Hell, do I really need to spell it out for you?
Daily Archives: June 16, 2020
“The cavalry is coming.”
Holy shit ($$).
The Athletic recently asked Navigate, a data-driven consulting firm, to provide estimates for the next round of Power 5 TV deals to get a better sense of the revenue increases that might be forthcoming…
P5 coaches and athletic administrators aren’t going to be missing any meals in the next decade, that’s for sure. For that kind of money, they’ll do whatever Mickey wants ’em to do.
Filed under College Football, It's Just Bidness
Lay your money down.
If you had to guess which SEC team did best in postseason play covering the spread since 2012, which program would you pick?
I don’t know if that says more about the Dawgs, or about bettors’ expectations, but in any event, I didn’t guess Georgia.
One other betting comment of note from the linked piece:
Bronco Mendenhall won a pair of Mountain West titles and the ACC Coastal division last fall by hitching his wagon to good quarterbacks. When he doesn’t have a difference-maker as his QB1, his team’s ceilings come way down. Which brings us to Virginia’s opener against UGA in Atlanta. Mississippi State transfer Keytaon Thompson, a former Gatorade state player of the year in Louisiana, might ultimately be the man for UVA, but he’ll be embroiled in a quarterback battle throughout August.
Offensive coordinator Robert Anae went out of his way to avoid naming a starter when asked in April, and with zero reps since then, it’s hard to feel confident going up against a consensus top-5 defense in Georgia. Toss in UGA’s hiring of Todd Monken, a man who once turned Brandon Weeden into a first-round NFL draft choice, and I think this has the making of a Red and Black rout. The line is currently sitting at 17/17.5 and I would be comfortable playing this one up to 20.5 as the Dawgs look to make a statement 2 weeks ahead of their colossal crossover matchup with Alabama in T-Town.
That no spring practice stuff cuts both ways, sometimes.
Your Daily Gator imagines.
“They’re still a step behind Georgia in recruiting,” one anonymous coach told Athlon Sports. “Dan Mullen is maybe the best project guy in recruiting. He can get more out of a three-star on offense than maybe anyone in the nation. But that’s not Florida. You have to win the big battles for the five-stars and flip them into NFL players.”
Wait… does that mean there’s still a gap? Apparently, there’s at least one place the Gator faithful aren’t seeing shrinkage.
This is something that has been emphasized a great deal by Gator fans on Alligator Alley, our message board at Swamp247. It’s not that Florida recruits badly, the general consensus is that they don’t recruit at a high enough level in terms of the blue chip prospects this particular coach is talking about to get to the goals that they want to get to as a team.
In Mullen’s first three years the Gators finished 14th in 2018 (actually pretty good for a transition class), 9th in 2019, and 9th in 2020 in the 247Sports Composite Team rankings. Jim McElwain did worse, but he was gone in three years. Muschamp was better 2011 (11), 2012 (3), 2013 (3), and 2014 (9). Those are the classes that helped McElwain reach two SEC Championship Games.
So the Gators weren’t exactly bathing in high blue chip talent when Mullen arrived. He’s done a good job with the Transfer Portal in bringing in some elite talent that has stepped on the field and done some big things. But fans and opposing coaches believe they need to do better.
You know, it’s not as if the Portal Master™ is the only coach who’s done a good job with the transfer portal (it’s only capitalized when they transfer to Florida). Not only is Smart whipping Mullen’s arse on the recruiting trail; he’s also done a hella job replenishing Georgia’s quarterback room. But success from the portal is just about filling in the gaps. Recruiting is where you build your talent base to win titles. So what’s Dan’s plan?
As the coach said, he can find and coach up the three-stars as well or better than anyone… just imagine if they start getting a fair share of the five-stars.
Who knows? But at least a Gator can dream, can’t he?
Filed under Gators, Gators...
Market power
It’s the SEC, so, even in the face of a pandemic, those season tickets just mean more.
An Alabama spokesperson told AL.com that 90 percent of TIDE PRIDE ticket holders renewed their seats for the 2020 season. There were approximately 16,000 TIDE PRIDE account holders in 2018 and 2019, according to the school. It doesn’t include season tickets sold to faculty/staff, lettermen, 17,000 for students and a few thousand allotted to opposing fans in the 101,821-seat stadium.
Those numbers are in line with other Power 5 schools who have reported season ticket numbers for the upcoming season. Georgia had 95 percent of its season ticket holders renew their seats, The Athens Banner-Herald reported in mid-April. Arkansas was at 91 percent of 34,000 season ticket holders from last year, according to the Democrat-Gazette.
We just can’t quit you, college football. We don’t think we can afford to.
AL.com spoke with a number of Alabama season ticket holders who made the decision to renew for 2020 in spite of the uncertainty. The most common reason for re-upping? They didn’t want to lose their seat at the table.
“I don’t want to get on the waitlist again,” said Taylor, who sits in upper deck Section BB. “It wasn’t a difficult decision for me. Even if they didn’t have full capacity this year, it wasn’t a decision.”
Back in March, Alabama AD Greg Byrne told AL.com the school still has a waiting list for those hoping to buy season tickets.
Maggie Browning is well aware. The Alabaster resident sits in the top tier, Section QQ in season tickets she’s held since 1992.
“I don’t want to fall off the list, you know?” she said. “I’m ready to go whenever they start playing the games, I’ll be there.”
This is what makes athletic directors believe they’re marketing geniuses. They’re geniuses in the same way a heroin dealer is.
Filed under It's Just Bidness, SEC Football
T-shirtgate
I touched on it briefly in yesterday’s comments, but thought I’d flesh it out with a post today. What’s interesting about what happened yesterday between Oklahoma State’s head coach and its star running back isn’t the politics. It’s that Gundy, who’s got a history of making the kind of comments that can only come from a guy who feels untouchable in his job…
Gundy, as it turns out, has never been shy about telling us who he is. He’s bullied reporters in public, dismissed criticism of his coaching from fans online as “people sitting home drawing an unemployment check,” called players who transfer “snowflakes” and, more recently, wanted players to come back to campus in May amid the COVID-19 pandemic because the school needed to “run money through the state of Oklahoma.”
… suddenly has come face to face with a change in the wind, that players are feeling a sense of power. Consider that yesterday wasn’t Gundy’s first show of support for OAN.
In the middle of that rant in April, Gundy touted his viewership of OAN, which is known as a favorite news outlet of President Trump and peddler of absurd conspiracy theories.
Gundy said he had gravitated toward OAN because he “wasn’t happy with the way the mainstream media” has handled the coronavirus story and that OAN was “so refreshing” because “there’s no left, there’s no right, they just reported the news.”
Notably, at the time Gundy expressed those thoughts, he got no pushback from his players and only mild criticism from the school — not about OAN, but about his take that everybody needed to be back at work by May so the program could get back to making money. Not so yesterday, as Hubbard’s tweet ignited a firestorm of support for the player and criticism of the coach from a variety of sources.
Gundy felt it, too, as this joint message from him and Hubbard appeared within hours.
Gundy: “… I realized it’s a very sensitive issue with what’s going on in today’s society. … I’m looking forward to making some changes, that starts at the top with me, and we’ve got good days ahead.”
You can question the sincerity (he just now realized it?), but you can’t question the awareness. And if you’re focusing on the t-shirt instead of the reaction, you are missing the big picture, as David Hale explained.
Gundy has done well as a football coach at a place where it’s hard to do well.
Oklahoma State has put up with plenty from Gundy during his 15-year tenure, mostly because he wins at a place where that isn’t terribly easy. His record is 129–64, with six seasons of 10 or more wins.
That’s how you start feeling untouchable, and for the most part, that’s how Gundy has been treated. It’s a different world now, though. We’ll see how easily he adapts. And if he doesn’t feel he needs to do more than offer a few sympathetic words, they’ll let him know about that on the recruiting trail.
One other question remaining is how many others out there are like Gundy?
************************************************************************
UPDATE:
Two observations:
- It’s a different world now.
- Would Gundy have done this had Hubbard not tweeted?
Filed under Big 12 Football, General Idiocy
“… Kyle better work because Emory is trying to get his job.”
He’s not ruling out Emory Jones taking the quarterback spot from Kyle Trask. Florida head coach Dan Mullen expects a competition between the two this season and while everyone expects Trask to be the guy, Mullen insists that Jones will see the field a great deal.
I’m not ruling out that I’m going to win the lottery. We’ll see how that works out.
Filed under Blowing Smoke, Gators, Gators...
“Newman brings a lot of talent to the table.”
Gawd bless the folks at PFF. They really love Georgia’s new quarterback.
I hope they get to take a victory lap at season’s end.
Filed under Georgia Football, Stats Geek!
Get The Picture 
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