Phone tag

Food for thought:

Northwestern football coach Pat Fitzgerald speaks on the use of phones in today’s society 📲 pic.twitter.com/A0R310aPuw

— CoachTube.com (@thecoachtube) July 21, 2019

I certainly wouldn’t deny his overall point about how social media affects public behavior (one of the striking things about attending the Masters is watching people spend the afternoon not glued to their phones), but I’m interested in what you think of his point about how it contributes to the decline in college football attendance.  I can’t say I’ve observed an effect on tailgating; hell, it’s as much an event to show yourself off at to others as concert going is.

I do wonder if schools offering improved Wi-fi as an attendance inducement are wasting their time, though.  If all you’re doing is coaxing people to show up who aren’t involved in the game, what’s the point?

************************************************************************

UPDATE:  More food for thought.

College football became a virtual event long before the iPhone existed, but pointing to the people bloating admin payroll with TV money is a bad look

— BUM CHILLUPS (@edsbs) July 22, 2019

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A couple of random scheduling notes

Via Yahoo!’s Pat Forde:

Toughest November schedule: Texas A&M finishes at Georgia and at LSU. Georgia plays Florida, Missouri, at Auburn, Texas A&M and at Georgia Tech — with Missouri and Auburn both having an open-date advantage. Maryland plays Michigan, at Ohio State, Nebraska, at Michigan State. Baylor plays at TCU, Oklahoma, Texas and at Kansas. Notre Dame plays its pileup of games against teams coming off open dates (see above) and then finishes at Stanford.

…

Team going nowhere: Georgia plays every game in Athens, Atlanta or a neighboring state, with out-of-state trips only to Vanderbilt (roughly 300 miles), Tennessee (235 miles), Jacksonville (340 miles) and Auburn (175 miles).

By the way, if you think Georgia’s got it rough playing teams coming off open weeks on the schedule, check out Notre Dame’s November.

Another Jacksonville post

If you don’t have that subscription to The Athletic, well, that’s a shame, because you can’t read Seth Emerson’s excellent summary ($$) of where things stand with the Cocktail Party.

Some points worth mentioning:

• Recruiting, which is Smart’s reason for leaving, is complicated.  Apparently the NCAA has one set of rules for games like Georgia-Florida, in which only the designated home team can give complimentary tickets to recruits, and another for games like the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game, in which both teams can.  (Although in both cases, there can be no contact between recruits and the coaches.)  On top of that, Georgia and Florida, by agreement, don’t comp tickets.  You only get one guess as to why.
• Speaking of which, the money is good — roughly $3 million more every two years.  “It’s financially advantageous to play in Jacksonville every year because you’ve got that consistent revenue,” McGarity said.  With a new contract offer looming, that’s likely to get even better.
• Television, more to the point, CBS.  “When the SEC-CBS deal was signed in 2008, Georgia and Florida asked for a stipulation that their game would always be at 3:30 p.m., according to former Florida president Bernie Machen. SEC commissioner Mike Slive backed them on it.”  Partly that was done out of a concern from a fan-behavior standpoint about what might happen if there were more night games.  Presumably, that’s a concern that lessens in the event the series goes home-and-home.

I am still of the position that money is driving this particular train, if only because money is pretty much the engine for any significant decision in college athletics these days.  I can’t deny that I’ve heard more noticeable whispering that a decision has already been made to pull the plug on Jacksonville, but I’m skeptical that such a call would be made this early without first hearing what the city has to offer this go ’round.

One other thing:   if recruiting is such a big deal, and Mullen’s recruiting already lags in comparison with Smart’s, why give the Gators another home game every other year to compensate?

Alex, I’ll take “Because they can” for $200.

So, LSU just spent $28 million on the latest wonder of the modern world and it’s crowing about it.

Setting The Standard pic.twitter.com/d7QUJfKL6M

— LSU Football (@LSUfootball) July 22, 2019

Only one question:  why?  It’s not for the reason you might expect, because that reason’s not really much of a reason.

While a large number of athletic programs have been building or completing facilities projects, our study found little to no impact from new athletic facilities on the recruitment of potential football or men’s basketball recruits. The direct impact football projects represented the largest amount of facility projects during the time period of the study, yet their returns in recruiting were mostly non-significant. There were no recruiting improvements for direct football projects during the year before facility completion, nor the first and second year after the facility was completed. Only in the year right before a project was completed was there a marginally significant effect which showed that team recruiting rankings slightly improved before a facility project was completed.

When you have lots of money rolling in, you can convince yourself of pretty much anything.  That’s how Jimmy Sexton has built himself a long and successful career.

Adios, and thanks for the twenty million.

If you missed Jim Delany’s farewell whinefest from last week, you missed an erroneous pot shot he took in Georgia’s direction.

Jim Delany: "I still don't know how Ohio State was ranked sixth last year, by the way. They were ranked sixth behind a divisional runner-up."

— Yahoo Sports College Football (@YahooSportsCFB) July 18, 2019

Well, seeing as Georgia won its division, it’s no wonder Delany is puzzled.  He’s also, not surprisingly, full of crap.

Regardless, this is a good point by Jimbo. Imagine a world where a Big Ten team (like, say, Penn State) won the conference, but yet was ranked behind another Big Ten team (like, say, Ohio State) that not only was a divisional runner-up, but lost straight-up to Penn State.

Now obviously, that’s all hypothetical, but just imagine a world (say, the year 2016) where that happened. I’m sure at the very least Jimbo would have argued in favor of both teams making the College Football Playoff. There’s no way he would have only argued in favor of the divisional runner-up, and then when his conference champion was snubbed, would have said the committee got the four teams right.

No way that would have happened.

This is where you wind up when you’ve spent your entire career twisting yourself in knots over a college football playoff.  Now, the man can’t quite bring himself to advocate for an expansion to an eight-team field in order to give his conference an easy in, so he’s left to grumble impotently over the lack of respect the Big Ten has from the selection committee.  (Not to mention Georgia deserved to be ranked ahead of Ohio State.)

But at least the Big Ten Network’s raking it in, Jim.

There are days when I don’t care that StingTalk is a closed message board.

And then there are days when there’s a thread topic called “How many years before GT is competitive with UGA“.

Say it ain’t so, Stevie.

Man, Spurrier.

Like with many media interviews with Spurrier, at some point during the conversation he talked about his feelings towards Georgia. The 74-year-old Spurrier started off his rhetoric in a modest and respectful tone, perhaps because Herschel was there:

“We couldn’t tell many jokes about Georgia because they were kicking our butts. They beat Florida 15 out of 20 times in the 70s and 80s. So we got a chance to turn it around in the 90s, and so forth.

“A lot of times, those stupid jokes I told – they were just meant for the Gators.”

Lame.  I actually respect him less for backing off the bravado.