And it’s why Greg McGarity’s continued employment isn’t in a smidgen of trouble.
#2 Georgia $129.0 million
This was the Bulldogs’ so-close-to-a-championship season ruined by Tua Tagovailoa’s overtime strike. Few saw the run to the CFP title game coming after Kirby Smart’s 8-5 year in 2016. But if you had to name the epicenter urban locale of college football, it’s probably Atlanta. If you had to name a state, probably GA. Everyone in the vicinity got very excited about the Dawgs to the tune of an $84.1M profit. UGa jumped 5 spots from the 2016-17 list.
Number two in football revenue and, more importantly, number two in football profit, is all anyone at Butts-Mehre genuflects to. Winning may be nice, but it’s a means to an end.
Pat yourselves on the back, peeps. He couldn’t do it without you.
(h/t)
Get The Picture 
The University of Georgia, a charitable educational institution. Consult your tax advisor about deductibility of contributions.
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The Georgia Way abides…
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Meanwhile UGA still sticks it to every student in the form of Athletic fees.
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And that would have happened with or without McGarity occupying the figurehead’s throne.
Which is what makes his ongoing marination in job security and personal pride so damned frustrating.
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Agree 110% – we could put Bonzo the chimp in as AD and let him make all decisions by throwing darts at a wall and still wind up making money hand over fist. McGoofy just happens to be in the right spot at the right time kinda like that old cartoon character Mr. Magoo.
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Hold on, you’re tellin’ me Bonzo isn’t UGA’s ad….
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How the hell is Clemson a spot behind GT? They only had 5.7 million profit?
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Senator,
I think you might be missing the bigger picture here. You still have so much cynicism deservedly built up from the Michael Adams days. I think that Morehead actually cares about the University. I think that he saw the success that Alabama’s Football prowess had brought to their applications and admissions. Alabama is basically a private university anymore. 60% of their incoming students for 2018 were from Out Of State (OOS). People here called me crazy when I proposed this idea a couple of years ago, but we have already moved from the traditional 9% OOS to the 2018 Freshman class being 17.8% OOS.
These people pay out of state tuition. That offsets cuts from the legislature. The same is said with “the Reserve Fund”. Half of it sits parked in the UGA Endowment. This money grows and allows annual expenditures on all the things that will make the University more elite such as world class professors, research facilities, etc. The current #1 priority for the Endowment is to grow large enough to support 100% of financial need for all students. This is the #1 signal of an elite University. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Vandy don’t give a shit about tuition money.
Stay with me here. I want you to imagine what will happen on Stingtalk if 5 years after getting admission to the AAU, it is announced that the average SAT score for incoming Freshmen at Georgia is higher than at Georgia Tech and that Georgia has passed them on the USNWR College rankings? To do that, we need money.
Also, the five schools tied or ranked above us on the USNWR Rankings are Pepperdine, Tulane, North Eastern, Case Western Reserve, and Boston University. What can we offer OOS students looking at that range? SEC football culture, $20K a year in lower tuition, and the #1 college town in America. Then you do the same to Wake Forest, Boston College, etc. We deserve to be in the same group as UC Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, UVA, and UNC. It is a great day to be a Georgia Bulldog.
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LMAO. I’m not missing any bigger picture here. I had several in the know tell me what the Regents stressed to Morehead when he was offered the job. He knows the ground rules.
“We deserve to be in the same group as UC Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, UVA, and UNC.” Deserve? You know what those schools have in common? None of them are doing what you allege UGA is doing, which is using athletics to leverage academics and/or endowments. There’s a good reason for that, too, which is why you’re dreaming.
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I have no problem with the revenue number. I think it sucks to force students to pay an athletic fee in this environment. If you want to charge a fee, make it an opt in choice. If you opt in, you can purchase student football tickets and attend other events for free. If not, you don’t get the privilege. Some students (grad students, students who work, students who aren’t interested) shouldn’t have to subsidize the AA’s budget or the interested student’s cost (and that’s from someone with 2 at UGA right now).
Agree with Anonymous above. I have no doubt Morehead wants what is best for UGA as opposed to his predecessor.
I don’t think the administration is trying to increase the number of out of state students. I only believe as the value of the education (even for OOSers) increases, the number of applicants also increases. From the acceptance stats released yesterday, 154 of the 159 counties in Georgia were represented, and 49 of 50 states were as well (Wyoming the lone exception). I have to assume of the 5 not represented that those counties’ top 2 students did not apply because those seniors are guaranteed admission.
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That statement begs an obvious question: “best for UGA” from whose perspective?
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He wants the university to be a positive for the entire state. If he does that, it will be good for him as well.
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