Earlier this week Doug pointed to this handy quiz where you could find out if you were "that guy". Other than letting the occasional "my bad" slip, I think I came out of the quiz OK. Since Doug also brings us the Friday Random Ten+5, we’ll steal borrow heavily from his format to present 5 ways to tell if you’re "that Georgia fan". Yes, we’re only six weeks from kickoff, and pretty soon we’ll be face-to-face with…that fan. At one point or another, this has probably been most of us.

You wear red pants.
Admit it: you don’t wear the red pants hoping that you go unnoticed. They look pretty damn sharp, and you’ve embraced your inner attention-whore. The red pants are widespread enough now that the pants by themselves aren’t enough to make someone "that fan". Not everyone rocking the red pants is a tool, but tell me you’re surprised by what this guy is wearing:

Red pants – check. Black polo – check. White hat (possibly mesh, possible reading "Herschel for Heisman") – double check.

You start the "drunk obnoxious Georgia fan" cheer.
Calling the Dawgs is as much a part of the pregame ritual as being, well, drunk and obnoxious. Put them together and you should have the perfect cheer, right? But the novelty tends to wear off when it’s 11:30 a.m. and it’s already the 29th time this morning you’ve heard some lush with no rhythm take three or four minutes to slur, "Whut’s that comin’ down thuuuu track?" Bonus points if your version includes "all dressed up in red and black."

You’re the tailgate emcee.
We all have our game day playlists. Division of labor at a tailgate is a good thing – you need someone who knows how to work the grill, someone who could zero in on a satellite signal from the deck of an Alaskan crab boat, and good tunes help too. Your friends might love your clever mix of David Allan Coe and acceptably mainstream hip-hop played at 130 decibels, but the guys three cars down who are just trying to watch Gameday wish you’d catch bird hepatitis.

You get involved in sit down / stand up arguments.
I’d like to think we live in a world where standing and sitting at a ballgame is less scripted and regulated than a Catholic Mass. By God, if I want to jump up when Rennie Curran adjusts someone’s spine or if I want to kneel in fervent prayer on 4th-and-1, I will. But there is a give and take here. The only thing worse than the "down in front" nazi is the guy who stands on principle knowing there’s an elderly fan or kid behind them who can’t see.

You provide play-by-play and color commentary to everyone sitting around you.
We all talk about what’s going on, but I can see that the last play was a Southerland run that gained 4 yards. Why, yes, the defense is in man coverage. If you could only run down to the sideline and get some info on that injury, I could turn my radio off. Bonus points if you a) ever put on the Munson voice or b) launch a rant on the wrong player or coach. (Um, dude, Chandler was on the sideline for that whole series.)

Have a great weekend! Only six of them left until we have better things to do.

Linebacker Derrick White was the Michael Lemon of the 2005 season. Just months after a bar fight earned White a suspension, he was arrested for DUI and dismissed from the Georgia team. White finished his college career at Clark Atlanta.

Fortunately the rest of the story is mostly positive for Derrick. Marc Weiszer points to a feature on White that tracks his progress in arena football and, more importantly, the turnaround in his life.

White is now married and a key defensive member of the AIFA’s Mississippi MudCats. He has also spent some time in the Arena League. He’s now focused on “setting a good example, being a good teammate and putting himself in a position to leave every game with no regrets.” That’s quite a turnaround for someone who was described by Coach Richt as having “a past history of behavior that does not represent (Georgia’s) program in the proper way.”

Not surprisingly, White speaks well of Richt.

The release of NCAA 2009 has lots of people excited, and it’s no surprise that the guys around whom the game is built are among those lining up to buy the game. When you think about it for a second, it’s at once flattering and bizarre that your identity could be boiled down to a few numerical ratings and controlled by thousands of couch potatoes across the nation.

Marc Weiszer talked to some of the Georgia players about the game and Georgia’s #1 ranking in the game. Coach Garner says thank-you-very-much for the recruiting edge of being the #1-ranked team and notes, “Anything like that with today’s kids, they’re all about electronics and the games.” It can’t hurt that every prep tailback can choose to be #24 in a black jersey for the nation’s #1 team.

I love reading the comments from the players when they see how they translate to bits and bytes. You’ll have freshmen and reserves tweak their ratings to make sure they’re in the starting lineup. It’s a very serious and hilarious business. There’s always bound to be this poor guy:

Linebacker Rennie Curran isn’t thrilled about one aspect of the game. He says they left out No. 35, which just happens to be his number.
“I think they messed up with my number,” Curran said.
Ellerbe knows the feeling.
“I got shafted last year,” he said. “They gave me Akeem Hebron’s number.”

I feel Dannell Ellerbe’s pain about needing a new system. “I’m probably going to go buy the Playstation 3 just so I can play the game on Playstation 3,” he said. The game isn’t available for my ancient X-Box, so I’m going to have to upgrade the hardware myself.

The shockingly high ticket cutoffs announced yesterday led many in message board land to ask the obvious question: is it time to expand Sanford Stadium?

There seem to be no immediate official plans to increase capacity. Ticket manager Tim Cearley told UGASports.com, "I have seen no mention or plans for a stadium expansion. I have not been given any indication from the Development Office that there is a plan or study for doing so."

That doesn’t mean we can’t kick the idea around. It’s a discussion worth having. You’ll see below that my view on expansion is generally negative in the "do you realize what it will take to do this?" sense. Any expansion worth considering will likely be the single most expensive undertaking in the athletic department’s history. It would also place significant additional stresses on the campus and city of Athens. Those concerns don’t mean that there aren’t solutions, and we might even be willing to live with some of the discomforts.

Pros

• Revenue. At $40 per game, adding 5,000 seats means $1,200,000 in revenue over a six-game home schedule. That’s before any additional Hartman Fund contributions to secure the right to buy those tickets. The costs of expansion will be great, and it will take some time to recover those costs, but eventually an expansion should become a revenue generator if demand remains high.
• Status. Sanford Stadium still trails only Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium among SEC schools in terms of capacity, but the neighborhood has become a bit crowded lately with recent expansions at Alabama and LSU. Would an expansion make Georgia the largest stadium in the SEC or the nation? Likely not. But it might get Sanford close to 100,000 seats. This might seem like a silly point, but college football – especially in the South – is all about the big. Coaches salaries are big. Even mundane facilities like offices and weight rooms are now caught up in the arms race. Bigger is better, and that applies to the stadium as much as anything else.
• Accessibility. With a point total of over 10,000 necessary for first-time season tickets, most recent alumni won’t sniff season tickets for years. Alums from my era in the early 1990s never had this problem (there were even such things as non-renewable season tickets!), but Georgia football is now accessible to fewer young alums and families. There’s no right to watch Georgia football in person, but you hate to turn away fans who want to support the program and start their own traditions of bringing their families to Athens for game day.
• Fixing what’s broke. I’ll bring this up again in the cons, but expansion will force improvements in existing areas of the stadium such as concessions, entry gates, and concourses. These areas need work even at the current capacity.
• The view is changing anyway. Almost everyone speaks wistfully of the view out of the open end of the stadium whenever expansion comes up. It isn’t special because of what you see (I mean, is Baxter Hill really that scenic?), but the sense of open space is what makes it work. Between the Student Learning Center and work going on around the Tate Center expansion, that view is changing on its own. If, as planned, a mirror of the SLC is built on the southeast corner of Baxter and Lumpkin, you’ll be looking at a lot of brick.

Cons

• Additional costs. Whether Sanford Stadium is expanded by filling in the west (bridge) end zone or extending the Tech Deck around to the east, there will be some very expensive consequences. Either option will require rerouting or tunneling a main campus artery. Construction on the east side would also have to deal with an active rail line. Construction on the west side would affect not only the bridge but also the Tate Center and the improvements currently underway for Tate 2. This extra work before actual stadium work begins will add significantly to the cost of the project.
• Parking. As recently as ten years ago, free parking was the norm on game day. One could park as close as the corner of Baxter and Lumpkin for no cost. The combination of campus construction, stadium expansion, and the expansion of Athletic Association-controlled lots has put a price tag on much of the parking on and close to campus. Free parking remains in nooks and on the campus’s southeastern fringes.
• Finances. Though the Athletic Association continues to operate in the black and bring in record revenues, it still carries close to $90 million in long-term debt. The last major expansion in 2003 cost $21 million, and it didn’t involve much of the extra work that the next expansion would. Would the fiscally conservative athletic department be willing to take on that additional debt with other projects like the Butts-Mehre expansion still ahead?
• Campus concerns. The state of campus after big games has drawn the attention of President Adams and other campus leaders. Their suggestions and proposals for dealing with a trashed campus have only added to the friction between Adams and the football fan base. Will the University administration be receptive to adding several thousand more fans onto crowded streets and a crowded campus?
• Stadium bottlenecks. The Gate 6 improvements showed how much has to be done around the rest of the stadium. Concession and bathroom lines are long, concourses are narrow and cramped, and it can take a while to get through the gate if you arrive close to game time. Those are problems that would have to be addressed before another major expansion.
• Tickets can still be had. The record-high cutoffs have led to a bit of overreaction, and I admit I contribute to that above by implying that Georgia football is somehow accessible to all but the loyal and the wealthy. That’s not really the case. Half of Georgia’s home games each year are more or less throwaways. Tickets for Georgia Southern, Central Michigan, and Vanderbilt will be easily available on game day and you’re almost certain to pay less than face value. Tickets for the other home games will be a little more difficult to come by, but they can still be had even if you have to use a broker like StubHub. The same applies to road games. If a $10,000 donation is too rich for your blood, I would be willing to bet that you could get into every regular season Georgia football game – home and away – this season for less than $1,000. If all you want to do is see a few games at Sanford Stadium with your kids, you can do it and pay less than face value for the tickets if you aren’t picky about the games.
• Demand is cyclical. Paul is right on. Times are good now, and they’ll be that way for the short term (wait til you see next year’s home schedule!). But reality is that it won’t be that way forever. Demand for Georgia football will probably always be strong, but the peaks will ebb and flow. Planning for stadium capacity according to those peaks will end up leaving a lot of excess capacity. If you don’t believe me, look at the stands during the second half of the season opener.

What do you think? Is expansion inevitable? Is Sanford at ts optimal size? Are the parking problems and other concerns exaggerated? Is preserving the view and aesthetics of the stadium overrated? Are there other considerations or benefits everyone else is overlooking?

The football equivalent of the rubber chicken circuit is underway – the Bulldog Road Tour kicked into high gear last night in Jacksonville. The recaps will be so full of fluff and baby pictures that they’re hardly worth mentioning, and Richt isn’t the kind to throw out the red meat quotes that get attention. Still, it’s a summer rite and a sign that practice isn’t far away.

Upcoming Road Tour Dates:

July 16th – Valdosta (Valdosta Conference Center)
July 17th – Macon (Macon Centreplex)
July 28th – Greater Atlanta (Cobb Galleria Centre)
July 29th – Columbus (Columbus Convention and Trade Center)
July 31st – Chattanooga (The Colonnade)

Ticket cutoffs are out, and it’s not pretty.

The report yesterday about first-time orders was true. A cumulative score of 10,651 points was necessary to become a new renewable season ticket holder. Additionally, we learn today that improving seat location took in the neighborhood of 20,000 points.

The reason for the high cutoff is simple scarcity. With the hype building for the 2008 season, all but 800 out of 53,000 season tickets (98.5%) were renewed. On top of that scarcity, many renewing season ticket holders sought to add seats up to the maximum allowed by their donation. Ticket manager Tim Cearley provided additional details to UGASports.com:

Of (the 800 available season tickets) only 698 were in pairs or groups as the other seats were scattered throughout the stadium by themselves. This is a continuation of a trend seen over the last few years as seat turnover has gone down from 1000 tickets in 2006 to 900 in 2007 and now down to 800 this year. With the season’s expectations being so high, many new contributors were trying to get tickets and many current donors were trying to add seats.

Point levels for away game tickets were also announced, and they are predictably steep. This is the first season where all games come with a cutoff. Usually UGA can fill all orders for a game like Vandy or Kentucky, but tickets for Georgia’s 2008 trip to Lexington will require a cutoff on par with Florida tickets.

• South Carolina – 22,000 points
• Arizona State – 27,007 points
• LSU – 30,415 points
• Florida Club 42,500 points
• Florida – 8,460 points
• Auburn – 25,850 points
• Kentucky – 8,405 points

UGASports.com also shares how the 92,000+ tickets are distributed within Sanford Stadium.

• 53,000: Season tickets
• 18,000: Students
• 10,000: Opponents*
• 4,000: Faculty/staff
• 1,000: Sponsors
• Remainder: Athletic department use – recruiting, player’s families, etc. Each player can request four tickets.

* – They say that 10,000 tickets are reserved for opponents, but we know that figure can vary based on reciprocity. Some schools probably get more and some surely get fewer than 10,000 based on how many tickets they make available for Georgia fans.

The numbers get a little fuzzy towards the bottom. If you do the math, that’s around 6,000 tickets available for the football team, and that seems like a lot even accounting for recruits, players, and families.

Anyway, read the whole thing. There are some very interesting insights into the ticketing process, information on when and how tickets will be mailed, and also a discussion about Sanford expansion.

According to an unconfirmed report on the DawgVent this afternoon, the Hartman Fund cut-off for first-time season ticket orders was 10,651.

If you are renewing your season tickets, this cut-off doesn’t apply to you. But for recent alums, your first-time season ticket application will be refunded if it didn’t come with a donation of over 10 grand.

Official cut-offs for season tickets and road games should be out later this week. This is the price of success, my friends.

But for those who will receive refunds, this isn’t necessarily bad news or the end of your chances of watching Georgia football in person. Tickets will be easy to come by for half of Georgia’s home games. Georgia Southern, Central Michigan, and Vandy tickets should be floating around on game day at less than face value. And for the rest (Alabama, Tennessee, Tech), you should be able to find tickets for a premium, yes, but I doubt your total would go over a few hundred bucks for those three games. Contrast that with a $10,651 donation on top of the cost of a ticket, and those who are forced to take the scalper route should come out well ahead.

If obtaining season tickets down the road is a priority but the one-time donation is too rich for your blood, contribute at whatever amount is comfortable and scalp your way in for a few years. Either your total will catch up to the cut-off, or the cut-off will drop if there’s a decrease in demand down the road.

The Washington Post looks at the ACC 5 years after expansion, and the reviews are, to put it kindly, mixed.

The Post does well to point out the biggest unintended consequence of ACC expansion – the rise of the Big East. Faced with losing Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College, even the Big East commissioner saw bad times ahead for that conference. But the result has been the rise of football programs like West Virginia and Rutgers. While Virginia Tech and Boston College have done relatively well in the ACC, their arrival hasn’t done much to boost the overall quality of the conference.

And in one of the most critical and unforeseen byproducts of the realignment, the rival Big East Conference — forced to expand in response to the flight of three of its schools to the ACC — has strengthened its standing as a big-time football conference and fortified the depth of its basketball programs to an extent the ACC has yet to realize.

The Post mentions the turnover among ACC football coaches as a factor that has held back progress on the gridiron. Some feel a similar upgrade in coaching talent is necessary to restore ACC basketball.

It is important to note though that while the ACC might be struggling in its competitiveness they are still, for now, bringing in the cash. The conference “has signed a seven-year, $258 million contract with ABC and ESPN — which nearly doubled the annual income of its previous TV deal.” From 2001-2002 to 2006-2007, the average revenue paid out annually per program has increased by over $2 million. There’s even a glass-half-empty reaction to that news. Outgoing UNC chancellor James Moeser said, “(The financial impact of expansion) has been positive, but not overwhelmingly.”

I can’t say it’s a surprise: Michael Lemon is off the team. He had been suspended indefinitely while facing a felony aggravated battery charge, and Coach Richt took the extra step to dismiss Lemon over the weekend.

“He’s been dismissed as a result of some poor decisions and conduct that is not in line with standards we have in place at Georgia,” said Richt. “I have had discussions with Michael and he understands the decision.”

Richt isn’t one to close doors, and he left open the (ever-so-slight) possibility of Lemon returning to the team.

“(Lemon) expressed a desire to find a path back to the team at some point but that’s a decision that will depend on several factors and will come at a later date.”

Whether “several factors” means a year away somewhere else and a favorable resolution to the criminal charges, I don’t know. If the University expels Lemon, it’s a moot point. I doubt we’ll see him back in a Georgia uniform for quite a while, if at all. But, pending the outcome of the criminal charges, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Coach Richt is working to help Lemon find as soft of a landing as possible.

For a team counting on defensive improvement, particularly in the secondary, to carry them back to the top, this isn’t good news.

University of Florida rising junior safety Dorian Munroe has suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament that will require surgery. The injury to his right knee will force him to miss the 2008 season.

Meanwhile, fellow defensive back and rising redshirt senior John Curtis also suffered a season-ending ACL injury to his left knee. Curtis will miss at least the 2008 season. This is the third tear in Curtis’ left knee and he has had two prior surgeries on the same knee.

Munroe was projected to start. It’s likely that a true freshman will take his place.

We wish both men a complete recovery.

Georgia’s starting cornerbacks are juniors, so developing the depth at the position is on the to-do list for the 2009 recruiting class. UGASports.com reports that Jordan Love, a 6’0″ cornerback from Virginia, made his commitment public today and became Georgia’s 12th pledge for the upcoming class.

According to UGASports.com, Georgia coaches offered Love after viewing a single workout back in the spring. Love had 22 offers, but his top three became Georgia, Florida, and Penn State. A visit to Athens in early June put the Dawgs over the top, and he’s spent the past few weeks thinking things over.

With Love on board, you’d have to think that Atlanta’s Branden Smith would be the top remaining target at cornerback.

Can someone please keep him away from the kids? This time it’s in Thailand. (h/t Deadspin…welcome aboard to Clay Travis!)

David Greene had plenty of accomplishments at Georgia, but his NCAA-record 42 wins as the starting quarterback is probably the most impressive. Sure, it’s ultimately a team accomplishment, but quarterbacks usually end up – deserved or not – with exaggerated credit for wins and blame for losses.

Getting to 42 wins is tough. First you have to be in a program strong enough and consistent enough to win over 10 games per season over your career. That eliminates most people right there. But most programs that strong rarely have to go into game one with a freshman at such a key position as quarterback. Tim Tebow didn’t start until his sophomore season. Peyton Manning started his freshman year at #3 on the depth chart until injuries cleared the path.

Greene’s record took not only the good fortune to be here during one of Georgia’s best runs in program history; it also took the unusual opportunity to start out of the gate and hold the job for four seasons. Let’s not forget that he also took plenty of beatings and stayed healthy. The combination produced a career for the record books.

When it took nearly half a season to establish Matthew Stafford as Georgia’s starter, Greene’s record appeared safe. But after a successful 2007 season and some promising years ahead, it’s now a somewhat realistic question: could Stafford break Greene’s career wins record?

The numbers tell us that it’s theoretically possible, but it would take consecutive seasons on the level of 1980 and 1981 to do it.

Greene’s record is 42 wins. Stafford currently has 17 as a starter. There are 28 possible games for Georgia over the next two seasons (including possible SEC Championship games and bowl games). To tie Greene’s record, Stafford would have to start in 25 more wins. That could be a perfect 14-0 season and another 11-2 year, a 12-2 season followed by a 13-1 campaign, or any other combination. The feat seems nearly impossible without winning SEC titles and major bowl games.

Of course back-to-back 14-0 seasons would put Stafford at 45 wins and shatter Greene’s record. And the rapture will come and take us all.

The catch is that an ultra-successful 2008 would likely make Stafford a prime NFL draft candidate. If Georgia wins 13 or 14 games in 2008 to put Stafford within striking distance of the record, does he stick around?

So what do you think? Your answer has a lot to do with how high you see Georgia’s ceiling over the next couple of years. With "only" ten wins per year, Stafford won’t even sniff the record. Does he even break 40 wins as a starter? Georgia would have to win more than 11 games in each of the next two seasons just to get Stafford to 40 wins. Does he come up just short of Greene? Or do the Dawgs have their most successful consecutive seasons ever and push Stafford to the 42-win mark?

Offseason attrition continues for the Georgia basketball program. Freshman forward Jeremy Jacob will leave the program and transfer. (Note that this is not Jeremy Price. Price was a regular starter on the frontcourt.) Jacob was injured early in the season and did not play in any SEC games. His injury qualified him for a medical redshirt, and he will have all four years of eligibility remaining.

If you want to stretch for a silver lining, it’s this: Jacob apparently doesn’t see much of a future for himself at Georgia. “Jeremy has expressed an interest in playing for a program where he can play a more prominent role than he believes he will play at Georgia,” said coach Dennis Felton. That’s a somewhat positive statement about the rest of frontcourt talent if playing time really is Jacob’s motivation. Still, he was a talented prep player and at least was going to provide some depth.

If a guy wants to leave, he wants to leave, and you can’t put this or Billy Humphrey’s DUI arrest on Felton. But the guy just can’t escape this kind of bad luck when it comes to his roster. Losing an obvious project like Singleton is one thing; now Georgia has lost its starting shooting guard and a four-star small forward.

If you had to guess the home of the SEC’s largest and shiniest HD video board, Mississippi State probably wouldn’t be in your first 10 guesses. With a capacity of 55,082, Davis Wade Stadium is the SEC’s second-smallest football venue behind only Vanderbilt. But by October 2008 the Bulldogs will have a 111 foot by 47 foot HD screen on a new scoreboard in the south (fieldhouse) endzone that will measure 152 feet by 135.5 feet in total.

The LCD technology used on the HD display will allow MSU to split the display as they like during the game for stats, announcements, advertising, etc.

By contrast, Georgia’s main video board installed in 2005 is 46′ by 25′ on a scoreboard of 76′ by 52′. It is not high definition.

MSU’s new board is even bigger than the 107′ by 30′ "Pig Screen TV" that was the centerpiece of Arkansas’ 2000 expansion. Only Texas, with a 134′ by 55′ main display, will be larger.