Reflections of last year

With the year coming to a close, there are many things to appreciate. For Georgia fans, it begins with winning the last game at Georgia Tech.

John “Kid” Terrell, with the greatest of antipathy for Georgia’s main rival, always got my vote as the greatest Bulldog fan because he hurt as much as the coaches when Georgia lost. Terrell, who died last summer, would have given a Shakespearian twist to the 2009 season — all’s well that ends well.

While most Georgia fans continue to toast victory over the ancient enemy, the season had forgettable circumstances for many Bulldogs. Coaches who pass through here have always felt that Georgia fans had a greater tolerance and patience when things didn’t go well on Gameday. This past season, however, I saw it vastly different for the first time. Nobody is patient, nobody is tolerant anymore.

You don’t have to consult with an oracle to figure out what is going on. Interest in college football is soaring into the stratosphere, and the impact of big dollars is, in part,

stimulating impatience and unrest.

While I am all for coaches making as much money as possible, some sanity should come about. Signing coaches to multi-million dollar contracts and paying assistant coaches over one million dollars seems out of line when a research professor has to get by on a limited, and now a shrinking budget. If that professor had a few more dollars available, he or she might come up with some discovery or formula that could save lives and improve the quality of life for us all.

I am part of the system, and while I don’t want to bite the hand that feeds me, I do worry about the trend. Georgia is about to hire a new defensive coordinator. For Mark Richt to sign the coach he wants, he is likely going to have to pay him a half-million dollars, or an amount close to that figure, to get him to come to Athens. If he is a difference maker, the Bulldog nation will celebrate his coming. If he doesn’t, then they’ll want to hang him by his feet from the chapel bell.

Joe Dean, former athletic director at LSU, said recently that he had a conversation about escalating salaries with former SEC commissioner Roy Kramer recently. “Roy believes,” Joe said, “that it will explode some day.”

Fans have to pay more for their tickets (and the right to buy those tickets), they have to pay more for parking and they still have to stomach kickoff times that often get them back to their parking spot after the game at midnight. Still there is unending demand for tickets.

Who can blame athletic directors for yielding to television demands when each Southeastern Conference school, with the new CBS and ESPN contracts, will net out close to $11 million dollars? That means more facilities can be built or upgraded. More of the non-football sports teams benefit from this largesse. Any prudent athletic director would do as SEC athletic directors have done.

“The Southeastern Conference,” says Fran Tarkenton, former Bulldog quarterback, “is bigger than the National Football League.”

Already, most ardent fans are making plans for the 2010 season. Come April, you will be hearing passionate fans saying things like, “Only 157 more days till kickoff.” It takes a consistency of losing seasons to see your fan base erode.

Those who pay the most money to support their team–like the box holders–tire of writing checks for $50,000, even $100,000 annually for anything less than a big winner. I have substantial friends who are not ready to tar and feather coaches when Georgia goes 7-5, but they feel that they are paying too much money for that sort of performance. If you did a survey of all the supporters of all major college teams, I think you would find that attitude to exist everywhere.

Those who think their team should win more often are going to be more vocal in the future. They will rant on the Internet and the talk shows. Mark Richt is in a league of coaching piranhas. His constituency, at least a large part of it, has become piranhas.

The biggest issue to be concerned about? With all that money bringing about all that pressure to win, isn’t there the likelihood that we are going to see more rules bending in the future? There is one exception when it comes to that. Mark Richt.

There are many in his constituency who really don’t care about that. Unfortunately.