So by now you’ve probably heard that Rodney Garner has interviewed with Tennessee.

Apparently this UT plane has been back and forth to Athens and Georgia quite a bit in the past day. (It had to divert to Atlanta last night due to heavy fog.) It returned to Athens earlier this afternoon and is now on its way back to Knoxville. Common sense would indicate that it came to pick up Garner.

Here’s where things get interesting. UGASports.com is reporting that the plane is returning to Knoxville without Garner. The plane came, sat, and returned without Garner getting on board.

What does it mean? Has Garner decided to stay at Georgia? Are negotiations underway? Is he taking another night to sleep on it? Did he just need more time to tell the Georgia players? Or did Lane Kiffin just want some takeout from The Grill? No one knows. Sure does make for fun speculation though.

Today marks the final Cotton Bowl in the old Cotton Bowl stadium. The game will be moving to the shiny new home of the Dallas Cowboys next year. What better way for a Georgia fan to bid farewell than with a look back at our most memorable trip to Dallas?

Remember the Steve Spurrier who would call a pass to the end zone on 4th-and-a gazillion?

Yes, folks, that really was the Ball Coach, formerly of Bandits ball, and Gators offensive juggernauts, explaining why he kicked a field goal – a field goal! – with two minutes left in the game.
“Well, it was fourth and about 10, wasn’t it?” Spurrier said. “It was a long way. Just trying to put a few points up. 31-10 looks better than 31-7.”

With the season now behind us, we’ve entered the recruiting home stretch. There’s little more than a month left until Signing Day on February 4th. While Georgia already has much of a solid class committed, there are still a few undecided prospects who could really put Georgia over the top in terms of the best recruiting classes in the nation.

This weekend is significant because of the national All-Star games. You have the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio on the 3rd (Noon, NBC) and the Under Armour All-America game in Orlando on the 4th (8 p.m., ESPN). Each game is sponsored in part by by rival recruiting services, so both games will showcase different top prospects.

U.S. Army A-A Bowl

• OL Chris Burnette
• OL Austin Long (injured)
• QB Aaron Murray

Under Armour A-A Game

• RB Washaun Ealey
• DL Abry Jones
• OL Dallas Lee
• LB Dexter Moody

Several other in-state commitments played in the Georgia North-South All Star Game on Tuesday.

In addition to those committed players, there are also several top uncommitted prospects in action. Receiver Marlon Brown (Under Armour), TE Orson Charles (U.S. Army), LB Jarvis Jones (U.S. Army), and DB Branden Smith (Under Armour) will be on display. Smith is expected to announce his college decision during the game, and Georgia is considered the favorite.

Confession time: I have no interest in pulling for other SEC teams in bowl games. I couldn’t care less where the SEC finishes on some contrived ESPN conference bowl scoreboard. It means nothing to me that the last two national champions are from the SEC if neither of those teams were Georgia.

I get why some fans chant "SEC! SEC!". It’s yet another identity through which we can (sometimes) claim superiority over some other group – especially Yankees or left coast liberals or some other set of people who don’t have the good sense to live in God’s country and follow a real football team. If our team can’t win the national title, at least someone from our conference can. Take that, Pac-10.

You can have it. If Alabama wins the Sugar Bowl, it won’t make them kicking our tails look any better. South Carolina’s disaster just down the road yesterday takes nothing away from my enjoyment of Georgia’s win. I smiled watching Shonn Greene run over South Carolina in between Garcia turnovers. I hope Florida has the same kind of success they enjoyed the last time they played a Big 12 team for the national title. Florida’s one hell of a team, but I still hope they flame out like the Cowboys last weekend. It won’t happen, but I’ll hold on to the dream.

Are there times I’ll pull for the conference? You bet. The Chick-fil-A Bowl was one of them. Loved it. Brilliant job, Les. I’m indifferent about Ole Miss in the Cotton Bowl, though I don’t give them much of a chance. It’s the opposite in the Sugar Bowl – I wouldn’t mind seeing Bama lose, but it’s not likely enough to worry about. Kentucky? Meh. Sure, why not?

I’m even a bit tired of Vanderbilt. Hooray, they won. In perfect Vandy fashion too. They pulled out the "bounce a punt off the other team" play from their South Carolina game and advanced the ball farther on penalty yardage than from actual football on their game-winning "drive". Opportunistic? Right. And the guy gets Coach of the Year for using a dartboard to pick his quarterback.

Of course all of this animosity doesn’t ignore the benefits of belonging to a good conference. As much as I want our rivals to lose and lose big, many of them will still win, and everyone will meet in a few months and divide up a pile of money that would qualify the SEC for G8 status.

Khalil El-Amin. Nice job, Fox.

(Screencap by the Dawgvent’s BopperDawg).

I imagine that most Georgia fans had some version of this internal (or, depending on company, external) discussion going on today.

“Now THAT is Georgia defense.”
“Where the heck was that in the other 12 games?”
“How many times are they going to have to bail us out?”
“Is this the result of a few people getting healthy, or did someone light a fire under this defense over the past month? “
“…or is it the result of playing a one-dimensional Big 10 offense?”
“If we join the Big 10 and give them a total of 12 teams, would the Big 12 mind?”

(Radi Nabulsi / UGASports.com)

It was a throwback to earlier in the decade or at least to September 13th and the game at South Carolina. Sloppy Bulldog offense leaned on the defense time after time until the offense could make a play. I’m sure the enjoyment of the win for some was tempered with the thought, “some of this in the second half on November 29th would have been nice.” The performance of the defense didn’t make up for whatever happened in the regular season and likely won’t make those losses any less painful, but most Georgia fans can let it go long enough to recognize a job well done.

Whatever you have to say about the game, it came down to this one series for me:

1st and Goal at GA 6: Javon Ringer rush for 3 yards to the Geo 3.
2nd and Goal at GA 3: Javon Ringer rush for no gain to the Geo 3.
3rd and Goal at GA 3: Brian Hoyer pass incomplete to Blair White.

How many times this year did we see the Georgia defense deflate after a turnover and/or a costly penalty? We had both here. A Stafford interception was returned to the 12, and a personal foul moved the ball to the Georgia 6. It was the third time that Michigan State had the ball on Georgia’s half of the field. The Dawgs kept Ringer out of the end zone, sniffed out the pass on 3rd down, and made MSU settle for the tying field goal.

You can say what you like about the quality of the opponent. As with Hawaii last year, watch how quickly a respectable ranked foe in a major bowl gets spun (even by our own fans) as a team barely worthy of a September cupcake game. But this hunkerdown-ness was something that was absent from even the Kentucky game. To see it show up time after time on Thursday against a decent team shouldn’t be discredited. Late or not, it was welcome.

We welcome Javon Ringer to the Ron Dayne Club. The standout tailback was held to 47 yards on 20 carries – a little short of a perfect afternoon. It’s not that Knowshon Moreno was that much more productive on the ground, but Georgia at least had a passing game on which to fall back. Ringer was the heart and soul of the MSU offense, and they got away from him. The Bulldog defense held Ringer to his second-lowest output of the season, and the result for the Spartans was much the same as it was the other two times this season in which Ringer ran for fewer than 21 carries.

MSU was one-dimensional, but when the defense was coming off a horrible effort against the ultimate in one-dimensional football, you can’t take it for granted that the strength of an offense would be shut down or that the weakness won’t burn you. MSU had their chances in the passing game, but the Bulldog defense made enough plays and got enough pressure to make it a non-issue.

One final note on the defense: Georgia had 18 sacks in 12 regular season games in 2008. They’ve had a combined 14 sacks in the past two bowl games. If someone could smuggle a calendar that reads “January 1” out to Stillwater in nine months, it would be most appreciated.