I was at my in-laws this past Sunday afternoon having lunch to celebrate my father-in-law’s 73rd birthday. As the kids sat down to eat first I was standing in the doorway from the dining room into the living room watching the ESPN unveiling of the final college football rankings. It dragged on and on. Finally, they flashed “Alabama” for the 4th playoff spot and I yelled, “Thank God!”
Sorry, Florida State.
Here’s the latest 18S Top 20 Poll.
18 Stripes Top 20 Poll
| RANK | TEAM | RECORD | NEXT |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Washington (+1) | 13-0 | vs. Texas |
| 2 | Texas (+3) | 12-1 | vs. Washington |
| 3 | Florida State (+1) | 13-0 | vs. Georgia |
| 4 | Alabama (+3) | 12-1 | vs. Michigan |
| 5 | Michigan (-2) | 13-0 | vs. Alabama |
| 6 | Georgia (-5) | 12-1 | vs. Florida State |
| 7 | Ohio State (+1) | 11-1 | vs. Missouri |
| 8 | Oregon (-1) | 11-2 | vs. Liberty |
| 9 | Oklahoma | 10-2 | vs. Arizona |
| 10 | Ole Miss | 10-2 | vs. Penn State |
| 11 | Missouri | 10-2 | vs. Ohio State |
| 12 | Penn State | 10-2 | vs. Ole Miss |
| 13 | Arizona (+2) | 9-3 | vs. Oklahoma |
| 14 | LSU (+2) | 9-3 | vs. Wisconsin |
| 15 | Louisville (-1) | 10-3 | vs. USC |
| 16 | Notre Dame (+1) | 9-3 | vs. Oregon State |
| 17 | Liberty (+3) | 13-0 | vs. Oregon |
| 18 | NC State (NR) | 9-3 | vs. Kansas State |
| 19 | SMU (NR) | 11-2 | vs. Boston College |
| 20 | Tulane (-7) | 11-2 | vs. Virginia Tech |
Out:
#18 Iowa
#19 Oklahoma State
National Storylines
Yes, that’s right we have concluded our 18 Stripes investigation into the Michigan Football program and handed down a sentence that bars the school from participating in the College Football Playoff. Lost in all the hubbub and controversy between Florida State and Alabama was the fact that MICHIGAN NEVER SHOULD’VE BEEN ELIGIBLE FOR THE PLAYOFFS.
It was all right there, the easy way out! Banning Michigan solved all of these problems and gave the CFB Committee and NCAA a get out of jail free card from controversy in case of a doomsday scenario (which happened!) and more importantly, was the right thing to do!
A sliver of me feels bad for Florida State but with more time I think the committee’s decision will be less controversial. Winning all of your games doesn’t grant you immunity, the Seminoles strength of schedule was bad, the ‘Noles strength of schedule was really bad for a team particularly leaning on being undefeated, like many teams they had some ugly close calls, and had they made the playoffs it would’ve been with some of the worst collection of Best Winsâ„¢ in the history of this post-season format.
Without their star quarterback, did FSU earn a participation trophy to the playoffs and face Michigan? Yeah, probably. But if we’re going to do the wrong thing and allow Michigan to play, at least we did the right thing and put Alabama as the preferred matchup. Deep in our souls we know this is true:
Michigan will take on Alabama in the Rose Bowl pic.twitter.com/obgheMS7oU
— Clayton Sayfie (@CSayf23) December 3, 2023
So, I put Washington in the top spot after championship weekend. I don’t love it (this was an awesome year to have a 12-team playoff oh well) but they stepped up and upset Oregon to give them the best win from an undefeated team over the weekend.
Alabama snapped Georgia’s long winning streak with a 27-24 upset and sends the Dawgs tumbling out of the title picture. Nick Saban has to be smiling for more reasons than one, but going from being written off a bit and questioned earlier in the season to his 11th SEC Championship has people now calling this his best coaching season of his career.
Texas pounded Oklahoma State 49-21 and the Horns just might be the National Championship favorites. Can that and Steve Sarkisian be said in the same sentence?
With their 3rd string quarterback, Florida State ended up beating Louisville 16-6 which is more than Notre Dame can say. All the Seminoles needed was 232 total yards in the win.
Iowa put up a fight consisting of 166 total yards in a 26-0 loss to Michigan.
Assuming they can put away Boston College, the SMU Mustangs should finish 12-2 following a solid 26-14 win over Tulane in the AAC Championship Game.
Liberty kept their perfect record intact with a 49-35 win over New Mexico State in the Conference USA Championship.
The Top 3 Best/Worst Seasons Based on Pre-Season Expectations
#3 Best: Arizona
The media picked Arizona to finish 8th in the Pac-12 and instead they finished 3rd (ahead of the likes of USC, Oregon State, and Utah) with an overall 9-3 record. Tremendous work.
#2 Best: New Mexico State
Sure, they just lost the conference title game but the Aggies made it to a conference title game and won 10 games. They might make a documentary about this season. Somehow, Jerry Kill didn’t make the Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year finalists!?
#1 Best: Northwestern
I didn’t have this program beating any Power 5 teams this year. They looked completely down and out following a controversial off-season and the firing of Pat Fitzgerald. Somehow, they beat Minnesota, Maryland, Wisconsin, Purdue, and Illinois to finish 2nd in the Big Ten West. I don’t know how they pulled this season off to be honest.
#3 Worst: Texas A&M
Beginning the season no. 24 in the AP Poll and finishing 7-5 isn’t the worst thing ever, especially after your quarterback is injured for the season. However, hitting the eject button on the Jimbo Fisher era while paying an insane buyout probably wasn’t how the Aggies wanted this season to play out.
#2 Worst: TCU
I think many saw a pretty big backslide coming for the Frogs and a pre-season no. 17 ranking looked awfully suspicious. Still, finishing 10th in the Big 12 and losing 7 games was pretty bad.
#1 Worst: USC
Why do good things happen to bad people?
Referring to anything specific?
Probably a certain 13-0 team that’s heading into a particular playoff with the #1 seed
Perhaps the part where Michigan was caught red-handed cheating in games this season and nobody did anything about it.
It’s like Joe Montana said…
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/joe-montana-on-patriots-if-you-aint-cheating-you-aint-trying/
Was he also absolutely sloshed during this interview, like he was in Dublin?
Are people really calling this the best season of his career? If so, those people should reassess. Alabama lost at home, then squeaked by USF. Some people might say Saban turned things around, but they then squeaked by Texas A&M, squeaked by Arkansas, won on a lucky 4th and 30 vs an Auburn team that got smoked by New Mexico State the week before. The win against Georgia is their only win against a team with anything resembling a good defense. This is the LUCKIEST team of Saban’s career, not his best coaching job.
Made the playoffs with an intern at OC!
Putting him in the elite company of Brian Kelly
Hey, they beat USF with a lacrosse player at QB.
In nice news, mad props to Xavier for winning the nagurski award, well done big fella!!!
If you had told me preseason an ND player would win this award this year, you could have given me at least 8 guesses and I don’t think I would have picked Watts. What a fantastic year he had. We will be very fortunate if he decides to come back for 2024.
Would have made it even tougher to guess if we also told you no one on ND would be a finalist for the Thorpe award.
I’m just glad he beat out Brock Bowers for it.
ND landing at #16 feels about right. 6 spots lower than where they opened the season in this poll. A disappointing year, but not significantly so if you take a high level overview. The defense was much better than last year, the offense was better (but in a very weird way) than last year, and special teams was worse than last year.
The 12 Team Playoff is going to make the analysis of whether a season is a Disappointment very interesting going forward. In the 4 Team Playoff era, ND finishing #11 in Freeman’s 3rd regular season (after #21 and #16 in his first two) would feel like progress, but wouldn’t exactly feel exciting. Now, with a 12 Team Playoff, would we be find ourselves happy with that result in his 3rd season?
I think the novelty of Playoff Appearances is going to wear off pretty quickly. This isn’t March Madness, even though people very much want it to be. The first round is going to be mid-December on-campus games, in most cases when the semester is over and campuses are largely closed. 9-3 Ole Miss going to play Texas for the reward of rematching Bama? Bleh.
What is your preferred way you want to crown a champion in CFB?
Devil’s advocate, imagine being a student on campus just wrapped up finals and now you get can drunk for the next 4 days to prep for the playoff game. That sounds pretty awesome to me.
I was fine with the BCS. The old bowl system was good too. I don’t think a playoff is a good match for this sport.
Remind me – what is the APR and how does it apply in 2023? (I did find this (link) on microfiche at the NCAA, but there was no one there.) Colorado had 90% of new players who transferred in with only ten players left from 2022 when they had their all time high APR of 991. Ten of those transfers in transferred out before the fall. What do you think the APR will based on for 2023 and could/should it exceed 2022’s? Once upon a time, didn’t it apply for post-season qualification? Deion gets a $50k bonus each time its at or over 965.
….quoi?
In the old BCS and bowl system you were fine with, the APR existed in an era that nominally paid attention to academics. From NCAA link above:
“Instead, the requirement that teams achieve a minimum APR is simply a benchmark for participation in championships.”
Simply put, how relevant is the APR anymore in this era of transfers and as a measure for qualifying for post-season play as in the BCS era?
I really can’t imagine how to calculate Colorado’s for next year as an example. Kevin’s imagining above of students taking finals before a postseason game may be as relevant as the APR.
quod erat demonstrandum
I…I don’t know? I’m sorry, you totally lost me here.
I was fine with the BCS era, too. Reps
Such good and logical matchups to determine who the best team is:
1989-90
Orange Bowl: No. 4 Notre Dame 21, No. 1 Colorado 6
Sugar Bowl: No. 2 Miami (FL) 33, No. 7 Alabama 25
Rose Bowl: No. 12 USC 17, No. 3 Michigan 10
Fiesta Bowl: No. 5 Florida State 41, No. 6 Nebraska 17
1990-91
Orange Bowl: No. 1 Colorado 10, No. 5 Notre Dame 9
Florida Citrus Bowl: No. 2 Georgia Tech 45, No. 19 Nebraska 21
Cotton Bowl: No. 4 Miami (FL) 46, No. 3 Texas 3
Rose Bowl: No. 8 Washington 46, No. 17 Iowa 34
1991-92
Orange Bowl: No. 1 Miami (FL) 22, No. 11 Nebraska 0
Rose Bowl: No. 2 Washington 34, No. 4 Michigan 14
Sugar Bowl: No. 18 Notre Dame 39, No. 3 Florida 28
Cotton Bowl: No. 5 Florida State 10, No. 9 Texas A&M 2
Fiesta Bowl: No. 6 Penn State 42, No. 10 Tennessee 17
Yeah, those games are bangers. College football ending in a glorious trainwreck on New Year’s Day was awesome.
So you enjoy watching good to good-ish college football teams play each other? Would you enjoy this happening for several weekends in a row?
Yes, in September, October, and November.
Oh, you mean back when FSU had a 1st and 2nd string QB?
Really we are just arguing whether the figure skating judging happens before or after the postseason.
At least the playoffs offers a few extra weeks of football instead of being the only time we needed multiple screens in the same room for the entire year.
This was supposed to be in reply to Eric below. I’ll get better at commenting next year
The figure skating judging of National Champions was *wonderful* back then.
You know what I just learned last year (or whenever the last winter olympics was) that kind of reminds me of the CFP committee.
Ski jumping (the distance one) is judged! You can jump the longest and lose. That is freaking insane. Like oh yeah you looked perfect up there, let’s just ignore the fact that the weird looking guy flew a meter further.
Thank you for this! I absolutely love that the Florida/ND game that ND fans love to remind everyone about isn’t even possible anymore and shouldn’t have happened in 92.
That team wouldn’t have even played in the 12 team playoff but because of the pageant show that CFB was at the time, ND got into a game they didn’t deserve to be in.
What’s even more shocking is that I was told a team 13 thru 24 wouldn’t even be competitive against “the best”. I also love that in 89/90 if Michigan had beat USC in the Rose Bowl they would have likely ended up ahead of ND despite ND beating them in September, but remember the ENTIRE season matters.
Why can’t we just admit that the only thing that matters in CFB is the last game you played and that’s how it’s always been.
After we get ACS to admit the 12 team playoff is better than it was back in 19-dickety-2, we’re all coming after you for your 24-team bracket.
haha I’m ready for it. I’ve been pushing for 24 teams for awhile. You know how you really get people to get on board with 24 teams? Put that option in the new NCAA CFB game.
If you remember the first few iterations and then the CFB National Championship game on Sega (cover was ND Stadium oddly enough, with a logo in the end zone *gasp*) allowed you to do a tournament.
In the old NCAA ‘0X games, I used to play Rutgers and UNC in the national championship game all the time. We should make that real life too.
So you just want the blue bloods to be able to win the NC?
quoi?
So you would love to see a UNC/Rutgers NC game where they each ran through a playoff gauntlet? I’m confused I thought you were being sarcastic earlier.
Or were you saying you would love to see a NC game where 13-0 BIG Champ Rutgers plays 13-0 ACC Champ UNC in a BCS format?
….I’m just joking about the goofy matchups the NCAA video games generated
I know or was hoping you were I should say. I was intentionally being dense.
I’m really trying to understand why the anti-playoff sentiment. It’s literally creating a better regular season. I implore you to take a look at Texas, Bama, Michigan, and USC’s schedule for next year. Those teams haven’t scheduled like this in years and I know conference realignment helps but you can’t reverse that.
BCS and 4 team playoff just encouraged schedule 1 or 0 big OOC games early in the year then if you lost you probably had 1 top 10 conference opponent during the season or the CCG game to get you back into the hunt.
A 24 team playoff will just make it that much better plus then maybe mid level programs will have stability and you’ll see more programs like Wisconsin rise up like they did under Barry Alvarez or Iowa’s stability under Ferentz.
Rutgers is the OG blue blood
And UNC is blue!
On campus playoff games, gonna kinda suck? My column:
🙂
Your stake against the playoffs is so fierce, it’s amazing.
lol that’s the first time in my life anyone has called me “fierce”
rawr
He called your stake fierce, said nothing of you as a person.
I’d rather have a steak
I think it makes the “good”/”bad” season determination very straightforward – a bad season is not making the playoff and a good one is making it. Going forward, no ND coach should survive three straight seasons out of the playoffs ever, and two might reasonably lead to some firings (e.g., if Freeman doesn’t make the playoffs at some point in the next two years, that’s a gots-to-go situation).
Agreed. Especially with schedules that don’t seem to be particularly difficult in the near-term future. (looking at 2027, it looks like there’s only 4 games currently scheduled)
Also, kind of cool that the 2032 schedule features games against Florida, Florida St & Miami. (Preceded by USF, UF & Miami in ’31)
Yep – if we go 10-2 next year losing to Florida State and USC and finish #13 in the rankings and the schedule is as soft as it looks, sorry, notwithstanding the 10 wins that’s a bad season and Freeman should be on the hot seat. Same thing but finish #11 (which I suppose would probably require FSU and USC to be really good, plus A&M to have a good season) – good season! (Or good enough to claim meaningful progress, anyway.) It’s going to be very slight gradations but that is going to matter a lot.
Relatedly I haven’t been chiming in on the raging playoff debate the last couple days but offhand my sense is going to 12 teams will not lose much excitement for much of the regular season because of things like this – the 11 slot will be huge (assuming the 12th team is some lower-ranked conference champ), as will the 8/9 ranking, plus the conference championship game weekend will be huge because every game will effectively be playing for a bye. I think some luster will be lost for the truly huge regular season games (the OSU-Michigan game this year, for example), but that will probably be offset by the other stuff. IDK, I’m watching anyways.
Something I hadn’t considered but was brought up on the Rakes Report podcast was the financial benefit of getting a 7-8 seed versus a 9-10 for hosting an additional game – not just the universities themselves but the communities around.
That’s interesting – hadn’t really thought about that – but I wonder how much of an effect it will be. Obviously some folks will come in and stay in hotels/eat at restaurants etc. that wouldn’t otherwise, but the turnaround time is going to be two weeks, so I wonder how many people will do that. It may end up being the case that, after the first few years and attendant initial enthusiasm, first-round playoff tickets are quite reasonably priced.
I, for one, definitely can see myself traveling to the first ND playoff game, it being 20 degrees out during a night game, and being like “well that was a first and last”.
I know I’m passionate about this.
What about the NFL? They don’t have a problem with successive playoff games stunting the stadium being full.
Heck look at the prices for tickets and parking passes to the OSU game this year. Or the fact that the Sun Bowl sold out in 24 hours. El Paso not an easy place to get to and not particularly warm and it sold out for what is going to be a crap game playing for nothing against a program that no conference wants.
Since it will be on campus, it will be structured just like every other sport. Season ticket holders will get first dibs and asked to put down a deposit in late October if it looks like ND is going to make the playoffs. You can roll that over to the next season if they don’t make it.
In a 24 team format, I think if Texas were coming to ND the Saturday before Christmas with a chance to go to the Final 4 and you have a chance to go to the game you’re going to do it. Maybe you won’t every year, but someone else will take your spot the following year. As I said yesterday, if this were a 24 team playoff year ND would be playing Iowa in SB on Saturday and the winner would then play #1 Michigan next week. That game would be so awesome to be at no matter how cold it is.
I will take the 21 in your name to assume you were class of 21, and to that I say: I too was young and hardy once upon a time.
I wish I were 21 again ha. 34 with 2 kids in the suburbs of Chicago. I’m ripe for not wanting things to change
I think the bigger problem would be getting to South Bend in mid December on short notice. Unless you’re in Chicago, you’re going to have to take multiple flights/rental cars/buses/long drives and hope there isn’t a blizzard coming off the lakes around then.
I mean it’s not like we’re talking about the Donner Party here. There are nearly 16M people between Detroit, Chicago and Indy metro areas, I think they’re going to be able to fill the 80K seats for a couple of playoff games.
We have a national championship in a neutral city that is 10 days after the semifinal games and people have had no problem making those short travel plans.
This season played out as I predicted, but in a monkey’s paw kind of way. Before the season, I thought we’d go 9-3, 1-2 against the ‘big 3′ and losing a surprising game (I guessed Duke). What I didn’t realize is that we’d look really really good for the first four games, everyone’s expectations would be sky high, we’d have another “almost got ’em” against OSU, and that 2 of the ‘big 3’ would kind of suck this year. Thus, even though we had the same record with the same losses as I was anticipating, I end the season disappointed.
the biggest disappointment I think is actually how bad our schedule turned out to be. If there was ever a year to go undefeated without actually being elite, this was the year. And we still face-planted into 9-3.
Strange year. Those east of the Mississippi who generally contemplate their football navels recognized the play in the Pac. Then they gobbled up their top teams in their insatiable gluttony. Alabama won by a whisker over an Auburn team that lost the previous week by three touchdowns to the Aggies then beat Georgia.Wouldn’t the SEC have whined if none of their teams were in the CFP?
Jayden Daniels needed to transfer from ASU to LSU to post Heisman numbers. If he’d stayed, he may have been the fourth best QB in the Pac. Oregon could have beaten Washington and continued the streak of the Pac being shut out of play for the NC. Media money drove conference contraction.
Coaches are getting guaranteed contract money that puts tens of millions of dollars in their bank account to not play. Recruiting team rankings have a two year life span, if that, right A&M?
The NCAA surrendered any semblance of authority over college football without any attempt to control Transfer Chaos and recommendations to pay college athletes $30k a year and that there should be a new top tier of teams in the FBS. Iowa won their BIG division with one of the worst offenses for a contender in memory and would not be in that hypothetical top tier. Would they care if they continued to get $100 mill per year?
A Safety from Notre Dame won the Nagurski Award. Only one other Safety has been so rewarded in thirty years. A lacrosse player at ND is one of our top WRs and a former Irish QB is transferring back to play lacrosse for the National Champions.
I imagine no university has a problem anymore with players transferring and accepting players’ academics credits from two previous schools to continue their pursuit of a “General Studies” major.
Just here to say that I love your posts and you should never change.
Awesome. I feel like you’re gonna have to block off a week to type this post up next year. Not saying it’s good or bad, but I kinda feel CFB is being shot out of a cannon and the cannonball has just at this moment reached the breach. What’s next? What’s the trajectory?
A ballistic one typically continues along the original upward or straight path before losing momentum and crashing back to earth. So it sounds like a good metaphor for the future of college football.
Your NCAA comment makes me wonder what the landscape could have looked like if there had been actual leadership from them. If they had any type of foresight, or whatever you call the ability to see what is currently happening (insight?), or even hindsight, and had tried to actually guide CFB into a good direction once it became painfully obvious everything was breaking apart.
But alas, they simply fought tooth and nail against any change, while getting unanimously hammered from all directions, just to make sure they could keep lining their pockets for as long as possible.
The only good thing the NCAA has done in the past decade is get all 9 supreme court judges to agree on something.
Who actually ends up with this money and what do they do it with exactly (or at least what is it supposed to be for)?
Mark Emmert used to make $3-4 million per year. He was always the face of not changing anything. I can’t find Charlie Baker’s current salary.
Compare that to college president salaries. According to Forbes the Texas president is the highest paid university president and makes $2.5 million. Average university president makes $300-$400K per salary.com, and much less per ziprecruiter and glassdoor.
In the end, the NCAA also listened to the schools and conferences, who aren’t not at fault, as they got a lot of the money. Maybe it’s like blaming Rodger Goodell, when really it’s the NFL owners fault and he is just their mouthpiece.
yea that’s what I was wondering. Who is really running the ship and where is the money really going. because even a few million doesn’t seem like that’s where all the money is going obviously.
According to this document (produced by the NCAA), in the ’18-’19, just over 4% ($45mm) of their revenue went to Salary & General Expense dollars.
Additionally –
The top brass at the NCAA are paid like they are a fortune 500 company, not a 501c3 who organizes sports for universities. Emmert would be the 10th highest paid executive of a 501c3 in the US, with the rest being health care and credit union CEOs making $10-20B in revenue.
For reference, the NCAA brought in $1.14 billion in revenue last year. Just looking at 2 other companies I am familiar with. I work for a company that brought in $5B last year, and our CEO made $12M. WEX had $2B in revenue and their CEO made $10M.
But wouldn’t they be making that kind of money no matter what the landscape for football would be?
Given the NCAA business model, the salaries were/are probably reasonable. It is a $1B company after all.
But that $1B was/is generated off of unpaid athletes. And ever since O’Bannon it has seemed very likely to change. But the NCAA hasn’t been doing much to guide the direction of college sports (and itself).
I think a huge opportunity for them would have been to just realize the direction things were headed and figure out a better way to handle it. Who knows what could have been done, but if there was good leadership it could have been something better than wild west NIL and insane conference realignment.
Or we might actually have stumbled into the best possible situation (highly doubtful), but even if so it certainly wasn’t because of their efforts.
So it’s the same as the rest of executive-level positions at universities, getting six figure salaries for overseeing tax exempt slush funds.
It’s 10x the average university president. And I would say very few people in academia as a whole are overpaid, even executive level.
But certainly, when you get to executives at top universities, with billion dollar endowments, who are essentially CEOs making millions of dollars, it certainly seems a bit disingenuous to claim tax exempt status.
Average university president doesn’t mean a ton to me unless by that you mean one with a D1 football program or at least basketball
Paid extremely well, but not as well as F500’s
NCAA Per CharityNavigator.org:
Donald Remy, Chief Operating Officer (thru 7/17/21)
$3,483,089
Mark Emmert, President
$3,221,033
Stanley Wilcox, Executive Vice President
$1,421,276
Brian Hainline, Chief Medical Officer
$930,829
Kathleen Mcneely, SVP Of Admin And CFO (thru 9/12/22)
$696,302
But these poor souls don’t get stock considerations like F500 CEOs, either
Also, on the topic of charities – Rakes Report Christmas Giving 2023 is open for anyone so inclined and able
That’s the average fortunate 500 CEO. The median revenue for a F500 company is 42B. So you are looking at about 0.03% of total revenue.
NCAA is only a 1B company. So Emmert is making 0.3% of total revenue. 3M itself is more than a number of F500 CEOs on the lower end of compensation. There are a handful making around 1-2M.
So I guess it’s all semantics. But I would say NCAA pays competitively with what you’d expect from a very top company. Which is basically what you pointed out, and great details about the rest of the staff.
Interestingly while I was looking this stuff up, there’s even a few CEOs, largely founders who already own most of their companies, who legitimately only make $1/year from their companies. One of them even pays for his own parking. They are already billionaires whose net worth grows with their company value. And are probably getting money back from the IRS each year. I just found that interesting, because most $1 CEOs still get more stock each year.
I’m sure those people only taking $1 salary are doing it purely for good
Yes, there are a handful of founder/CEOs whose disclosed “salary” from the company is just comprised of security, personal use of corporate jets, or whatever benefit they can’t reasonably describe as fringe benefits. But it’s funny to see how expensive those not-really-salary benefits can be! E.g.: https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-owner-meta-increases-zuckerbergs-security-allowance-by-4-million-2023-02-15/
Still, if you ever read stuff that people take from public company disclosures about median salary of employee to the CEO, which is a required disclosure under the federal securities laws, be advised that it’s basically a useless statistic because it’s funky on both the CEO end (for aforementioned reasons) and on the employee end (depends on, what the company does in-house vs. outsourcing… e.g., the more truck drivers Amazon hires as employees as they do more and more of their deliveries, presumably the lower the median employee salary gets because it dilutes the highly paid programmers). #TheMoreYouKnow
Thinking about the Award season, Xavier is not one of the five finalists for the Bednarik Award nor among the three finalist for the Jim Thorpe Award given to the best defensive back of the year. Curious but maybe he will stay another year to get those.
Great to see Missouri’s Cody Schrader, the former walk-on RB as one of the finalists for the Doak Walker Award. awarded tomorrow and a second team All-American. Quite a story. Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz was named Coach of the Year. Missouri just got the a transfer from the #1 ranked CB from the Portal, Toriano Pride, who is from East St. Louis. Missouri loses its two starting CBs but will be almost at full strength for their bowl game against Ohio State. Pride had an offer from ND in 2022.
All three Ray Guy finalists are Australian.
Oregon’s and Washington’s Offensive lines are two of the finalists for the Joe Moore Award. Oregon’s Center, Jackson Powers-Johnson, is a Rimington Trophy finalist. Joe Alt is one of the three finalists for the Outland Trophy.
I don’t find a Coaches Award for the most obnoxious, “poor me”, worst dressed coach who was on the sidelines for half his teams games.