Bill Connelly has updated his S&P+ projections based on current rosters. Care to guess what the one change in his top ten is?
Or not.
Daily Archives: July 30, 2019
The year of living crazily
It’s a shame that the passage of time dims our memories, because nobody should forget how utterly chaotic the 2007 college football season really was.
And don’t forget that West Virginia was this close to playing in the national title game until it crapped the bed in the Backyard Brawl and left RichRod in tears.
2007 as the best college football season ever is a hill I’m absolutely prepared to die on.
Filed under College Football
Larry Scott is college football’s George Constanza.
You may recall the Pac-12’s commissioner’s lukewarm concern about the conference’s general counsel inserting himself into the review of a penalty call in last year’s USC-Wazzou game. It’s taken a while, but Woodie Dixon has been unceremoniously removed from a position of having any authority to challenge a review decision.
But, as Jon Wilner relates, it’s not because Larry Scott woke up suddenly motivated to do what appears to most normal football fans as an obvious and correct decision.
At the time of the scandal, accountability was difficult to locate.
Immediately following the incident, Scott conducted an internal review and committed to changes in the relevant protocol; only after several weeks did he announce an unspecified punishment for Dixon.
That wasn’t enough — not close to enough — to restore public trust, and the athletic directors knew it. They pushed the conference for a full audit conducted by an independent agency…
— The removal of Dixon from the top of the Pac-12’s officiating operation: Coleman will now report directly to Scott.
(If not for Anderson and the ADs pushing for the external review, Dixon seemingly would have remained in charge. Give that some thought.) [Emphasis added.]
All of which brings this to mind.
Filed under Pac-12 Football
Those cupcakes aren’t gonna pay themselves.
Those of you who think ending the Cocktail Party will merely cost Georgia $3 million every two years, a sum that the school can easily afford, aren’t really thinking through the math.
The Dawgs will pick up a home conference game every other season, true, but will still be left filling a gap when Florida hosts in Gainesville. That gap will either be plugged with a marquee home-and-home series, which means scheduling another road game without revenue, a neutral site game to replace a neutral site game, or a one-off home game against a cupcake.
Those aren’t free, peeps.
So if the school goes the cupcake route, you’re really talking about more than a three million-dollar swing in revenue in one year. I don’t know about you, but where I come from, that’s considered real money.
Filed under Georgia Football, It's Just Bidness
LSU AD to School: Drop Dead.
When it comes to college athletics, I like to think I’m at least as cynical as the next guy, but I’ve got to say I was totally unprepared for the sheer blatancy of this:
Times are changing around LSU athletics, as with a new athletics director comes new policy.
And one new policy change under LSU’s new Athletics Director Scott Woodward will affect the university his department is connected to directly.
Under an unprecedented fund-transfer policy initiated by former LSU athletics director Joe Alleva, the LSU athletics department contributed millions of dollars to the academic institution that is LSU. Between 2012 and 2017, LSU athletics contributed nearly $50 million to the university under this policy despite the initial guarantee being just $36 million during that time.
But in an exclusive interview with Tiger Rag, Woodward said that policy will no longer continue under his watch, at least not as it has existed in recent years.
“It’s something that’s very dangerous, when universities rely on recurring money, especially from an auxiliary like the athletic department,” Woodward said. “So no, I think, while I will always support the university in some form or fashion, we can not sustain what we’re currently doing.”
Woodward confirmed his belief that it’s not the athletics department’s responsibility to bail a state school out.
Keep in mind Woodward was asked this in the context of the athletic department shelling out $28 million for its swanky new football operations center while the LSU library, which currently has flood damage among other problems, is the subject of a GoFundMe campaign.
This — an athletic director admonishing the school, which is, let’s not forget, his employer, about finances — is so far beyond a case of the tail wagging the dog that I no longer recognize the animal’s anatomy. The saddest thing is I suspect nobody in a position of authority in the state of Louisiana will do anything about it.
Remember the old sarcastic line uttered by the president of the University of Oklahoma: ”We want to build a university our football team can be proud of.”? Woodward’s just taking that one step further. LSU’s athletic director doesn’t care what kind of university his department is affiliated with, as long as it’s not a financial drag.
I’ll be curious to see if other ADs decide to march under his banner. And if any school presidents push back.
Filed under Academics? Academics., SEC Football
Lead, follow or get out of Kirby’s way.
Once upon a time, I wrote this in the wake of the Richt firing:
… Regardless of where you think Richt falls on the performance spectrum, you cannot deny that for the bulk of his time in Athens, he was not allowed the resources to duke it out with Georgia’s main rivals.
Forget about the IPF. Georgia was one of the last schools to give out multi-year contracts to assistant coaches. (Ironically, the administration got away with that because of staff loyalty to Richt.) Saban bulks up support staff; Richt is forced to come out of his own pocket to pay bonuses to his assistants. Georgia’s recruiting budget was far short of what other conference schools were allocating until this year.
If you manage an SEC football program, there’s a difference between being committed to winning and being financially committed to winning. Everybody wants to win. The hard part is figuring out how to allocate resources to make sure that happens. And, no, that doesn’t mean spending money like a drunken sailor. (We’re looking at you, Tennessee.) It simply means that if you think your rightful place is among the Alabamas, Floridas and LSUs of the world, you’d better take a hard look at what they’re doing and make sure you’re giving your coaching staff the opportunity to keep up with them.
This is what allocating resources to make sure that happens looks like. (h/t Argondawg)
Stadium obtained the NCAA Financial Reports for the 2018 fiscal year for more than 50 FBS schools, most of which play in a Power Five conference. These reports are submitted to the NCAA annually, and they list detailed financial data regarding the operating revenue and expenses for each school’s athletic department.
That includes how much schools spent on recruiting.
Among the schools examined, Georgia’s $2.6 million spent on football recruiting in 2017-18 ranked first, and that spending yielded the No. 1 recruiting class in 2018, according to the 247Sports Composite rankings…
After analyzing annual million-dollar investments into recruiting, recent win totals and historical AP polls, we’re left with a recipe that tells us the surest way to land an elite recruiting class is to:
1.) invest at least $750,000 annually (but more likely at least $1.2 million) in recruiting,
2.) field a football team that has recently experienced high-level success, and
3.) be able to boast about your program’s proven winning culture.But how many schools can check all three boxes?
Before you ask, yes, Alabama wasn’t included in Stadium’s data collection, but if you look here, you can see that Saban and Smart are essentially neck and neck in spending on recruiting. The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree, in other words.
While Kirby deserves the lion’s share of the credit for Georgia’s recruiting success, Butts-Mehre’s role in that can’t be ignored. It’s not simply a matter of giving Smart a blank check (admittedly, that’s a change in direction); it’s also a matter of having an athletics administration that’s rowing the boat in a synchronous fashion with its football staff. Having all hands on the same page is something new for Georgia’s athletic department and look where it’s gotten the football program.
Whether that’s the result of desperation, fear, or simple resignation that Smart is better at managing this whole football thing, doesn’t really matter. Georgia is checking all three of those boxes right now, and that’s good enough.
Filed under Georgia Football, Recruiting
Your Daily Gator rationalizes.
So, Georgia grabs its second big recruit in the past couple of days and is in a virtual tie with ‘Bama in average stars, per the 247Sports Composite. Florida, not so much.
Not to worry, says this resident genius on Alligator Alley. The Gators’ recruiting is juuuust a bit outside right now.
First off our class isn’t bad by any means, add like three 5 stars or quite a few more 4 stars and it’s elite. With regrades and if we land some top targets by signing day our average should be above 90 with a full class. This is considered a “good” class.
Let me say Clemson’s class is on Pace to be a monster… Even by anyone elses standard. With 19 commits they could realistically sign potentially ten 5 stars (disgusting).
Also Georgia sitting down at 6 is surprising. Starting to think the bags in Athens are starting to wait and see if they can get over the Bama hump. Honestly if they don’t this year expect them to settle in the 4-7 range, rather than the 1-3 range.
There are only two programs in the Composite with as many as three five-star commitments, Clemson and Georgia. Florida has zippo. But, sure, Mullen’s got a bunch of studs in his back pocket waiting to drop at an opportune time.
Meanwhile, this post in the AA thread about Milton’s commitment is so good, I was tempted to break precedent and make it the QOTD.
This board must be what like f$u or mutt boards were like when we had Meyer killing it in all facets. Sucks we are on the other side now with dopey Dan incapable or unwilling or oblivious to this recruiting mess
Savor the times, Dawg fans. Those salty tears will never taste better.
Filed under Gators, Gators..., Georgia Football, Recruiting
Your Daily Gator is MIA.
I’m not sure I know what I enjoy more here — the continually dwindling size of Florida’s roster, or Mullen’s lame attempt to sound like he’s still in control. I mean, “I have to check with him with the family situation”? WTF does that even mean?
Filed under Gators, Gators...
#RegressionToTheMeanIn2019
Nah, this one isn’t about Boom.
It’s better.
Filed under Gators, Gators..., Stats Geek!
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