The Georgia homer in me is just happy to be ranked at any point in the season. The Georgia fan in me who’s spent much of the past seven months trying to reconcile last season wonders what seemed rankable about a 6-7 team that lost its best play on both sides of the ball.

We could get all analytical and wonder if it’s the effect of offseason changes or belief in Mark Richt by his peers or anticipation of the Dream Team or any other factor that led to coaches ranking Georgia. Or we could remember that it’s a preseason poll and that coaches (or their SID interns) put as much thought into it as what they had for lunch. “What do you mean I haven’t ranked Georgia, Florida, or Texas yet? OK…stick them on the end.” Silly and pointless, but not ever going away.

There is one angle worth talking about: if Georgia finishes ranked where they begin, that implies a 3 or 4-loss season. Would you take a 9-3 or 8-4 season right now with this schedule? More specifically, would 8-4 and a #22 ranking mean that Mark Richt is still coaching when the Dawgs head to their bowl game?

A few other thoughts about the SEC in the poll:

• Alabama and LSU are ranked about where you’d expect. The two have been favorites to battle for the West since last year ended.
• That said, a lot of people seem to be sleeping on Arkansas. There they are at #14 and fresh off a BCS win game. Mallett will be missed, but his replacement is capable. They have more preseason All-SEC players than any other team.
• Has Auburn fallen that much to be closer to 6-7 Georgia than someone like Arkansas? I know they lose Cam and Fairley, but I also know that Malzahn can do a lot with a little. Add in a little swagger after the national title, and they’ll be a lot tougher to knock off their perch than these pollsters think. One thing working against them is the conference schedule; 7 of their 8 conference opponents are ranked in this poll.
• On the other hand, I’m not buying Mississippi State. Mullen gets the genius label due to a sometimes-competent offense and a defense that got a good bit better. The man behind that defensive improvement is gone. This is a team that was 4-4 in the league last year, and is there really that much more room for improvement to merit a top 20 ranking? That early game at Auburn will tell us a ton about both teams and whether the preseason read was correct about either of them.

With Garcia and his coach in the news so much lately, it’s not hard for the South Carolina offense to dominate much of our thoughts about the game. They have a quarterback as polarizing and potentially effective as anyone since Tanneyhill. They have a tailback who launched a career off of his performance against Georgia last year. There are few receivers I’d take ahead of Jeffrey. It’s not quite Stafford-Moreno-Green, but it’s a skill triangle few SEC teams can match.

We’ve seen plenty of evidence for Garcia’s impact on the productivity of the South Carolina offense. I don’t deny that stopping Garcia, Lattimore, and Jeffrey presents problems for any team. But viewing the problem through a Georgia lens, cracking the South Carolina nut has a lot more to do with Georgia’s own ability to put the ball in the endzone.

Other than the scoring binge in the 2009 game, this has been a tight, low-scoring game over the past ten years. The Bulldogs have averaged just 18.1 PPG against the Gamecocks during Mark Richt’s ten years, and that includes the 41-point outburst in 2009. Fortunately South Carolina hasn’t done much better and managed less than 14 PPG over that span. Last year wasn’t much different on the South Carolina side of the scoreboard. Even with the unforgettable debut of Lattimore, Georgia only gave up 17 points to the Gamecocks – only 3 or 4 points more than their typical showing against a Mark Richt team. And this was a “good Garcia” game. He threw no interceptions and completed 70% of his passes. South Carolina was able to run their freshman all day, take few risks, and throw only 17 passes despite having the ball for 35 minutes because the Georgia offense put no pressure on them to do otherwise.

Georgia, meanwhile, posted their lowest score against South Carolina since a 2-0 loss in 1904. Georgia limped along to 253 yards of total offense (their lowest total of the year) and managed just a field goal in each half. The Bulldogs rushed for only 61 yards, and seven of their nine drives finished in five plays or less. Over half of Georgia’s possessions were three-and-out gaining a total of 20 yards.

You can blame the suspensions of A.J. Green and Caleb King. You can point to a freshman QB’s first SEC road game. You can even credit the defense’s inability to get South Carolina off the field. Just don’t expect too much drop-off from the SC defense this year, especially up front where they’ll provide a second tough test for Georgia’s offensive line. Three of their defensive linemen earned preseason All-SEC mention, and they have a newcomer up front you might have heard of.

There might be better defenses in the SEC, and there probably are. But from year-to-year, few have been as much of a problem for Georgia as South Carolina. For a while, we thought it was all about Charlie Strong. But they’ve maintained that effectiveness pretty well since Strong’s departure, and it doesn’t look to let up this year.

One of the big memes that’s driven the Georgia program during the offseason has been better fourth quarter performance. True enough, Georgia was right there in the fourth quarter in most all of their 2010 losses. The offseason focus then, particularly from the new strength and conditioning regime, has mainly been on finishing those games better and turning the close games into wins. No problem there. But it’s also useful to ask why those games were close after three quarters in the first place. As important as it is to finish strong, starting better could be even more important.

Was Georgia really, as Bill Connelly put it, “a rock solid team for 45 minutes?” Well…sometimes. That can certainly be said of their SEC wins. Georgia had the Tennessee, Vandy, and Kentucky games in hand by the second quarter and played well enough to make the fourth quarters of those games irrelevant. We can pretty much say the same for their cakewalks against UL-Laf. and Idaho St. The Tech game was more of a mixed bag: the offense was generally productive early, and the defense let Tech back in the game on several occasions.

Georgia’s several losses tell a different story. Georgia failed to score a touchdown over the first three quarters in three of their losses (SC, MSU, and Central Florida). You can’t play crap offense for three quarters and expect that the fourth quarter will be different. Those games remained close enough to support the fourth quarter meme only because of the defense and some cooperation from the opponents. Yes, we’re talking about the same defense that made Lattimore a star, but the Bulldog defense allowed those three opponents an average of 8 points through three quarters. You can say that allowing late and decisive scores in those games proves that Georgia didn’t have enough left in the tank to finish off those close games, but that’s a cynical way of looking at the water the defense carried for much of those games.

In three of Georgia’s other losses (Colorado, Arkansas, and Florida), the defense joined the offense in ineffective starts as the Bulldogs fell behind by double-digits during the first half. The key in those games wasn’t the fourth quarter: Georgia outscored each of those three opponents in the final period. The Bulldogs either came back to tie or hold the lead in the second half of those games. But finishing games is a lot easier when you haven’t used a ton of energy to dig out of a deep hole.

Let’s look at it a different way. Here’s Georgia’s fourth quarter performance grouped by the final margin of victory:

There you go, right? Georgia was outscored pretty badly in the fourth quarter. Only three times did they outscore their opponent. The thing is, they lost two of those games. Had they played the rest of the Arkansas and Florida games as they played the fourth quarter, we’d have those games in the win column. If giving up fourth quarter scores to those teams was so bad as to require a complete overhaul during the offseason, what of the first three quarters that saw them fall behind by a combined 45-20?

Georgia let two games get away from them in the fourth quarter. We include the South Carolina game in the “big loss” category, but the Gamecocks only added a field goal in the last 15 minutes. Three points allowed might not seem significant, but that lone SC field goal was the difference between a one-possession game and a hopeless chasm of 11 points that might as well have been 50. We’re talking more about the Mississippi State and Auburn games. Only once last year, at Auburn, did the Bulldogs come out strong and fade late. Auburn outscored the Dawgs 14-0 in the final quarter and opened up a 35-31 game. Mississippi State was also a lopsided fourth quarter. Thoguh just a 7-6 game entering the quarter, MSU scored 17 points. They didn’t put the game away until a touchdown with about 4 minutes left and finished Georgia off with a short-field drive just minutes later.

I don’t like to think about that Mississippi state game, but two things stand out when I do: first is Georgia’s difficulties with the option. Dealing with that QB/RB read was a problem that plagued them first at South Carolina, and it played a big roles in losses to Florida and Auburn. Second was the missed opportunities in the first half. Ealey’s fumble at the goal line comes right to mind, but Georgia also had a third down conversion inside the 20 wiped out by a holding penalty. The Dawgs got zero points on both of those trips. We’re deep into “if only…” territory now, but I have a tough problem putting the South Carolina or MSU losses primarily on an inability to finish in the fourth quarter. Yes, Georgia would have had a better chance to win had they not given up any points in the fourth quarter, but that’s saying something entirely different.

If you think I’m trying to prove (or talk myself into believing) that Georgia was a fine fourth quarter team, I’m not. When you’re coming off a 6-7 season, there aren’t many aspects of the program that should go unscrutinized. We’d much rather be the team that turns it on and puts people away in the fourth quarter as Auburn did so many times last year. I’m more of the opinion though that what we see as fourth quarter problems were issues in quarters 1-3 also. The same defense that gave up a 51-yard fourth-quarter score to Florida’s Trey Burton was on the field when Georgia got down 24-10. The offense certainly wasn’t great in many fourth quarters. Sometimes it was because they didn’t have to be, and others it was because they stunk from the opening kickoff.

A lot of our postseason analysis is puzzling because we look at season-long averages. I think we’ve come to the realization that the ups and downs of the season smooth out those averages or lead to some conclusions that don’t quite work. Georgia scoring only 68 fourth quarter points was a bad thing if they were in close games and couldn’t score in any quarter. It’s an inconsequential thing if they had done enough work in the first three quarters to shut it down, and that was the case five times last year. Georgia impressively outscored opponents 107-38 in the first quarter over the season, but it was only 37-35 in Georgia’s losses, and that’s skewed by 21 first-quarter points at Auburn – again, the only game in which Georgia came out strong but ended up losing. In Georgia’s six other losses, they were outscored 16-28 in the first quarter and only scored a single touchdown (vs. Arkansas).

Hopefully some of the offseason emphasis on conditioning and finishing trickles down to affect how the Dawgs start the game. Sometimes you just find yourselves in close games; that’s life in the SEC, and you want a team capable of winning those games. We cited Auburn’s ability to turn it on and finish strong, but they tempted fate several times last year by falling behind. Not a lot of teams could pull that off, and Auburn nearly didn’t. I’ll take a tougher team at the end of a game, but I’d appreciate more consistent effort earlier in games that would make those fourth quarters a little less close and a little less dire.

This. A thousand times this. Travis is a little rage-y this week, and I like it.

I appreciate the effort and intentions of all of the highlight/hype videos. I really do. But it drives me crazy every time I see that Green catch at Colorado only to think back on how it felt to wander through Boulder after the game. Remembering that night doesn’t get me pumped for the future. I don’t want to be reminded that incredible talents like Moreno, Stafford, and Green left Athens without titles of any kind. That’s what I see any time I watch any footage from the last five seasons that isn’t from late 2007.

Would Zeier-era highlights have made much sense or had much relevance in 2002? We’re about at that point now with Pollack and Hobnailed Boot clips and dozens of others in standard-def. We might as well show Herschel and Trippi highlights.

The best hype video right now is this one. It’s blank. This is a program that needs to make new highlights. It’s to be filled in with team accomplishments from the present and more meaningful plays than just sporadic individual moments of greatness.

There was a time a few years back where shoulder injuries were the Bulldog medical equivalent to traffic violations. You didn’t leave Athens without one. Unfortunately our favorite malady rears its head again just before preseason practice gets going.

UGA announced today that RFr. inside linebacker Brandon Burrows will miss the 2011 season after surgery next week on his right shoulder.

With the new strength and conditioning program in the spotlight, the program was clear to point out that the surgery will be to correct “chronic shoulder instability.” That’s fine, but a chronic problem might have been addressed during his redshirt season while Burrows was already recovering from knee surgery. It’s just speculation, but you have to guess that something more recent exacerbated that shoulder condition.

We wish Brandon the best in his recovery and look forward to seeing him back in action. It’s been nearly two years since the ACL injury that ended his high school career, so he must be frustrated and more than ready to get out there.

As Seth Emerson reported on Monday,

The four-year-old daughter of new inside linebackers coach Kirk Olividatti has been battling leukemia, Richt announced. Olividatti’s wife Keely hasn’t left the hospital for 30 days, the head coach informed the crowd; she spoke to Richt on Monday, and agreed that Richt could make the daughter Kasyn’s fight public.

You can imagine the incredible strain on the family. Mrs. Olividatti has been by her daughter’s side the whole time as they fight through chemo treatments and their inevitable complications. The Olividattis also have a son back at their home in the Athens area. Coach Olividatti has worn out the highways between Atlanta and Athens managing to do his job while attending to his family now spread out over 60 miles.

If something like this has to happen to a family, it’s a small bit of grace that it happened here. Mark Richt’s assistants are generally loyal for a reason. We learned that during last season first-year assistant Warren Belin was given leave to travel to his dying mother each week. There is an incredible support system that has already sprung into action to aid the Olividatti family during their ordeal.

It also helps that Georgia is in close proximity to one of the nation’s top hospitals for pediatric cancer. The relationship between CHOA and the Georgia football program was already strong, and the Olividattis can at least take solace in the knowledge that Kasyn is receiving the best possible care.

If you’re wondering how you can help, stay tuned.

It’s usually the SEC taking criticism for its scheduling, but this week it’s Big 10 and Big 12 schools whose scheduling philosophies are in the news.

Fans looking for future opponents for a home-and-home series can probably scratch Michigan from their prospect list. Wolverine athletic director Dave Brandon doesn’t plan on playing any non-conference road games other than Notre Dame. (h/t Dr. Saturday)

I don’t believe we can or should go on the road for non-conference games when we can put 113,000 people in our stadium.

Brandon’s doctrine allows for an exception: the occasional neutral-site game like next season’s opener against Alabama in Dallas. But such games aren’t road games; Michigan will split a large payout that will more than compensate for the lost home game. The Wolverines are currently obligated to a game at UConn in 2013, but Brandon is also trying to get that moved to a larger venue with, of course, a higher payout.

Pointing out the obvious financial advantage of hosting as many games as possible is one way to frame a light nonconference schedule. There are much less graceful ways too. (h/t Blutarsky)

Texas Tech had to drop a team from the nonconference schedule because the Big 12 wanted to play a round-robin conference schedule. That team just happened to be non-BCS heavyweight TCU. Tubs, of course, admitted that Tech dropped TCU because TCU “isn’t the type of team we need to play now.”

Georgia’s new approach to scheduling following the “Florida model” is nothing to brag about. It’s also not that rare. When home games mean over a million dollars in revenue and the process values absolute record above all else, it’s good to see other teams from the far corners of the nation be honest about the way they approach the schedule. It might not produce the most entertaining matchups, but it does reflect the incentives at play in major college football.

We’ve had some fun over the past week noting the complete lack of reporting leading up to last week’s announcement of sanctions against Georgia Tech football and men’s basketball. For Georgia fans sick of reading overblown stories about a lineman transfer or the departure of a recruiting assistant, it was hard not to comment on the contrast.

To be fair, this is not about the AJC. Not at all. They’re not the only ones on the Tech beat. Atlanta has 75 different Kings, Kangs, Doctors, and Misters of college football hanging around, and none of them were on this. Atlanta’s sports talk stations couldn’t be bothered. And with TV sports all but outsourced now, you can forget about them breaking any kind of investigative story.

The Senator was right last week to frame this as a bigger issue than laziness at the local paper. Investigative journalism is tough, especially when you have no reason to think anything is out of the ordinary. No one at Tech resigned, there were no self-imposed sanctions announced, and the program went on as if they had done nothing wrong because that was (and remains) their posture on the allegations. About the only way to fall into a story under those circumstances is through a leak. Leaks and loose lips are hardly rare around athletic programs, but this process seems to have been as under the radar as you can get.

In contrast, LSU’s sanctions yesterday came after a well-documented, if not especially scintillating, investigation. In that case, there had been self-imposed sanctions. The staff member involved in the allegations resigned abruptly with his role in the allegations a matter of record at the time of his resignation. Those of us who really weren’t paying attention to LSU might not have been aware of an investigation and pending sanctions aside from the separate Willie Lyles saga, but the reporting had been done.

There’s an interesting case going on up in North Carolina right now. I won’t bore you with the ins and outs of Michael McAdoo’s reinstatement case, but in the context of this post the relevant angle is this:

Unlike honor court cases, state Superior Court proceedings are public, and that required McAdoo to produce the paper at the heart of the academic violations, as well as records of the honor court and NCAA proceedings. Message board commenters on Pack Pride, a sports website devoted to rival N.C. State, seized on the paper, finding several examples of plagiarism.

That’s right: some of the more damning evidence of plagiarism wasn’t found by the school’s own processes or even the local Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill media. It was rival message board denizens with a little too much time on their hands and access to the same public documents anyone else could have read. As the folks at DBR wondered,

It’s also worth asking why PackPride.com embarrassed the entire local media. This was not brain surgery, and you can’t say that it’s because of cutbacks. It’s as simple as googling and using a site like scanmyessay.com. The N&O ultimately did use it, but only after basically being embarrassed into it.

The Andrew Sullivan piece referenced by Blutarsky concluded that, “as it is, most newspaper coverage isn’t much better than a basic wire service.” At least the Atlanta media had the excuse of apparent normalcy at Tech. That wasn’t so in North Carolina where the McAdoo case was very much in the public eye and the documents in question already in the public domain. As Blutarsky observed, developments like this aren’t really worthy of celebration. More than anything, it’s the sad degredation of a resource whose value used to be much greater.

I was willing to let the Tech infractions story come and go last week. After all, I’m sympathetic to the gripes. The initial violation (on the football side anyway) was sketchy. As the institute’s president admitted, it’s likely that the eligibility issue would have been resolved quickly had Tech done things the right way and acted immediately and honestly when the possible violation was brought to their attention.

I was also willing to let the players have their say. Having an accomplishment like a conference title removed from the record naturally provokes an emotional response from those who worked to make it happen. Relax, guys. No one is coming for your rings.

But it’s becoming evident that the program just can’t let it go. And it’s evident that this attitude starts at the top. Paul Johnson right in this respect: no one can take the memories of the accomplishment away, demonstrating how toothless the concept of vacating wins really is. And no one is coming for his ring either (again with this strawman). We pointed out that going forward Tech is in as good of a position as they could expect to be. They don’t face any kind of operational restrictions going forward other than the probation which simply requires them to do things by the book – the same requirement any school has. There is no bowl ban, no restrictions on recruiting, and no loss of scholarships. LSU – a school lauded by the NCAA for their cooperation – could only hope to be positioned as well after hearing their own sanctions.

Johnson’s subsequent tantrum directed at the NCAA though is something I’d expect from an irrational blind-loyalist fan and not from someone charged with teaching his players larger lessons about accountability. Tyler does a good job of dealing with one of Johnson’s most absurd points. Of course Tech gained an advantage by playing Thomas at the end of the year. The ACC championship win, in which Thomas’s long touchdown played a big part, meant millions of dollars for the school. Put another way, is there any way the absence of the team’s best (and only effective) receiver wouldn’t have been a disadvantage?

There’s a common theme in Johnson’s and Sean Bedford’s gripe: the verdict is not fair to everyone who worked so hard and did things the right way. Bedford states:

I have a hard time grasping the notion that one of the proudest moments in my life (and the lives of every other individual that was a part of the team and program in 2009) is apparently worth $312 in your eyes. If that truly is the case, I’d be happy to provide you with that same amount of money (cash or check, your choice) in exchange for the reinstatement of the title my teammates and I earned through our blood, sweat and tears.

It’s understandable why Bedford would lash out at the guys meting out justice at the end of this investigation. But his questions shouldn’t stop with the “pencil pushers” he belittles in his response. He’s right that this all started over a mere $312. Evidently one of his teammates thought so little of everyone’s “blood, sweat and tears” that he was willing to throw it all away over $312 in clothing. Evidently those responsible for the stewardship of his program would put such a promising season at risk by sweeping such a small violation under the rug with the season’s three biggest games looming.

Heather Dinich sums it up: “instead of accepting the penalties and moving on, Georgia Tech has taken the Bedford approach – win as a team, lose as individuals.” Be mad at the NCAA if you like, but your anger should really be directed at the teammates and administrators who let you down.

Check the release for all of the information. Here are highlights:

Boise St.

All Hartman Fund contributors got Boise State tickets. If you received a refund in the past week with an odd amount, it was a refund for the difference between the section you ordered and the section for which you qualified. The cutoffs were:

• Club Level – Patrons with a score of 104,600 or higher.
• Mezzanine Level – Patrons with a score of 45,001 or higher.
• Lower Level – Patrons with a score of 14,000 or higher.
• Upper Level – Patrons with a score of 100 or higher.

There are still a few tickets left for this game: “A limited quantity of Boise State upper level tickets at $55 each will be made available to the general public at 9 am on Monday, July 25. Please visit georgiadogs.com at that time, if you have an interest in ordering additional game tickets.”

Home Tickets

After several years of a cutoff score for new renewable season tickets, the bar was set much lower this year. “2011 Hartman Fund donors, who contributed a minimum of $250 per seat, placed a season ticket order and had a cumulative score of 500 or higher, will receive adjacent renewable season tickets.”

For home single game tickets, there were no single-game tickets available for South Carolina or Auburn. All other single-game ticket requests were filled for Hartman Fund donors.

Season tickets will be mailed the week of August 8th.

Away Tickets

All requests by Hartman Fund donors for Tennessee tickets were filled (incredible!). Cutoffs for all other road games, as well as Florida, will be announced at a later time. Away tickets will be mailed separate from season tickets as usual.

It’s not every day that an ATP World Tour event is held in your neighborhood. With the Atlanta Athletic Club set to host next month’s PGA Championship, the 2011 Atlanta Tennis Championships have moved a few miles south to Peachtree Corners and the Racquet Club of the South. The stadium and the neighborhood look great, and we’re excited about having 40,000 drop people by over the next week.

Qualifying will take place on Saturday and Sunday with the main draw starting on Monday the 18th and continuing through Sunday the 24th. The complete schedule is here. Unfortunately most of the weekday action takes place during business hours, but there will be plenty of chances to drop by both this weekend and next.

Mardy Fish, John Isner, and Lleyton Hewitt headline the 32-man singles event. Even Nicolas Mahut, Isner’s first-round Wimbledon opponent for the past two years, will be there. But Isner isn’t the only Bulldog coming to Norcross. Recent alum and co-captain of last year’s team Drake Bernstein will also be part of the field. Wil Spencer, a rising senior on the current squad, will compete this weekend for one of the four wildcard spots in the draw.

You can find ticket information here. Drop me a note, and I should be able to pass along some deals on tickets.

Georgia placed eight players on the 2011 SEC Coaches Preseason All-SEC Team announced yesterday. Six players merited first-string mention, and two others were named to the second team. Brandon Boykin was named both to the first team (as a returner) and the second team (as a cornerback).

First Team

• Orson Charles
• Cordy Glenn
• Aaron Murray
• Blair Walsh
• Drew Butler
• Brandon Boykin

Second Team

• Ben Jones
• DeAngelo Tyson
• Brandon Boykin

Georgia’s eight selections were fourth-most in the league. It’s up from six a year ago, and it equals the nine preseason all-conference selections in 2009. One trend continues from last year though. For the second year in a row, Georgia has no defenders on the first team. It’s an improvement that Tyson and Boykin made it on the second team this year; the Dawgs placed no one from defense on the preseason all-SEC teams.

Justin Houston emerged last year to earn first-team postseason honors, but he was the only Bulldog defender to make the coaches’ postseason all-conference team last year. Will Boykin or Tyson elevate their game to become first-teamers at the end of this year, or will someone else emerge this season to become one of the best in the league? If the defense is going to take the step forward we expect in Grantham’s second year, it’s going to take more than a pair of second-teamers to get it done.

The NCAA released its public infractions report on Georgia Tech Thursday. You can read the full report here. A few thoughts and questions based on the report…

First – basketball. The violations were deemed “major” in the eyes of the NCAA, “were also not inadvertent,” and “provided the men’s basketball program more than a minimal recruiting advantage.” With that in mind, does Tech now have cause to reduce the massive buyout due Paul Hewitt? I would imagine that someone at Tech is digging through the contract now to see how the compliance clauses read. Hopefully that person doing the digging is a better counsel than the one who gave the football program such poor advice.

“It is almost always the cover-up…”

Back to football. Of course the story is less about the $312 in improper benefits and much more about Tech’s response. Everyone from the legal counsel to the athletic administration to the compliance office contributed to a decision to willfully ignore the possibility of an ineligible player. As Tech’s president admitted, “it appears (the ineligible players) would quickly be reinstated” had Tech acted more aggressively and moved to declare them ineligible as soon as they were aware of a problem. But that timeline put Tech up against their three most important games of the year: the rivalry game with Georgia, the ACC championship game, and subsequently their first BCS bowl game.

Was it worth it?

No one will admit that it was. But if Thomas was a factor in Tech winning or not winning the 2009 ACC championship game, it becomes an interesting call. That game was an exciting display of offense, and both teams needed all of their weapons. A 70-yard touchdown pass to Thomas was a huge play in the third quarter. He finished with only two receptions, but there’s no questioning his impact in the game. Instead of heading to a BCS bowl, Clemson fell all the way to the Music City Bowl.

Tech lost two of the three games for which Thomas was retroactively ineligible, but they won the one that paid off. There’s no telling in which bowl Tech would have played had they lost the ACC title game, but no other bowl is close to the payout or exposure that comes from a BCS bowl. If Tech isn’t required to pay anything but the $100,000 fine, that’s a relatively small investment for a BCS payout.

So what?

It might seem tough to have to vacate a conference title, and four years of probation sounds ominous. But none of those penalties are constraints on the program going forward. There is no loss of scholarships, no postseason ban, no requirement to repay the gains of their violations, and no reduction in recruiting contact. Should there be? The program might have to whitewash their conference title, but the memory will remain of an exciting last-minute triumph and a trip to the BCS. On the other hand, I can’t get past the fact that all of this was over freaking $312. When you think about breathless stories of major violations, you think about cars, reckless boosters with envelopes full of cash, and sketchy six-figure “donations”. $300 is a rounding error in most of the infamous college scandals.

It’s worth pointing out that Tech’s penalties were similar to those self-imposed recently by Ohio State. The Buckeyes also vacated their wins using ineligible players and accepted probation. Ohio State vows to fight penalties with any teeth like the loss of scholarships or a postseason ban. If the Tech decision is any indicator, will Ohio State have anything to worry about? Of course the cases aren’t analogous from the value of improper benefits to the number of student-athletes involved to the school’s cooperation with the investigation. But in the end both cases involved programs playing ineligible players.

What can Georgia learn?

Tech did what many Georgia fans urged Mark Richt to do last season: play your best receiver anyway. Georgia was tipped off to the possibility of an improper benefit. While the NCAA took its time to rule on the case, the frustration was building each week. Georgia made the tough and unpopular call to keep Green on the shelf while there was still uncertainty. The news ultimately wasn’t great for Green, but he served his suspension and that was the end of it for he and Georgia as far as the NCAA was concerned.

The Dawgs face a situation now where two incoming student-athletes possibly received improper benefits. The severity of Tech’s penalties were ultimately about their response (or lack of response) to evidence of an improper benefit. Georgia will consider that precedent when deciding how to proceed with Jones and/or Caldwell-Pope. If there’s any uncertainty, I would expect them to be declared ineligible until the NCAA is able to decide otherwise.

Where was the media?

I asked this earlier, but it still amazes me. When you think about the concentration of college football media that passes through or resides in Atlanta, how could this story have slipped through until the day when the NCAA came forward to announce sanctions? Look at all of the actions that occurred just on the football side of things:

• You had the NCAA notifying Tech of a possible violation in November of 2009. They conducted interviews in November and December.
• In September of 2010, Tech’s president got a notice of inquiry from the NCAA.
• In December of 2010, Tech received a notice of formal allegations.
• Tech responded to the allegations in March of 2011.
• The school appeared in front of the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions in April 2011.

All of that, and the story stayed under the radar until today. I have to take my cap off to Tech for keeping it quiet, but even they couldn’t have done it without the complicity of a lazy media. It’s not the first time this year the Atlanta media have been caught asleep at the wheel.

The lack of media attention wasn’t necessarily a good thing for Tech. When the A.J. Green story broke last year, Georgia’s every move was open for scrutiny. They had no choice but to play it safe and by the book. Had there been a brighter spotlight on the Tech program, might they have been forced by the exposure to make the tough but wise call to shelve Thomas for the Georgia game? They still would have lost to Georgia, but they’d still likely also have their ACC championship banner.

Far be it from me to take much delight* in Georgia Tech facing an NCAA investigation. If it turns out to be street agent type of stuff, it’s the same kind of thing that could happen to any program, and we’re right in the middle of two Georgia student-athletes facing questions about improper benefits themselves.

What gets me is this: Atlanta is home to one of the more significant newspapers in the Southeast. It’s also home to two sports talk radio stations and major market television stations. Several regional and national college football pundits are based here. And we’re just finding out about an NCAA investigation into a BCS-level program on judgement day? That’s some good work. But I’m sure that if you wanted Brent Benedict’s thoughts on the situation, the Atlanta paper could have that for you by close of business today.

* If it turns out that Tech’s wins from the 2008 season must be vacated, it will mean that it’s been over 20 years since Tech beat Georgia without ineligible players.

When I talked about the depth at running back last week, I was pretty dismissive about the idea of Richard Samuel being part of the solution. Never say never, I guess. We have to remind ourselves that this is all conjecture for now, and Samuel’s cryptic Tweets could as well be about choosing which model of scooter to buy.

Bernie has some thoughts about what this means, and they all make sense. We can analyze the heck out of this idea not only for what it means for the tailback situation but also for what it has to say about the linebackers.

I think this has a lot less to do with Crowell than with what’s after Crowell. We’re about as tense over Crowell’s adjustment to the college game as we would be driving in Bolivia. If he doesn’t come out of the gate averaging 150 yards per game, cardiac units across the state will be busy. Take it for what it’s worth, but Crowell’s talent has apparently shown up in Athens along with whatever adjustment issues might go along with them. We’ll at least have to wait a few games before knowing whether it’s time to pass the torch to the next high school tailback prospect.

Assuming for now that Crowell will actually step in to and keep the starting role, there has to be a plan for those 10 or 15 carries that come when Crowell is out of the game. Most of us would be nervously OK seeing what Thomas and Malcome can do. The tailback is also usually in on passing plays too, and a bulked-up Samuel could be a very valuable piece of the protection puzzle rather than an undersized Thomas or the freshman Malcome who is still learning the ropes. I think we’ve seen Samuel’s limit at tailback. And to be honest, it wasn’t bad. By that I mean I’d be as comfortable with him getting some of those carries as Thomas or Malcome until Ken shows what he can do. That’s not saying a lot, I know.

There’s necessarily a question of opportunity cost. If Samuel moves back to offense, he’s not a linebacker. Is that a big deal? The consensus when he moved in the first place was that he was better suited as a linebacker and had showed a lot of promise at the position in high school. But after a redshirt year during which he was able to dedicate himself to working as a linebacker, the coaches still saw fit to moved a newly-converted safety (a position with plenty of its own depth issues) ahead of Samuel on the depth chart. That’s not to say that Samuel hasn’t cut it at linebacker – he hasn’t played a live down yet. But you don’t consider a move like this for someone you see as more essential to one position than another.

What if Crowell isn’t the answer, you ask. I don’t think anyone is suggesting that Samuel or any other tailback on the roster would be a solution. Georgia would be in a tough spot. Teams weak in the backfield might be able to compensate with a spread passing game, but the second and third-best receivers on this team might be a pair of tight ends. The 2003 blueprint is fine, but it required an exceptional defense.

There are other answers: Branden Smith’s role is always good for discussion, and he’s surely good for more than jet sweeps. And if Nick Marshall is that serious of a threat in a “wild dawg” formation, he could do something with the ball in his hands. But those are short-term solutions in limited roles. With questions at receiver and a defense that’s still on the rebound, Georgia could really use that standout tailback. Right now, even with Samuel’s position up in the air, it looks as if there’s still only one candidate for that role.