as a player, we only had six SEC games but we also had the opportunity to play Texas A&M—who wasn’t in the conference at that time—North Carolina and Notre Dame all in the same year. I think our fan base now, they want to see those type of games. But, at the same time, when I’m scheduling, I’m doing the same thing as Alabama, Georgia, Auburn, Tennessee, Ohio State and Texas. We’re all scheduling the same way.
“So, if the Power Five commissioners get together and want to make the change to the scheduling format, we have no problem with that.
You go first. No, you go first! (Is this when somebody should point out to Ausberry that other P5 conferences are already playing nine-game conference schedules?)
“Let’s be honest. It’s hard to get your team up to play those guarantee games. And they’re trap games. With the right opponent, you get trapped, like last year we got trapped with Troy. You beat that team nine out of ten times, but if you’re not ready to play in those type of games, you’ll get beat.”
Hey, if we don’t treat cupcake games seriously, why should the players?
Ausberry also agreed with Saban that fan attendance should be a driving factor toward a change.
Eh, fans. What do we know?
Filed under College Football
TFW you realize you shouldn’t get too comfortable about that scholarship…
I keed, I keed a little here, but notice that they’ve got Rodrigo Blankenship’s name misspelled in the new locker room.
For $63 million, you think they could hire a competent editor. Instead, it looks like they got the same person who overlooked the condom clause in Ludacris’ contract.
Filed under Georgia Football
I don’t think “there’s no money to pay players” means what they think it means.
Or, perhaps more accurately, what they want you to think it means.
There’s no money. Also as a part of that article, a stunning stat about the AD:
Michigan, for example, employed 253 people in its athletic department at an average salary of $73,382.64 in 2010-2011, per state records. Just seven years later, in 2017-18, there are 368 employees (up 31.3 percent) at an average salary of $99,310.58 (up 26.1 percent).
Simply by maintaining 2011 levels of staffing—sure you can have that raise, AD employees—Michigan would have 11.4 million dollars left over annually, or 116,000 dollars per scholarship revenue sport athlete. They’d have 12k per athlete, period, including walk-ons.
I’m shocked, shocked that there’s bullshit going on here.
Filed under It's All Just Made Up And Flagellant
Jim Chaney’s crayon box: the past and present of Jake Fromm
Ian Boyd takes a look at how Fromm’s 2017 season went, starting with a stat that likely won’t be repeated this year.
In eight of Georgia’s 15 games in 2017, starting QB Jake Fromm threw the ball fewer than 17 times. The Dawgs were 8-0 in those games.
It’s reasonable to expect the run/pass ratio Jim Chaney calls in 2018 to favor throwing a little more: Chubb and Michel are gone, Fromm is a year older and wiser, a rapidly improving offensive line, etc. What’s interesting is that Boyd thinks (unlike a lot of Georgia fans) that Jim Chaney has a clue.
However, it’s worth noting that offensive coordinator Jim Chaney is the same man who coordinated the Drew Brees-led spread offenses at Purdue, and this Georgia team will now include a talented and experienced cast of receivers and tight ends…
Coaching in the NFL with the Rams gave Chaney a greater appreciation for using TEs and running the ball, which has carried over in his second college stint, but the passing game knowhow is still there.
When Georgia did throw in 2017, you could see the high degree of complexity…
Georgia’s advanced passing game isn’t going to solve every third down, but it will see increasing prominence as Fromm progresses.
Will Chaney and Fromm combine to make Georgia’s passing game lethal enough to carry the team until the defense sorts itself out (something which, admittedly, may not take as much time as the fretters think)? Stay tuned…
Filed under Georgia Football, Strategery And Mechanics
The road to hell, NCAA edition
I know it’s in defense of Chuck Person, who was in the employ of Bruce Pearl, so, yeah, anyway you look at it, there’s an underlying element of sleaze you can’t ignore, but, still, this makes me damned uncomfortable when I read it:
“Straining to charge the alleged NCAA rules violation as a federal crime, without any conceivable federal interest at stake in doing so, the government has concocted unworkable legal theories that lack any basis in the statutory language and exceed the constraints of due process,” Trzaskoma writes. “The federal government has no business policing the NCAA rules, and the superseding indictment should be dismissed.”
If there is some federal interest at play here, what is it, and, more importantly, why is it coming to a head now?
“The revised wire fraud theory in the superseding indictment does not fix any of the problems that were fatal to the original indictment and the government has failed to advance any persuasive arguments in its opposition brief that its federal criminal charges against Mr. Person are viable,” Trzaskoma writes. “… It is no exaggeration to say that the government’s new wire fraud theory (like its original theory) would criminalize nearly all undisclosed NCAA rule violations because every college coach and staff member routinely certifies compliance with the NCAA rules. … One need not be a careful student of college basketball to appreciate the number of coaches or athletic department employees who have failed to disclose known violations of the NCAA rules but who have not been prosecuted for federal wire fraud.”
Like Person’s former boss, for example, who just got a reworked contract, if I’m not mistaken.
Be careful what you wish for, Mark Emmert.
Filed under See You In Court, The NCAA
If gloating about Dan Mullen’s recruiting is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
Demographics alone suggest that probably won’t last, but for now I’m gonna enjoy myself.
Filed under Gators, Gators..., Recruiting
Get The Picture 