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field

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  1. Right, this would be a totally different situation if Tour players were employees. There's no way an "employee" would leave one employer to work for another employer to earn millions of more dollars a year and to work less. I never realized it was that simple.
  2. Decent article on the economics of the contracts. Screw LIV
  3. Pierceson Coody, the former University of Texas star, said LIV Golf made him a life-changing offer. Here’s why he passed on it. Good for Pierceson
  4. That's him. CDC rocks shorts and flip flops in Scottsdale.
  5. Three year deal. It will be there next year as well. It then moves to La Costa for three years.
  6. Noncounting score - which will be Hammer.
  7. Wonder who the one lucky guy was to get an NIL deal.
  8. Faldo was at Houston for 10 weeks before dropping out....
  9. Clearly wish someone would encourage him to stop saying "clearly" so much.
  10. Another Rival Golf League is Brewing, and It’s Gaining Traction With PGA Tour Players Seems like this one could have some more traction since it isn't Saudi-based and, at least conceptually, not a separate tour.
  11. Because this isn't a tour that has "a few events." It's a tour with around 14 tournaments, at least as rumored. Players like Spieth, DJ, JT, etc. usually play somewhere around 20-25 tournaments a year including the majors. That means if someone plays on the Saudi tour and the majors, he's at 18 events without playing a single PGA Tour tournament. That's not Curtis Strange playing a one off event in Asia.
  12. https://www.golfdigest.com/story/cole-hammer-be-right-podcast How cool is Cole Hammer's name? It was the talk of the 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers Bay, where Hammer, at the age of 15, made his major championship debut. His rounds of 77 and 84 saw him miss the cut, but the teen phenom's name remained an unforgettable one in the golf fan's mind. Turns out, his game has become even better than his name. In the seven years since, Hammer has put together a decorated amateur career that includes two Walker Cup appearances (both wins in 2019 and 2021), wins at the 2018 Azalea Invitational and the Western Amateur, a win in the 2018 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball with partner Garrett Barber, two more U.S. Open appearances and the 2019 Mark H. McCormack Medal. Need we continue? Despite the laundry list of amateur accolades, Hammer, now a senior in college, still doesn't consider himself the Big Man on Campus. There's simply too much competition for that title on a campus like the University of Texas in Austin. "You know, it's funny, we're not [the big men on campus] whatsoever," said Hammer when asked if the Longhorns golf team is popular amongst their peers. "Oklahoma State claims to be a golf school and they're still fully a football, basketball, baseball school. My school, our social media does a great job of trying to promote our program, but the short answer is no. The long answer is we wish we were Big Men on Campus. Sometimes we'll walk around and people will recognize us, but it's not like 'oh, there's QB1.' It's like, 'oh, there's golfer 1-2-3-4-5.'" The good news for Hammer? Once he reaches the tour, everybody will either remember his name or love his name at first sight. He'll soon miss the days of being able to stroll across campus incognito-like. Speaking of school, Hammer still has his final spring golf season remaining before going pro, which was among the topics discussed on this week's episode of "Be Right." Please, have a listen below to our chat with Hammer, and stick around for our Honda Classic picks.
  13. His name has not been mentioned at all, but I wonder whether a guy like Rickie Fowler would be tempted. He's making bank with all his sponsorships, but he's not making any cuts. Does he take what I assume would be unimaginable guaranteed money at a time when his game stinks and he's headed the way of Duval?
  14. PGA Tour player Kramer Hickok says he thinks 17 golfers have already "jumped over" to a rumoured Saudi-backed Super League amid ongoing speculation of a new breakaway circuit. The circuit in question has been dominating the news recently with reports of a $1.5bn budget and huge offers to the likes of Bryson DeChambeau and Ian Poulter. Hickok, speaking on the Stripe Show podcast, was brutally honest with his words on the rumoured tour, revealing that it could have between 12-14 tournaments that feature just 40 players and no cut. Hickok, who says he has heard things from fellow pros, said that "a lot of big names" will go to a new tour that could begin as early as June. The American also said that "some of these guys are probably getting a little bit greedy" and "we’re starting to realise how money-hungry a lot of players on the PGA Tour." "You’re going to see a lot of big names jump over there, I think there’s already been 17 guys that have jumped over and I can’t say who they are but there’s going to be some big names going over there," the Texan said on the Stripe Show podcast. "Look, I mean from what I’ve heard the money’s very, very appealing. You’re only gonna have 12-14 events, those events are gonna have purses, you’re not going to have to deal with missing a cut anymore, there’s only going to be 40 players. And 10 of those 14 events will be in the States. Signing bonuses, huge, huge purses, it’s going to be very appealing for some of these guys. Yeah you’ll see some big names for sure. "I’m extremely happy with the PGA Tour. I have a lot of perspective I would say, in college all I wanted to do was play on the PGA Tour, I wanted to win tournaments, I wanted to win The Masters and put on the green jacket. I am extremely blessed but I think some of these guys are probably getting a little bit greedy. I think you have to be thankful and appreciative for the Tour, they’ve given us this platform to be able to chase our dreams and do what we love and make a great living doing it. To go after a few extra bucks, I mean I think it might be a little greedy because you don’t know how long that Tour is going to be around, you don’t know if that money’s going to dry up, you don’t know what’s going to happen and if you do leave you’ll be banned from the Tour, the Tour’s come out and said that. "The word is that the Tour is going to start in June so you’re going to start seeing this stuff, you know you’re going to start seeing these name changes in the spring time. Very soon. A lot of these guys have signed NDAs but a lot of these guys you’re seeing these guys signing at tournaments and getting a huge amount of money wired to their bank account the next day. "I think we’re starting to realise how money-hungry a lot of players on the PGA Tour are because a lot of it is just money. I think there’s pros and cons. The pros are money, the pros are less events. The cons are you don’t really know who you’re getting in bed with here." There has been no official confirmation of a Saudi-backed super league and 2020 US Open champion Bryson DeChambeau has denied reports of the huge deal he was said to have received. DeChambeau also denied reports that he told players he was quitting the PGA Tour.
  15. field

    USMNT 2022

    Good article from The Atlantic on the (stupid?) decision to play the games in Columbus and especially St. Paul. The USMNT arranged frigid World Cup qualifiers, which could be a boost…or a risk
  16. My wife did it and loves it. She especially loves being the client, not the lawyer. I don't know many GC's who say they have any regrets unless the company they went to just sucks. My one hang up has always been the thought of going from being my own boss to being an employee. But the thought of not billing hours really makes it attractive.
  17. field

    EPL 2021-22

    Good article from The Athletic on the postponements. Paranoia, backbiting and anger: How Premier League COVID-19 postponements turned toxic
  18. We did Sayulita last week and it was crowded as all hell. Really not worth the drive up there, imho. If you go, highly recommend getting a driver as opposed to just catching a cab.
  19. GM's in college football are really common Organizing the roughly 75 recruits visiting each day last month (primarily on unofficial visits), could have been overwhelming for Georgia Tech coaches. Each recruit needed a tour, face time with coaches and, maybe most importantly in the age of social media, to have their picture taken. But because of the work done by Patrick Suddes and his department, coaches didn't need to worry. Everything was organized. Suddes even connected with a local car dealer who loaned them a 1970 Pontiac GTO and a pair of Bentleys, which they parked inside Bobby Dodd Stadium for a music-video-worthy photo shoot. Over at Ohio State, the Buckeyes have typically hosted 58 official visitors per year. But last month alone, they hosted 51, something made more manageable by the work of Mark Pantoni and his staff of 10 full-time employees. Billy High, Pantoni's counterpart at North Carolina, said the first month of in-person recruiting felt like "organized chaos." He didn't go anywhere without his trusted tablet, keeping track of vast spreadsheets showing where players ranked on their board, what other offers they received and where else they visited. And to think, positions like his didn't exist not that long ago. There was no college football equivalent of the NFL front office to oversee recruiting and roster management. No one called themselves a director of player personnel (DPP) until a clever assistant created the title in 2006 and one of the greatest head coaches of all-time noticed what it was and what it could be. Now, college football can't function without DPPs like Pantoni. Some have even embraced the broader and more recognizable title of general manager, like High and Suddes. In addition to high school recruiting, they oversee another important avenue to acquire talent: the transfer portal, which is college football's version of free agency. It's up to the heads of personnel departments to keep their ears to the ground and their eyes on the portal, pointing coaches toward players they should be targeting. LSU didn't sign potential difference-makers like Clemson linebacker Mike Jones Jr. and Georgia safety Major Burns by accident. Austin Thomas, who became the first GM in SEC history, oversees an advanced scouting department in Baton Rouge that provides coaches with in-depth dossiers on players the instant they become available. Besides the head coach, there's arguably no one with more influence on a team's future. The idea of a personnel department isn't new to the NFL, where it isn't unusual for general managers to wield more authority than the head coach. But for one reason or another, the concept of a formalized unit dedicated to roster management took a while to trickle down to colleges, where coaches handled personnel decisions themselves, tabbing one of nine assistants to take on the role of recruiting coordinator. Granted, these were much simpler times -- before social media and Internet-based video services like Hudl created a mountain of information to sort through; before the race to offer freshmen and sophomores more than doubled the number of players who needed to be evaluated; before the advent of the transfer portal, which can give just as quickly as it takes. As everything was beginning to change back in 2006, Geoff Collins was searching for an excuse to return to Georgia Tech, where he previously worked as tight ends coach under George O'Leary. Chan Gailey, who had taken over for O'Leary, was interested, but he didn't have a coaching position available, so he instead offered up the director of high school relations post. Collins, who was coming off two years as a defensive coordinator at Western Carolina, saw it as a possible dead end and was hesitant -- he wanted a role that would give him flexibility. If he couldn't get back into coaching, he thought he might like to transition to an NFL front office. He had noticed how people at the pro level were being named director of player personnel, so he asked about creating that position instead. Gailey didn't care about semantics. "Call yourself whatever you want," he told Collins. And just like that, Collins became credited as the first DPP in college football. He oversaw recruiting and helped Tech sign arguably its best class ever. Meanwhile, Nick Saban was in the process of leaving the Miami Dolphins for Alabama, and one of his top priorities was building an NFL-style personnel department. He believed he could create the biggest impact advantage over other programs in recruiting, so he poured resources into it. He wanted someone in charge who had an understanding of the college game, so he called Collins. Collins accepted the job, and began putting together a room of student volunteers, graduate assistants and anonymous support staffers that would serve as the machinery in Alabama's larger recruiting operation. They were young and hungry. They worked, quite literally, in darkness: a windowless office that they staffed around the clock in rotating shifts. They'd send hundreds of blank VHS tapes to high school coaches, cursing when they inevitably came back in the wrong format. Highlights were useless. What they really wanted were entire games, which they'd then splice by a process known as "one'ing and two'ing," and is exactly as mindless as it sounds. The real intrigue came when evaluating the tape, but even that was formulaic, relying on a predetermined set of critical factors at each position which, taken together, provided every recruit with a grade. And if their grade was good enough, their information was passed up the ladder where coaches would begin the more traditional recruiting process. The operation would evolve over time and begin to remove some of the guesswork in recruiting, taking what essentially had been an art form and applying processes to it. Instead of leaving assistant coaches to their own devices and their own thoughts on what made a successful football player, the personnel department would follow strict guidelines determined by the head coach. Collins was by Saban's side every day that first season at Alabama, getting what he called a "doctorate" in the how-to's of coaching and roster management - things like how many players to recruit at a position in a given year, which had to be viewed through the lens of the current roster makeup and anticipating future attrition via the NFL draft, graduation or transfers. Collins left the following offseason to reunite with O'Leary at UCF, resuming on-field coaching. Twelve years later, he was named head coach at Georgia Tech. "So I think I was the first and the second director of player personnel," Collins said. "And I take a lot of pride in it, because I think a lot of people have been able to go on and do some things, and it has become a positive role for college football programs." In the ever-expanding tree of directors of player personnel, Collins is the only one to become a head coach. But that's not a negative. It shows there's a place for non-coaches to have meaningful careers in college football, where before those opportunities for advancement were limited to the NFL. When Collins returned to Tech as head coach, one of his first calls was to his old co-worker at Alabama, Suddes, who had gone on to work at Texas, Arizona State and Auburn. Suddes had never been a coach and had no aspirations to be. He was the kid who played "NCAA Football" on dynasty mode, simulating the games so he could get to the fun part of tinkering with the roster. When he played "Madden," he'd trade every player, stockpiling draft picks. Collins knew that he and Suddes saw the game the same way, that he could trust him to rebuild the roster and help reshape the image of Georgia Tech football. So rather than making him yet another DPP, he switched things up. Collins chuckled when asked why he landed on the title of general manager for Suddes. It wasn't arbitrary. "It was intentional," Collins said. "I wanted him to have an overarching reach within the organization." While Collins is Patient Zero in the DPP experiment in college football, he's not the only one who made the position what it is today. His successor, Ed Marynowitz, took it to another level. Suddes called Marynowitz "one of the godfathers" of the profession, building upon and bringing even more sophistication to the systems Collins started. His work was so well regarded that the Philadelphia Eagles hired him in 2012, later promoting him to VP of player personnel. He's now an agent. The other so-called godfather is Mark Pantoni. Around the time Alabama's recruiting operation got going under Collins and Marynowitz, Pantoni was getting his feet wet under coach Urban Meyer at Florida. In the beginning, it was a way of avoiding the mountain of debt awaiting him on the other side of med school interviews and whatever long road awaited after. He was a football fan who loved recruiting, so he figured why not take a year to intern with the team? He got the job and trekked into the office where he'd send out VHS tapes at 6 every morning, splice film in the afternoon and then ask for even more to do before day's end. He grinded for a year, learning the tricks to the trade, before Meyer hired him full time. Pantoni never wanted to be a coach, either. He imagined becoming an athletic director, but fell in love with the world of personnel, watching countless hours of film and forming evaluations he'd then pass to the coaching staff. Meyer empowered him, allowing for disagreements and healthy debates. Meyer had the final say, of course, but Pantoni said Meyer didn't want a yes man. Though Pantoni was hesitant in the beginning to stand up to veteran coordinators Charlie Strong and Steve Addazio, he gained more confidence in his opinions, and they would listen, trusting that he was watching exponentially more film than they ever could. But it wasn't just the evaluations that Pantoni grew to be in charge of. DPPs are largely responsible for compliance and the recruiting budget, which includes money for coaches' travel and official visits, as well as the use of online recruiting services and databases. When Meyer retired and popped up again at Ohio State in 2012, he hired Pantoni a second time, and he inherited a department of two. Now, Pantoni oversees a group of three full-time employees and one full-time intern dedicated solely to personnel, a director of on-campus recruiting and a five-member creative team. That's to say nothing of the hoard of student volunteers. He and Marynowitz started a personnel symposium three years ago in which about 180 people showed up. The next year, that number ballooned to 300. While COVID-19 caused them to cancel last year's event, they hope to pick it up again soon. So much in the sport is changing. Support staffs have grown exponentially, the transfer portal has finally brought free agency to college football and advanced analytics, which have taken off in professional sports but struggled to gain a foothold in college, are beginning to make strides. What's more, the ability for athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness is a game-changer in terms of helping players build their brands. There's no choice but for personnel departments to keep up with demand. "It's going to continue to evolve and parallel the NFL front office," Pantoni said. Assistant coaches have to focus on their specific position for advancement, head coaches have to focus on winning immediately in order to keep their jobs, leaving it to DPPs and GMs to manage the long-term picture. "You're recruiting so many classes of kids; we have 2025 kids we're offering now. There's just so much that goes into it," Suddes said. "The coaches have so much they have to deal with coaching X's and O's, dealing with players on and off the field, and then contacting these recruits. A coaching staff of 10 and the head coach just can't handle it all." The personnel tree grew quickly out of Alabama. As Saban's recruiting operation kicked into high gear and started raking among the top three classes every year, whispers circulated about what was going on inside that windowless office. The college football world watched as Saban's former assistants became head coaches, and how like clockwork they'd take someone from that office with them. Georgia's Kirby Smart hired Marshall Malchow, Michigan State's Mel Tucker hired Geoff Martzen, Ole Miss' Lane Kiffin hired Matt Lindsey, and so on. Opposing coaches got the bright idea to do the same. "They were all cherry-picked by teams trying to do what Nick did," Suddes said. He should know. After six years at Alabama, Mack Brown brought Suddes to Texas. And when Brown later resurfaced at UNC, he hired High, who had worked for Suddes at Auburn, picking up the nickname Billy Spreadsheets. There's also a lot of cross-pollination that happens. High just so happened to be working at Tennessee at the same time as Thomas. And upon returning to LSU in January, Thomas, who was associate athletic director for football personnel at Texas A&M from 2018 to 2019, was replaced by Malchow. Thomas is relatively young, only 36 years old, yet he's already excited to see what the next generation is capable of -- that's how quickly this field is growing. There's plenty of room for those without direct connections to Alabama or Florida. Andy Frank, who went to school at Princeton, gave up a career in engineering and climbed his way up from volunteer to DPP at Vanderbilt and now Penn State. Jordan Sorrells left his job as operations manager at Chick-fil-A to become director of football ops at Furman and is now DPP at Clemson. When Dabo Swinney spoke to reporters about how Clemson's 2020 class came together, he said, "Jordan Sorrells. You've got to start there." What's neat, Thomas said, is not just how many more people there are in his business or how they're starting to receive more recognition; it's how they're starting to see their responsibilities expand beyond recruiting. Serving as GM, Thomas acts as a liaison between the administration and the football program, and he is part of the process identifying candidates for assistant coach and other roles within the organization. LSU keeps expanding its ranks, bringing in a director of scouting, a director of personnel research and a director of recruiting. Thomas studied NFL front offices a few years ago, leaning on contacts he had with the New York Jets and Houston Texans, and he decided to recreate their advanced scouting departments to suit college football. Their ability to help identify transfers is only one piece of what they do; they also aid in game-planning during the season. "You think about it, it's strength staff, training staff, nutrition staff, analysts, recruiting staff, personnel staff ... it's a lot of people," Thomas said. "If a head coach doesn't have help with that stuff to carry his message and implement that on a daily basis, it can go sideways really quick." And therein lies the biggest difference between the GM of the NFL and college. It's simple, really. GMs in college have a lot of authority, but they're essentially serving as the right-hand to the head coach, who has the ultimate authority. "I work for Coach O," Thomas said. "He doesn't work for me."
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