Crowell not the biggest key to Georgia’s turnaround

Matt Hinton has a nice reminder that it’s defense, and not necessarily the impact of Crowell, that could mean the most for Georgia this fall. It’s hard to argue with, and we all remember the 2003 East champs that did well despite a tailback rotation that included Ronnie Powell and Tony Milton (not to mention David Greene getting destroyed behind a rebuilt offensive line). It’s also a point we made concerning the 4-loss Florida team of 2007 and their national champs a year later.

That’s not to say that Crowell’s impact is unimportant. Georgia’s receiving corps is looking thin to begin with, and the lack of a credible running game won’t help them or Murray much. The offense has to at least be able to do something to help the improved defense.

Is it a bad sign that there are Boise State tickets remaining?

Kyle’s concern is one that I’m sure a lot of fans share. Georgia’s ability to sell out the Dome could be seen as a vote of confidence in Mark Richt and the 2011 season. Is this really a case of lagging demand, or is it simply a factor of the sheer size of Georgia’s allotment of tickets?

Georgia sells approximately 53,000 season tickets. You can read the approximate breakdown here…the allocation might have shifted slightly since, but we’ll use that total. Only those people have, to date, been offered the right to buy tickets for this game. The Georgia Dome seats over 71,000. Boise State’s allotment is 7,500. Even allowing for tickets set aside for sponsors and suite holders, Georgia could likely have over 55-60,000 tickets to distribute. Even if every single season-ticket holder requested a Boise State ticket, Georgia’s likely to have a few tickets left over from that initial offering. That the school is releasing these limited upper-level surplus tickets only to Hartman Fund donors and not the general public leads me to believe that the gap isn’t all that wide.

If we get into August and are running ads to the general public to unload thousands of tickets, I’ll share Kyle’s dismay. Until then I expect that we’ll hear soon that these limited tickets and Georgia’s allotment are gone.