“’Georgia fatigue’ is someone else’s problem”

Groo nails exactly how I feel with this.

Earlier this summer Ari Wasserman of The Athletic wrote, “But it’s June and it’s fun to dream that this sport isn’t predetermined and boring. Maybe Georgia or Alabama or Ohio State won’t win it all.” I don’t mean to pick on Wasserman who does good work and had a bigger point to make in the piece. It’s amazing though that two titles after a 40-year drought suddenly makes another Georgia title run “predetermined and boring.”

We went from wondering after 2020 whether Georgia and Kirby Smart could get over the hump to being the boring default so quickly that it makes one’s head spin. Don’t we get to enjoy this a little longer than two years?

It seems like there’s so little for me to enjoy about college football this offseason, so why diminish the one unaltered joy I still appreciate?  Take that fatigue somewhere else, aight?

Not for love or money… well, maybe for money

How it started ($$).

With a wave of then-commissioner Jim Delany’s wand, Rutgers, the New Jersey school that famously won college football’s first game in 1869, magically escaped the crumbling Big East for the sport’s most lucrative conference…

“Rutgers had a good reputation, although they hadn’t lived in the big leagues,” Delany says. “In one moment, they thought they were Penn State. In another moment, they thought they were Bucknell. So they hadn’t made the investment.

“I consider it a long-term play, but I don’t feel like I need to defend it. … I knew that it would be a big climb to begin with.”

How it’s going.

Rutgers’ time in the Big Ten has been a competitive and financial nightmare, compounded by a few salacious scandals. Entering its 10th season in the conference, the football team has gone 13-66 in league play. Meanwhile, despite astronomical increases in shared Big Ten revenue, the athletic department has racked up more than $250 million in debt, according to financial documents obtained by The Athletic and first reported by NorthJersey.com.

Eh, what does Big Jim care?  He got his cable numbers for the Big Ten Network.  Fine work, everyone.

It just rolls off the tongue.

Georgia Tech football — built like a Hyundai.

The Georgia Board of Regents approved a motion Tuesday to rename Georgia Tech’s football field to Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field.

Tech and Hyundai have agreed to a $55 million deal over 20 years. Beyond the naming-rights deal, Tech will receive another $15 million-plus for other sponsorship arrangements with Hyundai, according to a person familiar with the situation.

“The dollar and cents that go with this? This is transformative for our athletics department,” Tech athletic director J Batt said Tuesday. “The revenue that will be generated from this field naming, and this broader partnership across a lot of our different facilities, will allow us to provide needed resources for coaches, student-athletes, operations and it will go straight to our bottom line and make a big difference for our athletic department at, obviously, a time and place where we need those resources to continue to be competitive, but also provide world-class experiences for our student-athletes.”

Yes, yes, even at Georgia Tech, it’s all about the dollars and cents.  I guess now they can afford all the buyouts from the bad coaching contracts they negotiated.

And I still think Mark Richt should sue for trademark infringement.  The man owns that joint.

And we’ll have fun, fun, fun

What college football fan couldn’t use more of this in their life?

The Fun Index is a metric that was developed for this newsletter last season (If you want to read more about it: click here). Basically the idea behind it is to take different metrics that I find exciting (explosive offense, elite QB play, havoc creating defenses etc.) and mush them together into an index. While the fun index has mainly been used in a descriptive manner (using past performance to see who has been fun that season), we are going to dip a little into the predictive world by attempting to predict which teams will be the most fun in 2023.

Exciting is good.  Fun is good.  Who says advanced stats can’t be used to advance mankind?

Even better, if you’re a Georgia fan, is that you’re in for a boatload of fun this season.

As the author puts it, “Coming off of back to back national titles, yeah it is a pretty fun time to be a Georgia Bulldog.”  Buckle up!

The shoe just dropped.

Sure enough.

Greg Sankey tells @finebaum that the CFP should re-examine the expanded Playoff due to realignment. Noted that we don’t know how many FBS conferences there will be in 30-60 days. Still supports a 12-team bracket , but wants to look at the designated spots vs. at-large breakdown.

— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) August 8, 2023

That’s gonna be fun.  Moar popcorn, please!

Can’t buy a break.

Damn it, Kendall.

Reports coming out of the first week of Georgia fall camp indicate that running back Kendall Milton suffered some sort of a hamstring injury, and while the severity of it is still uncertain, it’s concerning nonetheless.

No shit.  I feel for the kid.  For some reason, he can’t stay healthy.  Let’s just hope this doesn’t rise above concerning and that he’s ready for the regular season sooner rather than later.