UGASports.com reported from the practice field this afternoon that Mark Richt has continued an unofficial tradition by rewarding a walk-on with an “extra” scholarship. NCAA rules limit the Dawgs to 85 scholarships, and they entered camp with 84 scholarship players this year.

Richt announced today that junior running back Jason Johnson has earned the remaining scholarship.

“Johnson has been honored with a scholarship and it was very well earned by him,” said Richt. “We know he can play tailback, he can play fullback, he can play special teams, and he is just a very productive guy. Johnson is a hard worker and it is kind of a joy to give that aid to him. He has done extremely well as a student and I am really happy for J.J.”

Back at it after a perfect week on the Georgia coast spent recharging and relaxing. A week away forces you to take a step back from the myopia that comes from constant practice updates and remember why you’re really looking forward to the upcoming season. With only two weeks remaining, there’s lots to talk about, so let’s start with the obvious: Richt and his starting QB. Is anyone really surprised? I’ll dive more into this later tonight.

One of the few things I managed to catch on vacation was the occasional installment of ESPN’s "Championship Series" where they took a shot at the big games of each weekend and – shock! – more or less chose the favorite every time. Not a terribly thought-intensive exercise, but it was college football talk and a pretty good insight into the teams that ESPN will be pimping at the start of the season.

A big thanks to CFR for the link. I keep meaning to add my links here…not a comprehensive list as in the Daily Dawg days but a small list of the sites I make it a point to check every day. CFR is certainly one of those.

Bart Hubbuch has this very strange swipe at Georgia in today’s Jacksonville paper.

First, I’d like to congratulate Bart for breaking April’s news. Can’t wait for his mid-December piece on the preseason top 25.

The “inferior product” line is techically valid (the NFL plays at a higher skill level than college of course), but it’s a very crude way to phrase it…especially since many in the South feel that college football is a superior product to the NFL. The Falcons, Bucs, Dolphins, and Jags all have nice followings, but someone writing in Jacksonville knows that college football comes first in this part of the world.

But his last line is a keeper. “Will the players ever see a cent of that? Of course not. Any sweatshop owner will tell you it’s hard to make money without free labor.”

I guess schools down his way pay their players quite comfortably.

Oh, and the second item of his column is a pretty clear rip-off (and a poor one at that) of Clay Travis’s brilliant tribute to JP Sports that made the rounds earlier this week. C’mon Bart…at least attribute.

I’ve had the privilege in the past to have press credentials for various sporting events. I appreciated the opportunities and enjoyed serving those who arranged the credentials for me. It’s a nice change of pace and gives you a different perspective on the games. You get to see little things that escape you in the stands or on TV, and you see sides of the participants and coaches that most don’t get to see. I especially appreciate getting the occasional interview where I can ask the questions that I know are on the minds of fans like myself.

I couldn’t imagine doing it full-time though. Why? It’s a job. There is little if any tailgating. You must (or should) appear outwardly impartial and neutral. After the game, there’s no time to celebrate or enjoy a win – it’s time to get to work filing stories and/or processing pictures. You’re at the game, but there is a disconnect from the fan experience. That’s a big adjustment that most fans couldn’t handle. I just enjoy being a fan too much.

EDSBS has an interview up today with Phil Steele, publisher of the invaluable preseason football guides. He describes how he researches all of the teams and then goes into detail about his setup for the weekends. "In this year’s magazine on page 17 we have a picture of the 12 tvs in front of my desk. I get to watch 12 college games all day long on Saturday and 12 NFL games on Sunday."

To a lot of people, that sounds like heaven. Not to me. Don’t get me wrong – there are a lot worse fates in the world than being surrounded by an endless choice of football games. It’s how I spend bye weeks. But it’s infinitely better to me to be at a Georgia game and immerse myself in the gameday experience. Steele might be surrounded by hundreds of square feet of hi-def college football goodness, but in that same position it would kill me not to be at Sanford Stadium.

What I’m trying to say comes down to this example: In 2002, I was fortunate enough to be on the sidelines for Georgia’s game at Auburn. Most of you immediately recognize the significance of that game. My mission was mostly photography, and I took several rolls of pictures during the game. What stands out is the picture I didn’t or couldn’t take. You’re all familiar with the play – fourth down, David Greene, Michael Johnson, touchdown. It was possibly the biggest play in Georgia football in decades. I was in a perfect position – on the goal line maybe 20 feet away from Johnson’s catch. You can see me in the replay of that catch. I had my camera ready to capture the picture of a lifetime. But I couldn’t move. I had to watch the play. I had to make sure he caught the pass. I forgot about the camera, I missed the picture, but I didn’t care – Georgia had just taken the lead and was on its was to the SEC Championship.

I happened to catch yesterday’s PTI, and the topic of the college football rules changes came up. I shouldn’t be so naive as to expect an ESPN show to point the finger back at the networks, but they could have at least acknowledged television’s role in excessively long football games. Of course they didn’t head in that direction. They focused instead on why all of the complaining coaches should get over it. It’s not like they have time to get more than an inch deep on an issue given that show’s format, but that makes it that much more important to get to the root of the issue, and they didn’t in this case.

Wilbon even mentioned the long Rose Bowl broadcast but failed to connect the dots and see the obvious reason why the Rose Bowl (and any BCS bowl) lasts so long. As pointed out clear as can be in this analysis by Dan Bickley of the Arizona Republic, there were 161 plays in the BCS title game and 96 commercials.

Bickley’s analysis had one surprising stat – the SEC has the shortest games at 3:15 on average. With the interminable CBS broadcasts, I expected that number to be a bit higher. That might mean that the SEC is more of a run-based conference with fewer changes of possession (and consequently fewer chances for commercials). It might not mean anything since we’re talking no more than thirteen minutes’ difference among the conferences.

HeismanPundit has an interesting post up about the stat-skewing in overtimes. Lots of good, hard empirical data courtesy of CFBStats.com.

I replied that if there are stats that have the potential to really get skewed or distorted by overtime, they’re team scoring offense and scoring defense.

Remember Georgia’s 1996 game at Auburn? Of course you do. Regulation ended 28-28 after a miracle Bobo-to-Allen pass, and the Dawgs won in overtime 56-49. My problem is that the nature of overtime scoring means that the final score doesn’t tell the true story of a game. A low-scoring struggle can easily turn into a 45-42 final. These points come from a shootout format that starts at the 25 yard line.

A team that gives up 20 PPG could find its average shifted by 2 or 3 points per game after a single overtime game. That’s a pretty significant skewing of the average.

My suggestion: keep score as usual in overtime but once things are decided, revise the score to give one point to the winner. A 28-28 game would end 29-28 no matter if overtime had a single field goal or five or six touchdowns.

While I searched for a job after graduating from the University of Georgia in 1995, I noticed that the Dawgs didn’t have much of a presence – official or unofficial – on the relatively new World Wide Web. There were several discussion groups on services like Prodigy, UseNet lists, and scattered e-mail distribution lists. But there wasn’t much on the Web, so I started a Dawg site for the hell of it on my personal account. I don’t remember the specific date I started, but I remember working on the site while the news of Jerry Garcia’s death came across the TV. I’m not an especially big Deadhead or anything, but the date stuck with me. It seems as good a date as any for the anniversary of this site.

August 9th, 1995. 11 years ago. We’ve been there for three Georgia football coaches, four basketball coaches, dozens of conference and national titles, and two URLs.

The site grew quickly. We got good behind-the-scenes reports from Jim Donnan’s first spring practices in 1996. We eventually had contributors writing on everything from football to hoops to baseball. We had the Daily Dawg which became the directory of Dawg news sources. It was very crude and very grassroots, but that was the nature of the medium. We were all learning. Several other Dawg sites sprang up, each with their own kind of speciality. The Anti-Orange Page captured perfectly what it meant to be a Georgia fan in a world of rivalries. The DawgVent quickly established itself as the place for discussion. The Grapevine became a must-visit site for Georgia recruitniks.

In 1998, the specialized news services started up. AllianceSports and Rivals (later to morph and twist and reincarnate into Rivals and Scout) started a healthy competition and arms race for the very focused target market of the passionate college sports fan. The role of disorganized grassroots coverage was fading, and I was glad to see this cottage industry established. I dove in myself, contributing frequently to UGASports.com over the years. Those sites take a lot of heat for being "amateurs" among journalists and letting fans run wild on message boards, but other media and even official team sites have been completely transformed in response to the innovations pioneered by companies like Rivals and Scout.

With the online news services establishing themselves, the mission of this site had to change. I bought the dawgsonline.com domain in 2000, and I abandoned the "breaking news" style while keeping the site as a place to write and reprint things I had written elsewhere. A blog, in other words. I had become familiar with the blog concept by reading some of the early pioneers like Dave Winer, but content management tools were so clumsy when I dove in. I tried writing my own system, and then I settled on a system called GrayMatter. It worked well but wasn’t maintained at all. I tried Blogger for a short time, used Moveable Type for a while, and now I’m happy using WordPress. A few things have been lost in the transitions, but some posts as far back as 2001 have been salvaged. I’ve recently found some content that’s older still and may post that again just so it’s not lost.

While I can’t help but be slightly amused by all of the sites congratulating themselves recently over a year or two online, I’m really happy that so many fan sites have been created. Some have become wildly successful in just a year – deservedly so. I’ve read so much good analysis, thought-provoking writing, and humor online over the past couple of years, and several of the writers are as good (if not better) than some who get paid to write about sports.

The one thing that most of us eventually realize is that it’s hard and sometimes even expensive to keep a personal site going over a long time. Motivation can come and go. Priorities and life circumstances change. But if the bug to write is there, you can work through that.

I agree with Stewart Mandel’s opinion here in an interview with HeismanPundit.

It’s another outlet for fans to express themselves, which is always good. I think it’s the next generation of the Rivals/Scout message boards, only now, instead of having to share space with 900 other posters, you can be your own columnist. And just like anything else, the best will rise to the top and gain more credibility.

Without sounding all populist and idealistic, that’s what this is all about – fans love to talk sports, and now they can connect. Someone with something to say now has very few obstacles to getting his thoughts out there. True, there’s a lot of crap out there now as a result, but Mandel’s point is right: the best will separate themselves.

I can’t begin to count the opportunities and personal rewards that have come from starting this site 11 years ago. I’ve been published on the Rivals.com national home page. I used my experience building the site to change careers – one of the best moves I’ve ever made. I’ve met some amazing people and made some great friends. I guess it comes down to one moment – circumstances put me on the sideline at the goalline ten feet away from where Michael Johnson caught the gamewinner against Auburn in 2002. It’s the moment I’ll probably remember most as a Dawg fan, and it probably wouldn’t have been possible had this site never existed.

RIP Jerry Garcia, and here’s to another 11 years.

Maurice Clarett…traffic stop…weapons…police chase…mace…stun gun…hatchet. bulletproof vest.

In other words, Wednesday.

Welcome to August.

No news is usually good news in the month before the season.

Suspensions, injuries, and generally bad news dominates the preseason coverage. Fans are just dreading each additional update, peeking with one eye to see if we survived this afternoon without losing another lineman. We’re so accustomed to the bad news that even good news can get turned around. Are the wide receivers looking good? Oh no! The secondary is toast!!! Is the offensive line playing like a brick wall? Noooooo!!! We have no pass rush!!!

The life of a football fan is a roller coaster of emotions, and there aren’t many ups in the preseason. We crest the hill during the first week of August and enter a freefall as the updates and bad news and potentially bad news and the good news that we’re sure is somehow bad comes flying past faster and faster until the season begins and we get that rush that makes us come back for the ride every year.

Injuries are an inevitable part of this time of year and the news we dread the most, especially when the injury is serious. The Dawgs seem to have recorded their first serious injury of preseason camp – UGASports.com reported today that redshirt freshman safety Antavious Coates is out for the year with an ACL injury. Coates also missed last season with an injury to his other knee. It’s really tough to see a promising career derailed like this two years running. Just one knee injury is enough to alter some careers, and he’s now dealing with two. We hope he can recover from this setback, because you can almost hear in his voice how much this hurts.

“I worked my butt off this summer and came here ready to play,” Coates said. “It’s hard.”

Even they know…

You’ve probably already heard that Picture Day is Saturday August 19th at Sanford Stadium. UGA has released some additional details. Some highlights:

• Picture Day will take place between 1:00 and 5:00 p.m. The football team will be there between 3:00 and 5:00.
• You may only bring in one item to sign.
• Team locations: The Georgia offensive unit and Coach Mark Richt will be located throughout the North side concourse of Sanford Stadium between Sections 109-101 while the defense will be located on the Gate 6 Plaza between Sections 125-121. Other Georgia sports teams will be located between Sections 119-113 and the interactive games, concessions and merchandise will be located throughout the event. All activities associated with Picture Day will take place only on the 100 Level between Sections 125-101. Everyone must enter through Gate 6 on the southeast corner of the stadium.
• (Free) tickets are required for a photo with Coach Richt and UGA, and those will be available beginning at 9:00 a.m. at the East End Ticket Windows located off East Campus Road.

In the Palm Beach Post. Not so sure about the addictive bit, but there are a lot of regulars on the boards I’ve seen. In 10+ years of the DawgVent, you get a pretty tight-knit group of folks talking about the hobby they love above all, so I can see why people keep coming back. Now that the sites associated with the message boards update so frequently with team and recruiting news, there is an impulse to check it frequently just to keep up.

“Yet enough solid information has been offered that the boards can’t be ignored.”

Very true. There’s a lot of crap slung, but most developments in the Georgia program that I can remember have been mentioned on the boards first. The problem is knowing not to jump and overreact at every rumor and see how the facts play out. But I’ve seen enough to know that we just can’t be outright dismissive of them.

All I can say is that you’d be surprised who reads (and posts) on these things. The experiences mentioned on the FSU and UF boards have played out on ours several times over.

Just in time for the season, ToonDawg (or more appropriately TuneDawg!) has put Anti-Orange Radio back on the air. If heaven had a radio station, this is what they’d play. Just a few minutes of listening should have you ready to pack up the truck for gameday.

Last year, Andy Landers took his undermanned team up against defending champion Baylor in the season opener at the State Farm Tip-Off Classic. The Lady Dogs played well until the final minutes when their lack of post depth was painfully exposed.

This year, Georgia will once again participate in the State Farm Tip-Off Classic, hosted by Oklahoma, and will face Rutgers on November 12. Rutgers isn’t the defending champ, but they always have a good team and are coached by C. Vivian Stringer, one of the best there is. Rutgers lost superstar guard Cappie Pondexter to the WNBA, but they bring in a top-rated recruiting class headlined by high-scoring Epiphanny Prince.

This opener is just part of a typically-challenging Lady Dogs non-conference schedule which will also feature Stanford, Georgia Tech, and FSU.

The first coach’s poll has been released, and the Dawgs start off at #14. That projects to a nine or ten win season. As expected, Auburn, Florida, and LSU all start off ranked higher, and Ohio State is the preseason #1.