He doesn’t care for Auburn.

Can’t say I’m a Danny Sheridan fan, but this had me chuckling.

In December, Malzahn and Auburn agreed to a seven-year, $49 million extension. Malzahn’s previous contract at Auburn was for $4.725 million annually through 2020.

“It’s mediocrity at Auburn over the last four years,” Sheridan said. “It looks like they are going to lose three or four more games this year.

“The only person who would give a coach like that, with a mediocre record, is a president. A president has no business giving a contract to him. His agent, Jimmy Sexton, should be in the hall of fame for that contract.

“No president that I know of should ever make that decision because it isn’t his territory. Only a neophyte, an ignorant – ignorant being ignorant of the facts – president would make a deal like that. He isn’t stupid, just ignorant of athletics. He should be able to approve everything, but not make the deal.

Hos.

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The greatest trick Jimmy Sexton ever played…

Your semi-regular reminder: Auburn is 22-21 vs P5 opponents since Kick Six.

Florida, which is on its third coach since then, is 21-21.

— A David Hale joint (@DavidHaleESPN) September 16, 2018

… was convincing Auburn it needed to give Gus a 7-year, $49 million contract extension.

Convoluted botany

Remember, peeps, if you’re a branch of the Saban coaching tree, it likely means you’re also populating the Jimmy Sexton tree.

Super agent Jimmy Sexton, who controls the SEC job market like nobody else, represents Smart. He also represents Muschamp. While apologetically removing Smart from the mix at South Carolina, he pitched Muschamp as a backup plan.

ADs like shopping convenience as much as anybody.  Jimmy’s kind of like the Amazon of coaches’ agents.

Thursday morning buffet

Num, num, num…

• A professional handicapper looks at some projected SEC win totals.
• Here’s an update on the hostage act holding up a $208 million settlement from the NCAA to former student-athletes.
• Bill Connelly ranks all 130 D-1 programs, and Georgia’s on his short list for the CFP.
• Groo thinks Georgia’s defensive backfield is going to get tested early and deep.
• Bud Elliott’s back with this year’s Blue Chip Ratio study.  Kirby’s got the Dawgs climbing to fourth:  “His last two classes are right on par with those of Saban and Meyer.”
• Mike Bobo’s back.
• Mike Bianchi’s gonna Mike Bianchi.
• Not like you didn’t already know this, but Jimmy Sexton’s a wizard, at least in comparison with your average AD.

You got played.

As the old cliché goes, Jimmy Sexton plays eleven-dimensional chess while Greg McGarity plays checkers.

In fact, there’s always been the thought in some circles that Georgia accelerated its search to hire Smart before the Gamecocks could make an offer. Smart was announced as the Bulldogs new coach on Dec. 6, 2015. Muschamp was introduced as South Carolina’s coach on the same day.

This week at the SEC’s annual spring meeting, Gamecocks athletics director Ray Tanner addressed the idea that Georgia “stole” Smart from South Carolina.

“I don’t think that’s exactly how it played out,” he said. “I think we had zeroed in on all the best coaches we could at that time. He was a guy that everybody thought highly of, but he was one of many who was on our list at the time.”

Yeah, it all worked out, once again proving the adage about it’s better being lucky than good, but let’s not kid ourselves.  Letting Sexton drive the hiring train wasn’t the way a well-run program with the top job offering in college football should have gone about its business.

Jimmy’s probably good with McGarity getting a contract extension now, though.  So there’s that.

This is what Greg In Charge looks like.

If you’re wondering who wears the pants in Butts-Mehre these days, look no further than the buyout provisions in Kirby’s new contract.

The buyout for Smart if he were to resign or terminate the agreement is as follows depending on the calendar year:

2018: $6 million

2019: $6 million

2020: $4 million

2021: $3 million

2022: $2 million

2023: $1 million

2024: no buyout.

If Georgia were to fire Smart without cause, he would be paid 65 percent of any remaining compensation owed to him.  [Emphasis added.]

That would be at the start of:

2019: $27.56 million

2020: $23.20 million

2021: $18.79 million

2022: $14.24 million

2023: $9.55 million

2024: $4.81 million

Jimmy Sexton has been given a license to manipulate Butts-Mehre financially for the lifetime of Kirby’s gig in Athens.  That’ll show him who’s boss.

I hope Jimmy’s at least gracious enough to send McGarity a Christmas card every year.

Jimmy Sexton’s Kryptonite

Apparently, there are some bridges that even Sexton can’t cross.

According to a report from Gridiron Now’s Mark Nagi, who recently spoke to Kiffin for an upcoming book on Tennessee football, former Vols athletic director John Currie told super agent Jimmy Sexton that his client would “never be the head coach” at Tennessee as long as he was in charge.

“What normally happens in those things is when jobs come open, there is usually communication with the agent and the athletic director,” Kiffin said in a phone interview earlier this week. “The agent says something like, ‘Hey, I got these eight to 10 guys; what do you think about this guy here or there?’ … Then the AD says, ‘I want to interview those two guys; those sound good.’

“In that conversation with [agent] Jimmy Sexton — who has a million guys obviously, so it’s not just about me, it’s about all the guys — … [then-Tennessee athletic director] John Currie says, ‘Lane will never be the head coach as long as I’m the athletics director here.’ So once he said that, I didn’t think about it. So that kind of answered that.”

Of course, if I had to pick a bridge, it would be Junior.  Sexton had to know the job was dangerous when he took it.