Thursday morning buffet

Perhaps you’ll find something nourishing here.

• SOD taught personal hygiene; Butch has his “Fourth-and-1″.  At Tennessee, they’re always learnin’.
• Vanderbilt is experimenting with GPS in players’ shoulder pads.  (No, it’s not to find them if they get lost on the playing field.)
• Mark Weiszer has a list of the new faces on Georgia’s support staff.
• Todd Gurley’s 2014 season:  In 2014, 61.9 percent of his rushing yards came after contact. He fumbled just three times in 510 carries.
• Don Leebern, friend to the beer drinker.
• “The Gators haven’t had a receiver sniff first- or second-team All-SEC honors from the coaches since Percy Harvin in 2008.”  When people tell you Florida’s offensive personnel don’t live up to the program’s recruiting reputation, this is the kind of stuff they’re talking about.
• Great line from Thomas Brown:  “He still looks good, so he still got it,” Holyfield said. “He says he’s got two more quarters in him.”
• Here’s a look at offensive efficiency trends in the SEC.
• The conclusion to the Silas Nacita affair:  “The bottom line is that I broke the rules.”

“You can’t have the animals running the zoo in a college education.”

Pat Fitzgerald thinks it was a tragedy that he had to spend time “educating” his seniors about unionization.

It sure would have been a lot easier if somebody would have just made it illegal. Then you wouldn’t have to spend any time explaining yourself.

Mommy, make the bad schools share!

Boy, this is subtle.

In a meeting with the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle, Tilman Fertitta, chairman of UH’s Board of Regents, suggested that the Texas state legislature should pressure and/or threaten the Big 12 into giving UH a spot in the conference.  And by suggested I mean he just flat-out said it.

“Put pressure on the presidents; say, ‘If you don’t do this, we’re not going to fund you for this,’” Fertitta said of the state legislature’s role in meeting his goal. “It’s just the way it is. That’s the way to do it. …

“Be a big boy, step up and put this school that has almost 50,000 students and is so high-profile, has so many of the top schools in the United States, it’s a tier one university — we belong in the Big 12. We’re a big, major school with an unbelievable history in athletics and academia.”

The Texas legislature can’t even get Texas and Texas A&M on the same field anymore, but it’s gonna wade into this?  Sure it will.

Perhaps if ol’ Tilman availed himself of his school’s resources and learned that more Big 12 schools are located outside the state of Texas than inside he wouldn’t sound like such a dope.

“Stop mixing politics in with college football,” you said.

Talk to the politicians.

(h/t Doc Saturday)

Thanks, Obama!

Stuck inside the POTUS’ latest budget proposal is this (h/t):

Obama’s budget proposal sent to Congress Monday would end the deduction available to some fans for donations they make to get seats at college sporting events. This is a new proposal by the administration.

By closing what the White House calls a loophole in the system, people would pay about $2.5 billion over the next decade in higher taxes. Currently, college sports fans can deduct 80 percent of the cost of such donations.

It’s not going to be the taxpayer who’s going to be screaming about this.  It’s the schools.

While some alumni and fans would give money to schools regardless of tax benefits, ending the deduction would hurt revenue at some sports programs, said Robert Spielman, a senior tax partner at Marcum LLP who advises high-net-worth clients.

Some U.S. colleges use the tax benefit to generate more revenue from sports. They set a price for season tickets and then demand donations in the hundreds or thousands of dollars on top of that cost as a condition of the sale. Part of the pitch is that fans can claim the expense as a charitable deduction when they itemize their tax return.

Required Donations

At certain universities, fans can’t buy tickets unless they make a donation, and at other schools the donations help people get premium seating on the 50-yard line.

One athletic department that uses the donation is the University of Louisville, whose men’s basketball team made $40.5 million in revenue in 2013-2014, about $15 million more than the next closest program.

Louisville requires a donation to the Cardinal Athletic Fund for most of its season tickets — contributions that range from $2,500 to $250 a seat. Of the university’s $40.5 million in men’s basketball revenue, $21.7 million come from donations, according to the school’s annual report to the NCAA.

Yeah, that could leave a mark.

Given the make up of the current Congress, it’s not like Obama’s budget proposal is going anywhere soon.  But as a marker for how the President feels about college athletics administration, it’s worth keeping in the back of your mind when the NCAA gets serious about lobbying for that antitrust exemption it’s shuffling towards.

But don’t ever take sides with anyone against the Family again.

Alabama state Rep. Jack Williams, time will tell whether you’re brave or foolish.

Northwestern and the NLRB, a year later

The National Labor Relations Board has yet to weigh in on the regional director’s ruling that gave football players employee status under federal labor law, allowing them to unionize, but, if nothing else, the decision has played a hand in kick starting an effort by the schools and the NCAA to bend more in the direction of student-athletes.

Earlier this month outside Washington, Northwestern women’s soccer player Nandi Mehta was one of three Big Ten athletes to cast a vote in favor of the “cost-of-attendance” scholarships. Student-athletes make up 15 of the 80 votes, along with each of the 65 schools in the Power 5 conferences.

Mehta, whose three-year term will stretch beyond graduation, said she relishes having a “direct voice” in the process and does not believe that unionization — which would rebrand athletes as employees — is the right avenue for reform.

“But the way (Colter) did it,” she said, “did get a lot of attention.”

I can think of worse legacies for Kain Colter.

Of course, the decision has brought out its share of the morons, too.  If you question my characterization, read this:

I asked Pscholka about this issue of admitting athletes just for their athletic ability, and he said it’s wrong if that’s what Michigan does, but that he has seen no evidence of it. He also said that he had heard of such things happening “in the SEC, but not in the Midwest.”

Uh hunh.  Right.  That’s why everyone keeps getting the Big Ten confused with the Ivy League.