Speaking of Christmas, I meant to post this earlier, but what the hell…
It’s the holiday season and I ought to update the blog’s Gift Guide. So, if y’all would take to the comments section and let me know if you’ve come across any cool stuff that should make a GTP reader’s holiday gift list, I would appreciate it, and so would your fellow readers. I’ll amend the GG accordingly.
Thanks!
Filed under GTP Stuff
Please, please, please, football gods. I’m begging you. Don’t tease me with this.
Between Freeze and Petrino, I may succumb to sensory overload. It’ll be worth it.
Filed under Fall and Rise of Bobby Petrino, SEC Football
Why am I not surprised?
At least Clay didn’t put any money on it.
Filed under It's Just Bidness, Recruiting
I can imagine Greg McGarity gritting his teeth as he reads this.
Anyone else observing the binge investing into college football coaching and support staffs may label it excessive.
To Georgia athletics director Josh Brooks, whose program sits No. 1 in the College Football Playoff, it’s called attention to detail.
“There’s so much that goes on that we’ve never lived through,” Brooks told USA TODAY Sportswhile reflecting upon the logistical challenges that preceded the Bulldogs winning the national title last season in a pressurized playoff system equivalent to back-to-back title games.
“Coaches want to maximize every opportunity they have, so when you think about preparation for a contest – whether you’re talking about travel, nutrition, weightlifting, sleep, you want to make sure everything is maximized at 100%. You don’t want to go into a contest thinking, ‘Man, if we just had better nutrition … .’ You can’t risk not having your team prepared. Everything is important.”
Not a word in there about the reserve fund. Josh, didn’t you learn anything from the master?
… The Bulldogs, beyond paying head coach Kirby Smart $10.25 million this season, are paying their 10 assistant coaches a combined $8.4 million (not including $1.8 million spent in connection with buyouts new hires owed their previous employers) and are devoting a separate $4.8 million to support staffers who provide depth and counsel for Smart.
This newly robust market has led Georgia to count three chefs and six “quality control coordinators” among its support staff, including former Bulldogs quarterback Mike Bobo, who has been Colorado State’s head coach and now is making $147,925. Mike Cavan, the former head coach at Valdosta State, East Tennessee and SMU, now earns $202,210 while wearing the less-pressurized hat of director of football administration.
Sounds like a lot, but the crazier thing is that Florida is well past that now. The Gators spent $6.2 million on their 68-member support staff. All that for a 6-6 record. Which brings me to this:
Makes you wish you could see Spurrier going up against Kirby, doesn’t it?
Filed under Gators, Gators..., Georgia Football, It's Just Bidness
I’m not posting this in the vain hope that there’s still a point to railing against the 12-team CFP, because there isn’t.
If that format was in place right now, the top two seeds would be the same as they are with the four-team model: Georgia and Michigan. But because of the upsets in the Big 12 and Pac-12 championship games, the third and fourth seeds would become Clemson and Utah.
If you’ve watched the season play out, that sounds really messed up. And when you look at how the rest of the bracket fills out because of it, you’ll see that the wrong teams are being rewarded.
For top-seeded Georgia, there’s no issue. They beat Tennessee easily with Hendon Hooker. They’d have little concern about facing the Vols without him in a quarterfinal… or Kansas State for that matter. And projecting to the semifinal round, whether it’s Utah, TCU or Tulane, that’s an easier draw than what the Dawgs have in real life this year against Ohio State.
But for second-seeded Michigan, this doesn’t work out as well. Sure, there’s a possibility that USC could upset Alabama (first-round games are on the home fields of the higher seeds, so that would be played in Tuscaloosa). But if Bama prevails, now the Wolverines have to open against the committee’s fifth-best team in a quarterfinal matchup – and not at home in Ann Arbor in the cold but rather at a bowl site, likely one that’s closer to Alabama’s campus than Michigan’s. That’s the reward for an unbeaten season that was worthy of consideration for the No. 1 seed?
The team that actually gets the big break is Ohio State. The Buckeyes would get to host Penn State, a team they’d already beaten on the road, and then draw Clemson on a neutral field. And while the Tigers’ QB change might make them better than they looked for most of the regular season, we’re still talking about OSU being able to reach a semifinal from the 6 slot by beating two lower-ranked teams.
And while you could argue that, being the fourth-ranked team (although sixth-seeded) should allow them such a path to a semifinal, here’s the other advantage for the Buckeyes. By not being the 4 seed, they’re now on the opposite side of the bracket from Georgia instead of having to face the Bulldogs in a semifinal.
So, what is Michigan’s reward for having gone into Columbus and won in late November and then following it up with the Big Ten championship? It’s difficult to see how that helped their national championship hopes in this future playoff model.
Unfortunately, when you give the 3 and 4 seeds to teams that clearly aren’t worthy of being in those spots on the bracket, the trickle-down effect is that the top two seeds will sometimes face a better opponent in a quarterfinal than they will in a semifinal. And while that does increase the chances of an “upset” that would give this expanded football playoff more of a basketball tournament feel, let’s be honest: in football, that’s rarely going to be a “Cinderella.”
Nah, I’m leaving this as a marker, so that a few years down the road when this becomes a reality that everyone and their brother questions and objects to, leading to the eventual screaming for another round of change, I can smile and say I told you so.
Naturally, I except from this Mickey, Fox and the P5 commissioners, who will all see this garbage as a feature, not a bug.
*********************************************************************
UPDATE: Oh, and look at what else playoff expansion begets.
The remaining football members of the Atlantic Sun and WAC have agreed to align to form the foundation of a 10-member football-only conference, sources told ESPN, with the intention of becoming the 11th FBS conference.
Sources said the founding documents for the league state the group intends to move “from what is currently known as FCS football to what is currently known as FBS football at the earliest practicable date.”
Shades of college basketball. That move should payoff handsomely when the CFP expands to 20 teams.
Filed under BCS/Playoffs
I’ve come across a couple of posts analyzing the Georgia defense from an Ohio State perspective, this one (“How Ohio State can attack Georgia’s defense in the Peach Bowl”) ($$) in The Athletic, and this one (“Film Study: Georgia’s Defense…”) in Eleven Warriors. Both are worth a read, if only to get an outsider’s perspective, but both are a little predictable, as well.
More to the point, both share an understandable emphasis on the second half of the SECCG, and if you’re someone looking in from Columbus, why not? It was the most vulnerable stretch of pass defense Georgia displayed all season and if there’s something the Buckeyes do well, it’s throw the ball. At second nationally in passer rating, they’re certainly better at it than LSU.
But (and there’s usually a but in these circumstances) neither piece notes that a lot of that damage came after Georgia had built better than a three-touchdown lead in the game and were never threatened after the Tigers went into throw it mode.
There’s one other thing neither article brings up, and that’s how Georgia’s pass defense fared against the one team with a better passer rating than Ohio State. Now, as the investment world will tell you, past results are no guarantee of future performance, but I will say that the way Georgia handled Tennessee’s passing attack gives me some confidence that, given almost a month to prepare for Ohio State, Smart and his defensive staff will come up with some answers.
That being said, there is a scenario lurking out there that does give me some concern, although Ryan Day’s conservative approach to game management (go back and look at the Michigan game to see what I mean) makes it unlikely. For the sake of argument, what if Day comes in with two working assumptions, that OSU can’t run on Georgia’s defense (who has this season?) and that Georgia puts up lots of points in big games, and decides to take LSU’s second-half desperation approach on offense and play that way the entire game, stress testing Georgia’s pass defense for sixty minutes? I don’t know if it would work, but, like I said, he’s got better horses to work with than Brian Kelly did. It would sure make me nervous.
Filed under Big Ten Football, Georgia Football, Strategery And Mechanics
It’s not an entirely silly question.
Biggest remaining question: Who’s going to get a quarterback? Because there are quite a few teams with a need at the position. Florida just lost Anthony Richardson to the NFL. Stetson Bennett is finally leaving Georgia. Same for Hendon Hooker at Tennessee, Will Levis at Kentucky and Bryce Young at Alabama. Joe Milton III seems like he’ll get a long look to replace Hooker in Knoxville, but everywhere else feels wide open for competition. At Alabama in particular, dual-threat Jalen Milroe didn’t take the bull by the horns when Young was injured. While there are a few good young prospects waiting in the wings — freshman Ty Simpson and commits Dylan Lonergan and Eli Holstein — Nick Saban might not have the patience to develop a quarterback when a readymade product is available in the portal.
Especially in the East — and that paragraph doesn’t even mention the possibility of Rattler moving on from South Carolina.
In any event, there will be a lot of new faces at the position next season, and many of them will be new arrivals.
Filed under SEC Football, Transfers Are For Coaches.
He’s been the commissioner of the Big 12 for less than half a year, but I guess that was enough time for Brett Yormark to get his lord and master of college football credentials in order.
Yeah, it’s a good thing nobody in college football thinks like that.
Oy. These people.
Filed under Big 12 Football
Well, Stetson Bennett may not win the Heisman, but he’s still The Athletic’s College Football Person of the Year ($$).
… A story that nobody predicted — walk-on leads his home-state program to its first national championship in 41 years — had come true. Screenplay and book offers surely would follow. The legacy of Stetson Bennett was forever secure, and now he could ride off as one of the greatest stories in college football history.
There was just one hang-up: Denise Bennett’s oldest son, the kid who loves a good book, wasn’t done writing his own story.
Bennett is back under center for top-ranked Georgia this season, leading the Bulldogs to a 13-0 record, an SEC championship and the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff. He’s also one of four finalists for the Heisman Trophy, to be awarded Saturday. For his unlikely rise to a national champion quarterback and his follow-up season that has Georgia two wins away from back-to-back titles, Bennett is The Athletic’s College Football Person of the Year for 2022.
Seth’s done a great job with this story, so if you have a subscription, dig in.
Filed under Georgia Football, Media Punditry/Foibles
Is it petty of me to insist he should have won it last year, too?
Anyway, congrats Mr. Bowers!
Filed under Georgia Football
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