Danny White is something.

Oh, FFS.

OS: Do you know how much financial impact Monday’s NCAA’s decision will have?

White: “It’s going to be somewhere in the $3-$500,000 range, it just depends on how many of them elect to do it. The way that they did it was smart because it’s a one-time expense. As we look into next year, I think there are going to be a lot of scenarios where there are one-time challenges. We’ve just got to find a way and hopefully, there’s ways with federal and state support, one-time relief to help us get through the next 12 months or so.”  [Emphasis added.]

Sure, why not? Maybe Danny can get the Feds to award UCF that national championship while he’s at it.

(h/t)

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Nike isn’t your friend.

I don’t know about you, but the first thing that came to mind when I saw this tweet…

When you see Georgia, you see @Nike | @UGAFBEquipment brings us behind the scenes of the best looking uniforms in college football#ATD #GoDawgs @usnikefootball pic.twitter.com/54plFDInwK

— Georgia Football (@GeorgiaFootball) March 31, 2020

… was this.

An abomination, a total abomination.

Coach Mark Richt’s Georgia Bulldogs will wear a Nike Pro Combat uniforms for their season-opening game against Boise State in the Georgia Dome on Sept. 3 in the Chick-fil-a Kickoff Game. Needless to say, reaction is mixed.

The uniforms are all red with black accents. The traditional red helmet will be replaced by silver versions. It does keep the widely recognized “G” on the sides…

Richt, via Twitter, says of the uniform: “We like them. Nike did a good job.”

What do you think?

Me?  I think if Richt had been fired for saying that, I wouldn’t have objected.

Your 4.1.20 Playpen

These days, I find myself thinking a lot about something one of my favorite authors, the amazing William Gibson, has written about in his last two books.

Considering this record, it might be worrying to learn that Gibson’s latest novel, Agency, is largely a credible account of a coming apocalypse. His characters call it “the Jackpot”. “It’s multi-causal, and it’s of extremely long duration,” he explains. Over many decades, climate change, pollution, drug-resistant diseases and other factors – “I’ve never really had the heart to make up a full list, else I’ll depress myself” – deplete the human race by 80 per cent.

The Jackpot is the mundane cataclysm of modernity itself. It is hundreds of millions of people driving to the supermarket in their SUVs, flying six times a year, and eating medicated animals for dinner. “If the Jackpot is going to happen,” Gibson says, “it’s already happening. It’s been happening for at least 100 years.”

“The Jackpot is the mundane cataclysm of modernity itself.”  Exactly.  It’s not an overnight thing.  It’s civilization as the frog in that slowly warming pot of water.  That’s how things feel to me in my more morose moments.

In Gibson’s books, technology advances just quickly enough to stabilize what’s left of society finally, but not before the world is emptied.  It’s a sobering vision, to say the least.

Anyway, I’m curious — is there any work of fiction that’s affected you in a similar way these days?  I’m not talking about what you might be watching/reading as escapist fare (Lord knows I’m doing that, too), but what’s resonated with you based on current events.

Share in the comments.

TFW the timing is just a bit off

Boy, it almost sounds like McGarity wishes he could have a mulligan about this.

Three Georgia assistant football coaches received boosts in pay in recent months, including a hefty raise for Dan Lanning.

The defensive coordinator is being paid $1.25 million annually, a raise from $750,000, according to information obtained by the Athens Banner-Herald, part of the USA TODAY Network, in an open records request.

Inside linebackers coach/co-defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann and defensive line coach Tray Scott will make $600,000 each. Scott gets a $130,000 pay increase while Schumann’s salary rose $50,000. In addition, director of player development Jonas Jennings will be paid $406,000, a $100,000 increase.

All of the raises have effective dates listed that precede the coronavirus pandemic. Lanning’s raise took effect Dec. 10 and Jennings’ on Dec. 8. Scott’s came on Jan. 20 and Schumann’s on Feb. 8.

“We were all making decisions like we were going to be full speed ahead,” Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity said Tuesday. “The key thing is from March 6, or whatever it was, forward, that to me is when the accountability really steps up. It could be, what does your horizon look like in the future? What happened before then I think is kind of irrelevant. It wasn’t in this world we’re in now.”

I mean, think about how much better things would be, financially speaking, if the impact of the coronavirus was apparent a few months earlier.  A few raises held in check, a chance to get clear sooner and start football season a little earlier, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

I keed, I keed… I think.

Wednesday morning buffet

It’s a virtual buffet, peeps, so don’t worry about exposure to the virus.

• The Pirate gets a commitment out of a four-star QB from Texas.
• Here’s the transcript from Smart’s conference call yesterday.
• The SEC cancelled its spring meeting in Destin.
• Athlon’s preseason top 25 list has Florida ahead of Georgia.
• Two Rivals pundits think Jamie Newman will be the real deal this season.
• “Using ESPN’s way-too-early preseason Top 25 as a guide, 247Sports national analysts Bud Elliott and Brad Crawford take a stab at which teams are overrated and underrated ahead of the 2020 season.”  Elliott thinks Georgia’s number four ranking is right; Brad Crawford continues to pump the brakes.
• NCAA President Mark Emmert and members of the association’s senior management are taking pay cuts.  I wonder if that will comfort the athletic directors out there irritated about the significant drop in funds being paid out by the NCAA.
• Spurrier, on Finebaum, about spring practice: “Most all coaches would tell you that the staffs that have been there for 2, 3, 4 years or more that it’s not that big a deal not having spring football,” Spurrier said. “Maybe if you had competition at quarterback or some other positions, it would be important, but preseason, if you can get a month in before you play, I certainly think everyone would be capable of playing — maybe not quite their best, but pretty close to playing the best they can. 

“… we are confident this matter will be appropriately resolved in court.”

So…

Jeff Long planned to fire Kansas Jayhawks football coach David Beaty and replace him with Les Miles early in his tenure as athletic director but needed the money to do it, newly released court documents show.

Long and others planned the firing during the fall of 2018, including Long directing an employee to start raising funds from donors to finance the coaching switch. In the midst of that planning, questions about Beaty took a turn toward a personal nature when Chris Freet, a top Kansas Athletics, Inc. official, quizzed a colleague about Beaty’s sex life, including whether the coach was involved in an extramarital affair.

Ultimately, Long fired Beaty in November 2018, initially promising the coach $3 million due to him under his contract. The payment was later withheld after Kansas Athletics reclassified Beaty’s firing as for cause after an investigation found one of Beaty’s non-coaching staffers engaged in impermissible coaching activities under NCAA rules.

Those details and others emerged in two sworn depositions from February that were unsealed this week in a lawsuit that Beaty filed against Kansas Athletics, seeking the $3 million he says is owed to him. The documents present a portrait into how Beaty was fired and other details about the inner workings of Kansas Athletics, an organization keen on walling off public scrutiny of its private dealings.

As you can guess, there’s nothing in what follows that any rational human being would consider flattering to Jeff Long, which hardly rates as a surprise, considering what a mediocre athletic director Long has been over the course of his career.  This futile exercise in denial might be my favorite bit:

Beaty’s lawyer Michael Lyons pressed Long repeatedly about video clips of game footage from the 2019 season, coached by Miles, showing Long numerous snippets of non-countable KU coaches interacting with players and coaches on the sideline…

Lyons showed Long a later clip after KU had scored a touchdown against Boston College. Miles and special teams analyst Devin Ducote both held up their index fingers, appearing to show players that KU was electing to kick the extra point.

When Lyons argued that signaling by an analyst would be a violation during a game, Long disputed that.

“Devin could be signaling, ‘We’re No. 1,’” Long said. “We just scored a touchdown against Boston College. I don’t know. I don’t see any tactical thing. I see a finger in the air.”

And, the inevitable punchline.

Long also revealed that after The Star ran its original story, he instructed compliance to look into the matter, saying, “it appeared from the news article there was a potential violation.”

Jeff Long being shitty and vindictive at his job doesn’t surprise me, but you know what does?  Why schools keep thinking going to court will eventually vindicate them.  (Remember, Beatty’s buyout is a relatively small $3 million.)  Pro tip: when you have morons running your athletic department, they’re generally not going to be made to look any smarter in a deposition.

“If there’s no season, we will be f*****.”

You can read the long version of what Brett McMurphy got out of a survey of athletic directors about the fate of the 2020 football season…

Or you can read the tl;dr version.

.@Brett_McMurphy " says ADs are considering all options for college football if the season is delayed due to COVID-19, including starting the season in October or even in January. “These universities and athletic programs desperately need revenue for college football.”

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) March 31, 2020

They may wait a long time to start.  They may not play until there’s a vaccine available for the players.  They may only offer us a truncated version of a season.  But offer up one, they will.  Because, in the end, money matters more than anything else in college athletics.