Tide Tidbits – July 20, 2009

Alabama football consensus No. 5 in preseason magazines
The college football predictions are in, and the magazine experts like Alabama’s chances of repeating last season’s magical regular season. Combine the preseason rankings of four major magazines, and the Crimson Tide emerge as the No. 5 team nationally and the favorite to claim the Southeastern Conference Western Division. Only Yahoo! Sports picked the Tide to be in the top 5, but strong disagreement among the other three — Athlon, Lindy’s and Phil Steele — push Alabama down the chart. Nick Saban’s team is one of five programs to make the top 10 in all four rankings. Auburn didn’t crack the top 25 in any of the magazines, while Georgia was a consensus No. 14 and Georgia Tech was No. 17.

Auburn more than doubled Alabama in spending to recruit recent football and basketball talent
Football and men’s basketball programs at Auburn spent more than double the dollar amount of in-state counterparts at Alabama to recruit players during each of the past three school years, an investigation into recent SEC recruiting budgets has revealed. The Press-Register obtained recruiting expenditures from each of the SEC’s 11 public institutions for the 2005-06 school year through ’07-08 (Vanderbilt, as a private school, is not subject to open records laws). At an average of $705,125 for the three years, Auburn’s football program spent more than any public SEC institution besides Tennessee, which was a clear front-runner at more than $1 million per year.

Air travel a primary reason for discrepancy in recruiting costs for Auburn and Alabama
Tennessee football spends the most on recruiting. Auburn wasn’t far behind, though, and stands well ahead of Alabama in dollars budgeted to recruit athletes in major sports. While these numbers may be surprising to many, they were not to Auburn athletics director Jay Jacobs. Jacobs explained that Auburn used more than half its recruiting budget (roughly $400,000 or more) on air travel for recruiting purposes.

View year-by-year totals of what SEC schools are spending to recruit
The Press-Register has released and ranked dollar totals today of recruiting expenditures obtained from 11 SEC schools, research that lasted from the 2005-06 school year through 2007-08.

Which SEC coach would pick against Tebow?
It seems that Florida quarterback Tim Tebow not being a unanimous selection for the preseason All-SEC team has led to some speculation about which coach is responsible for dissing college football’s golden boy. Many rumors circulating point the finger at Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin, who doesn’t have the best relationship with UF coach Urban Meyer. As a Vols fan, I feel the need to point out why some other SEC coaches might have motivations to vote against Tebow:

Roll Tide!

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