“The only thing people care about is cash. That’s it. Tradition and other stuff, it’s bulls—.”

The Athletic does a Q&A with five anonymous agents ($$) and this quote, about Mel Tucker’s stunning contract, is the one that gets me:

Agent 2: Mel’s got a great situation. I can go 8-4 every three years and not worry about getting fired? That’s the greatest f——- job in the world. It’s really becoming irresponsible. I get that people say agents are the reason for this, but the fact administrators would do this shows how foolish they are. They’re spending TV money they don’t even have.

It’s both a sign of the general lack of accountability ADs have and the savviness of agents who recognize that’s something to take advantage of.

What I’m curious about is whether player compensation eventually impacts that, particularly if the compensation is coming from the school.  Right now, that’s not the reality, but it’s not hard to see it going there in the next decade.  And what then?  There’s only so much moolah to go around.

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Jere Morehead’s guardrails

Jere Morehead haz a concern.

As a member of the NCAA Division I Board of Governors and Board of Directors, Georgia president Jere Morehead has dealt directly with the topic of name, image and likeness. The conversation around NIL has not gone away over the offseason, and Morehead made it clear Thursday he’d like more changes to be made…

“It was intended to reward student-athletes for their name, image and likeness, as student-athletes enrolled at college institutions. It’s clearly become something different than what it was intended,” Morehead said. “I believe we’ve got to have some very clear rules that do not lead to the professionalism of college athletics. And you probably saw the action that the Division I Board of Directors took a few weeks ago at the NCAA, that was a strong statement by the board that we want the enforcement staff to enforce the rules that exist related to recruitment. And we don’t expect that NIL would be used as a recruitment device.

“I believe in the long term that we’re going to have to have a more formalized process whether that comes from Congress, or can come from the actions of the NCAA. We clearly need a strong framework that governs the conduct that every institution engages in when it comes to NIL. How we get there, and when we get there, is an open question. But right now I hope the enforcement staff feels like they’ve been given a green light by the Division I Board of Directors to investigate some of the cases that have gained a lot of national attention.”

What a false equivalency there.  The NCAA (of which Morehead himself is a figure of some influence) has the desire to do something, but apparently lacks the power, while Congress has the power but lacks the desire (at least in the sense of doing what the NCAA would like for it to do).  Quite the conundrum!  Just imagine the constructive role somebody like Morehead might have played had he made those comments a decade ago, had the desire and the power both co-existed.

While everyone’s at it, Jere thinks something needs to be done about the transfer portal, too.

“I think some work’s got to be done with the transfer portal. We’ve got, again, a great leader, co-chair of our Division I transformation committee, Greg Sankey, along with Julie Cromer, the athletic director at Ohio University. They’re leading our Division I transformation committee every Tuesday afternoon through important discussion of all these issues. And I’m hopeful that we can ultimately come up with a series of rules that will effectively govern us in a collegiate model.”

Give him credit — at least he’s not giving the “doing it for the kids” faux justification any lip service.  Of course, if the NCAA isn’t doing it for the kids, that could open up its own can of worms.  Sigh.  It’s not easy being a concerned school president these days.

Tiptoeing into the new year

With the NFL expansion of its regular season schedule, this is a problem that’s only going to get more awkward for college football.

The Sugar Bowl has been moved off its usual primetime spot to noon ET on Dec. 31 to avoid a conflict with a Monday night NFL game.

… With Jan. 1, 2023, falling on Sunday, the games usually played on New Year’s Day were moved to Jan. 2, when the national holiday is observed. The move to Monday is common in college football to avoid conflicting with the NFL.

But ESPN found itself with a conflict that day: The NFL has scheduled the final Monday regular-season game for that night, which forced a relocation by the New Orleans-based Sugar Bowl on the schedule.  [Emphasis added.]

By the way, the CFP semifinals will be played on December 31, which should guarantee the Sugar Bowl minuscule ratings, relatively speaking.  But Mickey will be appeased, by Gawd.

No beer for you!

At least not in the Sanford Stadium cheap seats:

Georgia football fans that don’t sit in premium seats will have to wait at least another season if they want to buy a beer in Sanford Stadium while watching the Bulldogs.

There will be no public alcohol sales in 2022 for Georgia home games, athletic director Josh Brooks said Thursday…

“There’s a lot of elements into it, whether it’s the length of the game and the time, or the logistics of just doing it and preparing it,” Brooks said. “Look, we’re still learning as we grow, so we started with smaller venues, to where we can crawl, walk, run, so now we’re still monitoring the progress we made for the events at Stegeman, Foley and Turner, and we’re just now getting that data in and really analyzing, so it make take some time for us to continue to see how that evolves, but there’s no thought on that now, it’s not our focus.”

Sounds pretty definitive.  And not just for another season, either.

At Georgia Tech, a different kind of NIL problem

This is pretty pathetic sounding.

Georgia Tech athletics director Todd Stansbury won’t dissuade any Yellow Jackets supporters from making a financial contribution to the “Swarm the ATL” collective or any other similar outfit. But he also wants to encourage supporters to help keep the athletic department engine running, too.

“At the end of the day, we’ve still got to pay for the scholarships and all the things we need to provide our student-athletes as well as our teams,” Stansbury said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “So, obviously, I want (donors) to support student-athletes how they want to and engage them in the appropriate ways, but I do not want that at the expense of their support of the core program, which is essentially providing scholarships and now, educational expenses, cost of attendance and all the other things that we do to make sure that our student-athletes are taken care of.”

Tech’s AD is concerned about competing with Tech’s players and recruits over a limited pool of donor dollars.  You can see why:

In the 2021 fiscal year (July 2020-June 2021), Tech received $7.7 million in outside contributions, part of the $86.2 million that the department generated in revenues, which just covered the $86 million in expenses, according to Tech’s financial report to the NCAA. Tech’s expenses likely will continue to climb in coming years.

What a sales pitch — “Recruits, do you want to starve your athletic program’s funding by accessing donor support directly?  At Georgia Tech, you can do that!”

Mark your calendars

Suddenly, we’ve got scheduled times for five games on Georgia’s 2022 schedule.

The times are set! 📺📅#GoDawgs pic.twitter.com/Rcf5yZu1lz

— Georgia Football (@GeorgiaFootball) May 26, 2022

A noon September game in Columbia, SC is my idea of what Hell must feel like.  Needless to say, I’ll be watching that one from Section HD at home.

More on the Monken contract

Two things worth mentioning in the aftermath, according to Chip Towers:

The Bulldogs’ offensive coordinator the two past seasons will make $2 million next season, according to information released by UGA on Thursday afternoon in response to an open-records request for recent salary actions. Though Georgia released the information only Thursday, the school lists the effective date of Monken’s new salary as Jan. 15 of this year.

Ah, the power of open records requests.  The timing of the salary agreement is interesting, as you may recall that LSU was sniffing around then to see if Monken could be coaxed into changing programs.

UGA said it did not have a new contract on file for Monken. However, a person with knowledge of the negotiations confirmed that Monken’s new deal is a fresh, three-year agreement with annual salary escalators. The means it will begin anew in 2022 and extend through the 2024 season.

Good news, there.

As a side note, Towers also points out that the three assistant coaches who were paid more than $2 million/year last season are all now head coaches, which may make Monken college football’s highest paid assistant by default.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.