Personally, as someone with little respect for the SEC (not for their teams on the field, but for the rest of it), I am delighted to see UGA do well. Helps to have multiple SEC teams that can grind on each other. Historically that league has been a couple of elite level teams, several good teams and a bunch of cannon fodder. The current concentration of players at Alabama is being diminished somewhat by UGA's recruiting success, which to me is a plus. A few of the traditionally decent teams (a few of which are even academically credible, as well...Florida is an example) have stumbled in terms of coaching choices. The pendulum will swing and they will get back in the saddle eventually. At this point, though, it is Georgia's turn.
The SMU comments are probably peripherally accurate. There are many ways to game the system. I doubt that there are any sacks or coffee cups with cash. That kind of thing is more of a crude, unsophisticated, UW-type method. No need to do it that way; it is too easy to simply have a kid's dad get a much better job with a booster, or better yet, a business that is dependent upon business that comes from a booster's business. Example: the booster owns a series of car dealerships. The kid's dad suddenly is hired by the company that supplies all the car cleaning supplies to the dealership chain, and the chain suddenly is paying a little more each month for the soap, wax, towels, sponges, etc. I saw that exact thing happen up close and personal 40-ish years ago with a WSU booster, and I can guarantee that if it happened then for WSU, it is (and has been) rampant in the SEC. The biggest risk to SEC teams is when another team, or another team's rabid booster, finds out about the arrangement and drops a dime. I suspect that the ESPN money has probably had the inadvertent effect of making the league take those tips a bit more seriously and although they probably try to keep the investigations quiet, they are probably trying hard behind the scenes to keep this kind of thing from blowing up publicly. Net result is you get more & better league enforcement in a roundabout way, but it is not transparent.
