“It’s the best way to handle it.”

Eight simple words to make every Georgia fan preemptively cringe:  Greg McGarity sat down last week to discuss…

He doesn’t disappoint, either.  Here are three quotes for your viewing pleasure.

• Kirby is driving the Get Out of Jacksonville Train.
  Do those remarks mean Smart wants to stop playing in Jacksonville?“I think so. I think that’s pretty much where Kirby stands,” McGarity said. “He is just a recruiting guru. Anytime something is done to take away from that effort I think he feels like it affects our program, but there’s so many other things going in that game, with that weekend, you’ve got to look at every aspect of it… there are a lot of things to consider. But we’ll all get together and at the end of the day whatever decision we make, it’ll be our decision.”
• Butts-Mehre isn’t showing enough love to Magill Society members.  “Right now in the Magill Club — I think we’ll call it the Magill Lounge — there are only 200 donors in there. We’ve got over a thousand donors in the Magill Society. So it’s only a fraction of individuals, but it’s sort of a good problem to have. We have a lot of interest. A lot of people have really given large donations. We really can’t move their seat locations until somebody gives up their seat location, so what do we have as an alternative to that? This is an alternative among that group to offer this opportunity.”
• Non-Magill Society members aren’t showing enough love to Butts-Mehre.  “Right now we’re at $75 for our premium games and $55 for others, but our season tickets have not increased this year, and hopefully we don’t have to increase in the future. That’s always probably the most controversial thing you can do is raise ticket prices. But we’ve not had to do that because we’ve been very successful fundraising.”

There’s plenty of pap interspersed throughout (“Nobody likes a warm beer”), but the gist here, to what should be nobody’s surprise, is the relentless focus on cash flow.  Some portion of the nouveau riche is disappointed that throwing the big bucks in the pot haven’t gotten them everything they want — those sweet secondary prices for Notre Dame tix were fine, Greg, but some primo 50-yard line North stands seats would be finer, thank you very much– and that’s left the athletic department scrambling to come up with a bone or two to throw in the meantime.

The tradeoff is there for all to see.  The Magill folks get moved to the front of the line and the rest of us will be told to be grateful that their contributions are all that stand between us and a ticket price bump.  (That’ll come, anyway, after he gets them in their new seats.)

That part is unsurprising, but the attempt to throw Smart under the bus regarding the aftermath of a departure from Jacksonville is less so.

I assume McGarity believes the fan base has bought into the Smart recruiting narrative so completely that he’ll be able to shield himself after another money-driven decision from the criticism of a major chunk of Georgia’s fan base.  With regard to that, the best thing those of us who would prefer the Cocktail Party stay where it is have going is that Jacksonville appears to be as enamored with Georgia football as we are.

Such is what passes for genius and The Georgia Way.