The Logistics of Paying College Athletes

The firestorm surrounding O.J. Mayo allegedly taking benefits for the last four years was quickly followed by the same litany of questions surrounding NCAA athletics that have lingered for years. The issue I am focusing on here is the question of paying players.

It’s a very emotional argument for many people. Some think it’s nothing short of a crime that players of revenue sports don’t receive a salary. Others prefer to keep college athletics strictly an enterprise for amateur athletes, and not paying players is about the last thing they have left for arguing that college football and basketball players are still amateurs.

There are some very complex logistics to go over for setting up a player payment system, some of which I’ll detail below. Just remember: for the NCAA, image is everything. Whatever system is set up will have to have the image of being equal to both large and small schools, even if it breaks down in the details. That’s why the Patriot League still gets auto-bids to the NCAA tournament.

Issue 1: Scholarships

Scholarships, and their accompanying benefits like housing and meal plans, are the compensation that college athletes currently receive. They have real value, and the money to pay for them comes from somewhere. Just because athletes can’t convert their meal plan allowance into cash to buy a TV doesn’t mean scholarships don’t count as compensation for playing.

Will they count as a part of the salaried athlete’s total compensation package? After all, a scholarship to FIU and a scholarship to Stanford are drastically different in value. If so, then expensive schools will have a disadvantage because they won’t be able to pay as high a salary. If not, then expensive schools have an edge since they will be offering a more valuable total package than less expensive schools.

For simplicity’s sake, I’ll assume that scholarships won’t count towards the payment. Athletes don’t pick schools by trying to get the greatest amount of free tuition, and the NCAA doesn’t seem to mind that scholarships have unequal value. I still would expect the issue to come up in any serious internal NCAA debate.

Issue 2: How much?

This issue is the most critical. The professional leagues set salary caps based on total league revenue, but college athletics are a lot less centralized. Plus, the professional clubs have only one team and sport to worry about.

TV contracts in college are done with conferences, not the NCAA, so each conference starts off with a different amount of TV revenue. Add to that the differing sizes of fan bases and drastically different sizes of stadiums and arenas, and you have a huge financial puzzle to try to solve.

The NCAA won’t let some conferences pay more than others, because that would not be an equal system. It won’t go with a salary cap and floor, because some schools will have no choice but to pay the minimum while others take advantage by paying the maximum. With that in mind, how do you set the pay rate?

If you base it on the conference with the least ability to pay, then you get a large gap between revenues and player compensation at the big money makers and little has changed. If you base it on the conference with the greatest ability to pay, then you price out the little guys even more than what we have today.

Once you’re done figuring that out, how do you determine where to set the pay rate for each different sport? And how do you know which sport generated a hat or shirt purchase if it just has the school logo and nothing else on it?

Issue 3: Revenue Sharing

Revenue sharing does exist on some level in college football, since smaller conferences get a cut of the BCS money whether they had a team in the BCS or not. It will probably have to exist in a much bigger way if player salaries get approved.

The revenue sports provide the money that allows all other sports to exist. Even with football and basketball being generally profitable ventures, some schools’ athletic departments struggle just to break even. Others don’t even come close. If the NCAA is going to force teams to pay players on top of everything else, some sort of revenue sharing will have to occur.

The money disparity within even major conferences can be pretty large. The amount of money that Florida, Georgia, and Alabama can spend is significantly greater than what Ole Miss and Mississippi State can spend. Beyond that, I have a hard time seeing Jim Delaney wanting to allow any profits generated by his baby, the Big Ten Network, paying for player salaries at Bowling Green or Akron.

When a pro team doesn’t spend a lot of money, a new owner can purchase the team and spend more on players. You can’t tell a small university to suddenly expand its student base to bring in more athletic fees, graduate more future boosters, and better pull its weight in generating money. Let’s also not forget that colleges have to build and maintain all their own facilities; pro teams get city, county, and sometimes state taxpayers to pay for theirs.

Then you get the issue of donations. The big money schools make a lot of money off of donations. There’s no way whatsoever that the NCAA can take donation money away from one school and give it to another. How heavily do those gifts factor in the revenue sharing equation when divvying up TV money?

Issue 4: The Star Treatment

I don’t know if it would ever come up in real NCAA discussions, but I know a lot of fans have expressed an interest in having star players get more money than others. If the NCAA did talk about uneven play scales for players, it would probably get dismissed pretty quickly because that’s not equal for everyone.

I can’t imagine the schools supporting it either. Inevitably, someone will promise a pile of money for a high profile recruit. That will cause everyone to have to do the same to have a chance of landing the kid. Then, someone like Tim Floyd or Billy Gillespie will start promising money to ever younger athletes as they already have done with scholarships. I doubt many coaches will want to get into bidding wars over middle schoolers.

If you try to make pay adjustable based on performance, you would open a Pandora’s Box of lawsuits. If Jimmy Benchwarmer is upset that he doesn’t get to play, he might suspect his lack of playing time is because the coach has secret deals ensuring levels of payment to other players. There have been many coaches in college football’s history that would do that very thing, and it would get very ugly if Jimmy’s dad is John Benchwarmer, Esq.

Issue 5: Pay All the Divisions’ Athletes?

How many divisions are going to have to pay players? Will I-AA football teams have to pay players too? What about the bottom of Division I basketball? Will Binghamton of the America East Conference have to pay as much as Wichita State of the MVC will? And will WSU have to pay as much as Duke will?

If the NCAA tries to make some sort of rule saying a program has to make a certain amount of money in order to pay players, there could be some interesting cooking of the books to avoid that threshold for schools that don’t want to pay players. Or, aspiring schools might fudge some numbers to appear above that threshold to get the recruiting benefits that come with paying players.

The NCAA already doesn’t spend enough on rule enforcement. I can’t imagine it wanting to spend a fortune on auditors too.

Issue 6: How Many Sports?

How many sports will the payments extend to? Football and men’s basketball are the obvious targets, but other sports could be revenue generators at other schools.

Until Bruce Pearl showed up, I’d bet that Tennessee made more money off of women’s basketball than men’s basketball. UConn probably makes a nice amount off of that sport too. However, most schools don’t make money off of women’s basketball.

Will only some schools have to pay their women’s basketball players but not other ones? If that happens, all of the best players will all sign exclusively with the schools that pay players. The barrier to putting together a successful women’s basketball program will have been significantly raised.

What about the non-revenue generating sports? It’s not the swimmers’ faults that thousands of people don’t flock to meets. Universities are non-profit organizations, so the usual rules of capitalism don’t strictly apply to them. And what if a school voluntarily wants to pay athletes in non-revenue sports? Will that be allowed?

Issue 7: Title IX

Title IX is the biggest issue, primarily because federal law is now in play. The law states:

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

That’s right; violate Title IX and you can lose federal funding. No university wants to play with that fire. A school can prove it is in compliance by passing any one of the “prongs” of the “three-prong test”:

1. Prong one - Providing athletic opportunities that are substantially proportionate to the student enrollment, OR
2. Prong two - Demonstrate a continual expansion of athletic opportunities for the underrepresented sex, OR
3. Prong three - Full and effective accommodation of the interest and ability of underrepresented sex.

The sudden new spending on player salaries in revenue sports – generally football and men’s basketball – would require a proportional increase of spending on women’s athletics to stay in compliance with Title IX. The alternative would be continuing to eliminate other men’s sports to help bring back balance.

Neither of those alternatives is appealing to universities. Even the most cutthroat football factories still do care about fielding teams in as many different sports as they can afford, but they are not going to want to have to pour huge sums of money into sports that don’t provide financial returns. Until and unless Title IX is amended to exempt football, paying players a salary is very unlikely to happen.

* * *

If anything, I hope I have showed that the issue of paying players is a lot more complex than just increasing stipends for football and basketball players. Plus, one of the reasons the BCS plus-one system was rejected was that it would make college football too much like a professional league. There’s plenty wrong with that statement, but “preserving amateurism” is a big deal for the NCAA and the conferences.

It certainly seems unfair that athletes in revenue sports bring in a disproportionate amount of money compared to the value of their scholarships. However, I honestly think we’ll see a college football playoff before we see college athletes get salaries. In other words, don’t hold your breath.

Bissinger v. Leitch

Much has been made of the dustup on Bob Costas’s show between Will Leitch of Deadspin and Buzz Bissinger, sportswriter and, most famously, author of Friday Night Lights.

Much has been said already at every other sports blog on the web, so a recap should be easy to find.

The central issue seems to be the meme that the mainstream media (MSM) is dying and that its members lash out at bloggers in fear and anger.

That is certainly what Bissinger did, taking full advantage of the fact that HBO is not censored. He trotted out the standard material we’ve all heard: that bloggers are the rabble of the earth, living in their mother’s basement and “spewing” out invective by the truckload.

There also has been talk of a generation gap effect, and that’s part of it. Leitch isn’t doing much novel work over at Deadspin, though, as his site is basically a sports tabloid with humor articles sprinkled in. It just happens to be online instead of on the newsstand.

The core of the conflict is between those who understand the Internet for what it is, and those who don’t.

A Brief History of the Internet

The Internet grew out of the US military’s reaction to Sputnik. As time grew on, it became more and more academic, and later, social.

By the end of the 1980s, the most popular part of the Internet was Usenet, a distributed system of newsgroups where people exchanged messages. Someone would post something he thought was interesting, and people would discuss the topic by replying to it. Usenet is where a lot of Internet culture was born, including concepts such as FAQs and spam.

Usenet was divided into categories, ranging anywhere from academic discussions of science and math to discussions of nonsense and unspeakable horrors. It was where the things such as the World Wide Web, Linux, and Mosaic (the first graphical web browser) were originally announced to the world. It was the main influence for message boards and chat rooms as we know them today.

For the most part the Internet was a place of libertarian ideals, where there was no censorship, a naturally-occurring etiquette and slang, and in most places, no one to chide you for being profane.

It was its own little world; aside from a few kooks and trolls, no one bothered it and it didn’t bother anyone. Whether you wanted to be rude or civil, there was a place for you.

That still remains true today. Many of the people who have shaped the Internet along its journey through the Endless September and corporatization grew out of that culture.

Many of its most popular destinations, from Something Awful to 4chan to Fark, follow those same veins of discussion without censorship. They are bastions of poor taste and lively discussion, where ideas, regardless of what they are, flow freely. You really have to have a thick skin to get through it all.

Blogs

If you’re unfamiliar, the word “blog” is just a shortening of “weblog.”

The practice predates the term, as it began mainly as people keeping online diaries or routinely updated special-interest sites. I can remember there was a big debate in high school shortly after the turn of the century about whether LiveJournal or Xanga was better.

It was another way for people to communicate, and people have always been communicative creatures.

Blogging began to hit the mainstream around 2001, and mainly in the political category. The first time many mainstream outlets covered their existence was in the reaction to Trent Lott’s infamous statements about Strom Thurmond.

It should not be surprising that politics was where blogging hit its stride, as that arena tends to provoke some of the strongest feelings and most heated debates.

Most of the popular sports blogs (such as Deadspin, EDSBS, and SMQ) began in 2005 and 2006. It was only natural as sporting endeavors also provoke strong debate. Sports also lends itself to satire and poor taste, so that trifecta is right up the Internet’s alley.

The Inflection Point

I don’t have any hard evidence, but I believe the real inflection point in the mainstream media’s reaction to blogs was when Dan Rather got fired.

It’s one thing when people are being immature, trading funny pictures and throwing barbs at each other for dozens of pages. It’s another thing entirely when the anchor of a Big Three network’s evening news is fired over a false story that was exposed mainly by bloggers.

Dan Rather had been a staple of the traditional 6:00 news for decades, but some random person on the Internet brought him down by exposing a story Rather ran as a fraud.

The correct reaction would have been to marvel at the speed of information exchange and try to figure out a way to harness the masses of educated people who now had a voice. The reaction instead has been to periodically attack what they don’t understand.

Sports

The sports media in particular should have seen this coming. I’d argue that a forefather of sports blogging is George Will, a political journalist and commentator who is also a skilled baseball writer.

If a political columnist could be a good sportswriter, why couldn’t a lawyer be one too? Or an English major? Or an IT worker? Or anyone else? Heck, Warren Buffett is one of the most highly regarded writers in America today, and he’s a full-time investor and financier.

Whether he realizes it or not, Leitch is simply following in the 30-year-old tradition of the Internet. In pseudo-Usenet terms, he’s running the “rec.sports.deadspin” newsgroup where only a small number of people can post news but anyone can reply. There is no censorship, a naturally-occurring etiquette and slang, and no one complains about profanity.

The big change of course is the scale. More people read Deadspin in a month than were probably even on the Internet for much of the 1980s.

Sometimes blogs break news; that fact shouldn’t be too surprising since traditional media outlets have only so many eyes and ears out there. Some major sports sites, such as Fox Sports and the Sporting News, have even integrated blogging by fans as a part of their sites.

Conclusion

As I said at the beginning, I think core conflict is between those who understand the Internet for what it is, and those who don’t.

I don’t know if Leitch consciously knows the history he’s perpetuating, but he certainly feels it intuitively. Bissinger, Costas, and a bewildered Braylon Edwards all clearly did not.

The Internet is truly a libertarian’s dream. Everyone has a voice, and the marketplace of ideas lets the cream rise to the top. Bissinger and Costas lamented the large volume of bad writing on the Internet, but those who understand the Internet for what it is know how to use search engines, social networks, and link aggregators to find that cream.

Leitch runs a well-written supermarket checkout tabloid for the sports world. He provides gossip, paparazzi-style photos (usually from Facebook or MySpace), humor, and some real analysis.

It’s not Pulitzer material, but it never claims to be. It has its place in the world and it occupies it with glee.

I wish though that the majority of the sports bloggers out there would get over themselves and this mythical battle with the mainstream media for The Future that they keep talking about. They are not the Future, but today’s embodiment of the Internet’s past. Plus, there’s no Future that can realistically exist without professional journalists anyway.

Besides, worrying about the future is for business analysts and actuaries. The greatest cultural achievements that people make usually are those that come naturally as a result of people scratching an itch to satisfy themselves and their inner drive, not those looking to cement something for future generations.

Just keep reading and writing. Just keep exchanging your ideas. If you’re worth it, your message will be heard. If not, then at least you tried.

In Gainesville This Weekend

I will be in Gainesville this weekend, visiting family and friends and of course, attending the Orange and Blue game. I’ll try to get some good pictures to share.

I’ll be interested to see the progress of Urban Meyer’s prized Gateway of Champions, as detailed by Pat Dooley at the Gainesville Sun. Apparently it’s all covered over and will remain as such until its done, but that’s somewhat of an improvement over the random steel girders blighting the southwest corner of the stadium last fall. It apparently will contain a large alligator near the entrance with the names of every player from the 1996 and 2006 national title teams on it. That brings up two questions:

1. Will Marcus Thomas‘ name be on it? (guess: no)
2. Will they put the names on it like a tag cloud where the most important players’ names are the largest?

My guess on #2 is also no, though it’d be awesome if they did. It would start one of the all-time great discussions/arguments/flame wars in Gator football history. The biggest name for 1996 obviously would be Danny Wuerffel, but for 2006 I’d put Reggie Nelson’s name as the biggest, followed closely by Jarvis Moss.

Never underestimate the importance of Jarvis Moss to the 2006 team.

If you can’t make it to Gainesville, you can watch it on ESPN at 1pm. GameDay will be there, and the first hour will be on from 11-noon on ESPN2 and the second hour is from 12 -1 pm on ESPN.

I’m looking forward to the Race for a Scholarship; it’s not that I think some random kid will beat Louis Murphy, Chris Rainey, or Deonte Thompson in a footrace, but to see just how badly three highly motivated speedsters smoke 15 regular college students. It’s too bad Percy is hurt, but the tradeoff is we get to see Rainey or Thompson go (who we otherwise wouldn’t) after not getting to see much of anything from them last year.

Coach’s Show Review: Bobby Bowden

This is the second is a series of reviews of coach’s shows. The first was Urban Meyer’s show.

Official Name: The Bobby Bowden Show

Episode Reviewed: After the Clemson game

Theme Music: Syncopated strings in a minor key with light, electronic percussion

Co-Host: Gene Deckerhoff, voice of FSU football and basketball; voice of the Tampa Bay Bucs

Intro Graphics:

It’s a flyby of a 3D virtual model of Doak Campbell with a strange color filter and focus blur. I think they spent more money on this intro than the rest of the show combined.

This is literally the only frame where the show’s logo is centered. It quickly gets out of the way to show logos of the show’s corporate overlords sponsors. Again with the amber color scheme.

Set:

This is the first sight that greeted you on that Sunday after the Clemson loss. I apologize if your computer screen just broke.

That’s right, it’s a green screen! It’s a desk with red trim and a green screen. The graphic behind them is supposed to look futuristic, I suppose, what with the rounded walls and Millennium Falcon turret-like window back there, but the fake fluorescent lights and TV screens (which do not change; it’s just a still picture) make it almost like a dark news studio in a warehouse. Mixed genres there, bad form. If you’re going to use a green screen, at least have your graphic have taste. Grade: C-.

Show Format:

Five segments: opening remarks, first half highlights, Inside the Program, Great Moments in FSU Football with Burt Reynolds, and second half highlights. There are brief closing remarks at the end.

Opening Remarks

Opening remarks after losses are either completely gloomy or delightfully funny depending on the coach and depending on if you like the team or not. Count this one in the funny category. Gene, trying to be upbeat, says the FSU program started off “with a bang in the second half” after “Clemson [took] us to task in the first half.” Bobby drops a dadgummit and repeats his line about never seeing the FSU offense play worse. More on this later.

First Half Highlights

No fancy graphics here, but there is a spiral video transition from the “set” to the game footage. Apparently, the Bobby Bowden show is produced on a 5 year old iMac with iMovie 2.

This is where the Bobby Bowden show makes its reputation - game review. Ol’ Bobby has trouble keeping track of his own players names a lot of times, usually just calling them by their numbers. There wasn’t as much as usual in this particular episode, which was disappointing, but it did include statements like “Nice block there by… someone.” Gene and Bobby start by talking about generalities and ignoring the footage, and throughout all of it he’s not sure which plays are next. He also forgot which drive their only field goal of the first half came on, which is remarkable since it came after a blocked punt. Grade: D+

Inside the Program

Your standard garnet-and-spear look for FSU.

Gene’s voice over says it’s your exclusive, all-access pass to FSU football. In actuality, it’s about 40 seconds of Jimbo Fisher working with the quarterbacks at practice. There are some interesting quotes in it though, like “Eyes go, ball goes,” and “Cornerbacks lie, but safeties tell you the truth.” Still, an exclusive, all-access pass? Hardly. Grade: C-

Great Moments in FSU Football with Burt Reynolds

No, I swear, no photoshopping was done to the above picture. Really.

Of every coach show I’ve watched so far, and I’ve watched over half a dozen of them, this is the only show where they bring out a celebrity who went to the school to talk about something that happened years ago. Isn’t there anything that they can talk about that is going on, you know, right now? Apparently this is a feature every other show, and they’ve been doing it for 24 years. The great moment the segment shows Deion Sanders returning a punt for a TD against Clemson.

Let’s review: green screen (again), horrendous green screen graphic, Burt Reynolds shot full of Botox in a Hawaiian shirt, and it has nothing to do with the program today. Grade: D-.

Second Half Review

No Star Wars-style wipes this time, but for the fourth quarter, like the second before it, they have black bars come in to make it look widescreen. I think that’s why they did that, anyway.

It’s just more of the same. Bobby is more upbeat, probably because FSU played a lot better in the second half, but possibly because someone got him some coffee during the last two segments. The widescreen look for the fourth quarter highlights also has the effect of hiding the score and time remaining. At one point he compliments a Clemson player’s coaching, which means he’s complimenting his son without being obvious about it. Clever, Bobby. The same spiral wipe as was used to enter the highlights in the first half was used to leave them in the second. Grade: D+

Embarrassing Commercial Starring the Coach:

Bobby’s version of the Simply Orange commercial. No fist pump, but you do get the gratuitous flash of the national championship ring.

Bobby only had one commercial - for Simply Orange orange juice, just like Urban Meyer. Here, though, it becomes crystal clear why Bobby is the fundraiser and closer extraordinaire for recruiting. He’s a great pitchman; he’s congenial, believable, and has good camera presence. Unfortunately for him, this category is embarrassing commercials starring the coach. Grade: F

Interesting Quotes:

Two words: blocking, and tackling.

Grade: A++ for unintentional comedy.

Overall:

If you’re looking for insight into the FSU program, this is not where you’ll find it. If you want fodder for Bobby’s-too-old jokes, it’s a gold mine. Still, when you watch a coach’s show you’re looking to hear things from the coach that you didn’t from the press conference, why they ran plays when they did, and get an eloquent description of how the coaches view the game. You’ll find none of that here, unless you think “Dadgummit, we just couldn’t play well enough to win” is eloquent. Grade: D+

West Virginia - USF

If you’re not watching this game, shame on you. The story of the USF program, which played its first game ever in 1997, has a chance to make a statement and say definitely that they are for real. The Bulls have NFL talent all over its defense, and they have an exciting quarterback in Matt Grothe. Imagine Matt Jones only with more running, and there actually appears to be a rhyme and reason to what he does most times.

Even if you don’t care about the USF story, tonight the #5 team in the nation has a legitimate threat of losing, and it’s also two ranked teams going at it with no other game on. Five minutes into the game we’ve had a West Virginia punt and a missed USF field goal, but don’t worry, it’ll pick up some. This is going to be a good one.

POST-GAME EDITS:

Well, USF pulled it off. It ended up being a lot more sloppy than I thought it would be, but it was good drama nonetheless. What we learned is that USF’s defense, at least, is for real. UF could certainly use some of their d-line and secondary. Anyway, this was USF’s national coming out party, and unlike Boise State’s Fiesta Bowl win, I think this one will stick. USF is going to be a contender for the Big East title.

Coach’s Show Review: Urban Meyer

I built myself a DVR last year, and this year I decided to record as many different coach’s shows as I could because there’s something inherently funny to me in them. Most are done with laughably bad graphics, very low budgets, and when the team is playing badly or has lost, they’re unintentionally hilarious.

Between SunSports and Cox Sports TV, there’s a lot of different coach’s shows on Gainesville TV. I am going to do mostly satirical reviews of as many as I can find, and to be fair, we start with the Gators. This is required weekly viewing for me, so I can actually comment on how things usually go. For just about all of the rest of them, I will only have one episode to go on.

Official Name: Florida Football with Urban Meyer

Episode Reviewed: After the Ole Miss game

Theme Music: generic hard rock music

Co-Host: Mick Hubert, the voice of the Gators

Coach’s Mood: Stoic, all business. As usual. He has the same demeanor every week on the show.

Intro Graphics

How do you know the Gators are a tough team? Steel diamond plating on what appears to be rock. If you could make steel out of rock, that’s how tough the Gators would be.

This is Urban’s best attempt at a smile when he’s not on the football field.

They’re a bit hokey, but at least it appears someone spent more than 10 minutes on them. Comparatively speaking, it’s a solid B for this category.

Set

A wide-angle shot of the set as seen every time the show goes to commercial.

The designers tried a little too hard to make this look classy, and the Gators logos on the wall are all distorted and put up on weird angles. At least they’re muted so as not to be too distracting. There’s a wide screen high def display, two Gator helmets, and a wooden desk. This is actually the best set of the shows I’ve seen so far. Grade: A.

Show Format

Four segments: opening remarks, game review, Inside Gator Football, and All Access Gators. There are brief closing remarks at the end.

Opening Remarks

Urban was not happy about the game as a whole, so that means he dropped a few of his patented backhanded compliments of the team. He tried to stay positive, but you could tell him the game’s outcome bugged him. He seemed most happy about the way Florida dominated the fourth quarter statistically.

Game Review

These graphics indicate which segment of the game the highlights are coming from. You know the games are intense because not only is the blue, diamond-plated rock back, but the text distorts light.

Either Urban practices this (unlikely) or someone who puts the show together actually gives him a list of the plays being featured (overwhelmingly likely) because he’s very sharp every week during this segment. He knows what’s going on with every play and how it relates to everything else int he game. Only Mark Richt can pull off the game review segment as well as Urban can. Grade: A.

Inside Gator Football

At least it’s consistent with the rest of the show’s graphics

Longtime SunSports veteran Steve Babik does a segment every week on either a coach or a player in the program currently. This week was Tony Joiner. They’re fluff pieces every week, but you usually find out a couple of interesting things about the people featured. Plus, they’re almost as objective as the College GameDay fluff pieces, so it’s got that going for it. Grade: B. You have to grade on a curve with these shows.

All Access Gators

Where did this come from? It has no diamond plated rock at all!

This segment repeats highlights from earlier, only this time with Mick Hubert’s radio calls over them. After a highlight, you get a 5-second or so video quote from a player involved. This segment has had several names over the years, and it always confused me as to why they were recycling highlights just to show video of players say something like, “Boy, we really tried hard out there today. It was a battle, but we just fought through it, man, and we came out on top.” Grade: C-.

Embarrassing Commercial Starring the Coach

I’ve already documented how bad Urban is at commercials before. This episode featured his orange juice spot, as well as these two gems:

Billy Donovan and Urban Meyer “fly” a biplane to hawk frozen pizza. 

Billy flies the plane for most of the ad and then at the end the big reveal is that Urban Meyer was in the other seat. His only line: “Yeah I like to air it out.” This one dates back to when Urban first arrived, so it was a nice surprise the first time we saw it two and a half years ago.

Did Urban even know he was going to be doing a commercial the day they filmed this?

Here, Coach Meyer sits down with some old guy and pretends to interview him about pest control. It appears they roped him into doing this before practice one day because he’s wearing shorts and doesn’t even try to make it look like he’s not reading off of cue cards.

When it comes to making embarrassing commercials, Urban’s one of the best. Grade: A+.

Interesting Quote(s)

Coach Meyer slips in his quotable sound bites all at the beginning usually. He brought up the youth and inexperience of the team and mentioned that Chris Rainey had asked him earlier in the week if the team left the day before or the day of the game. He questions whether he has a smart team or not because of all of the penalties. At the end, he said he’s glad to have the state of Mississippi “in the rear view mirror” and is not looking forward to returning. We also owe something to Auburn for last year. Overall, pretty tame. Grade: C.

Overall

This is one of the best coach’s shows out there. It’s easy to make fun of sometimes, but believe me, it gets a lot easier in that domain once you head up I-75 a bit. Urban has less camera presence than Jamie Hyneman does, but Mick Hubert makes up for it. It’s a good, solid show. Grade: A-

Auburn Game Time

In case you somehow missed it, CBS decided to chase the Saban vs. Bowden storyline, so the Auburn-Florida game will be at 8 pm on ESPN.

Ole Miss Wrapup

This was a classic trap game. Sandwiched between the big rival of Tennessee and the revenge game of Auburn was the worst road game of the year and it looked it. By worst, I don’t mean in terms of competition but in terms of quality. It’s a horrible trip because it’s a long bus ride from Tupelo to Oxford from the game, the stadium is small so that won’t get you amped up, and it’s hard to get excited when playing a bad team like Ole Miss. Urban Meyer was concerned about players not being ready to play, and he was justified.

Rece Davis of ESPN called it “Hangover Saturday,” and that’s what we saw. There were 14 penalties, some defensive lapses, and overall uneven play. We had receivers dropping balls and running wrong routes. The play calling was conservative, perhaps not to give much away for later, and so screens and runs up the middle ruled the day.

Now, it’s hard to find fault with Tim Tebow’s performance from a statistical standpoint, especially since he, Percy Harvin, and Kestahn Moore were the only offensive players who showed up fully ready to play (Derrick Harvey was the only one on defense, by the way). However, Ole Miss dropped 8 in coverage and Tebow took off running a lot of times when his first or second option wasn’t open. For a young player in his first year starting, that’s perfectly normal. However, it could be a concern against future secondaries, especially LSU’s.

In the end, I think everyone is just happy to get out with a win. We’ve got one more home game before the big test in Louisiana to get some things straightened out. I’m not dismissing Auburn, but those Tigers are looking a lot more tame after losing at home to USF and Mississippi State. Hopefully, with future road contests being later in the day we won’t be showing up sluggish. It’s best to put this one behind us.

Troy Wrapup

There’s no real point to talking about the first half because we all saw it, and there’s nothing I can add to what has already been said. Yesterday, I said I would talk about three things, so here we go.

First Half Offense versus Second Half Offense

The first half offense was nearly flawless, and it was helped out by lots of incomplete passes stopping the clock and allowing for more plays. The third quarter was the real problem, because it picked back up in the fourth quarter. Problem number 1 was the defense not stopping Troy anymore, but that’s for later. The entire offensive sequence in the third quarter is as follows:

1. Andre Caldwell catches crossing route, fumbles, and is injured: turnover
2. Kestahn Moore draw up middle: 1 yard
3. Moore triple option handoff up middle: 2 yards
4. Percy Harvin dropped pass thrown behind him by Tim Tebow: no gain
5. Punt
6. Tebow option run up middle: loss of 3 yards
7. Cornelius Ingram very short crossing route: 4 yards
8. Tebow sacked on double linebacker blitz from one back set, missed blocking assignment by either Drew Miller or Moore: 10 yard loss
9. Punt
10. Louis Murphy bubble screen: 7 yards
11. Moore draw up the middle: 4 yards (first down)
12. Jarred Fayson blindsided and injured thanks to poorly timed triple option pitch from Tebow and missed block by Riley Cooper: no gain
13. Incomplete pass on Tebow scramble thanks to pocket breakdown from blitz, missed block by Maurkice Pouncey, and Tebow not recognizing blitz coming: no gain
14. Tebow sacked despite Troy rushing only 3 because all receivers are covered and Tebow slides up in the pocket farther forward than Miller is blocking: loss of 2
15. Punt

That’s 12 whole offensive plays. Not to sound like Bobby Bowden or anything, but blocking was the biggest issue. The offensive line had a terrible third quarter after dominating Troy in the first half. Riley Cooper missing a block didn’t help either, and Tim Tebow forgetting where in the pocket he was led to a sack despite only three rushers and the guy getting the sack being double teamed. That’s the play that gets me the most of all of this.

Another problem was unimaginative play calling. The coaches, probably not wanting to run up a gaudy score, took their foot off the gas and began running mostly inside rushing plays. I understand that winning 70-something to 20-something is considered bad form by a lot of people, but you can’t try to flip switches with such a young team. Maybe last year’s team could have handled it with all of its senior leadership, but not this year. I don’t think the defense will keep too many scores close enough to worry about this, but we saw the coaches turn back the offensive intensity in the BCS title game last year. If another team has a bad first half and the Gator offense runs up a big lead, they had better not pull this crap in the second half because every team on the schedule, except for maybe Ole Miss and FAU, can come back against our defense.

Why the Defense Fared Poorly in the Second Half

First and foremost, the UF defense fared worse in the second half because Troy started playing a lot better. QB Omar Haugabrook stopped missing as many receivers and began running effectively. The Trojans’ play calling was also less predictable.

Another issue is that a lot of the defense backups went in. The easiest way to tell that the backups are going in is the presence of true freshman Carlos Dunlap. He is gigantic, and he’s a defensive lineman wearing #8 so he really sticks out. He has perhaps the most physical ability of anyone on the team, but he came in with what the coaches described as the worst fundamentals because he has poor coaching in high school. Plus, with as big, fast, and strong he is he didn’t need fundamentals against average high school offensive linemen. Anyway, if you see him that means the starters are being rotated out more aggressively.

That is exactly what happened. A lot of guys who were in high school last year were lining up in blue jerseys, and that lead to a lot of missed tackles, mistakes, and penalties. The starters were fine in the first half, but when the guys who needed experience went in, they showed why they need it. As long as the Gators defense stays healthy, it should be able to at least contain most opponents well enough for the offense to give them a shot to win.

Why Florida isn’t in as Big of Trouble as Many Think vs. Tennessee

Tennessee had a hangover half against Southern Miss before waking up and pulling away. That doesn’t take away the fact that Tennessee’s defense looked really bad against Cal. It committed a number of sins, like missing tackles, taking bad angles, and being slower than the guys their trying to cover. The Vols will have the same problem this weekend, so there’s no guarantee that they will keep Florida under 30 or 40 points.

Losing Bubba Caldwell hurts, but that just means Riley Cooper steps in the same place and we don’t miss a beat. Plus, Tennessee’s starting CB Antonio Gaines is now out for the year, so that’s going to be a bigger loss for the Vols than Caldwell for the Gators. Brandon James will be ready to go, and the backups on defense shouldn’t see too much action since the game will be close the whole way. There’s no reason to believe that Florida is in any bigger trouble in this game than Tennessee is.

Bowden Bowl 9

My goodness, what a horrid game. FSU came out completely flat and looked like a helpless team in falling behind 21-0. Then, a snap over the punter’s head by Clemson led to a momentum change in FSU’s favor which led them to a deficit of just 6 at 24-18. Then, it became an epic battle between Tommy Bowden’s proclivity to give away games and Drew Weatherford’s uncanny ability to get sacked in the worst possible times.

ESPN’s Lou Holtz and Mark May didn’t have their A games either when it came to picking the winner in this stinkfest.

The most exciting part of this game was watching the students run on and off of the field as the final play was reviewed and the stadium announcer told them to get off of it. Now, maybe the Clemson students were just looking for an excuse to rush the field, but a word to Tiger fans: beating FSU doesn’t mean much anymore.

The GameDay guys both missed it too.

The FSU defense only looked fast and nasty for about 10 minutes on the game clock. Players were routinely missing tackles, leading to numerous stat boxes showing that something around 80-85% of Clemson’s rushing yards came after the first contact. The FSU offense wasn’t much to speak of either. FSU had only 1 first down in the first half. Drew Weatherford had only one good drive, and the Noles couldn’t run for most of the game. So much for Jimbo Fisher and Rick Trickett coming in and having an immediate impact. There was a priceless shot of Jimbo right before halftime talking to Weatherford from the booth looking like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and not in the good way.

Jimbo Fisher, center, had no idea what he was getting into. Then again, which is worse: working at FSU, or working for Les Miles?

Hopefully this will put to rest the idiocy that FSU is a good team. I was surprised to see such a smart guy as Phil Steele predict that FSU would compete for a national title this year. In addition, the Semis were names as the most underrated team by the BlogPoll roundtable, though that was heavily influenced by Mr. Steele. I still don’t understand why because as I pointed out on my rankings, while many coaches are new it’s still the same old players who went 7-6 last year on the field. Add on to that bit the fact that offenses usually struggle under new offensive coordinators, and any talk of FSU deserving to be ranked - much less be a title contender - are absurd.

As it is, I know why the ACC puts Florida State on Labor Day evening. It’s because it has the strongest brand in the conference and probably drives the best viewer ratings (I don’t have any stats to back that up, but it’s a pretty safe guess). It’s a risk though, since FSU has been in decline and has offered up some truly eye-scarring games the past couple Labor Day evenings. It may be time to pick someone else to feature. You know, someone who will likely finish over .500 in the conference.

On a side note, bravo to ESPN for the revamped on-screen graphics where the each team’s timeouts appear under its name and the relevant stats for the relevant players appear above the score after each play. It managed to add two very useful things without adding clutter or annoying sound effects. A lot of people around the net hate ESPN, but you have to give it credit for the new graphic.