When he’s not bankrolling the Oklahoma State football program, T. Boone Pickens is of course at the forefront of the energy industry. In business just as in sports you win some and lose some, and a change in plans has Pickens with a bit of an inventory problem on his hands.

Plans for the world’s largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle have been scrapped, energy baron T. Boone Pickens said Tuesday, and he’s looking for a home for 687 giant wind turbines.

Pickens has already ordered the turbines, which can stand 400 feet tall — taller than most 30-story buildings.

“When I start receiving those turbines, I’ve got to … like I said, my garage won’t hold them,” the legendary Texas oilman said. “They’ve got to go someplace.”

That’s correct…Pickens’ garage will only hold 356 of the 30-story turbines. He could always put up a few around campus to clear the smoke.

Everyone is all over the announcments of the ESPN/ABC crews for the 2009 season, and the names range from the celebrities (Musburger and Herbstreit) to the familiar (Dave Neal) to the cringeworthy (Matt Millen) to the unknown (Carter Blackburn?).

Georgia fans will recognize two of the names brought on as part of the deal to enhance ESPN’s SEC coverage. Former Bulldog starts Matt Stinchcomb and David Pollack will join the team: Stinchcomb as studio host for the syndicated SEC games, and both Pollack and Stinchcomb as studio hosts for ESPNU games. Both will also be a part of the SEC Weekly show on ESPNU alongside host Cara Capuano.

When Stinchcomb was part of the G-Day broadcast you got the impression that it was kind of an audition, and he came across well. The powers-that-be in Bristol must have agreed. Pollack similarly has built experience on local Atlanta sports radio and seems at ease behind the microphone.

Of all the moves (oy, Andre Ware), I’m glad to see Nessler join the top ESPN crew. It’s not that Mike “Britney Spears” Patrick was BCS on Fax bad, but ESPN has spread him so thin across so many sports that he never really seemed (to me) as someone who could be the face (or voice) of primetime college football. Now of course Nessler isn’t a football-only guy and is as well-known for his basketball work as anything else, but he does have a strong football background and local ties – longtime Falcon fans will remember him as the play-by-play guy in the 1980s.

And of course, you can’t have an early afternoon SEC game without a Dave. Amen to that and Osmose commercials.

ESPN Regional Affiliates

It was announced last month that Peachtree TV would carry the noon ESPN Regional game of the week (can we just keep calling it the JP game to keep things straight?). But that was only for Atlanta. As with JP/Raycom/Lincoln Financial, the ESPN Regional games will be shown on a network of local stations throughout the southeast. Since the Peachtree TV announcement, other affiliates have been announced. This is still a work-in-progress (I don’t see a Macon affiliate, for example), but here’s a partial list:

Georgia

• Atlanta, GA – WPCH (Ptree TV)
• Augusta, GA – WRDW (CBS 12)
• Columbus, GA – WXTX (Fox)
• Savannah, GA – WTGS (Fox)
• Albany, GA – WALB (NBC 10)

Florida

• Jacksonville, FL – WJXT (News4)

Carolinas

• Charlotte, NC – WAXN (TV64)
• Columbia, SC – WIS (NBC 10)
• Greenville/Spartanburg, SC – WSPA/WYCW

Other updates and affiliates can be found here.

The Palmetto State is home to some of the nation’s more rabid football fans. Clemson is the ACC’s closest analogue to an SEC school, and South Carolina fans are known for being loyal even through lean years. But with an unemployment rate over 12%, South Carolina has been impacted by the recession more than all but a couple of states. Naturally the economy has taken its toll on demand for the luxury of watching and supporting college football.

Clemson’s season ticket sales are down 12%, and the school expects lower revenue not just from ticket sales but also corporate sponsorships and individual contributions. “As a result, Clemson projects it could fall between $1 million and $2 million short of projected revenue for next year’s budget.” It’s somewhat of a cruel twist of fate that Clemson’s success in growing its fan base is causing it pain now. “Clemson figures to be among the hardest hit in the ACC because it is believed to possess among the largest pools of season-ticket holders.”

At South Carolina, the bad economy comes hand-in-hand with the poorly-timed introduction of a seat licensing plan (similar to Georgia’s Hartman Fund). Though the program has raised over $6 million for the program, the fallout over the plan is speculated to be behind the resignation of Bryan Risner, a “central figure” in the licensing plan. The plan has caused attrition in the Gamecock Club and has had an impact on ticket sales.

Demand seems to be holding up not only for Georgia but also Georgia Tech, but it’s certainly not a time for any program to rest on its laurels.

“Impermissible snacks” have been in the news this week thanks to the University of South Carolina’s report of secondary NCAA violations. Snack food is serious business, and even the NCAA realizes that there are some things you wouldn’t serve a starving dog, let alone a prime student-athlete.

We’re all about NCAA compliance here, so we realize that just what is and isn’t a permissible snack might be unclear. The NCAA rulebooks actually spend a good six pages on the subject, and the Pac-10’s controversial proposal to remove sushi from the list caused no small amount of debate at last year’s rules committee meeting. So that we’re in the clear, here is just a sampling of the impermissible snacks to avoid at your tailgates this fall:

Fritos. I know they’re popular, easy to find, and can even team up with chili. But there’s still this fact: no one smells good after eating Fritos. They smell like pets’ feet.

Shrimp cocktail. Shrimp is great in a low country boil or a gumbo, but few things are less appetizing than shrimp cocktail that’s sat out on the tailgating table in the hot sun for more than a minute or two.

Salami. See Fritos. Cold cuts are great and convinient to have at a tailgate – just not the ones that you’ll smell like for the rest of the day.

Cauliflower. Many fruits and veggies are fine – celery and carrots can be easily dipped and go well with wings and other finger food. But there’s just no place for cauliflower. It’s not visually appealing, it’s awkward to hold, and most of us have deep and unpleasant memories from being forcefed cauliflower as a child. Why risk bringing up your guests’ repressed traumatic childhoods over a vegetable?

Beef jerky. Jerky is fine if you’re finding your inner Bear Grylls in the woods for a week, but at a tailgate you really should have fresher and tastier sources of meat. That’s what the grill is for, after all. Besides – with the current Slim Jim shortage gripping the country, it would be irresponsible to waste our nation’s scarce jerky reserves in a setting where there are better ways to eat animals.

Smartfood popcorn. A tough call here – I love the stuff. But there’s no way of avoiding the finger-licking-good residue that builds up after you realize you’ve been eating the stuff constantly for the past half hour and have gone through a good 3/4 of a bag. Ordinarily this is no problem, but most tailgates don’t lend themselves to easily removing the powdery cheesy slurry that forms on the fingers after a good handful or 47 of the stuff. If you tailgate at an RV or right near a public washroom, consider yourself lucky.

Bad salsa. Salsa is too easy to make yourself to serve the bad stuff. You might as well break out the Fritos rather than serve chips with the bottled sludge that’s basically warm chunks of tomato + hot sauce.

Rice cakes. Even if you’re going to pile 3 pounds of pulled pork on top of them, this is no time to be serving rice cakes.

Most flavored chips. Salt-vinegar-jalepeno-mango chips might be the greatest thing you’ve ever tasted, but tailgating is as much about community as anything else. Have stuff that most everyone might like.

Add yours in the comments. We’ll get Damon Evans to sponsor legislation to put ’em on the list next year.

The news has been mostly positive during the offseason concerning the Georgia offensive line. Both Trinton Sturdivant and Vince Vance seem to be in great shape and on track to step back in to the first team line in plenty of time for the season opener. The presumptive starting line has, knock wood, been able to work together more or less intact over the summer.

The promise of a relatively experienced and talented line has been one of the steadying factors in an offseason full of concerns and uncertainty surrounding other positions on the offense. The strength of the line though depends on them remaining healthy. We’re well tuned in to the well-being of the starters, but there have been some developments that will affect the depth behind that first team.

Reserve redshirt sophomore guard Tanner Strickland injured his shoulder during offseason workouts and will require surgery which will sideline him for the entire 2009 season. Strickland played in all 13 games as a redshirt freshman in 2008 on special teams and as a backup lineman. Before Vance’s return, Strickland was listed as the starting left guard on the official depth chart.

The availability of another guard, Chris Davis, is still up in the air. Davis is one of the more experienced linemen with starts in 2007 and 2008, and he played through much of last season with incredible hip pain. Davis had surgery on the hip in January and missed spring practice, and he’s still not quite back yet. Vance, Glenn, and Anderson give Georgia a solid trio of guards, but the loss of Strickland and the uncertain status of Davis leaves a bit of a gulf in experience between the rest of the interior linemen. The Dawgs would still have some options in the event of injury, but those options would be much younger and much less experienced than Strickland and Davis would be as reserves. The opportunity is there for someone like A.J Harmon or even a true freshman like Chris Burnette to step forward and earn a lot of playing time in a reserve role.

Even tackle has been affected. The position wasn’t terribly deep to begin with, and Kiante Tripp is back on defense this year. Austin Long, from Memphis, was Georgia’s top tackle signee in 2009. Though we’d hope that the days of a true freshman at tackle were behind us, spring back surgery means that Long will be forced to redshirt regardless of need at the position. Sturdivant and Boling are as good as it gets as bookends, but beyond that you’re looking again at Josh Davis or a repeat of the 2008 shuffle that moved Vance and Anderson outside from guard to tackle as needed.

It’s Georgia week over at SEC blog Team Speed Kills, and they’re following their pattern of light previews leading up to predictions later in the week. Today there’s an interesting look at the “Richt does his best under low expectations” meme. I have to agree with the conclusion – it’s not as if Georgia came from the “Others Receiving Votes” field before Richt’s SEC championship seasons. At that level, we’re often talking about the difference of a single game, and while Georgia might have “disappointed” in 2004 and 2008, a combined 5 losses in those two years wasn’t exactly the faceplant of, say, the 2000 Alabama team. There’s been very little difference between Richt’s “underachieving” teams and those that we celebrate, and at TSK points out, how the other teams in the division fare has a lot to do with it. Would we remember 2005 and even D.J. Shockley the same if Urban Meyer’s first team doesn’t lose to South Carolina?

Keep reading over there through the week. The predictions should be fun with several toss-up games. Even for rabid partisan Georgia fans it’s hard to get a read on this year’s team, so it’s always interesting to see what those less familiar with the team think.

When offseason talk invariably turns to strong and weak schedules, we’re almost always talking about the nonconference part of it. The conference schedule gets treated like a monolithic block that’s more or less the same for each team in the conference. The presumed strength of the conference serves as a proxy for the strength of the rest of a team’s schedule.

But with the exception of the Pac-10 and their round-robin nine-game conference schedules, the road through a single conference can look very different depending on the division and the luck of the rotation.

Take Arkansas for instance. After a gimme against Missouri State, the Razorbacks will run this gauntlet:

Sept. 19: Georgia
Sept. 26: at Alabama
Oct. 3: at Texas A&M
Oct. 10: Auburn
Oct. 17: at Florida
Oct. 24: at Ole Miss

The “easiest” game of the bunch looks to be a nonconference road game in College Station. Regardless, they’ll start the SEC slate by hosting a top 15 Georgia team and then must travel to play three preseason top 10 teams. They’ll start the season 1-0, but delivering on the hype surrounding Ryan Mallet and finishing 7-5 or better might require them to come out of that stretch at no worse than 3-4. A season-ending road trip to LSU is still out there, and the Tigers will remember last year’s meltdown.

LSU is the only other SEC West team that will face both Florida and Georgia this year. If the Tigers manage to regain the top position in the West, they’ll have more than earned it.

Ole Miss is a preseason top 10, and their SEC schedule lends itself to a promising year. Though they’ll have to face strong Alabama and LSU teams from the SEC West, they’ll host both of those games. The Rebels’ schedule doesn’t include Georgia or Florida from the East; they’ll play South Carolina, Vandy, and Tennessee instead.

Kentucky, though not a contender, might still find some success thanks to the schedule. They’ll face Alabama and Florida within the first four games of the season but will face only one more preseason top 25 team the entire rest of the season (Georgia). Though Alabama will have a tough opener against Virginia Tech, their only ranked SEC opponents will be fellow SEC West contenders Ole Miss and LSU. The Tide’s tougher SEC East games (Tennessee and South Carolina) will be in Tuscaloosa.

No one is calling Georgia’s overall schedule easy (especially the September part of it), but the Dawgs also get a bit of a break by avoiding SEC West favorites Alabama and Ole Miss. They’ll still have to play LSU, but they’ll get the Tigers in Athens. The Dawgs also get a bye week before playing Florida; last year they went into the WLOCP right off a trip to Baton Rouge. It’s still no picnic, but the SEC schedule looks slightly less difficult for Georgia than it did a year ago.

Lopsided conference scheduling isn’t just an SEC thing. Nebraska is the presumed favorite in the Big 12 North, and they’ll only face one of the top three teams from the Big 12 South (Oklahoma). Their top competition in the North, Kansas (Oklahoma and Texas) and Colorado (Texas and Oklahoma State), each have to play two of the three Big 12 South favorites.

Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, FSU, and Clemson are the preseason top four in the ACC, and only one of those four teams (Georgia Tech) will play the other three. Virginia Tech won’t face Clemson or FSU, but they’ll make up for it with a nonconference schedule that includes Alabama, Nebraska, and East Carolina.

Blutarsky needs no help pointing out the faulty thinking underneath John Feinstein’s latest column railing against the BCS, but I’m still amazed that Feinstein concedes that college basketball has more or less a three-week regular season.

It’s true that one of the biggest tradeoffs between college basketball’s emphasis on the postseason and college football’s emphasis on the regular season is the quality of regular season nonconference games. Because a loss or two during the regular season for a college basketball contender isn’t the death knell that it might be for a football contender, basketball fans get some very high-quality matchups. In two of the last three basketball seasons, the national finalists had played each other earlier in the season.

But, as Feinstein unintentionally implies, those great pre-January games are little more than exhibitions because the games that get the real scrutiny are those “played the last three weeks of the season.” College basketball did itself a great disservice by marginalizing those major early-season clashes. A team’s performance in its final 12 games was one of the selection criteria used in determining the NCAA Tournament field, essentially setting aside portions of the regular season as less important.

Feinstein’s view of the three-week college basketball regular season was so entrenched in the sport that the NCAA recently had to clarify that a basketball team’s final 12 regular season games will no longer be considered as part of the selection criteria. “Parsing a particular segment of games and implying it had greater weight than others seemed misleading and inconsistent,” said SEC Commissioner and Division I Men’s Basketball Committee chair Mike Slive.

Feinstein asks, “Are the BCS apologists trying to say that the college basketball regular season has no meaning?” It’s not just the BCS apologists, John. The recent admission and correction by Slive’s committee is proof enough that even college basketball’s inner circle is struggling with the issue.

An e-mail sent a few weeks earlier notified fans that July 6th would be the date of the annual stampede to buy football parking spaces in one of four campus decks. Since certain decks, specifically Hull St. and the South Campus Deck, had sold out quickly in the past, the appointed hour of 8:00 AM was an important detail.

So it was a pretty big shock to those who logged on right at 8:00 to see the Carlton Street Deck as the only option for purchase. Nearly half an hour of refreshing didn’t reveal a solution, and the message boards soon became active with complaints from fans with similar stories. Those who were able to reach Parking Services by phone could only say that Parking Services was aware of the problem and a fix was coming. A temporary “hack” was found in the meantime: the missing decks could be located by using the web site’s Search feature, and at least those who knew about the workaround could complete their purchase.

Soon after 8:30, the glitch was fixed and all decks became visible on the correct page. The Hull Street Deck has since sold out.

You can currently buy spaces for $120 in the three remaining decks: Carlton Street (Coliseum), the South Campus Deck, and the North Campus Deck.

I don’t know if it was the best decision to start the parking land grab the Monday morning after a major holiday, but it was a pretty big screw-up on the part of UGA Parking Services not to be ready right at the promised hour of 8 AM. I hope not too many of you were inconvenienced.

UPDATE (9:55 AM): Now Hull Street and the South Campus Decks are sold out. Parking remains available in the North Campus and Carlton Street Decks.

Rivals.com has an outstanding look from a national writer about the job ahead for Georgia’s new basketball coach. It talks about developing a winning culture at Georgia and also illustrates the mandate to recruit well in the state and in metro Atlanta.

Anyone who’s followed the program during the last few years can really relate to this quote:

“He really emphasized that to be a winning team, you can’t have external problems. He really pushed to eliminate any of the simple mistakes you can make.”

While catching up with some friends in Athens a few weeks ago, we agreed that you could pretty much say the same thing about Joe Cox as you could about new basketball coach Mark Fox: everything sounds great so far, but now let’s win some games.

Fox, for his part, has made all of the right moves. His staff makes sense. He’s reached out to the fans whether meeting with local boosters or evangelizing on the football-focused Road Tour. He’s even signed a player at a position of need and hit the recruiting trail hard in the talent-rich state of Georgia. Short of actually putting a competitive team on the court, he seems to be off to a great start.

It’s much the same for Cox. Coaches rave about his attitude and ability. His teammates speak well of his leadership. Strong marks in those intangible areas aren’t a form of homely-person-has-nice-personality; Cox has talent. Greg Biggins of Rivals.com gushed at the 2004 Elite 11 camp,

In fact, with the exception of Mark Sanchez, no one was more impressive than Cox. He won every accuracy contest during the week, showed better than average arm strength, is incredibly smart and is a natural born leader. In fact, the college counselors voted Cox as the Best Leader of the group….He drew raves from all of the college counselors because of his mature game and his keen understanding of the position.

There’s that leadership thing again. Anyway, all that’s left to do is actually take the field, as Jim Donnan was fond of saying, when the band’s playing.

The level (or lack) of experience and quality among SEC quarterbacks is a big topic this week getting play everywhere from Get the Picture to Dr. Saturday to EDSBS to TSK. Without getting too deep into that discussion, it seems that it’s a pretty normal year with a few standouts, some teams dealing with known rubbish, and a healthy group of teams hoping that their young or inexperienced (or both) quarterback is going to develop into someone who can do more than just “manage the game” (a euphemism that usually means you’d better have a strong running game and defense).

Georgia is firmly in that final group. Cox isn’t a proven quarterback yet. Yes, there’s the Colorado comeback. (Everyone remembers the Colorado game, but memories become hazy when his subsequent start at Ole Miss comes up.) Though we’ve seen Cox on the field, he’s still as unproven as any incoming Bulldog starter since David Greene in 2001.

Depending on your level of pessimism, you’ll see Georgia’s quarterback situation in one of Hinton’s scenarios:

If your team has a quality returning starter, or a long history of producing quality starters and strong candidates to continue the line (a la Aaron Corp and Taylor Potts at Southern Cal and Texas Tech, respectively), that’s one thing; you have nothing to worry about except injuries.

The vast majority of offenses are either breaking in new starters or welcoming back a so-so option they’re just hoping will emerge as a respectable within-the-offense type, in which case, don’t get your hopes up.

During the offseason I’ve seen Cox compared to every recent Georgia quarterback but Quincy Carter. The comparisons, I’ve found, have little to do with Cox and more to do with how people view the state of the program. Cox is neither Shockley nor is he Tereshinski (or Zeier or Bobo or Stafford or Preston freaking Jones), but the split is definitely there between those who see him as the next in a long line of quality starters and those who see him as a placeholder until one of the younger quarterbacks is ready.

No one’s claiming that Cox will be able to step in and duplicate the throws we saw from Stafford. We’re talking about someone in Stafford who left as the #1 draft pick after his junior season. It’s hoped instead that a more experienced and healthy offensive line will give him enough time and room to do what he’s able to do well. You don’t need a first-rounder under center to win in the SEC, but you also can’t do much with a stiff. Cox is neither, and Georgia will find out pretty quickly against some quality competition whether he’s up to the job.

How do you expect the season to go for Cox? Will his leadership and talent make him an above-average performer in a relatively weak year for SEC quarterbacks? Will he prove to be more like Snead and Tebow or Crompton and Burns? How much will he struggle with a young group of receivers? Will he make the most of his one year as starter, or could someone else finish the season at quarterback?

On the fifth anniversary of Damon Evans’ first day as Georgia’s athletic director, how things have gone depends on the metrics you choose.

Business can hardly be better. The core “product” of football is second only to Texas in the amount of revenue it generates. The overall athletics program, under Evans’ stewardship, remains one of the few nationwide that are firmly in the black. Additional revenue from SEC television contracts and a new marketing and broadcasting contract with ISP Sports will only strengthen that revenue stream.

Facilities have taken a step forward. There’s been impressive investment in the basketball programs and gymnastics. The football program is about to get a big boost from an expanded Butts-Mehre facility.

Academics are another strong point. The APR is solid across the board, and policies have been put in place that all but drag a kid out of bed to go to class. The Rankin Smith Center is a tremendous resource for student-athletes, and the academic support structure is comprehensive.

So from the point of view of a business, things are great. Meanwhile, fans are most concerned with what’s happening on the field. Business is athletics, and teams are judged not by revenue or graduation rates but by wins and titles.

Since the “Titletown” year of 1999 that brought the program four team national championships and and Georgia’s highest-ever Sears Cup finish, the program has finished out of the Top 10 four times. Two of those instances have come in the past three years.

Georgia’s Sears Cup / NACDA Learfield Sports Cup position

1999: 2nd
2000: 12th
2001: 3rd
2002: 8th
2003: 15th
2004: 5th
(Evans took over on July 1, 2004)
2005: 7th
2006: 9th
2007: 12th
2008: 10th
2009: 18th

Georgia’s spring sports were its strongest this year. Baseball, softball, tennis (M+W), golf (M+W), and track (M) contributed more to Georgia’s point total than fall and winter sports combined. Yes, football counts. No, equestrian does not.

Is it a slide? It looks that way. Is it a collapse? Not at all. If the program continues to slide out of the top 20 next year, there might be a trend worth talking about.

Does the Director’s Cup standing really matter? When Georgia does well, it’s a nice point of pride on a summer’s day. As far as many fans are concerned, the strength of the football team is a proxy for the state of the athletic department, and that area is doing just fine. That’s not to belittle the other sports; it’s just that it’s hard to indict the golf team for not winning the national title or men’s tennis for not three-peating. These are the kinds of sports on which we usually depend for the higher Director’s Cup finishes, and a year in which the Lady Dogs only make the field of 64 instead of reaching the Sweet 16 isn’t the end of the world.

As Evans begins his sixth year on the job, he’s to be commended for having a program that’s strong and successful by every administrative standard. But with much of the focus on “budget” and “brand” these days, the lowest finish in the Director’s Cup in over 10 years is a reminder that athletics is still the point of the athletic department.

See also:

• UGA showing strong progress in Evans’ first five years (ABH)
• The Steady Erosion of UGA Athletics? (GSB)