The four shouldn’t surprise anyone – most fans know what they mean to the team on the field, and being voted captain shows what they mean to their teammates.
The honor is especially poignant for Tyson. A lot of players even from the best backgrounds don’t make it as far as Tyson has. But Tyson didn’t have anything close to a normal upbringing. All but deserted by his family, Tyson was a product of foster homes and DFACS with little direction. After earning national recognition in high school and committing to Georgia, Tyson nearly threw it away. Thanks to the Joseph’s Home for Boys in Statesboro and a strong support system at his high school, Tyson was able to make it to Georgia. Now he’s a senior starter at his natural position and respected enough in the eyes of his teammates to become a team captain.
It wouldn’t have been hard to top the old spot or most any boring commercial from that genre, but the team knocked it out of the park with this one. Great job, and kudos to R.E.M. for their participation. It never leaves you…
Georgia has the nation’s best uniform, the nation’s best mascot, and one of the top ten stadiums in the nation. And they’ll be featuring exactly zero of those next weekend.
Thankfully the partisan Georgia crowd will be there to provide some of the comforts of home. One of the things I like about a big nonconference game on campus is a chance to show off everything that makes your campus and stadium great, and Georgia has plenty of that. If games like this are in part about building Georgia’s brand, they’ll be doing it without the hedges, the silver britches, and even an Uga. But if people come away with nothing more than an impression of quality football from Georgia, I’ll be plenty happy.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to Pat Summitt and her family as she begins life with the devastating diagnosis of early-onset dementia. Though Georgia’s rivalry with the Lady Vols has often been bitter on the court, there’s never been any question about the standards of professionalism, character, and excellence that have been set by Summitt and her program. There’s not a women’s basketball fan (or any serious sports fan for that matter) who shouldn’t respect what Summitt has accomplished and what she stands for.
Summitt plans to continue to coach for as long as she is able, and she’ll have an experienced and capable staff on which to lean. We’ve seen other coaches, notably N.C. State’s Kay Yow, become inspirational figures as they coached on while fighting other diseases. Summitt’s experience with her condition, as it plays out in the public eye, could likewise do much for education and awareness, fundraising, and hopefully one day a treatment and a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.
There’s a tendency in these kinds of posts to keep writing and say something stupid, so we’ll leave it at this: read this piece by Summitt collborator and friend Sally Jenkins. Summitt’s approach to her diagnosis and disease is right in character, but I came away with an immense respect for her son Tyler.
The AJC and a few others on the Georgia beat have noted that Boise State will not make any players available to “opposing media” before the Georgia game.
It’s silly to begin with and probably makes perfect sense to a media market small enough to be so easily segmented. It will be interesting to see who turns out to get that label. Obviously the Georgia beat writers qualify, but would someone like Barnhart? Technically he’s a national guy now, but his background is all about southern football. But Boise isn’t doing themselves any favors. There isn’t a bigger concentration of college football passion than there is in the South, and that passion supports a strong media presence. Many of those members of the media aren’t only influential outside of the South; they also vote on everything from the AP poll to the Heisman.
Heisman votes are distributed by region. As you might imagine, results often quite different from region to region as votes naturally go to players with whom the voters might be more familiar. The inverse is true also – players, unless they’re runaway favorites, tend to do less well in the Heisman voting the further they get from their region. You can see in 2009 that Ingram carried most of the east and even the midwest, but he did no better than 3rd on the west coast and in the southwest.
That said, if you had a chance to get your Heisman candidate in front of media from regions across the country, it might stand to reason that the media – many of whom vote on postseason awards – will become more familiar with that player. Their profile of your star player might be a good addition to his press portfolio. Probably the last thing you’d want to do is alienate an entire region of media and voters, especially when it’s likely that your star will struggle to have many more high-profile television appearances in the region.
A link yesterday from the Senator led to this feature on Boise State’s right tackle Charles Leno Jr. Leno will be making his first start against Georgia, and he’ll have the job of protecting the left-handed Kellen Moore’s blind side.
That’s not the only interesting situation on the Boise State offensive line. Senior center Thomas Byrd is an all-conference performer who has started since his freshman year, and the Broncos are 37-2 when Byrd starts. But Byrd has been dealing with “a troublesome knee that prevented him from practicing in the spring and has forced coaches to manage his practice time.” He’s managed the injury and is expected to play and start, but his endurance will be something to watch during the game. As it is, at he’ll be undersized at 5’11” and 288 lbs. against Georgia’s Geathers and/or Jenkins.
It got all but buried last week during the Miami bombshell, but UCF is also in quite a bit of hot water. The program received a letter of inquiry last week aimed at possible recruiting violations in football and men’s basketball.
Ordinarily issues of compliance at Central Florida wouldn’t get a mention here, but the central figure in this case was was a name that came up earlier this year in a recruiting story that involved Georgia’s basketball program. According to ESPN, “Allegations are believed to center on Ken Caldwell, a 42-year-old Chicago native and former AAU basketball coach who has been tied to Central Florida’s recruitment of several basketball players and at least one football player.”
You might not remember Caldwell’s name, but you Kevin Ware might ring a bell. Ware is a promising guard from Georgia, rated among the top 100 prospects in the nation for the incoming class. Ware originally committed to Tennessee, but he re-opened recruiting once Bruce Pearl left the Volunteer program. After he was granted his release, Ware immediately listed four programs that would get consideration: “Louisville, UCLA, Georgia and Central Florida.” Three of those schools made sense: UCLA and Louisville are traditional basketball powers. Georgia was the up-and-coming hometown school coming off an NCAA Tournament bid. But UCF? The story took an even bigger twist when Ware committed to the Knights in one of the bigger recruiting coups in program history. Things became much more clear when Caldwell’s role was uncovered.
Central Florida, it turns out, had an ally in its recruitment of Ware: Kenneth Caldwell, a Chicago man with a substantial criminal record and apparent ties to a prominent sports agency. Ware said Caldwell called him repeatedly to talk up Central Florida, traveled to Atlanta to meet with his family and even arranged joint phone conversations with the university’s basketball coach, Donnie Jones, and his staff — contact prohibited by the N.C.A.A.
Once Ware became aware of Caldwell’s shady background, he backed out of his commitment and opened things up once again. In the end Ware settled on Louisville over his other finalists, including Georgia. Another top UCF prospect allegedly with ties to Caldwell, QB Damarcus Smith, hasn’t enrolled yet due to academic issues.
So we got to see the uniforms for the season opener on Saturday. Of course change brings backlash, and these uniforms don’t have many outright fans. Those who don’t like them more or less fall into two groups: the traditionalists who abhor any change, and those who think the solid red look is just plain ugly. Judging by the number of redesigns I’ve seen on the message boards and blogs this weekend, I’d have to guess that most people are actually OK with alternate uniforms as long as they looked like the ones they wanted.
The uniforms are said to be a nod to elements of Georgia’s past, but they remind others of everything from an ACC school to mid-century Ohio State to, well, this. Me? I don’t particularly like them, but it’s also not going to make the Ugas buried in Sanford Stadium roll over simultaneously. Georgia isn’t the first school to change things up for a game at the behest of a corporation, and it won’t be the last time it’s asked to do something like this.
A game like this should need no additional juice, and it’s unfortunate (and more than a little unseemly) that a game of this magnitude is being upstaged to some degree by Nike’s graphic design department. But that’s what this uniform change is all about: it’s tribute paid to Nike. Thanks in large part to Nike’s relentless marketing and ubiquitous merchandising, Georgia is consistently one of the nation’s top 10 programs in merchandise sales. That’s true even in the lean years. We’re told that “the 14 profitable Division I programs earned up to ten percent of their revenue from merchandise sales,” and that’s several million dollars to a program like Georgia.
Georgia fans and their kids, if they aren’t already, will soon take to the store and the computer to look for the jersey, gloves, and whatever else is mass-produced with this design on it. That includes many of those fans who are holding their noses and hope the uniform never sees the light of day or dome again. Buying Georgia stuff is what we do. In that respect, I’m surprised we don’t see uniform variations more often than we do. It’s not unheard of in the SEC.
Many Georgia fans now have a distaste for uniform changes thanks to the 2008 Alabama game. I think it’s important to distinguish that these uniforms aren’t a sign that Georgia is going back to that well (unlike this silly idea). The idea came from outside the program, and both teams will be participating. If the players like the look, so much the better, but none of that will replace the work that’s been done over the past seven-and-a-half months. Georgia didn’t lose to Alabama because of the jersey color; they lost to a team that was more talented, better prepared, and better coached on that day. I’m a little less persuaded by “the players like them” arguement than others are. If this offseason was about anything else, it was about getting back to business and putting the adults back in charge of the program. Hopefully Christian Robinson’s attitude is a common one – no one looks good missing a tackle or a block.
UPDATE: And if you were wondering what Boise’s version of the uniform looks like, here it is. Looks very similar to Georgia’s. Two thoughts hit me when seeing them: 1) I hope Georgia doesn’t see this combination of orange and blue and think back on this game, and 2) Georgia got the better deal out of these uniforms.
The 2011-2012 men’s basketball schedule was released yesterday. I’m having a tough time getting a consensus on the strength of this schedule. How ’bout you?
Seth Emerson: UGA men’s hoops schedule: More challenging than expected
Marc Weiszer: UGA hoops schedule offers `challenge’ for retooled Bulldogs team
Dawg Sports: Mark Fox’s Georgia Bulldogs Reveal Challenging Basketball Schedule for 2011-2012
AJC: The Georgia men’s basketball team will travel to Xavier, Colorado and Southern California, among other places, under an ambitious 2011-12 schedule announced Thursday.
Mark Fox: We’re very excited about the challenge this schedule will present to our young team.
Georgia’s brief scare with Orson Charles’s eligibility came and went quickly yesterday. Charles was put into a potentially bad situation by his former teammate and his high school coach, but he was alleged to have received nothing but a tour of an expensive home and a recruiting pitch from a booster. That’s a problem for Miami, but it has no impact on Orson’s eligibility since he signed elsewhere. Had he signed with the Hurricanes, his visit and contact with Nevin Shapiro would have been a much bigger issue.
With the eligibility scare past and Charles cleared, his relationship with Miami becomes more of a curiosity than a Pandora’s box. Why didn’t he end up signing with a school that he considered his favorite for much of the recruiting process? Miami’s recruiting of Charles is an interesting story, mainly for how it ends. Many of the links I’ll use here are behind the paywall, but you’ll get the gist of it. The short version is this: sometime in late 2008, Miami went from being Orson’s favorite to disappearing completely off the radar.
Miami was Orson’s favorite as early as the first updates on him in March of 2008. Though he mentioned several other schools, including Georgia, he did call Miami “my dream school.” He got his Miami offer at the end of March but made it clear that he wanted to wait and take his visits before deciding. Over the spring and summer, he made several trips to Miami but also got out to see other schools like FSU, Florida, and Georgia. Charles’s visit to Shapiro’s house took place after his junior year of high school.
After an unofficial visit to Miami in mid-August, Charles told Rivals.com that he “would put Miami ahead of everybody.” In fact, he was close to committing on the spot but held off. Charles continued to talk about Miami and his “real good relationship” with coach Joe Pannunzio through early November. (Pannunzio, currently director of football operations at Alabama, is one of the individuals named by Yahoo! Sports in their investigation of the Miami program.)
Things really began to change during that November-December 2008 period. The catalyst was the turbulent status of Hurricane QB Robert Marve, a friend and former teammate of Charles. Things went downhill for Marve in 2008, and he was in a fierce competition for the starting job with current Miami signal caller Jacory Harris. Marve was eventually suspended for the team’s bowl game for violation of team rules. Charles maintained as late as December 20th that Marve’s situation, while troubling, didn’t necessarily eliminate the Hurricanes from consideration. “[What happened with Robert] doesn’t really affect me,” Charles said. “It just keeps me guessing. I’m just going to talk to Marve and see what’s going on. But everybody is still in it.”
Subsequent events just after the bowl game only increased the uncertainty at Miami. Offensive coordinator Patrick Nix was let go just before the New Year. That seemed to be the last straw for Marve who decided to transfer. Miami coach Randy Shannon restricted Marve’s transfer options to any school outside the SEC, ACC, and the state of Florida.
Shannon’s treatment of Marve ended Miami’s chances with Charles. Robert Weiner, the high school coach of both Marve and Charles, unloaded on Shannon. According to the Miami Herald, Weiner said that no player of his would play for Shannon, and “Weiner said tight end Orson Charles…definitely won’t be attending Miami now.” Whether Weiner’s definitive statement about Charles came with Orson’s blessing is unknown, but that’s how things played out.
By the end of 2008, Miami was out of the picture. Charles stated that he had decided on his five official visits, and Miami was not among them. Now it’s often the case that a prospect won’t “waste” one of his limited official visits on a favorite nearby school that he’s visited unofficially several times. That didn’t happen here; it looks as if Miami really had been eliminated by that time. The events at Miami certainly finalized things between the Hurricanes and Orson Charles, but it’s unclear whether Charles had begun to change his mind much earlier. A Rivals.com article posted around the same time as Nix’s departure and Marve’s transfer decision had already annoited Georgia as the new “team to beat” for Charles.
Orson’s recruiting process ended up going beyond Signing Day, but he never really wavered from the five schools he named as his official visit destinations shortly after the beginning of 2009. Georgia, FSU, Florida, USC, and Tennessee were his finalists. Eventually Florida State and then Florida were eliminated, and he announced his decision for Georgia over the Vols and the Trojans.
Thomas L. Friedman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist known for, among other things, having a strange preoccupation with China’s authoritarian model of government. Wouldn’t it be great, he asks wistfully, if, just for one day, we could bypass all of the annoying politics and “authorize the right solutions” for our nation? It’s not such a strange notion, actually. How many of us have had a great idea that would solve everything if only the stupid people would do things our way, the right way?
You don’t have to look much further than the topic of a college football playoff to find this at work among sports fans. My idea is so simple and would make everyone three trillion dollars, but the stupid, evil, greedy conferences aren’t smart enough to realize it. If only there were someone who could make them fall in line.
The college football punditry is in this mode now. Blutarsky goes to work on Pete Thamel’s lament that “no one is in charge” of college football. Tony Barnhart joins in with a call for “a commissioner of college football” as a way “to get college football out of the ethical ditch.”
No one ever really says what this commissioner is supposed to do, but we expect that this Solomon will, as Thamel dreams, “look out for the greater good of the game.” (The “game”, incidently, that’s never been more popular, more lucrative, and which has television networks lining up to bid for rights.) Barnhart has a vision that such a commissioner would have “the last word” on such matters as the Cam Newton case. As opposed to the last word belonging to the NCAA’s enforcement division? Is this commissioner supposed to step in and overrule unpopular decisions made by the current governing processes?
Newton wasn’t allowed to play because no one did anything. He was allowed to play after the NCAA applied its own rules (as flawed as they were) and made the appropriate decision based on the information available at the time. So would Barnhart’s commissioner ignore these rules, make up new ones on the fly, or find some miscellaneous reason to suspend someone that looks guilty in order to get the result demanded by the conventional wisdom?
Why not get rid of that tangled mess of NCAA rules and come up with new ones? Barnhart’s vision goes in that direction. Who needs the NCAA?
The sport has become too big to be managed within in the limitations of the NCAA framework. If a way cannot be found to accommodate these schools then they should leave the NCAA and form their own organization and make their own rules.
That idea might have support from both sides of the aisle, as it were, but not for the reasons Barnhart imagines. Top schools and conferences would love to operate without having to subsidize the bottom 75% of the 346 Division I schools. The end result though wouldn’t be the top-down structure Barnhart describes. It would be a federation of a handful of conferences with even greater visibility and influence than they have now.
Barnhart laments that what makes college football great leads to what he sees as a flaw.
At the end of the day, every institution has a right to self-determination. Texas A&M is currently a member the Big 12 conference, not the National Football League. It does not have to subjugate its mission, either academically or athletically, to a larger body unless it chooses to do so. Conference membership is voluntary. The conference serves the collective needs of the institutions. The institutions do not serve the conference. They cooperate, they consult, and they compromise, but they do not serve.
That’s a beautiful summary of college athletics, but somehow the competing self-interests of the member schools and conferences is a problem. Things would be a lot smoother if everyone would just align themselves to the “greater good” enforced by some central figure. Sure, it might not be the best for your school or even your specific conference, but think of the game! That paragraph also captures but doesn’t explore the essential difference between college athletics and a pro league. The schools aren’t franchises and cannot be operated that way.
Barnhart’s description of the conference structure shouldn’t stop where it does. The same language can be used to describe the relationship between the school, the conference, AND the NCAA. The NCAA is run by and serves its members, not the other way ’round. Barnhart suggests that “if NCAA President Mark Emmert wants to get a handle on some of the excesses of college football, then go to the presidents and sell them on the idea for a commissioner of college football.” That’s backwards. If the presidents that make up the NCAA decide there is a problem with “the excesses of college football,” they will empower Emmert or whomever they appoint to take action. From where I sit, they don’t seem to be moving in that direction.
We’re not used to good news on the NCAA/compliance front, so we had to read it a few dozen times. The AJC reports that linebacker Jarvis Jones has been cleared to play and will not have to miss any games as a result of an investigation into possible improper benefits received from a Columbus recreation director.
The investigation stems from a June report in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. While there doesn’t seem to have been much of a dispute about Jones receiving a benefit, there was a question about the existing relationship between Jones and the men alleged to have provided the benefit. According to Eric Baumgartner of the UGA compliance office, “Georgia’s investigation showed that there were not improper benefits for Jones, a sophomore, based on his prior relationships before he became a prospect.” Because there was an established relationship before Jones entered the ninth grade, the benefits were allowed. Ninth grade is when kids become prospective student-athletes in the eyes of the NCAA.
Jones is expected to jump right in and start at SAM linebacker after sitting out the 2010 season as a transfer from Southern Cal. Jones suffered a neck injury during the 2009 season, and the Trojans would not clear him to play. While much is expected of Jones this year, that neck will be something worth watching as his career in the Red and Black gets underway. He’s gone through a full year of practice including spring drills, and no problems have yet manifested themselves. We hear great things about his progress and readiness, and now we learn that Georgia will have one of their fast-rising defensive starters for the season opener.
It should be noted, and it was mentioned by the AJC, that things are still up in the air for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, the incoming Georgia basketball freshman who was named in the same Columbus report. I’m sure most fans consider this case closed now that Jones’s part of it is resolved, but Caldwell-Pope’s availability is central to the outlook of Georgia basketball this year. His absence, relatively speaking, would be of much greater impact to his team than Jones’s absence.
And while we’re at it, it would be nice to get some resolution from the NCAA Clearinghouse on Kent Turene. The longer his exile drags on, the worse it looks for his chances of joining the football team this year.
Hartman Fund contributors got a note from AD Greg McGarity on Monday. The e-mail was just much of the standard compliance boilerplate that is now part of the booster education efforts of any responsible program. Though the actual rules aren’t really this restrictive, McGarity’s note boiled it down to leave no gray area.
Members of The Georgia Bulldog Club can have NO interaction with any prospective student athletes, nor can members of The Georgia Bulldog Club do anything for any current student athletes. If we just remember those two things, we will go a long way in avoiding any NCAA violations in this area of our program.
You can’t blame them for going well beyond the actual letter of the law – every athletic director has to be on edge now. “Improper benefit” violations having nothing to do with the school are all over the news, and “do nothing for anyone” leaves no wriggle room for inadvertent violations. With that in mind, it’s no surprise to learn that going forward pictures will be pretty much the only thing you’ll be taking from Picture Day. Leave the jerseys and footballs at home.
Due to recent public issues surrounding student-athlete autographs across the country, no outside items may be brought to Picture Day. The Georgia Athletic Association will provide each fan with two free schedule posters to be signed by the players and Coach Richt. No other items will be permitted.
Georgia’s more detailed rules and guidelines for boosters can be found here.
Aaron Murray had one of the best years of any Georgia quarterback, let alone a freshman quarterback. His 61% completion rate and 3,049 passing yards placed him among the top 5 in both stats among Georgia quarterbacks of any experience level. Those 24 touchdowns were just one off the Georgia record of 25 set by Stafford in 2008. His TD/INT ratio was an impressive 24/6 during the regular season, and half of those interceptions came during one game.
So when you hear Murray talk about giving himself a “C” for his performance last season, you might get that eye-rolling reaction that comes when the perfectionist A-student complains about only getting a 98 on the exam. He’s right, though. I especially liked the discussion of accuracy. Green, Durham, and other receivers made several nice catches on slightly mis-thrown balls that might have resulted in big yards-after-catch had they been caught in stride. Screen passes were especially problematic.
Getting beyond the mechanics, Murray and his team will also have to work through a more nebulous problem. If Georgia’s emphasis this off-season on the 4th quarter pays off, we’ll see improvements in some of these areas:
Georgia didn’t beat a ranked team last year but had several late chances to do so.
Given the opportunity to engineer several significant 4th-quarter drives last year, Georgia came away empty almost every time. Late comebacks against Arkansas and Florida were wasted with key mistakes on Georgia’s final possessions.
Georgia was 5th best in the SEC at creating redzone chances, but 7th best in getting touchdowns from those chances.
Georgia was 4th in scoring offense but was in the bottom half of the conference in both first downs and third down conversions.
Travis’s observation that “we stalled on a lot of drives, right when we needed momentum” has some substance to it. It’s important to note that none of those points above are solely on Murray. He didn’t fumble at Colorado or leave a tailback to block a defensive end against Arkansas. Like a baseball pitcher, a quarterback often takes the blame (and also the praise) for the play of his teammates and the decisions of his coaches. Acknowledging that, coming through in those clutch situations is the biggest step forward that Murray and the Georgia offense can take this year. As Arthur Lynch put it, Murray “will judge himself on wins and losses, rather than stats.” Fans and history probably will too.
"Everyone is different, but the smartest decision you can make as a prospect is to stay in state if you are from Georgia. If a guy comes from Parkview, Thomson, or anywhere, the best thing that he can do is to be a Dawg. Everybody will know you, and it is such a big thing to play for the University of Georgia."
Four seniors named Georgia captains
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