Big 12 Needs to Study Georgia's Football Spending Model
Article photo of Stetson Bennett and Kirby Smart; photo credit to Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports.
Despite an incredible season, TCU proved to be no match for Georgia in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game. The final score said it all: 65-7. As noted in yesterday's preview about the trenches, the Bulldogs were simply too much along the lines of scrimmage.
Before getting into how the Bulldogs have become the dominant program in college football, a note about the Horned Frogs though.
Nobody can take away from TCU and what they accomplished this season. They won nine games by 10 points or fewer. That was a tremendous accomplishment by itself. Now, onto the brutal truth.
Most, albeit not all, Big 12 teams, probably need to adjust how they spend if they are going to make future runs at not only entering the College Football Playoff, but being competitive.
Now, there's Texas, a program that's spent a lot of money for years but for whatever reason top-notch success has not come. Beyond the Longhorns, few Big 12 institutions have gone all-in with spending to compete with how the Georgia program has done with their overall finances.
Keep in mind, this article was never intended to be about fair. College football has never been fair, but it has proven to be about the cash.
Starting this July, UCF, Cincinnati, BYU and Houston will all need to find new ways to raise and utilize more financial resources, too. The following will be proof of that.
Here’s a major part of the blueprint from Georgia that every Big 12 team should study and utilize in some way, and it’s all about the Benjamins.
1) Overall spending must be over the top.
Lots of money. Like, you cannot spend enough money. On what? Facilities, coaches, and anything football related. If you want to know where the Bulldogs truly won this game, it starts with spending. Here’s a look at Georgia’s locker room:
Spending, that’s a naughty word for many college administration’s, but that’s also the bottom line for how to make it towards the top of the college football world. Boosters provided a lot of that cold, hard, cash, but the UGA administration also deserved credit for raising supplemental money from advertising, etc., and also utilizing the finances once in Athens, in different manners to elevate the football team’s stature.
Considering the Bulldogs had a strength and conditioning coach making more money than some college assistant coaches, it places things into perspective.
2) Top-notch strength and conditioning program.
Here’s one of many examples: The strength and conditioning program has been tremendous, and it even hired away Alabama strength and conditioning coach Scott Cochran in February of 2020.
According to public records, Cochran’s salary was 550,000 a year. Considering what he’s accomplished, his time and efforts of studying how to produce a top-notch football player from the ground up has been more valuable than the money he’s received. Cochran has since moved up to Special Teams Coach for UGA, but that only further signified just how valuable he’s been to the Bulldogs.
3) UGA hired an excellent coach with Kirby Smart, and then he hired a great staff.
Kirby Smart, a head coach that makes 10.25 million per year, has done a tremendous job of sticking with what he knows best, being a defensive-minded coach, and still adapting when and where it’s needed. His unleashing of the passing game, over the past few seasons, showed just how knowledgeable he’s become. Of course that cost him, er, Georgia, a lot of money.
Part of that adaptation has been allowing offensive coordinator Todd Monken to throw the ball more; be more creative with different aspects of the passing game. Prior to Monken’s arrival, Georgia was more ground and pound.
Monken’s salary? 2.01 million dollars per year. He’s the highest paid assistant coach in college football. That’s pretty much par for the Georgia staff, too.
Go across the Georgia coaching staff and one will see just how committed the Bulldogs have been to winning. All the salaries have been at a high level for quite some time. Like them, hate them, or any place in between, the Bulldogs put their money where their mouth is.
Regardless of which area Georgia needed upgrades with football, Smart and the Georgia administration have almost always done a great job with new hires to the staff, Monken included, who came to Athens, Ga. in 2020 after 30 years of coaching experience at the college and NFL level. That also aided with the acquisition of talent.
4) Recruiting benefitted from all of the top-notch facilities and people brought into the program.
Prospects like the glitz and glamor of the weight room, locker room, Sanford Stadium, the coaching staff, and all of the support staff as well. Those points, again, started with spending. Sure, Smart and his staff go after the best players they can find.
Bringing in prospects to see the facilities in the video above also made it easier for recruits to say yes to the Bulldogs during those unofficial and official recruiting visits.
What does all of these points about spending mean?
There could have been even more details about how Georgia spent money. The above was a sampling. Scary, but true.
Overall, there are many different items that each school in the Big 12, as well as the Big 10, ACC, and Pac 12 need to come to realize, if they did not already, to compete with Georgia; that goes over into the overall spending of other SEC programs as well.
It's not like Alabama is not spending a bunch of money either (and you can bet Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide will increase spending now, too).
That stated, Georgia deserved credit for maximizing its efforts, and that's why this article highlighted what it has created with its current football program, even over Alabama and what Saban accomplished since he went to Tuscaloosa in 2007.
Georgia has now won the last two national titles and many believe they are the favorites to do so again in 2023. The ability to spend enormous amounts of money may not be the same from school to school, but if so-called "peer institutions" truly want to compete with Georgia for College Football Playoff National Title trophies, they will likely need to up their spending in some way to make that concept a reality.
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