Monday morning buffet

It’s a short week, so let’s get it off to a good start.

• The Quad looks at its #65 team, Vanderbilt.  From the easier-said-than-done department:  “If the team can locate depth at running back and have two of its young, talented receivers step up, the Commodores will do better than the 19.2 points and 256.2 yards of total offense it averaged per game a season ago.”
• Nick Saban Fights The Power – with contract extension news.  It’s a win-win for everybody!  (Including Les Miles.)
• Rex Robinson hooks up with Brandon Bogotay.
• CFR cites this great quote from Steele:  “There is no way that you could find a single #7 team in the country the last 12 years that had a legitimate claim to being in the national title game.” B-b-b-but Cinderellas, fellas!
• It’s all good in Knoxville – except for that pesky quarterback thing, you know.
• Matt Hayes counts up all of the non-conference games, and finds that the BCS conference schools left a little too much on the table:  “In the six BCS leagues, there are 57 games against I-AA teams and 111 against non-BCS, Division I teams. That’s 168 chances where teams from BCS leagues could’ve played.” And check out his worst game of the season.
• Promises, promises from Michael Adams:  “I don’t think we’re going to see the 30-year tenures in ADs anymore than we are in college presidents these days…” Anybody got a calendar?

Wednesday morning buffet

It’s a muggy morning, so settle in with these:

• Bernie Machen and Michael Adams sound like they’re moving towards an extension on a deal to keep the WLOCP in Jacksonville, which isn’t that surprising.  Adams claiming to have a warm spot for anyone outside of his immediate family is, though.
• Rapture’s coming.
• Title IX is 37 years old today.  I think any reasonable person would agree that it’s succeeded in its goal to provide for greater opportunities for women to participate in collegiate sports.  Then, again, you have those who complain about women’s wrestling not being an NCAA sport.  Of course, the real issue continues to be football and its 85 scholarships.  That’s why women’s crew is an NCAA sport.
• The strange, sad saga of Mitch Mustain gets curiouser and curiouser.
• John Pennington finds himself lamely defending his lame “hot seat” post.
• And you know you’re going to enjoy an SEC prediction piece that leads off with “TEBOW WON’T LOSE”.
• See – this is what Chadd Scott and Paul Finebaum have started.  In response, all I can say is “Ich bin ein Atlantan.”

Michael Adams wants a shoe deal for himself.

You know, any SEC meeting wouldn’t be complete without some pompous comment from our favorite school president.

In response to Mike Slive’s effort to make the football coaches cool down the sniping amongst themselves, it’s not enough for Michael Adams to simply make a supporting statement.  Nah, he’s got to bring a little of that special edge, that special way of letting everyone know that he’s an underappreciated treasure.

So, we get this.

“The last time I looked all of these people still work for the presidents although they make about five times what the presidents do,” Adams said.

Cry me a river, sporto.  That really chaps your ass, doesn’t it?

“It’s old news.”

USA Today’s Ray Glier reviews Behind the Hedges: Big Money and Power Politics at the University of Georgia, which centers on the Michael Adams-Vince Dooley power struggle, but sounds like it turns over a lot more rocks than that.

See if this doesn’t get your blood boiling:

Among the details in the book:

• The school spent $138,000 for Adams’ presidential party in New Orleans when Hawaii played Georgia in the Sugar Bowl following the 2007 season, with $28,000 spent on a party Adams hosted at a popular New Orleans bar, Pat O’Brien’s. The money came from the school’s athletic association, according to the author, who reviewed previous reports of the party in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

• Don Leebern, a millionaire member of the state’s Board of Regents and an Adams’ ally, asked Dooley to make gymnastics coach Suzanne Yoculan an associate athletics director because the gymnastics coach at Alabama, a Yoculan rival, had a similar title. Dooley refused, and Barbara Dooley said in the book her husband’s decision to buck Leebern helped get Dooley pushed out as athletics director.

Yoculan’s gymnastics teams have won nine national championships. She and Leebern have a personal relationship.

• The book looks at the $250,000 Adams paid in a side deal to Donnan. The payment was never approved by the athletics board, and the audit by Deliotte & Touche said there was an effort to conceal the payment from the school’s athletics board.

• The audit report, which is included in the book, found that Adams’ family and friends received tickets to the presidential box at home football games under the guise they were major donor prospects to the university. The audit said Adams might have violated IRS tax code on taxable fringe benefits.

• Dooley said Adams wrote a letter to a high school basketball recruit taking credit for the hiring of Georgia basketball coach Jim Harrick and calling Harrick a “long-time friend.” Dooley wanted to hire Mike Brey, the current Notre Dame coach, who was at Delaware. Brey cooled to the job. Later, Dooley said Brey told him he was so put-off by Adams during an interview that he could not work for Georgia.

Let’s just hope nobody gives Mike Anderson a copy of the book.

And the most telling paragraph in the piece?

Whitt, the book’s author, died in January of a heart attack. He had been urged to write the book by former U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell, a prominent Atlanta attorney and Adams critic. In the book, Bell, who has since died, said Adams used the athletics vs. academics angle to thwart any pressure from the Board of Regents and saved his job.

Let’s see, pissing off powerful people and hiding behind athletics bashing doesn’t strike me as the best recipe for success.  The release of this book is bound to stir up some powerful feelings.  We’ll see how long Adams can go with a “no comment”.

Read all about it.

This looks like a fun read.

“Behind the Hedges: Big Money and Power Politics at the University of Georgia,” written by the late Rich Whitt, a former Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner, examines the internal power struggle between Adams and athletics director Vince Dooley and how the controversy resulted in the split between the Board of Regents and the UGA Foundation. By all accounts, Adams is made out to be the bad guy.

If you want a little taste of what the book covers, here’s a link to the table of contents, per Amazon.  Chapter 5 ought to be a hoot and a half, all by itself.  And check out the blurbs on the back cover – none too flattering (about the school, not the book).

********************************************************************

UPDATE: Hoo, boy. (h/t David Hale)

“That’s the best part of football, playing the games.”

Former University of Georgia senior athletic director Dick Bestwick takes on Rep. Neil Abercrombie and a certain unnamed, but easily identified, university president on the subject of D-1 football playoff in this opinion piece.

I never cease to be amazed and amused at the way politicians – both elected and self-anointed – seem to have all the answers on issues they basically know nothing about. Most recently, several of them have weighed in on the subject of college football playoffs, once again – and as usual – with an obvious lack of understanding of what they’re talking about.

One of these folks, who once proposed cutting back the number of regular-season games, now calls for an eight-team playoff. Since he never played the game, or any other team sport, he doesn’t realize football players don’t mind playing 12 games…

“One of these folks”, eh?  I wonder who he’s got in mind.

He’s got some cold water advice for Abercrombie.

… As for U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii – one of the members of Congress pushing for a federal probe of the BCS -lamenting Western Athletic Conference and Mountain West teams not having a chance to be in a national playoff game: He needs to realize that isn’t because of the BCS, but because those conferences comprise schools that don’t have the same resources or potential to get enough of the kind of players it takes to win a national championship. Having a playoff isn’t going to change that. These conferences have never had any consistent contenders for a national championship, and doubtfully ever will. The Pac-10 and Big 12, as they always have, will continue to dominate recruiting in that part of the country, producing the kind of teams that have a chance to win a national championship. The only national title ever won by someone from outside the BCS was Brigham Young University in 1984, and it took unusual circumstances for that to happen.

Actually, the WAC and Mountain West should be happy with the BCS since they are virtually ensured a game in one of the BCS bowls where they can get their only big bowl check. Without that connection, they would have to be settling for checks from games like the Poinsettia and Humanitarian bowls. Payouts for those were $750,000, rather than the $17 million the University of Hawaii and the WAC got for the BCS Sugar Bowl.

And then a little bit more for that unnamed president.

… Rather than playoffs, the publicity-seeking politicians and hypocritical college presidents could better use their “bully pulpits” to find a way to take some of the loot from the bowl games to provide the blue-collar parents of the majority of players with some expense money to see their sons play in the bowl game. Since the players are the ones responsible for there being a game, it stands to reason that a $1,000 expense check for their parents to attend the game should be the least done for them.

I have to believe that would be much more appreciated by the players than rewarding them with a four-, eight- or 16-team playoff system that enriches everyone but them.

I dunno, Dick.  Remember it’s a “work week” for presidents, too.

How come nobody told me yesterday was a holiday?

Judging from the headlines, it must have been National Stereotype Day.

Just consider a few of these stories:

• “Party on, Wayne”. Georgia spends around $2.2 million for a week at the Sugar Bowl, more than $320 thousand over budget. Only about $164 thousand was spent on the players. You can guess where much of the rest was spent. Money (heh) quote from Michael Adams: “It’s a work week for me.” Yeah, sure.
• They don’t call it the death penalty for nothing. That $2.2 million sure would come in handy at SMU, where the athletic department has racked up a staggering $56.7 million deficit over the past four years and is expected to lose even larger amounts of money in the next two years. This comes decades after receiving the harshest penalties in NCAA history and should make every ‘Bama fan realize something along the lines of “there but for the grace of God…”
• Jerimy Finch, we hardly knew ye. If this doesn’t reinforce the perception many have of Urban Meyer’s recruiting philosophy, I don’t know what will: Finch was a surprise in the 2007 recruiting class for Urban Meyer, who noticed his name on a Web site as an Indiana commitment. Meyer talked to Finch’s high school coach and decided to offer a scholarship to the free safety. Keep in mind, this from a guy who’s complained about the so-called Saban rule that cuts back on head coaching contact with recruits in the spring. By the way, Finch can’t figure out how to play defense at Florida, broke his leg… and is gone, gone, gone.
• Harold and Kumar go to Georgia Tech. Joe Hamilton continues the tradition. Somewhere, Ruben Houston is smiling ruefully.

Something to talk about

You know, if you’re Michael Adams, this whole BCS/playoff discussion is a complete godsend. If a journalist calls you up these days about college sports, he or she isn’t asking about the Harricks, under the table quarter of a million dollar payments to a coach you had fired a couple of seasons later or the utter lack of success of your game day family friendly zones. Naw, they call you because they want to hear you pontificate about the playoff plan you pitched that’s been peed on by your peers. Publicly.

Repeatedly.

So I understand why Adams likes having the discussion. Plus, he gets to trot out his “man of the people” schtick.

“… But when 80 percent of the public [according to polls] thinks there’s something wrong with it, that says something to me.”

What I don’t understand is why he keeps getting asked.

Meanwhile, this just in – WaPo’s John Feinstein is still a pompous ass. Here’s something he had to say at a commencement address yesterday:

… Commencement speeches haven’t changed much over the years, Feinstein said as he conjured up a graduation day oratory from Plato, circa 399 B.C. In Feinstein’s imagination, Plato congratulated the graduates, decried the influence of big-time sports, and called for a playoff system for major college football…

You remember that chapter in The Republic about playoffs, don’t you?

The best part of this is that he didn’t deliver the address at some major college football hotbed, or a D-1 school that wasn’t in a BCS conference. No – these remarks were made at Radford University, a Division 2 1-AA school which doesn’t field a football team.

Why can’t we all just get along?

It just wasn’t a happy news kind of day for some folks in the football world yesterday.

• Rich Rodriguez may be about to learn that a jury of his peers isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You can almost sense he’s about to be on the butt end of something akin to that scene in The Verdict where the jury asks the judge if they’re limited in awarding damages to the amount that was sought in the complaint. Coach, this is truly a situation where discretion is the better part of valor. Settle, man, settle.
• Meanwhile, they’re packing heat at depositions in the Reggie Bush lawsuit. Sounds bad, but on the bright side, that could open up some endorsement opportunities for ol’ Reggie.  (“Smith & Wesson? It’s as good at protection as my offensive line!”)
• And for some reason, Michael Adams has decided now is a good time to pick at a scab and reopen a wound. I have no idea why, but given the source, I’m sure whatever the motivation, it’s petty. Hey, at least no one is making fun of his playoff proposal now!

Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

From the Urban Dictionary:

red headed stepchild	144 up, 22 down
	A child who is obviously not your own, a child who is treated worse than other children in the family I beat him like a red headed stepchild.

From the Memphis Commercial Appeal:

When the presidents and chancellors of the 12 Southeastern Conference schools convened at the annual league meetings late last May in Destin, Fla., they concluded they wouldn’t support a football playoff.

SEC Commissioner Mike Slive then asked Ole Miss Chancellor Robert Khayat to continue to study the playoff question. That’s why Khayat, who was in Memphis on Thursday to accept the AutoZone Liberty Bowl’s Distinguished Citizen Award during a private function at The Peabody, was surprised when Georgia President Michael Adams began spouting in early January that he favored an eight-team playoff.

“I was surprised,” Khayat said. “But Mississippi-born author William Alexander Percy once wrote that red-headed people have hot tempers and they can’t do anything about it. Mike Adams, at one point in his life, had red hair. He was really ticked that Georgia wasn’t in the BCS game, and he called me before he said what he said publicly. We talked about a playoff in May, and we said we weren’t interested in a playoff. But we might be interested in a plus-one (determining the best two teams after the BCS bowls are played and having those two teams play for the national championship). I love and respect Mike Adams, but I think his emotions got the best of him and he fired it off in a hurry. He won’t get support from any of the SEC presidents on the model he proposed…

I’m not sure what else you can add after a comment like that.  Well, maybe one thing.  Adams has already inserted himself into one BCS title celebration with the timing of his proposal.  If a year from now it should come to pass that Georgia pulls off the stunner and wins a BCS title game, how much of a distraction do you think Adams will be at that time?