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Alabama leads the league with nine All-SEC selections in coaches voting | AL.com
Alabama led the league with five All-SEC selections when the coaches' picks were announced Tuesday.
The Crimson Tide had nine overall selections including five on the first team. Texas A&M put four on the first team and Auburn had three.
Congratulations to all of these guys, but this serves as yet another reminder of an opportunity lost. The good news is Bama will field the team with the best athletes in the country for the foreseeable future.
Prankster pages Alabama coach Nick Saban at Austin, Texas, airport | AL.com
But the prank of the day comes from a Texas airport. According to multiple media outlets, an employee at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport was asked by a prankster to page Saban over the intercom.
Just to be clear, Saban was recruiting in Ohio.
Yeah, but we don't know who he's recruiting for, PAAAWWWL.
Time for Alabama to re-invest in Nick Saban (Kevin Scarbinsky) | AL.com
There was a time when Alabama re-calibrated the market for college football coaches to hire Saban with an eight-year deal worth about $32 million, but that was a long time ago. If Brown makes the same amount of money for mediocrity at Texas as Saban does for sustained excellence at Alabama, one of them is underpaid.
Look at the new deal Auburn just did for Gus Malzahn, with the shadow of a Texas opening kicking spurs into that horse. After just one year as an SEC head coach - although it’s been a spectacular, historic year that’s one win away from a national title - the school and the coach have come to a six-year agreement that’ll pay Malzahn an average of $4.5 million a year. In the last year of the contract, if nothing changes and it always does, Malzahn will make $5.1 million. That’s approaching Saban’s current neighborhood, and no one in college football has approached Saban’s consistency in performance.
This is a pretty simple situation. Pay the man whatever he wants.
NCAA audit: Every football conference made money on 2012-13 bowls | AL.com
An NCAA audit report of bowl games released last week shows that every Football Bowl Subdivision conference received more money from 2012-13 bowl payouts than their schools paid on bowl expenses. The 35 bowls distributed $300.8 million last year to conferences, who negotiate deals on behalf of their teams, and schools reported spending $90.3 million on bowl trips. According to the NCAA report, bowls received $445.6 million in gross receipts and spent 26 percent of it on operating expenses. Bowls retained 7 percent of the receipts.
"The perception is out there that schools are losing money going to bowl games and the reality is that's not true," said Wright Waters, executive director of the Football Bowls Association. "Bowls strike deals with conferences, and there very well may be issues that conferences are not giving them a big enough allowance to go to the bowl. But at the end of the day, the conferences are still distributing money at the end of the year."
Surprising results, as the refrain about teams losing money has been constant and increasing in volume these last few years. It's always fun to inject empirical evidence into these discussions and watch as opposition shrivels. One thing is clear from this report: we need more bowl games.
Oklahoma players on facing Alabama in Sugar Bowl: 'We comin for Bama' | AL.com
When it was announced that Oklahoma would be traveling to New Orleans for a Jan. 2 date with Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, the Sooners were thrilled.
Alabama opened as a 15-point favorite to beat Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl, but that hasn't stopped some Sooners from letting their feelings be known on Twitter, per The Tulsa World.
Hahah It's about to go down baby!! We comin for bama. It's bout to be suhweeeeeeet!! #SugarBowl
— PL Lindley (@LindleyPL_40) December 9, 2013