Let all the Bulldog faithful rally behind the men who now wear the red and black with two words, two simple words which express the sentiments of the entire Bulldog Nation: Auburn Sucks.
If you are going to another site for your Dawgs’ content today, make it the guys at Dawg Sports. This defense of the Georgia-Clemson home and home is a magnum opus (Someone needs to send this to Josh Brooks – athdir@uga.edu). The good Senator would be smiling over this if he were with us today.
I’ll say it now. I refuse to purchase tickets to either of these games if they move to a neutral site (yes, I attended both games in 2021 and 2024). I may even decide to hell with it and not even watch the games on television on principle. I get that schools have to look for every revenue stream they can at this point, but the powers that be look at us as nothing but wallets at this point in the name of looking out for what’s best for UGA athletics as opposed to what’s popular to fans.
I carried the ticket stub from 1984 in my wallet for years after that. I wish I had kept it pristine and gotten a signed picture of Kevin Butler kicking the most famous field goal in Georgia history.
If we don’t reject this kind of thinking while still getting OOC games with the likes of Tenn State and WKU in our season ticket packages, we’ll get more of this.
It’s time for these people to feel the economic impact of the decisions they make rather than to tell us they know what’s best for us.
Greg Sankey says “nay nay” to any games played on a Friday.
If would be very off-brand for the SEC to play on Friday nights…unless you’re Mississippi, where’s it’s totally fine.
Of course, it’s very off-brand for the SEC to defer to the B1G’s scheduling model, but I digress.
His logic is correct, though, Friday Nights are for high school football, and it is likely (don’t know because I haven’t lived outside the south) true that Fridays would get lower viewership for a Friday SEC tilt given that most of your red-blooded football fans are out watching a high school game.
The one benefit of the chaos of the current state of the college football NIL market is this:
"I talked to an NFL scout last week…"
"Last year rounds 6 and 7 wiped out from NFL, this year rounds four through seven wiped out from NIL."@AndrewBrandt discusses the impact NIL has on the NFL Draft on this week's Business of Sports:9 pic.twitter.com/ssnS9suUys
The union closed shop with a rookie salary cap and scale doesn’t allow players to be eligible for their league until 3 years out of high school. The owners and player personnel people of the teams have taken advantage of the college football system as a free minor league for decades are crying because the back end of the draft has dropped off due to free market NIL.
A player with eligibility remaining with a late 3rd round or later grade can improve his draft stock and get paid for it instead of rolling the dice in the draft and betting he can make a team. He likely is able to make as much or more with less risk by returning to college for that 4th or 5th year.
NFL insiders cannot let this stand.
The law of unintended consequences is still the 1972 Miami Dolphins.
Pass the Kleenex.
Maybe this will bring the NFL to the table to discuss how they can work more effectively with the power brokers of college football.
SEC wants 16, and the B1G wants 24. I’m assuming the desire for 24 is purely a play for Fox by the Yankee conference to force the division of TV rights.
If Sankey doesn’t hold the line on this, he’s pretty much useless. I’ve become resigned to the fact they are going to expand. 16 seems right to give the top 4 a play-in game. The question is how far will they go with games on campus.
This feature took last week off because there was really nothing on the field to report, but this weekend got the message boards lit up. We’ll start today’s trip where we normally end it … to check in on the most obnoxious for no apparent reason fan base in sports. How is it going at the North Avenue Trade School after their 3rd moral victory in a row over the Dawgs?
This Booby Dudd like nerd’s response to the game on Friday was on a thread regarding whether they should keep playing Georgia. The copium being taken in west midtown Atlanta in the CFB landscape since the game is some of the most potent I’ve seen.
On the field, the defensive front took the Jacketasses behind the woodshed for 60 minutes. Other than the pass off the goal line after a blatant missed intentional grounding call that should have resulted in a safety, the vaunted Buster Faulkner/Haynes King offense was in a UFC choke hold for much of the game.
Here’s a different sports analogy for you from Brooks Austin:
If the offense had done anything of note, we could have witnessed a beatdown of epic proportions in MBS. Alas, that gives us something to worry about for Saturday as if Bama wasn’t enough.
Let’s move on to Austin to check in on the formerly undefeated Texas AgCult after their faceplant in Austin in the Lone Star Showdown (or whatever they call it).
Speaking of copium, a lot of that seems to have been smoked by this genius from Aggieland. Did this guy watch his team fall behind at home to South Carolina 30-3 a couple of weeks ago? The 12th Man played with fire multiple times during this season and got burned badly by their big brother on Friday night. Marcel Reed made the Archduke look like Peyton and Eli rolled up into one. Someone (cough, cough … Notre Dame … cough, cough) at the bottom of the first round bracket is probably drooling at the thought of going to Kyle Field.
Let’s move on to East Tennessee to check on the fan base that can’t say they run this state for the next year.
Powered by a 24-3 2nd half, Vanderbilt sends the Vol faithful to the exits to the tune of a 21 point whipping in Kneeland. That’s still not likely to be good enough to earn a playoff spot, but Clark Lea should be national coach of the year for doing something never done in the history of the traditional SEC Dore-mat football program.
All of this and they lost the turnover margin -2. Oh, my.
Enjoy your trip to Orlando, Commodores. On the other hand, let’s welcome Bobby Hill to the hottest seat in the SEC entering 2026, and enjoy your trip to Charlotte or Nashville in December.
Let’s end today’s trip in Oxford where a fan base should be looking forward to being a dangerous team in the CFP but, instead, is looking at a program holding on after being stung by a scorpion in the middle of the river (if you don’t get that reference, read my post from yesterday).
The first genius needs to calm down and step away from the ledge. The second genius doesn’t understand this decision likely wasn’t about money.
“No wrath like a fan base scorned.” I have no problem with Kiffin’s decision to leave even at this time. I have a big problem with his desire to do it on his terms and his apparent decision to go scorched earth on his way out as a result of not getting his way. His decision (likely with Jimmy Sexton’s blessing) to attempt to play the victim with his social media post announcing his departure should be insulting to the Rebel faithful who supported his NIL needs to build a transfer-laden roster. If Dooley had left for Auburn in 1980 during the season, I would have been apoplectic as a teenage fan.
I would love to see whether the Cane’s locations in Oxford see a drop in business as a result of all of this or if they try to do anything to buy off the Ole Miss athletic department.
What did you see this weekend? Let us know in the comments.
We have a lot of problems to solve as a country, but the President has decided to wade into the NIL mess created by the NCAA, its membership, the jackass-in-chief Mark Emmert, and the antitrust plaintiff’s bar with an executive order called “Saving College Sports.” I’m not going to get into the constitutional law of this order or the politics of this, and this is not the space to debate either of those topics … Derek can take that up on Wednesday if he so desires.
After reading the order, here are a couple of items I thought were interesting:
Overall, did the NCAA’s attorneys write Section 1 of the order?
The rationale for the order is all wrapped up in the NCAA’s past arguments for maintaining the façade of amateurism and current arguments for some kind of antitrust exemption. Olympic sports, academics, state laws, system where schools can buy the best players, and women’s sports are all arguments of the NCAA for intervention.
“It is common sense that college sports are not, and should not be, professional sports …”
We all need to face that college football and men’s basketball especially in the Power 4 conferences are now professional sports. The college sports industry made all of the decisions since NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma and the University of Georgia in the interest of generating more money over time.
The bag men plus the facilities arms race show that college athletes have a market value. Church steeples, Trans Ams, McDonald’s bags, and $100 post-game handshakes were the underground labor market while $10,000 massage chairs, miniature golf courses and other perks in athletic buildings showed how player compensation was hung up on the balance sheets of these associations. Eventually, that market value led to the O’Bannon decision on the EA Sports NCAA game franchise where the NCAA hid behind the fig leaf of jersey numbers while the demographics just happened to match the individual players represented leading to the total cost of attendance (TCOAS) scholarship. Of course, additional litigation has essentially blown up the guardrails of the TCOAS into pay-for-play thinly veiled as NIL.
The bottom line is that as the money in these 2 sports exploded, those participating were being left behind.
“… [I]t is the policy of the executive branch that third-party, pay-for-play payments to collegiate athletes are improper … This policy does not apply to compensation provided to an athlete for the fair market value that the athlete provides to a third party.”
The executive branch appears to be lining up behind the House settlement on this topic. Payments made by NIL collectives? Bad. Payments made similar to the Olympic model? Good. I admit I’m on the side of the Olympic model, but that doesn’t mean I agree with this mechanism.
I’m sure Jeffrey Kessler and his firm are already lining up to go after the order for injunctive relief. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt on their motivation … therefore, I lean that Kessler wants the best for the members of his class. I also am cynical about actions like this based on my day job. If there wasn’t a pot of money at the end of the rainbow for his firm, his firm probably wouldn’t be interested.
Is Section 4 an attempt at an antitrust exemption by fiat?
What does “unreasonably challenged” mean? I don’t think any of the NIL litigation to this point has been unreasonable. I also don’t think anyone wants the “rights and interests of student-athletes” harmed and the “long-term availability of collegiate athletic scholarships and opportunties” reduced.
I’m not sure the Attorney General and the Chair of the FTC can do a damn thing if NIL makes a school decide to shed sports.
“Protecting Development of the United States Olympic Team”
What sports at this point purely depend on amateurs generally and college athletes specifically for participation in the Olympics?
Tackle football isn’t an Olympic sport yet. Basketball? That ship sailed a long time ago with the 1992 Dream Team on the men’s side and soon thereafter with women. Swimming? Katie Ledecky famously left the Stanford swim team while remaining in school to pursue endorsements while also swimming professionally, and Michael Phelps never put on the maize and blue while attending Michigan to train with his long-time coach. Gymnastics? Many of the women are past their prime at college age, and the GOAT never wore a college leotard. Hockey? The Miracle on Ice was a long time ago, and the Olympics are now the NHL all stars playing for country. Track and field? Most of the US athletes are professionals now across the board even though they were collegiate athletes at one time.
Summary
Is this order like Texas football … all hat, no cattle?
It would seem so because there is no real policy, and any policy is likely to go down in flames under judicial oversight.
Is this order telling Congress what framework the President is willing to sign in a bill like the SCORE Act?
In my opinion, winner, winner, chicken dinner. He is telling the 535 members of Congress he is willing to sign a bill that reforms some of the problems of college sports while maintaining that student-athletes are not employees with collective bargaining rights.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments. Keep it civil and out of the political realm. If you want to do that, take it to the Playpen.
The greed of college administrators started this ball rolling down the hill. NIL and the collectives added fuel to accelerate it. The transfer portal and the NCAA’s decision to cave on the revised transfer rules have turned it into a high-speed snowball.
I hate this for college sports below the P4 level.
Marshall, App State, and Georgia Southern were three proud brands of Division 1-AA football back in the day. It was stupid for them to make the jump to FBS.
I would love to ask Erk if he believed the Eagles jumping to the Sun Belt from the SoCon was worth the money.
