Just thought I'd ask.

Its making me use 70 more words. So I am just typing to fill space here. I guess they use a 75 word limit to keep people for posting crappy posts. Kinda like this one. But, I am too formidable of a crackpot not to be heard, so you're reading this. Sorry about that, by the way. You'll never have this time back. Its gone.... forever. This is the end: done!

It was interesting to read Commissioner Slive's interview on the ESPN website.  It can be read in its entirety here: Slive Interview.

The part I want to focus on here, is the part about the South Carolina investigation by the NCAA.

What are your thoughts on the ongoing NCAA investigations at South Carolina and Tennessee?

MS: I can’t comment too much on them, but the South Carolina matter was an administrative error and not one that rises to a level that we would be overly concerned about.

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This paper was written for a class entitled 'Law and Economics'.  The focus of the class was the relationship between social economic factors and legal theory and application.  This was not a law class or a law school class.  I am not a lawyer or a law student.  I only have basic understanding of the legal matters addressed in this paper and used the cited text book as my main source.

Now that the disclaimer stuff is out of the way, this is the paper that I wrote for the class.  I have decided to go ahead and post it in its current form and not update it for topics I did not have room to discuss due to page requirements.  I personally believe that this paper is not detailed enough.  When I find some time I would like to get into more detail on the economics of players, the effect on Title IX on athletic budgets, how much money is contributed from tv contracts, the percentage of capital siphoned off by conferences and the NCAA and the efficacy of openly paying players with respect to the problem of stopping unwarranted compensation. 

            With the on-going issues of college athletes and athletes' families taking money from professional agents and members of the colligate community, there has been a rise in volume in the debate of amateurism in college sports.  This has been especially true with high profile cases in college football.  Currently, the NCAA governs rules and punishments on violations in amateurism.  The NCAA is not a legal body, but it is a regulating one.  Member schools enter into the NCAA voluntarily in order to access the benefit of fair competition with other universities.

            The NCAA makes amateurism one of its main concerns because they want to promote relative equality among college programs.  The NCAA isn't naïve enough to believe that all programs are created equal.  They have separated the competitive field into three divisions and have separated Division 1 into two subdivisions for football.  The intention of these divisions in conjunction with other regulation (such as scholarship limits) is to even the competitive playing field.  Since its inception in 1906, the NCAA has been tasked with consolidating rules, protecting the health and well being of student-athletes, and preventing unfair competitive practices by member institutions.

            The current debate on amateurism has many detractors of the current system.  The people believe that allowing schools to pay athletes will alleviate the pressure for athletes to take money.  The efficacy of this stance, while important, is not the central issue of this paper.  Here we will be discussing the economic arguments of this issue.  To assist with this analysis, I have used football and athletic budget data for the Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS).  The NCAA releases this data and it was compiled by Indystar.com and USA Today.  Indystar compiled the 2004-2005 data by sport for the major sports and USA Today compiled the total athletic department for the 2008-2009 academic year.  This data is helpful in determining the financial impact to the academic institutions.

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First off:  Merry Christmas Everyone!

After this Ohio State debacle, I have been seeing more of this 'Lets go ahead and play players' and 'don't give me the get a free education and room and board crap' on message boards and comment sections.  I say 'Bullcrap!  Get your head out of your ass.'  First we all know that the majority of schools could never afford it.  That includes a large portion of D-1 FBS schools.

As some of you may have seen me discussing before, I am a 2nd year IMBA student at USC.  While this in no manner means that I know everything, I did write a report on this subject for my Law and Economics class discussing the financial viability and legal theory involved with current player contracts.  A large section of my research involved looking at the athletic budgets of D-1 FBS schools.

Looking solely at football budgets, 32 current FBS schools lose money on their Football programs.  If ONLY football players were paid minimum wage ($7.25/hr) for only the NCAA allowable mandatory practice times (does not include 'voluntary' workouts, meetings and film-study) the number of Football programs in the red goes to 36.  This includes 2 ACC schools and 4 Big East schools.  If you look at the athletic department as a whole, 38 FBS programs are in the red and would increase to 61 programs, or 53% of FBS schools.  That's right... over half of the FBS programs would lose money if we paid players minimum wage for mandatory practice time.  This would include 5 ACC schools, 4 Big 12 schools, 3 Big East schools, 3 Big 10 schools, all 8 public Pac-10 schools, and 2 SEC schools.

I want to address the comments that got me started on this little rant here on Christmas Eve.  'Schools make big money off the kids, its not fair to them'.  Let me ask you one question:  How much money does the corporation you work for share with you?  As follow up:  what does your salary pay for?  The money you make for your work pays for your living conditions, your food, an allowance for entertainment.  In return you are expected to provide a service. Some people are lucky enough to work for a company that provides bonuses, others aren't, but the company is not required to provide the employee a share of profits beyond the agreed salary amount (with the exception of employee owned corporations or other such enterprises, of course).

Lastly, from a contracts point of view.  The school solicits the athlete to play for them for a year, the athlete accepts the offer, and in return the school agrees to provide certain things that have a monetary value as consideration. Namely, tuition, room and board, and an allowance.  These 3 aspects are what constitute a legal contract.  The athlete enters this contract voluntarily, with full knowledge of what is expected and what is to be afforded, and what the restrictions are.  As such, these athletes are not being taken advantage of.  The market has set the rate, albeit it is a regulated market.  The problem comes from an inconsistent regulator, not from the nature of the contract.

That's all I really have energy for tonight.  My paper was 10 pages long, And I am not against putting it up somewhere if you guys want to debate it, critique it, or tell me I am legally retarded.  I may want to look it over once first before I do so, however.  I hope you all have a very merry holiday.

Merry HoHo Everyone!!

Charlestowne

After taking the trip to ATL, this is the first time I've been able to get on the board. Wanted to share some of my thoughts:

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First, lets get full appreciation for what this game meant to our season.  With the Gamecocks pulling Auburn, Alabama, and Arkansas from the West this year, we have to take at least one of these games to have a realistic shot at the East title.  Luckily, we get Alabama and Arkansas at home, but they are also the two best teams in our league.  If we lose to all three of the West teams, we have to hope that Florida drops at least 2 games going into our game (and this is assuming we sweep the East).  Also, would we really like our first trip to Atlanta to have the footnote that we lost all three games to the West on the way to get there.  I am also assuming that Kentucky, Vandy and Tenn don't get a little uppity and only lose 2 conference games.

Second, this loss was a coaching loss.  There may have been 4 turnovers in the 4th quarter, but these were directly related to coaching decisions.  The two turnovers by Garcia were a direct result of one running Marcus Lattimore 3 times in the second half.  Our play calling became one dimensional and Auburn made us pay.  They brought the heat on Garcia and we never ran the ball to the outside or dropped the ball quickly to the flat to make them pay.  In the defensive side, we gave Auburn exactly what they wanted.  We covered the deep ball and let their QB have as much running room as he wanted.  Auburn adjusted to this, and we never did.

The nail in the coffin was putting in Shaw in the 4th quarter.  The first fumble by Garcia was forced because the blitz forced him to tuck it and go.  While trying to not take the sack (something he has been reamed by Spurrier to do) and pick up some positive yardage, a defensive back speared him in the chest.  There isn't a player in the country that could have held onto that ball.  The second fumble, Garcia was trying to go down and the defender held him up until he could get help to strip it.  In response to these two fumbles, Spurrier made an emotional decision and took out the guy that had been winning the game for him for 3 quarters and put in a freshman into his first SEC game, on the road, to try to win it.  The first interception was a stupid freshman mistake, the second one was a difficult catch for a well covered Jeffery and a lucky pick by Auburn.  In my opinion, neither of those throws should have been made, and Garcia wouldn't have done it.

A lot of people have been blaming the players for this loss, but the blame rests solely on Spurrier and EJ.  They both laid an egg and made some of the worst decisions I have seen them make since they have been at USC.  I just hope it doesn't cost us the season we could have had.

While threads are open on the main page and there has already been several threads started, I felt like I needed to put my thoughts down here.

Saying that I am shocked this afternoon would be an understatement.  It always seems harder to hear about things like this when it happens to people like Kenny.  I think it presses home that you never know how around you is capable of doing such a thing.  If someone as up-beat, well loved and successful as he can commit suicide, who else walks that edge?

By all accounts, Kenny was always the one with a smile on his face.  Always the one looking for the good.  Always the one that made those around him feel better.  Spurrier even mentioned that he was down here last weekend for the Georgia game.  The reports are that female friend found him when coming back from running an errand with his son.  These details make this tragedy seem sudden.  Both in its nature and in its execution.  Of course, we don't know what his private thoughts were.  We don't know how hard or personal he took his set-backs in his career.  What we do know is that we have lost someone that was a big part of our Gamecock family.  A shinning example of how we all would like to conduct ourselves.  Someone who we can all still try to live up to.

Lastly, this is not just a day to remember Kenny for who he was.  This is a day to remind ourselves to appreciate those that we have around us.  The people that make it possible for us to navigate our trials.  Today is a day to give these people a hug and let them know that they are appreciated.  To remind ourselves that we are as big a part of their lives as they are a part of ours.

In addition to not punishing players for being arrested, Larry Fedora is ready to talk trash about his season opener at South Carolina.  Quote and discussion after the jump.

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Editor's Note: Promoted from FanPosts. And, yes, I'll post the best pro-Alabama argument that's made if anyone cares to answer.

Given from the backlash from Cock-n-Fire's article, I am sure I will get some too.  (Unless everyone is already tired of talking about it)  Hopefully, I can help some Tide fans understand where the rest of us are coming from on this... and, no, its not about screwing you 'cause you're on top.  A little schedule talk of the actual schedules can be seen after the jump.

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Looks like this problem extends beyond the football program.  If true, this really points at the dreaded 'lack of institutional control' that tends to really nail schools.  However, there seemed to be a lot more damning evidence at Southern Cal, and we haven't seen anything there, yet.  What really surprises me is that we haven't heard anything from the administration at Tennessee.   More thoughts after the jump.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/sports/ncaafootball/12tennessee.html?_r=3&ref=sports

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The big story I'm hearing today is that Alshon Jeffery has been cleared to play ball for Carolina.  He received a high enough score on his last SAT, but we were still waiting on a summer class grade that was expected to come out this week.  It seems that he has passed everything he needs to be cleared.  Also, he will begin his career as a Gamecock by taking classes in Summer II, so he will be on campus to begin working with the team on Sunday.

This is great news for Carolina.  Alshon has the physical skills to begin contributing this season.  There has been some questions about how we would replace Kenney.  While this does not answer that question.  It will provide some very useful depth. 

As for the Kenney question..... My personal belief is that while he is a special kind of talent, everyone had the same question when Sidney Rice left and Kenney was a virtual unknown on the roster.  We may not be able to replace his talent level, but we'll be fine.

Its still early int he process (My God, its only June), but with 7 commits, our 2010 class is shaping up pretty nicely so far.  With AJ Cann committing today, I'd like to take this opportunity to do a Mid-Summer look at our next class.  Players after the Jump.

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So... Spring practice is officially over.  That means that we all have to find ways to spend the next couple of months.  Luckily, its summer (my favorite time of the year) and finding good ways to pass the time seam to come pretty easy.  I for one will spend the next couple of months partaking in a variety of activities.  Surfing, beaching, boating, drinking, and maybe some traveling.  Hopefully, by the time fall practice starts up, I'll be knee deep into grad school in Cola.  (Keeping my fingers crossed)

What are all of ya'll's big summer plans?  Go ahead, let us know.

The main stream of this site is covering spring practice fairly well, and as I cannot attend any of the practices personally, I really don't have anything to add.   So, I am just going to complain about something.

Clemson's recruiting strategy is showing itself, again.  Marcus Lattimore, a long time Carolina lean, visited Clemson over the weekend.  (For the record, I am not one of those guys that gets bent out of shape everytime a recruit that likes The Gamecocks visits our rivals)  According to an interview that Lattimore did with TigerIllustrated.com, Lattimore shared with Dabo that he was interested in majoring in Sports Marketing...  Dabo proceeded to try to sell Marcus on Clemson's Sports Marketing program (a program they don't have) by claiming that Panther's owner Jerry Richardson went to Clemson.  The fun part is that Richardson didn't go to Clemson... He went to Wofford.  He was a star football player for Wofford in the 60's.  I just really hope that someone talks to Marcus and sets the story straight.

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As a general rule, I try to avoid the whole name calling thing.

That being said: David Reaves is a Douchebag. 

I can understand that he gave Jarvis Giles a call.  Giles used to be committed to Tenn. before the Doughnut King resigned and it makes sense to see if the kid is still interested now that they have a new head coach and a direction.

For Reaves to try and turn not just the open recruits that he was recruiting for South Carolina, but to actively persue the committed players in this class is douchbaggery of the highest caliber.  So far, it hasn't really worked out for him.  Not only are our committed players staying, but it looks like Giles may end up at South Carolina anyway.

I have to give props to Chris Payne (our first commit in this class, by the way) for sticking to his guns and having nothing to do with Reaves now that he's gone. 

On another note, I am kind of glad that Reaves is gone.  He was a good recruiting coordinator for us. But he was an awful QBs coach. Our QBs have not been getting quality coaching, or Smelly would be a lot better than he is in his 3rd year.  The Gamecock QB situation needed a bigger shakeup than just Garcia getting some meaningful practice time. Hopefully this will help. Currently it looks like Spurrier is going to get more involved in the development side of the QB situation. That can only be a good thing in my opinion. 

I saw a link in one of the Blogs last week that took me to a nice little article in the So Cal student newspaper.  In this article, the author claimed that the current perception that So Cal's dominance over the Pac 10 was no longer impressive because of the talent gap between So Cal and the rest of the Pac 10.  The author also claimed that this was Pete Carrol's fault. 

The crux of the argument basically said that because of So Cal's dominance on the field and on the recruiting trail, the rest of the conference as deteriorated into mediocrity.  Because of this mediocrity, beating up on the rest of the Pac 10 didn't impress poll voters anymore and hurts So Cal's standings nationally.  Or at least, that's the perception.  (Side note: The fact that Oregon State could win the conference if they win out kinda debunks this argument, by that's not the point here)

Why am I talking about this on an SEC blog or a USC blog?

Good question, with the performance we've seen out of Fla for the last couple of weeks (Average margin of victory for the last 6 games: 44.33) and the fact that many of the big play makers are underclassmen,  I start to wonder when this type of on field dominance is going to end for Fla.  If that's the case, does Fla do to the SEC what So Cal has done (supposedly) to the Pac 10?  I don't think so.  But its scary to think about.

Right now the SEC is the conference that recruits want to be in.  Many of our bigger teams are known for recruiting nationally.  If it stops being a hard fought conference, does that change?  I hope not.  One of the things I like about being a USC and SEC fan is that you never know who the top teams are going to be every year.

Week 2:

Once again, WVU has some serious clock management issues.  ECU out gains WVU by 135 yds total and 171 in the air.  Pat White’s throwing performance isn’t bad.  He completes 61% of his passes and gains 6.5 yards per pass.  Not great, but obviously not being called to throw down field.  This is odd considering how far WVU fell behind. Pickney had another stellar day exploiting the weakness in WVU pass defense that was exposed in week 1. He threw for 78.6% and averaged 10.7 yards per throw. I am beginning to believe that he is the real deal. Williams and Simmons combined for another fine day rushing for a total of 119 yards.

I think that WVU was seriously overrated beginning the year. I haven’t looked at the ranking for this week, yet. So I can’t comment on how much the consensus has reacted. I also don’t want to get into how much is coaching (i.e. Rich Rod, game planning, scheme, etc.) or how much is personnel since that’s a completely different post and I am grossly under qualified and don’t know enough about the team to comment.  However, it seems that Pat White’s arm is being seriously under utilized.  If WVU keeps this up, they are going to find themselves extremely predictable and in a world of pain.  They still have Colorado, Rutgers, Auburn, Louisville, Pitt, and USF on the schedule.  I wouldn’t look to far past Marshall either, at this point.  I am certainly glad not to be a WVU fan right now.

ECU looks pretty good. Their defense has held its first two opponents to and average of 247 yards per game and their offense looks stout. This is against two teams that were supposed to be a lot better than ECU.  If they keep this up, I expect we shall see them in a late season bowl game with a chance to really prove themselves.  I don’t know who deserves the credit for either finding Pickney or coaching him up, but that man deserves a raise. Or an offer from South Carolina, I would love to have a QB that is a player like that on our team.

As I was trying to say..... The proudest father alive this week must be Lou Holtz.  His son, Skip, has led the ECU Pirates over Va Tech and WVU back to back weeks to open the season. This had led many commentators to ask two questions:  Is WVU that bad?  Is ECU that good?

I decided the only way to answer the above questions was to do some analysis on the games each team have played so far.  Disclaimer: I didn't actually watch any of these games, except for a few minutes of the ECU/WVU game.  I used the box score from these games to get the data.

Week 1:

First, I thought Villanova only played basketball.  Say what you will about the SEC, but at least when we schedule a 1-AA patsy it’s a football school.  The scoreboard doesn’t tell the whole story for WVU.  It looks like a pretty strong win for WVU until you notice that they were out gained by Villanova 54 yards total, by 61 in the air, and only out rushed them by 16 yards.   Pat White had a stellar day throwing a 75% completion rate and 5 TDs.  But WVU had a hard time controlling the clock (more on this later) and the defense was horrible against the pass.  I think that the voters focused on the score and Pat White’s production after this game and conveniently ignored everything else.

Looking at the numbers of the second game, it would seem that Va Tech’s outing wasn’t all that bad.  They allowed ECU to control the ball better and gave up an extra 126 yards total.  The difference in this game seems to be Glennon’s 2 picks.  Also, the special teams play that this doesn’t show.  Glennon still had 60% completion percentage and averaged 9.9 yds a throw, but it doesn’t seem like he was able to get the team moving against ECU.  Pickney, on the other hand, had a great day.  He had 82.6% completion percentage and averaged 11.1 yards a pass with a TD to top it off.  His two main backs also combined for 102 yards and kept the Va Tech D honest.

No great prose from me this moring.  Just bastardized commentation.

Hey, I have an idea.... Maybe we should make Vandy our new SEC rival.  Then maybe our team would start giving a crap about the game every year.

I am still planning on going to the Georgia game next weekend.  But I am not planning on being happy about it.

We just lost 2 years in a row to a school that doesn't have an athletic department.  That's got to be a good talking point.

I don't know why the team lost focus.  But I hope the coaching staff runs them into the ground this week.  If they don't want to play football, they don't have to practice football.  They can just run wind sprints for 2 straight hours everyday.

At least we're not Clemson.  Although we played like them.

Besides Michigans #5 preseason ranking last year, the team from the upstate must have one of the biggest week 1 poll drops in history.  From 9th to NR in the AP Poll and 22nd in the coaches poll.

That makes me smile.

However, I have no doubt that Clemson will claw their way back up there.  They always do.  However.  The ACC seems a little more dynamic now than it did a week ago.  How bad is Clemson, Va Tech, UVA, and NC State?  How good is Duke and Ga Tech?  Only time will tell.  But Clemson is sure to feast on the half dead carcus of some of these teams while allowing some of the other to do the same on them.

However enjoyabe it is for me to see Clemson fall, my main concern is on the Gamecocks this week.  We REALLY need to take care of Vandy like we mean it.  This is the game that really showed us the disaster that was unfolding last year.  Most eyes will be watching this game with that in mind.  How we play this game, and how close we play UGA next week will determine how far we climb before we get to the tough part of our schedule.  I don't expect to make the Top 10 this year.  We really only got there by default last year.  (To many top 5 teams were shooting themselves in the head.) 

I still think we can be good, as long as we're healthy.  But its still early.  I still hold my concerned optomism.

Go Gamecocks.  Can't wait till Thursday night.  As long as I am not in the middle of an evacuation.

Even though I have been following this story, I haven't made much public comment on it to date.  Partly because I wanted to wait to see how it played out.  (Although I already knew)  Also, because I hate getting into the topics on message boards because there are plenty of people that don't know how to hold a civilized conversation.  Mostly, because while I feel like there is a palatable double standard in this state, I really don't care how Clemson Athletics handles discipline issues.  But I feel compelled to speak on this situation.

First, yes, McDanniel was not convicted in a court of law, so we don't know for certain he did it.  But the circumstantial evidence is pretty damning.  First, his girlfriend shows up in the hospital bloodied and bruised.  His excuse:  she made it all up.  Second, for me, taking PTI is pretty much an admission of guilt.  I have known several people that went through Pre-Trial Intervention (admittedly mostly for drugs) and all of them were guilty as hell and caught red-handed.  PTI is generally reserved for first time offenders.  It gives them the benefit of the doubt that they won't always be delinquents and a clean slate.

But considering the nature of what he did, I was still a little surprised that absolutely no punishment was dealt out what-so-ever.  He didn't miss a practice and isn't going to miss a game.  Not even against the Citadel in week 2.  This sends a horrible message.  If you are even suspected of yelling at your significant other at South Carolina, you're off the team.  No questions asked.  It's happened.

If McDanniel had been busted for a small amount of weed and the case was dismissed, I wouldn't care.  But to send his girlfriend to the hospital and still be allowed to represent your University without any sanctions is unfathomable.

I think that this speaks more about Tommy Bowden than McDanniel.  There are always going to be bad apples on every team.  Its how they are handled that defines how a program is viewed. 

Clemson:  We'll do whatever it takes to just barely underachieve.