Georgia Paid $6,274 to Fly Joe Cox to Oklahoma State Game

When Georgia's football team flew to Oklahoma City on September 3 to take on Oklahoma State in its season opener, quarterback Joe Cox wasn't on the plane. Cox was suffering from the flu and wanted to get an extra day of rest before traveling to the game, so Georgia let him stay home, and then flew him separately Sept. 4 -- at a cost of $6,274.

The Athens Banner-Herald used a public records request to find out how much the university spent on Cox's travel, and Georgia athletic director Damon Evans told the paper that he, executive associate athletic director Frank Crumley and coach Mark Richt all agreed that spending $6,274 to send Cox separately was a wise decision:

"I was aware of the situation," Evans said. "Frank worked directly with Mark, and we're going to do what we feel is appropriate and that was the appropriate thing to do."

I don't want to go too hard on Georgia in all this because I'm well aware that every big-time college football program would have done the same thing under the same circumstances. But this is yet another reminder that the priorities of the NCAA member institutions, which claim to put education ahead of athletics, are seriously out of whack. The football program thinks nothing of spending $6,000 on travel. I wonder how many academic departments at the University of Georgia can say the same.