Huge series this weekend with South Carolina. The Gamecocks seem to have risen to the top of the tightly-packed SEC this year, and it will be a very challenging series. If Georgia can win the series, they’ll be over .500 in the league and in great position to make both the SEC and NCAA Tournaments. But to get there, they’ll have to overcome some bad trends. Georgia hasn’t won a home SEC series all year and are just 2-7 in home league games. South Carolina has also owned Georgia lately, sweeping them several times.

If the Dawgs are going to have success this weekend, it’s likely going to begin with the starting pitching. South Carolina has some potent bats, but Georgia has been excellent in Friday and Saturday starts recently. Westphal and Brown are the two most recent SEC Pitchers of the Week and have each thrown very well in the past two series. One bad rain-interrupted inning against Tennessee by Westphal is the only blemish. Sunday pitching has been a bit of a different story, and Perno will have to find an answer there. Westphal and Brown are going to have to go deep into their games, or it will be a very long weekend.

Offense has been a concern in SEC home games, and getting only three or at most four runs a game is a big reason for the 2-7 home SEC mark. Georgia’s bats have woken up lately, though. Offensive explosions against Georgia Tech and Florida came after a few changes to the batting order, and hopefully that can continue against a better pitching staff this weekend. Jonathan Wyatt has been on a tear since moving to the leadoff spot. Josh Morris is one home run away from tying Georgia’s career home run record.

UGASports.com caught up with Dennis Felton in Savannah on the Road Tour (subscription required). The emphasis was on the frontcourt, and Felton summed up the situation by saying, “We’re tired of being pushed around.” Georgia lacked not only depth but also physical presence. The Bulldogs will add 6’10” Albert Jackson and 6’8″ Takais Brown to the frontcourt, and both will be counted on for significant contributions. “Now, it’s gotten to where you’re not just relying on any one guy, you’ve got depth. You want to have depth to create competition and want to have it to be able to withstand significant injuries.”

He added that he was pleased with the progress made in the 2005-2006 season. Though the Dawgs faded down the stretch, an NCAA Tournament bid was a realistic possibility into February. “I was just proud to be in that position so late in the year,” said Felton.

Felton also mentioned the impact of the new practice facility currently under construction. “We’ve been able to hold it up as an example that once and for all, we are dead serious about building a good basketball program at Georgia. It’s a big step for our program and a big step for the University.” For pictures of the progress on the facility, Georgia Sports Blog has a fresh batch.

Marc Weiszer of the ABH reports that four undrafted Dawgs have signed free-agent contracts…

Bryan McClendon to Chicago (just like his dad!)
Dennis Roland to Dallas
Will Thompson to NY Jets
Russ Tanner to Indy

First, thank God it’s over. There will be a few days of post-mortem analysis of course, but the worst is past us. The “mock draft” has become as annoying of a sideshow to actual sports as poker-as-sport and fantasy leagues.

For those of us used to seeing Dawgs go in the first round lately and with so much hype around certain players, it would be easy to say that this was a disappointing draft for the Dawgs and to note how a few players we had seen mentioned as early draft picks slid to later rounds. In the end, everyone we expected to get drafted was drafted. Given the lack of SEC superstars that went early in this year’s draft, it should be a very competitive league with lots of young talent in the upcoming years.

2007 might not be as prolific a draft year for Georgia, but they will still have several top prospects led by bookend defensive ends Quentin Moses and Charles Johnson. For now, we’ll thank an outstanding senior class that leaves as one of Georgia’s winningest. They put up four 10-win seasons, three SEC Championship appearances, two BCS bowl appearances, and two SEC titles…not bad at all. My take on those who were drafted…

Leonard Pope. There is a sentiment going around that Pope’s drop to the early third round was a sign that he came out too early and should have spent another year improving. I’ll ignore the non-football questions (were there academic/financial pressures for him to leave early?) and take a contrary view. I think Pope made his money during the last part of the 2004 season. If anything, all he did in 2005 was maintain his stature – aside from a career-best 8 rec. and 102 yards against Auburn, the past season wasn’t very remarkable for Pope. 39 catches, 541 yards, 4 TDs. Nice, very nice – yes. Vernon Davis? No. Had Pope returned for his senior season, he would still be in an offense that would get him 3 or 4 catches a game, and he would have a much less-experienced quarterback and offensive line working with him. Despite his rapid development at the end of 2004, he never took that next step in 2005 to become the sure first-round pick many expected him to be. I don’t think another year would have changed that. He, in my eyes, didn’t become a better all-around tight end than Randy McMichael, and McMichael was a fourth-round pick. All that said, Pope is coming into a great situation in Arizona. They signed a great tailback, got a steal with Leinart at #10, and have plenty of good receivers. If their line is decent, Pope can become part of a very effective NFL offense.

D.J. Shockley. Nice pick by the Falcons. My (lack of) enthusiasm for the NFL makes this a golf clap instead of dancing in the streets, but I’m glad D.J. has an opportunity to begin his professional career near his home and family. This is a really low-risk pick in the 7th round. At worst, the Falcons have a versatile player they can use on the practice squad or develop in NFL Europe. At the same time, the Falcons play nice public local relations by taking a favorite player from the state’s largest and most passionate fan base. They silence a point of criticism from the local media. Win-win all around. The only negative I can think of is that Terence Moore probably considers himself a kingmaker now.

Tim Jennings. Last Dawg offered in 2002 to first Dawg drafted in 2006. What more can you say? Jennings was thrown to the fire right from the start in 2002 and was in the game at critical points during that nailbiting fourth quarter in Columbia. He played a huge role against Ole Miss with an interception returned 64 yards for a touchdown. This improbable cornerback turned that early experience into a starting job. All he did was get better and better, and it culminated in a fantastic senior season. I will always believe that the outcome of the 2005 Auburn game would have been much different had Jennings not injured his ankle that week. There was the acrobatic interception against Arkansas. Then there was his game-saving interception of Reggie Ball to save a win over Georgia Tech. He topped off his career by anticipating a pass from the red meat that was an LSU backup quarterback and sealed a rout in the SEC Championship game. His stature was small, but he was big play all the way. That ability to go after interceptions and make those game-changing plays might be the reason he was selected over teammate Demario Minter, a more prototypical cornerback who only had two career interceptions and dropped to a fifth round pick.

Kedrick Golston. Yes, he dropped to the sixth round, but Georgia was a completely different team when Golston (and Gerald Anderson) was on the line. Golston came into Georgia with an injured leg that would end careers for a lot of people, and he spent his college years recovering from that auto accident and learning how to play football with that reconstructed leg. He now has a chance at a professional career, and that’s a pretty strong statement about everything he worked through. Golston will always be remembered as a top in-state recruit who made it cool to pick Georgia at an uncertain time in program history. He challenged other Georgia prospects to consider what kind of program UGA would have if the best that the state had to offer stayed home. With all that Georgia accomplished during his time in Athens, he did plenty to help realize that vision.

Max Jean-Gilles and Greg Blue. A year ago, it was assumed that when these two All-Americans passed on the NFL draft to return for their senior seasons, they were giving up potentially very high draft position. This weekend, they were drafted in the fourth and fifth rounds. Did they get worse? Lose favor? Not really. If their was a downside to their decision to return, it was that the holes in their games which had always been present had another year to be exposed. Blue has been known as a devastating hitter for years, but his pass coverage and speed have always been questionable. Jean-Gilles has huge potential as a road-grader type of lineman, but conditioning has always been a concern since he showed up from Miami. He eventually played significant minutes at Georgia, but constant battles with weight which continued through the NFL combine had to scare off some teams that expect to see their linemen pull and sprint on quick-developing plays. Max and Greg were both outstanding college players who did certain things very well, better than anyone else. Their draft value declined because what they did well wasn’t necessarily broad in scope, but they will be great value picks for teams that can find ways to use them in roles suited to what they do really, really well.

While the Georgia news on most people’s mind this weekend will be the NFL Draft, it’s a very significant weekend for one of the University’s other sports. Katrina McClain Johnson will become the first player or coach from the University inducted to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. She definitely deserves the honor and finally gives the tradition-rich Georgia program a presence in the Hall of Fame.

Teresa Edwards only recently retired from competition and is not eligible for the Hall of Fame yet. That’s a sure thing. But it’s criminal that Andy Landers hasn’t been nominated yet. Wonder if it has anything to do with the Hall of Fame being in Knoxville.

Along with Dominique Wilkins heading to the Basketball Hall of Fame, this has been quite a year for some of Georgia’s past hoop greats.

Who knew that this whole debate over USC’s Dynasty was really about the house where Reggie Bush’s family holed up?

Tech coach Chang A. Lee has handed over the playcalling duties to offensive coordinator and former Auburn signal-caller Patrick Nix. I can understand Gailey wanting to take a step back – he’s only a year or so removed from a heart attack, and managing the Tech program is stress enough for any man. But Nix?

Nix is, if you remember, the gentleman who instructed Reggie Ball to spike the ball on third down as an astonished Chan Gailey gave the world’s best “WTF?!?!?” look on national television. In addition to his offensive coordinator duties, Nix is also quarterbacks coach. Since George Godsey threw a perfect pass to Tim Wansley in 2001, the Tech quarterback position has been a nice jambalaya of transfers, position changes, zero depth, and the stuck-in-neutral career of Reggie Ball. If he can do for the Tech playcalling what he’s done for the development of Ball, well…that’ll be just fine.

GSB put it well once again…imagine the contrast in the season opener. Charlie Weis called plays for the Super Bowl champ and poured gasoline on the Notre Dame offense. Patrick Nix is still trying to find a way to get the ball to Calvin Johnson that isn’t a fade or a 12-yard pass to the sideline.

The Diamond Dawgs needed a win in the worst way, and they got one against the best possible opponent on Wednesday. The Dawgs hung 10 runs in the first two innings on Georgia Tech and never looked back on the way to a 12-6 win. The offensive explosion was highlighted by a three-run home run by Josh Morris that landed somewhere near Ila, Ga. Things got interesting in the sixth, but Joey Side’s 794th amazing catch of the season ended the inning and a four-run Tech rally.

Though Tuesday’s loss to Western Carolina was a pretty rare bad loss for the team, a couple of wins over highly-ranked Clemson and Tech are huge when it comes time for NCAA Tournament selection. Now we have to go on the road against Florida, and it’s essential to make up some ground in the SEC standings.

I’m glad the rain held off for this game. Had it been rained out, it would have been the third time in four seasons that Tech hadn’t played a scheduled game in Athens.

May 10th – Turner Field. The deciding game in the season series. Proceeds go to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. There is no reason not to be there.

The ridiculous hype around the commitment of Jimmy Clausen to Notre Dame (addressed well by Dennis Dodd here and skewered nicely by Georgia Sports Blog here) has made for great comedy over the past few days as Clausen looked more like Liberace than an elite QB showing off his rings. Georgia fans have been party to several recruiting spectacles over the years, and I’d like to take a stab at what I think are the top 5. This list has nothing to do with hype vs. production – some panned out and others didn’t. I’m talking about five guys who when they committed or signed put the Bulldog hype machine into overdrive. I’d be interested to hear about any others from the 80s or even from the pre-Herschel era.

5. Jasper Sanks

“The next Herschel Walker” label has cursed many Georgia tailbacks with inflated expectations, but none felt the crushing weight of these expectations like Sanks. Recruiting lore tells us that Georgia targeted Sanks over fellow in-state prospect and future Vol Jamal Lewis. Georgia had the back they wanted to carry on the Robert Edwards legacy, and the dancing in the street began. Things turned sour almost immediately. Sanks failed to qualify out of high school and went off to Fork Union for a year of prep school. His freshman year in 1998 was essentially wasted by the coaching staff when he saw spot duty in what could have been a redshirt season. His career peaked in 1999 with around 900 yards of rushing (the highest single-season rushing total between Garrison Hearst in 1992 and Musa Smith in 2002), but that 1999 season was also marred by two critical fumbles* against Florida and Georgia Tech.  Sanks, plagued by weight and conditioning issues throughout his career, eventually gave way to freshman Musa Smith in 2000 and was eventually dismissed from the team late in his senior season of 2001.

4. Eric Zeier

In 1991, Ray Goff decided to completely change the Georgia offense. The SEC was in a period of transition, and the Dawgs were under pressure to modernize their offense in the post-Dooley era. Goff hired Wayne McDuffie to be the mastermind behind the new offense that would eventually earn the nickname “Air Georgia”. But McDuffie needed a different kind of quarterback to run his offense. The option-style quarterbacks of the past didn’t have the passing skills to run the system. Around the end of 1990, McDuffie got his quarterback – Eric Zeier of Marietta. Eric Zeier had taken root in Marietta after living on a military base in Germany and had set the Georgia high school community buzzing about his arm in just a few short years. He arrived on campus to find an established starter and a full-blown quarterback controversy, but he grabbed control of the starting job by leading the Dawgs to an electrifying upset win over #6 Clemson. Though his last two seasons at Georgia were a disappointing jumble of offensive imbalance and defensive ineffectiveness, Zeier left Georgia as a hero and made sure that there would be no looking back towards the offenses of the Dooley era.

3. Marcus Stroud

By early 1996, Georgia’s situation with Florida was dire. Not only had the Gators won six straight over the Bulldogs, but the Gators had also come into south Georgia to get a verbal commitment from superstar defensive tackle prospect Marcus Stroud. But on Signing Day, Stroud pulled one of the all-time recruiting surprises when he switched his commitment to Georgia. The moment was captured for posterity with a Sports Illustrated cover, and Stroud became the poster boy for the hope that things would change against Florida and that Georgia was on the way back up. It was an immediate triumph for new coach Jim Donnan, and Stroud played a part in ending the losing streak against Florida in 1997. He’s now one of the top defensive tackles in the NFL and has done plenty to live up to that SI cover.

2. Andre Hastings

Another Sports Illustrated tie-in vaults Hastings up to #2. When SI includes you on a future NFL All-Pro team when you’re still in high school, the hype machine has hit full stride. Andre Hastings was one of the top receiving prospects in the nation as demonstrated by the Sports Illustrated publicity, and the recruiting battle was fierce. To make things worse, Hastings didn’t sign on Signing Day and had coaches like Bobby Bowden and Lou Holtz (not to mention Georgia’s staff) hanging on his decision. The signing of Hastings and Garrison Hearst was one of the first huge recruiting coups for second-year coach Ray Goff. Hastings didn’t really take off until Zeier and “Air Georgia” arrived in 1991, but by 1992 he was clearly one of the best receivers ever to play at Georgia. He and Hearst left for the NFL after that junior season which put Georgia back into the Top 10. Hastings was a third-round selection of the New Orleans Saints and, while never the All-Pro forecasted by SI, had a fair NFL career with a couple of teams.

1. Herschel Walker

According to some recruitniks, the pursuit of Herschel Walker did more than anything else to usher in the attention paid to the “second season” that is football recruiting, especially in the football-crazy South. The battle between Georgia and Clemson for Walker lasted well past Signing Day until almost Easter of 1980. The stories of Mike Cavan pulling out all the stops to land Walker are legendary. Without the Internet to spread news, the fanatics starved for updates on Walker’s decision, and the fledgling recruiting industry was given a huge shot in the arm.

Within a few years of Walker’s decision, the magazines, newsletters, and 900 numbers fed this hunger among the small but passionate group of recruitniks until the Internet revolution of the mid-1990s began to bring the recruiting process to the casual fan. Now prospects use the machine of the recruiting industry to create their own hype by holding Signing Day press conferences or making their decisions on television. The system has evolved (or, more accurately, devolved) to the point where a high school junior makes his decision public at the College Football Hall of Fame, sending pundits shrieking about the “biggest commitment in 25 years”.

Ever notice how when the scheduling discussion comes up, one of the most common words used is “embarrassing”? I’m sorry – it’s not Mark Richt’s problem that something like a football schedule causes shame and office scorn that you have trouble coping with.

It’s OK to admit it – we’re selfish when it comes to scheduling. That’s the nature of a fan. We want to see a great game every week (though woe to all if they lose), we want to travel to some new football shrine or at least get a good golf trip out of it, and we want to shut up the damn Tennessee fan down the hall who goes on and on about how they played Notre Dame. That’s fine – just as long as we admit that the best interests of the team is way down the list of priorities.

One of the favorite offseason pasttimes is fantasizing about nonconference schedules. When the topic comes up most people end up with similar-sounding lists (Michigan, Texas, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, and on and on). Traditional powers, traditional settings.

I don’t get the appeal of Big 10 teams – I’ve seen plenty of them in Florida bowls lately. Personally, I’d like to see North Carolina and Army – two of the best settings in college sports and two programs with plenty of history (but unfortunately not much presence now). I always wonder why UNLV never makes the cut. Vegas, baby. Vegas.

The sad, unspoken reality of these what-if exercises is that most, if not all, of these dream matchups will never take place.

Now look over at basketball. UNC-Illinois. Duke-Texas. UCLA-Memphis. Kansas-Kentucky. UConn-LSU. Gonzaga-Michigan State. That was just this past season. UConn and Tennessee play almost annually in women’s hoops. Interesting, quality interconference games are so common in November and December in college basketball that they are taken for granted.

Why? Why does college basketball get a good look at who the really relevant teams are early in the season and football is in a situation where good matchups like Texas-Ohio State are the exception? It can be boiled down to a single point – losses are a killer in college football. Football rewards above all the undefeated record. Even giving some consideration to strength of schedule, there aren’t many seasons that will produce more than one or two undefeated teams in college football. If you’re in a major conference, that’ll get you into the national title game whether you schedule Ohio State or Savannah State. I don’t buy the Auburn 2004 example as a case where strength of schedule would have changed things. No one short of the 1985 Bears was going to leapfrog undefeated Oklahoma and USC teams. Who could have moved aside USC or Texas this past year?

To change that kind of inertia, you must change incentives. EDSBS has this exactly right. People (and organizations) do what will be rewarded, and you can’t really blame them for gaming the system. You can pout about it being unsporting or appeal to ego or manhood or whatever you’d like, but that doesn’t change the optimal way to approach the system, at least for a top SEC team.

Georgia’s response has been perfect: to get the schedule police off their back, they arrange to play Arizona State and Colorado. Recognizable names, power conferences, distance, some football credibility. But unless those programs take a major step forward, Georgia should be comfortably favored against both teams. Still gaming the system, and now they get a pat on the back for it.

Football ends up with the case of the regular season meaning almost everything but gets fewer interesting matchups as a result. Basketball has the opposite problem – Carolina can travel to Kentucky for a showdown between the two winningest programs in history, but the result doesn’t mean much more than poll and seeding position down the road.

Ideally, since we’re dreaming, how about a relegation-based method that’s used in European soccer leagues? Imagine a fluid “conference” of the best programs where Texas, USC, Ohio State, Georgia, and so on play every year as long as they remain good. Each year, the bottom few drop down and make room for up-and-coming programs from the next level. Teams would be allowed one rival game outside of the conference. Teams at any level would play among their peers, making for interesting games and competition down the line. Of course there are complexities that make such a system difficult, if not an impossibility, but it’s about as likely as a blossoming of great nonconference schedules under the current system of incentives.

Brooks Brown was named SEC Pitcher of the Week today, and I’m not sure if there has been a better pitching performance in the SEC this season. 14 strikeouts, three hits allowed, a shutout – I feel fortunate just to have seen it in person. Unfortunately, it was the only bright spot of the weekend. Even in that 3-0 win, the Dawgs missed several scoring chances as the struggles on offense continue.

It’s still a week away, and I’m already sick of the NFL draft. I think Martha Stewart is the only media type who hasn’t weighed in yet with a mock draft.

I want the best for the NFL-bound Dawgs, but that’s about the extent of my interest. I’m really not concerned who Arizona will take in the 6th round. I don’t care if Vince Young goes 2nd or 5th. Please…give us back our sports TV and talk radio.

West Virginia must be feeling a bit of the hype about their possible national title run this season. A student with ties to the Mountaineer football program was nabbed at a Marshall practice with a notebook full of practice observations and diagrams as well as a list of Mountaineer football contacts. Marshall and West Virginia play each other to open the season, and there’s already plenty of in-state bad blood there.

Honestly, if something like this were to happen outside of the SEC or the state of Texas, the state of West Virginia would probably be near the top of the list of places you’d expect this to happen.

No word on whether or not the apprehended student is a Hatfield or a McCoy.

I have to admit that this isn’t a particularly passionate topic for me. I’m only a halfhearted Falcons fan, and that’s only because they’re in my backyard and you can’t really escape that as a sports fan. My interest in the NFL is orders of magnitude less than my interest in college football, and I mostly try to keep up with how our Dawg alums are doing. It really only matters a tiny bit more to me whether NFL-bound Bulldogs go to Atlanta instead of Pittsburgh or Seattle.

Terence Moore tackles the issue in today’s AJC, and I can’t really disagree with the sentiment – such a legacy doesn’t seem accidental and is hard to overlook. But such hindsight makes for a pretty easy indictment that glosses over some of the issue.

Besides, why would you want to subject some good Dawgs to the trainwreck that has been Falcons football over the years?

The Falcons’ first obligation of course is to build a team with the best possible pieces, whether they went to Georgia, Florida, or Mount Union. I’d love to see more players from my high school at Georgia, but there are better players from other schools. Having a few high-profile Dawgs might help ticket sales and marketing, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the impact from a few elite NFL all-pros and a winning product.

Anyone who follows college recruiting knows how tough a job it is to identify talent and build a program. When Hines Ward left college, he was a special all-around player but a small, relatively inexperienced receiver with unspectacular stats. The decision to take him over Jammi German is an obvious no-brainer now, but in 1998 it was a question of Ward’s intangibles over German’s physical gifts, and it wasn’t as clear-cut then. Ward had to work very hard in his first few NFL seasons to improve as a professional receiver and earn a starting job. One might have expected Andre Hastings to have a stellar pro career after he left in 1992, but of course he didn’t. For every Dawg Moore identifies as a difference-maker, there is a Stinchcomb or a Sullivan who fizzled at the next level.

It’s no different for picks from any school. Moore wonders if a few more Georgia players might have prevented some of the really bad years in Falcon history (and there are many), but if there’s been a problem with the Falcons over the years, it’s been their shocklingly bad evaluation of talent from any school and much less some systemic policy to avoid Georgia players. If the Falcons had drafted Georgia players, you could be fairly certain they would have spent a high pick on someone like Bernard Williams.

So do I want to see Shockley or Blue or Jean-Gilles or anyone else get selected by the Falcons? Sure. Why not? I’ll get to see them every week. I’m not going to get bent out of shape about it though. The Falcons have much better front-office personnel now, and Rich McKay brought several Dawgs to Tampa Bay while he was GM there. The important thing from the Falcon perspective is that McKay and staff are competent, and any player drafted – Dawg or not – will at least make sense and address a need.