The only football line where UGA rules in SEC: Bottom line

Georgia's defensive line and their offensive brethren got pushed around last season, the new strength coach acknowledges. (The State)

The Dogs’ offensive and defensive lines might have gotten pushed around pretty regularly this past season, but in the most recent financial figures available Georgia’s football program ruled the bottom line in the SEC, according to Forbes magazine.

UGA ranked No. 1 in the conference in football profitability in 2009-2010 according to U.S. Department of Education data, and it wasn’t even close. Georgia’s profit of $52.5 million was $8 more than second-place Florida netted. In fact, Georgia was the second most profitable football program in the country, behind only Texas.

In terms of overall revenue from gate receipts, broadcast revenues, appearance guarantees and options, concessions, and advertising, Alabama ranked tops in the SEC at $71.8 million, with Georgia second at $70.8 million.

But while Alabama was also the top spender in the SEC on grants-in-aid, salaries, travel, equipment, and supplies at $31.1 million, Georgia was only seventh in spending at $18.3 million. Thus, Georgia made more profit by spending less money on its football program than Bama, Auburn, LSU, Florida, South Carolina and even Arkansas!

Forbes notes that Georgia put just 25.8 percent of its football revenue back into the program. Meanwhile, the 2009 BCS champion, Alabama, was putting 43.3 percent back into its program, and the 2010 BCS winner, Auburn, invested 42.2 percent.

Asks Forbes: “Is there perhaps a correlation between this and results on the field? Georgia went 7-5 in 2009 and just 6-6 in 2010. … Take a look at the teams ahead of Georgia in terms of expenses. In 2010, Georgia lost to every team they played who spent more than them in 2009: Florida, Arkansas and South Carolina.”

Ouch.

It’s worth noting here that Georgia’s football program just moved into its plush new digs in the Butts-Mehre building, newly expanded to the tune of $39.5 million. That includes a fancy new weight room to replace the trailers Georgia’s weight program was operating out of the past year and a half.

Let’s hope we see some on-the-field dividends from that investment in the coming season — or UGA may be having to spend some money … to buy out the remainder of Mark Richt’s contract.

Speaking of the weight program, the Macon Telegraph had an interesting interview with new strength coach Joe Tereshinski, in which amid all the typical off-season rah-rah talk of getting tougher he acknowledged the Dogs had been dominated on the lines in recent years. “The film doesn’t lie,” he said. “I’m the video coordinator, I see every play. Yeah, we were not winning the line of scrimmage.”

In reviewing all that game film, Tereshinksi said, he saw “where we were getting beat. I do see where our weaknesses are. And so that’s what we are attacking. We are attacking where we’ve been weak.”

Tereshinski also noted the coming season “is a very critical year for the program, for the University of Georgia. … It is very critical for our coaching staff. We all wanna stay here, we love this, we want to do our job, we want to win, and we want to do right by our kids.”

What do you think? Besides the new facility, where else does UGA need to be spending some of those profits to keep up with the teams from the state to our immediate west?

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— Bill King, Junkyard Blawg