Your 2.27.19 Playpen

Eh, let’s skip politics today.  Tell us about the most memorable meal you’ve ever had, and why.

The tradition that just means more

Seth Emerson’s opinion piece today ($$) about the SEC’s football scheduling dilemma — his suggestion is for the conference to ditch divisions in favor of a 4-4 pod system — is the perfect jumping off point for a reminder why we’re in this mess in the first place.

This is college football, so you only get one guess.

The problem has its origin in Roy Kramer’s decision to expand the conference to twelve teams and create a conference championship game.  It worked brilliantly on more than one level.  There was more money for the schools and there were more conference games for the fans.  An eight-game conference schedule meshed neatly with a 12-team SEC.  Life was good, for a while at least.

Then came Mike Slive’s crappy TV deal.  The presidents became unhappy with being outdone by other conferences with better contracts and pushed Slive to look for a way to renegotiate a long-term arrangement that didn’t sparkle like it used to.  Slive found his lever:  expansion to a 14-school SEC.

That got them the new money they craved, but at a cost.  Cracks began appearing immediately, as it proved far more difficult to shoehorn fourteen schools into an eight-game conference schedule than what the schedulers faced by in 1992.  For example,

Texas A&M is entering its eighth season as a member of the SEC, or at least that’s the rumor, because as someone who covers Georgia I have never seen the Aggies play in person. The two schools have yet to play in football. And while they finally will this November, it won’t be until 2023 that Georgia goes to College Station.

The SEC’s real problem now isn’t the schedule.  That’s the symptom, not the root cause.  The real problem is that the conference doesn’t have a financial incentive to work up a fix.  There’s no interest (other than from us fans, of course) in adding a ninth conference game in part because there’s no profit in it, and, in fact, to the extent it might harm some programs’ postseason choices, there could be a financial downside.

You can say the same thing about Seth’s suggestion.  You can say the same thing about eliminating the permanent cross-division game.  You can say the same thing about the status quo, with all the fumbling around that requires on a recurring basis.  There’s no financial upside, so there’s no groundswell for one specific change.

So when should we expect such a groundswell?  Just ask Greg McGarity.

Meanwhile, it does not appear that the Bulldogs will get to host Auburn at Sanford Stadium in back-to-back years. Georgia had to play at the Tigers’ Jordan-Hare Stadium in consecutive years in 2012-13 to accommodate conference expansion to 14 teams in 2012.

“I doubt that’ll ever happen,” said McGarity, speaking after the meeting in which his contract was extended by a year. “That was a one-time deal, unless the conference expands again. That may be another discussion. But this was the same situation as seven other schools that had to make changes to the rotation of their games. That was done strictly for conference realignment.”  [Emphasis added.]

Don’t worry, they’ll get back to us on it.

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Mark Emmert’s wet dream

Violate NCAA rules and go to jail.

Federal prosecutors are demanding jail time for three men convicted of bribery and fraud charges in the pay-to-play college basketball trial. 

The defendants — Adidas executive James Gatto, former Adidas consultant Merl Code and aspiring sports agent Christian Dawkins — earlier this month submitted motions asking for probation in lieu of prison sentences, but government attorneys pushed back in court documents filed Tuesday.

“A sentence that includes a term of incarceration is necessary to reflect, among other things, the seriousness of the defendants’ conduct and the need to promote deterrence, and is thus sufficient but not greater than necessary to further the legitimate purposes of sentencing,” U.S. Attorney Robert S. Khuzami wrote.

Jesus.  And that’s on top of restitution.

The government said Gatto, Code and Dawkins owe Louisville $31,922.75, based on Bowen’s attendance during the spring and fall semesters in 2017. Gatto alone owes totals of $1,136,424.52 to Kansas and $258,585 to NC State, which include financial aid and tuition paid while Preston, De Sousa and Smith were on campus.

That’s restitution for tuition that’s not actually paid by a school, although, if you’re going to argue the schools were somehow the victims here, I guess that’s at least consistent.  Crazy, but consistent.

I’m waiting for the NCAA to go all in with some sort of “VIOLATING AMATEURISM IS AGAINST THE LAW” promo.  Should be boffo.

“… it’s going to be a pretty strong number for us.”

The most amusing part of yesterday’s announcement that Georgia Tech will play five “home” games in the friendly confines of Mercedes Benz Stadium is the squirming attempt by the parties involved to spin the decision as something other than what it obviously is, a necessary move by an athletic department in desperate need of funds.

That’s why you get laughable statements about non-monetary benefits like these:

Coach Geoff Collins has a bauble that he can dangle in front of prospects – a home game every year in the stadium that has hosted the Super Bowl and the College Football Playoff Championship game.

“We see our location as being an asset that cannot be duplicated by our competitors,” Stansbury said.

Tech fans can watch their team in the opulence of MBS. And Tech can further connect itself to the city of Atlanta, which has been an objective of Stansbury’s since his hire and has likewise been a priority for Collins.

If MBS is such a fantastic asset, then why doesn’t Tech go ahead and move all of its home games there?

“I think Georgia Tech’s done a great job since Todd has come here, and coach Collins, of really breaking through the clutter, and this is another example of that,” Peach Bowl CEO and president Gary Stokan said. “Out-of-the-box thinking in a marketplace that’s tough.”

The clutter of playing home games in your own stadium clutter?  WTF, Stokan?  How out of the box is it to play a game at a place that regularly hosts kickoff classics and championship games?  It’s not like playing at MBS is some unique, never to be duplicated happening.

This is the only brand that matters.

For the four games besides the Clemson game, Tech will rent MBS and collect gate receipts. Stansbury was particularly excited about the large volume of private suites that can be sold for those games. At Bobby Dodd Stadium, there is a waiting list for premium seating.

At Mercedes-Benz Stadium, over five days between 2020 and 2024, that’s revenue that’s waiting to be collected.

It’s a money grab, plain and simple.  You know it.  I know it.  Gary Stokan knows it.  Todd Stansbury sure as hell knows it.  Even the folks at Stingtalk know it.