On one hand, I wish nothing but the best for genuinely good people like Michael Carvell and Chip Towers who have been affected by the recent changes at the AJC. Carvell didn’t just do a solid job on the competitive recruiting beat; he also reached out to the blogs and in a short time developed a go-to relationship with those in the link-peddling business. Towers, in addition to his beat work, made the most of his online presence and was also generous with the links. We’ll always have a contentious relationship with the columnists – that’s their job – but these two guys doing the reporting work were at the top of their game.

So I echo David Hale’s comments when it comes to those two. Change isn’t always bad – Hale himself is an example of that – but I’ve got to agree that the shakeup on the Georgia beat makes very little sense.

On the other hand, there’s this. The AJC’s Mike Morris recycles a week-old story from Chicago about Tony Cole, a basketball player whose 16 games in a Georgia uniform proved to be some of the costliest in program history. There are precious few new details added to an April 10th story from the Chicago Sun-Times, but that’s as good a reason as any to go through the entire litany of Harrick, assault charges, and – of course – academic fraud.

Even now Cole proves to be the cockroach that survives the nuclear war. Two coaches and seven years later, Georgia just can’t break its association with Cole. Only in the eyes of an AJC headline writer can a guy who played in 16 games, started 3, and averaged 5.6 PPG be considered an “Ex-UGA hoops star.”