Worth every fucking penny

Todd Monken gets a pay bump.

Georgia offensive coordinator Todd Monken is now among the highest paid assistant coaches nationally after the school gave him a huge raise this offseason.

Monken will make $2 million annually after coming off a national championship season in his second season with the Bulldogs, according to information obtained Thursday by the Athens Banner-Herald in an open records request.

That’s a $750,000 raise from the $1.25 million Monken made last season.

The contract term wasn’t disclosed, but it they want to make it a lifetime deal, I wouldn’t argue.

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Cash for grades!

Georgia’s athletes are now getting that sweet Alston money.

Georgia already made its first Alston payment academic awards of $2,990 to all of its athletes (about 500) in March. It will be $5,980 per year.

— Marc Weiszer (@marcweiszer) May 26, 2022

That’s about $3 million a year that’ll never make it to the reserve fund.  Somewhere, Greg McGarity is wincing right now.

Smiles all around

Happy bunch.

The man!!! We are all better humans because of CMR https://t.co/fjeYfnXcgy

— Aaron Murray (@aaronmurray11) May 26, 2022

Made me smile, too.

You can’t keep a good offensive coordinator down.

Graham’s breakdown of the first explosive play of the national championship game is terrific.

This is the first video in a new series I’m doing on Todd Monken

UGA is down 3-0 in Q1 of the Natty. Pickens is on a snap limit and the UGA OL is struggling to protect. They need a big play. Here’s how Monken used 3 TE’s to help his OL and get Pickens a one-on-one matchup deep pic.twitter.com/B7dzkrfCsV

— Graham Coffey (@DawgOutWest) May 26, 2022

Remember, before this play, Georgia’s first two series went three and out, gaining a total of one yard.  Georgia had just picked up its first first down of the game immediately before Monken called this.  The o-line had been shaky, especially trying to handle Will Anderson, and because of that, Bennett seemed a bit gun shy.

On top of that, Pickens, the team’s best receiver, is still limited as he recovered from his injury.  (As Graham mentioned, he was only on the field for a total of 18 plays.)  And yet, look at what Monken dialed up — he got the Bama secondary just confused enough with all the eye candy to free up Pickens on the outside and also caused Anderson to hesitate just enough to give Bennett enough time to make a great throw downfield.  It’s a brilliant play design and his charges executed it perfectly.  It changed the tone of the game for the rest of the night.

I had hoped this was the kind of stuff we’d get from Monken when Kirby brought him on board.

Collecting the Collective

A little tidbit in this piece about Georgia’s Collective, the Classic City Collective, and its new fundraising initiative, The 21 Club:

It’s important to note that the Classic City Collective is not an arm of the university or its athletics program. It’s an independent LLC that receives no funding from UGA. However, Hibbs is allowed to communicate with Smart to ensure the collective is working in the program’s best interests. This has included Hibbs asking Smart which players may need some opportunities to earn some extra money.

“I’ve asked, ‘Have any of the players come to you and say they sent their money to their parents? Do they need extra money?’ I’d like to help those people out first,” Hibbs said. “Stetson (Bennett) and Brock (Bowers), those guys have agents working on their behalf. Not everybody has that. I want to help the players who need it.”

As for recruiting, the Classic City Collective has a central hub that the coaches are able to use to show recruits what kind of NIL deals players are getting. The coaches are allowed to tell recruits how much money current players have earned and what kind of opportunities are available. However, the coaches cannot say these opportunities are guaranteed to the recruits themselves or have them sign any contracts.

“We are 100 percent aligned. Kirby and I, Josh Brooks and the athletic department,” Hibbs said. “I worked there, they trust me. They understand I am not going to put them in a bad position. I’m not putting them behind the eight-ball. That has allowed us a lot more flexibility. That has allowed us to get further down this road quickly because of those relationships. I’m very transparent with everyone with what we’re doing.”

It seems to me there are two approaches that can be taken when it comes to collectives:  one, allow the boosters to raise as much NIL money as they can without the school imposing any controls; and, two, placing some restrictions on the collective by running it subject to input from the program, even if that means some dollars are sacrificed.  Georgia, like Alabama, appears to be squared up in the latter camp.

2022’s 100 best games?

Eh, my guess is that all Brandon Marcello’s list confirms is that the size of the media’s collective hard-on for the TAMU-Alabama game is going to be ginormous.  There’s a significant possibility the game never lives up to the hype.

As a fan looking at his list, what game would you put at the top?  For now, I sort of lean towards Notre Dame at Ohio State.  Aside from the fact they’ve only met six times previously, it’s the kind of opening weekend game that gives you a decent gauge on what to expect from both teams this season.

For sheer entertainment, though, my darkhorse candidate is ‘Bama traveling to Ole Miss.  The Tide’s attention is likely to be drawn to the aforementioned Texas A&M meeting, as well as their early trip to Texas, and you know the Laner would love to be the next assistant to take down a Saban team.

“We’re a professional sport,” he says, “and they are professional players.”

Junior reiterates something I’ve long thought was pretty obvious.

It’s totally changed recruiting. I joke all the time about it. Facilities and all that. Go ahead and build facilities and these great weight rooms and training rooms, but you ain’t gonna have any good players in them if you don’t have NIL money. I don’t care who the coach is or how hard you recruit, that is not going to win over money…

… I’ve in my head put it into three tiers. Here’s your 8–10 teams (in the top tier). This is no different than what’s been going on. How much money they put into recruiting, how much money they put into facilities. All of that. It’s just a different way, but it’s more important than all of it. It used to be O.K. Those guys have had the most in the assistant coaches pool so they could hire the best assistant coaches! Or they’ve spent more on facilities!

NIL compensation is going to end the facilities arms race.  What incoming recruit is going to be more impressed by a ten thousand dollar locker than by the same amount in cold, hard cash?  Facilities will impress on the margin (if the money is even, in other words), but how do you convince the boosters who’ve been funding those that their priority remains unchanged?

It’s a good thing Georgia just got its massive football facility upgrade finished.

“I think everything should be on the table.”

A head coach who barely survived a palace coup and an AD in the last year of his contract waiting to hear if his new president still wants him around are brainstorming about the big picture surrounding the SEC’s future?

Shit, Auburn, that’s adorable.

Not the NIL I was expecting

Well, this is quite the plot twist.

The spectrum of activity surrounding name, image and likeness deals for college athletes grew wider this week when a college football quarterback announced his endorsement of a political figure as part of an NIL agreement. Tennessee-Martin senior Dresser Winn shared his support for a local district attorney candidate, Colin Johnson, on social media and repped Johnson’s campaign apparel while at a football camp.

“Thank you to life-long supporter, and candidate for District Attorney General for the 27th Judicial District of Tennessee, Colin Johnson, for coming to my camp this weekend!” Winn wrote. “Elections are in August, so make sure you are registered to vote!”

Winn’s NIL-fueled political endorsement is regarded as a first in college sports’ new frontier allowing athletes to profit off their public personas.

At the intersection of pay to play and stick to sports…

You just haven’t earned it yet, baby.

Shot.

I’m going to give Brenton Cox the benefit of the doubt and assume he got hurt mid-chase of Stetson Bennett IV here. Because if that’s not the explanation for this particular piece of game tape… oh boy. pic.twitter.com/01wa5zG3Ph

— InAllKindsOfWeather.com (@AllKindsWeather) November 2, 2021

Chaser.

After starting his career at Georgia, outside linebacker Brenton Cox transferred to Florida before the 2019 season. While it’s been a bit since he hit the field wearing red and black, Cox made it clear Wednesday the Bulldogs aren’t far from his mind.

Cox posted an Instagram story on Wednesday referencing Georgia and the annual matchup between the Bulldogs and Gators. Cox shared a photo of scoreboard at TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville with the caption, “We go [sic] kill them dawgs Animal cruelty.”

Of all the people in the world to be talking shit…