Lessons from the pandemic

PM RT: Total revenue by conference for FY21, when ACC and SEC played the most football games and Pac-12 the least:
SEC: $833 M (+$105M vs. FY20)
B1G: $679.8 M (-$89M)
ACC: $578.3M (+82M)
Big 12: $356M (-$53M)
Pac-12: $343.5M (-$190M) https://t.co/ZoAiEZXG53

— Steve Berkowitz (@ByBerkowitz) May 21, 2022

Next time, I can think of a few conferences that will be solemnly swearing not cancelling games is the new “do it for the kids” take.

[Ed. note:  Don’t make me shut down the comments thread, please.]

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Updated SP+ projections for 2022

Here’s Bill C.’s latest:

It’s the Big Three and everybody else.

Man, SP+ sure loves the Vols.  (And Mississippi State.)  And, with nine teams in the top 25, the SEC.

You know one other thing SP+ loves?  Georgia’s offense, which is essentially tied with Alabama’s.  That’s what happens when you lose Metchie and Williams, I suppose.

One significant caveat that Connelly brings up at the end of his piece, in talking about the rankings for LSU (36th) and USC (53rd):

Once we have dealt with a couple of years of evidence in how teams loading up on transfers change their ratings from year to year, I will get a pretty good idea of how to account for this in the projections. This is a very new phenomenon, however, and I don’t want to overreact in how I account for this, so for now we’re just going to have a couple of weird outliers.

Time to start wandering in the desert again, boys.

Damn, no slack is being given to Georgia in certain quarters.

What’s next for Georgia? Outside of the NFL Draft weekend, when Georgia broke the modern record with 15 players selected across the seven rounds, things have been pretty quiet for the reigning champions. Replacing five first-round picks on defense would be a massive issue for most programs, but at Georgia — thanks to the way Kirby Smart and his staff have recruited — there is another wave ready to step in and play right away. But having that talent does not guarantee elite results, as evidenced by all of those frustrating years between titles for talent-rich Georgia teams that came up just short. No program in the country looks more prepared to be the “next Alabama,” but to fully take on that role, you need to be winning more often than once every 40 years.

So, what’s the acceptable time frame for validation?  One year?  Five years?  Thirty-nine years?

“Nah, he quit after UGA…”

Hoo-wee, this is amusing:

Confirms what we all thought about Mullen pic.twitter.com/cO274Dd7mk

— AR15 HEISMAN🐊 (@LRYALL0140) May 22, 2022

“… what we all thought about Mullen”?  After he was fired, maybe.  Before the start of the ’21 season, he was a top-five coach in the game according to the Gator faithful.

Musical palate cleanser, took y’all long enough edition

As much as I love the Rolling Stones, I’ll be the first to admit there’s a fair amount of drek in their catalogue.  For example, take Love You Live, recorded on tour in 1975-6 and released in 1977 between Black and Blue and Some Girls.  From its Warhol cover that Jagger drew on (!), to the heavy use of overdubbing and its uninspired song selection, it reeked of being a toss-off.

Except for side three (I bought it as a 2-LP record).  Side three was taken from performances at Toronto’s El Mocambo Club in March 1977.  The club was a 300-seat venue and the band sounded on top of their game there playing classic blues and R&B covers.  It was everything that the other three sides weren’t and all I could think listening to it for the first time was “why didn’t they just release a Live at the El Mocambo album?”.

Forty-five years later, they finally did.

Live At The El Mocambo marks the first official appearance of the group’s two famous secret concerts at the 300-capacity Toronto club in March 1977.

As the Stones took to the stage of the “El Mo,” a fixture of the Toronto music scene since the 1940s, punk and disco were both rearing into full view, supposedly ready to see off a band who had already been at the top of their game for 15 years. Over two nights, in an intimate space in one of their favorite cities, they were about to make that prognosis look foolish indeed.

The gigs became reality after the El Mocambo was identified as the potential home for a secret booking. A radio contest was organized in which the prize was tickets to see Canadian rock heroes April Wine, supported by an unknown band called the Cockroaches.

Guess who they turned out to be…

On the nights, naturally, April Wine were themselves the opening act, and so it was that the Stones rolled back the years to the exhilarating club incarnation of their early years.

Against all the odds, the band produced two nights of exhilarating music that they still talk about in Toronto, and in Rolling Stones legend, to this day.

Nice story, but why wait so long?  Especially when Live At The El Mocambo turns out to be one of the best live recordings, not just in the Stones body of work, I’ve ever heard.  From the way Watts and Wyman are in sync throughout, through the guitar work from Keef and Ron Wood to the clarity of the mix (listen to the keyboard work and the vocals), it’s simply stunning.  Plus, it’s Small Venue Stones — no horns, no back up singers, just five guys doing their collective thing as The Best Rock ‘n’ Roll Band in the World.  It’s flawless.

“Honky Tonk Women” is the opener.  The groove is just filthy.

There are plenty of familiar tunes (it’s a double CD with 23 songs) but the added bonus here, if you’re a Stones geek like me, is that the set draws in a bunch of tunes from Black and Blue that you’ll never hear on another live album of theirs.  Here’s one:

Shit, that’s good.  Here’s the complete set list:

Trust me, you don’t want to miss this.  I can’t imagine there’s much more buried treasure in the Stones back catalogue left to unearth and with Charlie’s passing, it’s not likely there’ll be anything new, either.