Who’da thunk Geoff Collins would be casting a wider net than Kirby Smart?
That’s what you do when you’re trying to be the coolest, I suppose.
Of course, it’s not the offers that matter, just the acceptances.
Daily Archives: February 11, 2020
Deep depth
If you want to know what returning defensive production looks like, check out Jake Rowe’s current projection of a depth chart for 2020.
That, friends, is one stacked deck. Do you see any freshmen lined up to get much playing time on that side of the ball this season? Maybe the two Jalens, but it’s hard to see significant amounts for the others.
Filed under Georgia Football
What we have here is failure to communicate.
Yeah, I don’t think this is going to satisfy many state legislatures.
Which is why they’re spending the big bucks lobbying Congress now.
Filed under Political Wankery, The NCAA
PFF and the 2019 class
PFF has ranked the top ten 2019 classes based on last season’s production.
Some programs are forced to rely on their true freshmen more than others. Sometimes that pays off, and sometimes it doesn’t. Obviously, it takes time for top recruits — or any recruits, for that matter — to develop, but every year, there are a handful of rare athletes who make an immediate impact from day one as true freshmen.
PFF has unveiled its wins above average metric (PFF WAA) in recent weeks, and we used it to rank the top 10 true freshman classes from the 2019 college football season.
Georgia finished third on the list.
3. Georgia Bulldogs
Why they’re ranked here: Many of the Bulldogs’ true freshmen were called on to be role players in 2019, and almost all of them had a positive impact on the team. Georgia landed two of the top six wide receivers in ESPN’s rankings in Dominick Blaylock and George Pickens, and both led the pack for the Bulldogs, ranking among the 10 most valuable true freshman wide receivers in the country. On the defensive side, off-ball linebacker Nakobe Dean was the most valuable true freshman at his position, and it wasn’t close. Dean’s coverage skills shined, as he allowed just five of his 14 targets in coverage to be caught, with a couple of pass breakups mixed in.
How their top recruit fared: Edge defender Nolan Smith was ESPN’s second-ranked recruit of 2019, and he played the second-most snaps of any true freshman on Georgia’s roster, with 287. However, Smith was only slightly above average as a pass-rusher in 2019, sitting just above the 60th percentile in PFF pass-rush grade (69.9), and despite owning nine combined sacks-plus-hits on his 181 pass-rush snaps, he had a subpar pressure rate at 10.3%. Smith has a ways to go to get to elite status, but he fared better than most true freshmen at his position in 2019.
Best true freshman: Pickens finished the season first among true freshman wide receivers in WAA, and he finished 19th among all wide receivers in the FBS. The best thing we saw from Pickens was his reliable hands, as he was one of 10 wide receivers to not drop a catchable target beyond the first-down marker. He wasn’t the best in contested-catch situations, but Pickens proved to be a great deep threat and will be one to watch with the nation’s second-highest-graded deep passer, Jamie Newman, throwing him the ball.
The key there is the very first sentence. Almost no one in the 2019 class wound up as a full time starter, but there were a ton of freshmen who made contributions.
That being said, bonus Dawg porn points for the last sentence.
Filed under Georgia Football
Those taxes aren’t going to pay themselves.
This is their story and they’re sticking to it.
Georgia is taking steps that would allow it to attempt to avoid having to pay an excise tax aimed at the highest paid college coaches, a move that could save its athletics program around $2 million a year.
The excise tax is part of the changes to federal legislation enacted into law in December 2017.
It subjects certain tax-exempt organizations to a 21% tax on compensation above $1 million — including bonuses — that goes to any of their five highest-paid employees in a year.
Because the University of Georgia Athletic Association is set up as a 501(c)(3) organization, it would ordinarily be subject to the tax. But after consultation with university counsel, the association has not made any such payments, deputy athletic director for finance Stephanie Ransom said Monday.
As part of its upcoming federal tax return, the UGAA will contend that football coach Kirby Smart and men’s basketball coach Tom Crean are “common law” employees of the University of Georgia and not employed by the Athletic Association itself, according to Kathy Pitts, of UGA tax preparer Ernst & Young.
The university itself does not have recognition from the IRS as a 501(c)(3) organization. Instead, it operates as a part of the State of Georgia. So, it is not subject to the tax as the law is written.
“One of the main things it boils down to is the university itself, if something happened and you decided to fire the head football coach, the university really makes that decision,” Pitts told members of the UGAA finance committee in a meeting last month.
There’s a fine line between tax avoidance and tax exemption and it would seem that Georgia is right there on the edge.
“The way the law is written the University of Georgia is not included because they’re not a 501(c) (3),” Pitts said. “They’re an integral part of the state of Georgia. They are not an applicable tax exempt employer that this law applies to. We looked at it also from the Athletic Association side because athletics is a {501}(c)(3), but they are not the employer of all of the people listed here (on its Form 990), the University of Georgia is…We do not believe the law applies.”
Smart’s and Crean’s contracts state that they are “to be employed by the University System of Georgia at the University of Georgia.” The coaches are “not and will not be an employee of the Association” even though the university pays only Smart $500,000 in base salary and Crean $400,000 while the UGAA pays the remainder of their compensation. Or, as the contracts put it: “the Association has agreed to provide additional benefits and assurances … in order to induce him to accept employment with the University as Coach.”
That’s an awful lot of inducing going on there. Some might call the school’s portion a fig leaf. Some of those some might even be employed by the IRS.
Pitts said she thinks “there’s a pretty high chance the IRS will run a query that says, ‘Wait you’re a {501}(c)(3), …where’s our excise tax?’ The disclosures will help us explain that, but they’ll still send a notice and we’ll still have to explain.”
No kidding. Just keep McGarity out of it.
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UPDATE: Here’s the tl;dr version.
![Screenshot_2020-02-11 Andy Schwarz on Twitter what's going on Georgia set up a separate non-profit for its athletic dept to[...]](https://blutarsky.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/screenshot_2020-02-11-andy-schwarz-on-twitter-whats-going-on-georgia-set-up-a-separate-non-profit-for-its-athletic-dept-to....png?w=500)
Filed under Georgia Football, It's Just Bidness
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