TFW you’re chasing your own tail

Otherwise known as no mid-major program can serve two masters…

Memphis is coming off its best five-year stretch in program history, which includes an AAC championship in 2014.

Success, however, hasn’t kept the program immune from attendance problems that have plagued college football. While NCAA attendance figures haven’t been released from 2018,  attendance in 2017 had its largest drop in 34 years.

It’s something Bowen knows firsthand as a member of the NCAA Division I Football Oversight Committee. While he felt this season was a solid year attendance wise, he knows that Memphis and other schools are competing with fans who seek cheaper options to watch games and have more games to watch on television.

He added there have been discussions about bringing back pregame activities to add to the Tiger Walk and continuing to push fans to purchase season tickets. Bowen did not say what those activities would be.

 “It’s critical for us to keep aggressively marketing, aggressively pushing forward, re-evaluating what worked and what didn’t work,” said Bowen, “We’re going to do some dynamic ticket pricing this season which we haven’t done in the past which we’ll announce soon.”

Declining attendance is another reason the AAC has pushed for a better media rights deal when the current one expires in 2020. Memphis president David Rudd is a part of the negotiations with AAC commissioner Mike Aresco, and the conference is in an exclusive negotiating window with ESPN, according to an interview Bowen did with Sports56 WHBQ on Monday

With seven of the 12 AAC schools reporting a decrease in attendance from the 2018 season, there’s hope that revenue from a new deal will easily exceed the $2 million each school is currently receiving.

“If you’re going to have a situation where you sell all your media rights, you need to be compensated in a way that it helps offset loss of ticket revenue, so that’s why our media deal is really important for the AAC because my colleagues are seeing the same thing,” Bowen said.

All the aggressive marketing in the world isn’t going to offset shitty start times that depress live crowd numbers imposed on you by your broadcast partner, dude.  And you’ll have no choice but to become even more dependent on Mickey’s money as your attendance numbers continue to decline.  That’s what constitutes tradition in today’s college football world.

Advertisements

Once a dick…

He can’t let it go.

He is a LEGEND pic.twitter.com/124h26qfOf

— MyBookie CFB (@MyBookieCFB) February 18, 2019

When he dies, I fully expect his eulogy to take shots at Tennessee and Georgia.

Missing in action

Give things a few years, and I have the feeling a certain school with red and black colors will be working its way up these lists.

O-Line U? Most offensive linemen drafted since 2000:

18- Miami
18- Notre Dame
18- Wisconsin
17- Alabama
17- FSU
17- Iowa
17- Ohio State
15- USC
14- Arizona State
14- Florida
14- Michigan
13- Boston College
13- Oklahoma
13- Ole Miss

— Pick Six Previews (@PickSixPreviews) February 15, 2019

O-Line U? Most offensive linemen drafted since 2010:

11- Alabama
10- Florida
10- FSU
9- Iowa
9- Miami
9- Wisconsin
8- Notre Dame
8- Ohio State
8- Utah
7- Baylor
7- Michigan
7- Stanford
7- TCU
7- USC

— Pick Six Previews (@PickSixPreviews) February 15, 2019

To tell you the truth, with as much talk about how it’s a conference built in the trenches, it’s a little surprising to see how few SEC teams made either list.

Musical palate cleanser, shut your mouth edition

Bad.  Ass.

As one of the YouTube commenters posted,“Best wah-wah pedal intro to a song. Ever. No Arguments Allowed.”

I’m not arguing.

TFW you have no more f***s to give

Anthony Dasher voices a strange complaint about the Lanning promotion.

Yes, Bulldog fans should be thrilled that Smart is their head coach. Having said that, the public confirmation of Dan Lanning’spromotion to defensive coordinator deserves comment. It’s one of the oddest deals I’ve seen in 32 years of covering collegiate athletics.

For those unaware, the word from on high didn’t come in the form of a press release or a formal announcement by the University. No, it’s the result of an open records request, one made by UGASports and other media outlets that regularly cover Georgia’s athletic program.

I’m still scratching my head, trying to figure out why Smart allowed it to be handled this way.

When Georgia announced the promotion of James Coley, the hirings of tight end coach Todd Hartley and defensive back coach Charlton Warren, and even offensive analyst Shawn Watson, the school released the news in a professionally written email to beat writers, complete with a quote from Smart extolling the virtues of the program’s latest hire.

That wasn’t the case with Lanning.

It wasn’t until Georgia’s open records office replied to requests late Friday afternoon, listing Georgia’s assistants and their titles and salaries, that anyone outside the program could say what Lanning’s title was.

Was this a wise decision by Smart?

There’s no doubt a good portion of the Bulldog Nation who don’t give a flying flip how it affects the media and their ability to do their job. “It’s Smart’s team and he can do what he wants; you (media) don’t have a right to know.” I get it.

That’s actually not my gripe. It’s the false narrative that was unnecessarily created that Georgia had to settle for Lanning when that was not the case.

But while everyone tries to figures out Smart’s motives were—he’s been unavailable for comment since the Sugar Bowl—those reasons, whatever they are, seem curious at best.

The fact the media had to find out on its own via an FOI request has been a running joke for opposing fans.

Now, Coach Smart doesn’t care what anyone thinks, but it’s a shame that this incorrect narrative on Lanning’s hire has been allowed to percolate among Bulldog rivals: they could claim use Smart really didn’t “get his man,” and use it as recruiting propaganda.

Okay, Kirby doesn’t care, most of us don’t care and I’ll bet the coaching staff doesn’t either.  But what opposing fans say is supposed to matter?  Shit, if that’s all it took, we would have put Georgia Tech football out of business years ago.

I will be curious to hear if Dasher brings this up at Smart’s next presser, even if I’m pretty sure of the response if he does.

Sunday morning inspiration

Really, do I have to add anything to this?

pic.twitter.com/g7FX97fiV4

— Mike Leach (@Coach_Leach) February 17, 2019

ABC, peeps.

A Seth Emerson reminder ($$) that Kirby is always on the recruiting mother:

The​ narrative on Cameron Nizialek​ is he​ just​ picked Georgia on his​ own,​ showed​ up​ in​ Athens two years​ ago, and​​ the eventual SEC and Rose Bowl champions had their starting punter drop into their lap. But that’s actually not true. And it offers some lessons on why Kirby Smart’s program operates the way it does.

The real backstory: Nizialek was graduate transferring from Columbia, an FCS school, after the 2016 season. And as obscure as he might have seemed, he was already on Georgia’s radar. James Vollono, then a special teams analyst, had known Nizialek through the kicking community and reached out to him. Nizialek also was talking to Clemson, which had invited him to attend the South Carolina game two days after Thanksgiving. That was a night game. Georgia played at noon just over an hour’s drive south. Why don’t you stop by here first, Vollono asked Nizialek, who agreed.

“And I actually talked to Kirby for like 20 minutes before the Georgia Tech game that year,” Nizialek recalled last week. “So, yeah, I think Kirby downplays his role in me coming there a little bit. But they definitely wanted me to come. Now, obviously, I wasn’t on scholarship, so it just kind of looked like I showed up. But they were definitely interested and wanted me to come from the beginning.”

That level of attention for an Ivy League punter… can you imagine what Smart puts into pursuing a five-star in-state stud?