Marc Weiszer in today’s ABH has a nice rundown of news from the SEC spring meetings going on this week in Destin. A few comments on each item…

• It’s obvious that the drums are beating louder for the indoor football facility. The relatively minor upgrades to the Butts-Mehre facility are all necessary but are in a different class of magnitude. As the beautiful basketball and gymnastics facility takes shape within sight of the football offices, the drive to make the indoor facility our next major capital project will only increase. It’s interesting to see Richt back off his vision of the facility a bit. Where earlier reports had more of an “all-or-nothing” tone for a grandiose football office and practice facility that would also house indoor track events, Richt concedes now that “some things may be done in phases”. Is that a concession to move things along?
• Georgia can’t seem to ever get an off week before the Florida game, but at least the SEC has ensured that no team will have the advantage of a week off before the SEC title game.
• There was only one change among the SEC’s football and basketball coaches this year. You have to get a chuckle out of Phil Fulmer’s comment on that news. “That’s good,” he said. “I hope it’s the same thing next year.” LOL. I’ll bet you do, Phil. If there’s one high-profile SEC coach starting to feel some heat, it’s Fulmer.
• The mystery conference for the SEC basketball challenge is a poorly kept secret. Bring on the Big East. Better than the ACC-Big 10 Challenge? That would be something. At any rate, such a matchup would be another reason why the basketball regular season is so underrated. You’ll never see such a group of quality nonconference regular season games in football.
• Great to see that the falling-out-of-bounds timeout is on the way out. This practice was the “intentional grounding” of basketball – a bogus way of turning around a bad situation. Make plays within the white lines.