Since Kirby Smart became Georgia’s head coach, Georgia and Alabama have swapped a couple of assistant coaches, gone head-to-head for top members of the 2016 recruiting class, and now find themselves at the center of a tug-of-war over graduate transfer defensive back Maurice Smith.

Maurice Smith, a defensive back who is set to graduate from Alabama this month, wants to transfer to Georgia, where he would be eligible to play this season. But Smith’s mother said the potential move is being blocked by Alabama head coach Nick Saban. “He wants to go to Georgia. Period,” Samyra Smith said on Tuesday night. “That’s where he wants to go.”

Smith would take advantage of the same graduate transfer rule that brought Greyson Lambert and Tyler Catalina to Athens. As a reward for graduating with eligibility remaining, the NCAA allows players to transfer after graduating without having to sit out a year. The player’s current school must release the player though, and that’s where Alabama is dragging its heels.

Alabama has continued to decline to agree on a move anywhere within the SEC. “They’re being difficult. Intentionally,” Samyra Smith said.

Seth Emerson points out that Alabama didn’t have a problem with another graduate transfer to an SEC school. “Earlier this year, Alabama did not put a block on Chris Black, who graduated from Alabama and transferred to Missouri.”

Emerson also reminds us that karma can be a bitch.

The situation is an interesting turn in Alabama-Georgia relationship, given Smart serving under Saban the past nine years. And earlier this year Smart put a block on a player, A.J. Turman, from transferring to other SEC schools as well as Miami. (Turman did not want to go to Miami, but Smart said he wanted to set a precedent that players couldn’t follow former head coach Mark Richt to the Hurricanes.)

I expect this will follow the usual cycle: there will be some unpleasant publicity for Alabama, some haughty pronouncements from folks at keyboards, and eventually Alabama will relent. But will it be too late? Georgia has already started preseason camp. Alabama begins later this week. Alabama only needs to hold out on Smith long enough for him to be too far behind the curve to contribute at Georgia. Even if Smart is Smith’s former position coach, it might be tough for someone to miss a good chunk of preseason camp and expect significant playing time. It won’t be many more days before remaining at Alabama or transferring out of the conference are the only hopes Smith has for seeing the field in his final year of eligibility. The longer this plays out, the longer the odds of Smith ending up in Athens.

To add another twist of the knife, one of those out-of-conference destinations Smith might consider is …Miami.

Georgia takes over the SEC network programming at midnight tonight. There will be several magazine-type shows inside the football program, the must-see Herschel Walker SEC Storied special, and ten memorable games featuring six of Georgia’s sports. Clear some space on your DVR.

I’ve ranked the ten games they’ll show taking into account the magnitude of the win for the program, the quality of the game/meet/match, and the novelty of the rebroadcast. Surprisingly spots 1-4 are not all football!

1. 10:30 p.m. — 1983 NCAA East Regional Final (Men’s Basketball – Mar. 27, 1983): The Dawgs upset defending champs UNC to earn a trip to the Final Four. This is as good as it gets for Georgia basketball. Even the football-only crowd should watch this at least once.

2. 1:30 a.m. – 1980 National Championship Game (Football – Jan. 1, 1981): You’ve seen this already, right? If not, it’s a no-brainer – the crowning jewel of the Herschel Walker era and Georgia’s last national football title.

3. 8:00 a.m. — 2016 NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships (March 25, 2016): Georgia’s gymnastics and women’s swimming and diving programs have emerged as the standard-bearers for Bulldog athletics. In this meet you’ll see not only great collegiate swimmers but also world-class Olympians bringing home to Athens another national title.

4. 12:00 p.m. — 2016 NCAA Super Regional Final (Softball – May 27, 2016): It doesn’t get much more thrilling than a walk-off home run to advance to the World Series. Kaylee Puailoa’s improbable shot stunned the heavily-favored #1 Gators in arguably the biggest win in program history. If you missed this live, catch it now.

5. 2:00 p.m. — 2000 Outback Bowl (Jan. 1, 2000): I don’t know that there’s been a bigger swing in a game – perhaps the 2006 Virginia Tech bowl game is up there too. Many fans have a love-hate relationship with that era of Georgia football, but the spirit of this comeback win set the stage for some high expectations entering the 2000 season.

6. 6:30 a.m. — 2001 Women’s Basketball SEC Tournament Final (March 4, 2001): The last hurrah of the Miller-Nolan era. Kelly Miller hit an off-balance shot at the buzzer for the win to finish off a dramatic second half. It turned out to be the last SEC championship for Andy Landers.

7. 8:30 p.m. — 1997 Georgia vs. Florida (Football – Nov. 1, 1997): A cherished win between long droughts in Jacksonville. Bonus: two interceptions by Kirby Smart!

8. 1:30 a.m. — Georgia vs. Florida (Football – Nov. 8, 1980): Memorable for one play, but watch the whole thing to understand what got us to Belue-to-Scott. I put this low on the list because you’ve likely seen the game’s defining moment a million times. But one more time can’t hurt…

9. 3:30 a.m. — 2008 NCAA Super Regional Final (Baseball – June 8, 2008): The 2008 baseball team was probably the best of the three Georgia squads that made the trip to Omaha in the 2000s. There wasn’t much drama in this decisive third game of the Super Regional, but this 17-8 thrashing of N.C. State was a treat.

10. 10:00 a.m. – 2012 Men’s Basketball vs. Florida (Feb. 25, 2012): KCP and Gerald Robinson had big games, and Georgia led the entire way in the upset win. It kept alive Georgia’s slim postseason hopes for the time, but the Dawgs finished the season 15-17.

Marc Weiszer reports about some changes Kirby Smart will make to the weekly schedule during the season. Both the weekly news conference (Monday) and the Bulldog Hotline (Thursday) will be shifted around.

Those changes aside, I’ve been wondering how the game day experience will change under Smart. Each coach wants things his way, and sometimes the changes can be jarring: fans of a certain age can remember the smoky entrance and music (Macarena, anyone?) that ushered in the Jim Donnan era. The pregame we all know by heart now evolved during Richt’s 15 years – everything from the Dawg Walk itself to the pregame walk and huddle about 40 minutes before the game came about with Richt. Smart will and should have the opportunity to establish his own routine.

Some elements and ads are produced by the athletic department and sponsors, so I don’t expect that find-Hairy-behind-the-french-fries is going anywhere. But I do think that warmups and pregame activities might be tweaked. Nothing major – just enough to feel a bit off from the routine we became conditioned to over the past 15 years. Is it the end of Baba O’Riley? Of Nickelback? Will Smart prefer different in-game video? Does he care?

I was glad to see Smart embrace the Dawg Walk tradition as part of G-Day, and there’s no reason for a recruiting-savvy coach to scrap one of the program’s best recruiting experiences. The Dawg Walk will be modified by necessity in a season or two – the team will move to a new locker room under the west stands instead of crossing the field to the east endzone. The team will dress in that new facility rather than pre-Dawg Walk. Many teams arrive at their stadium in warmups or coat-and-tie, and that could be a big change for fans used to seeing the team come through the Dawg Walk in uniform.

Will the new locker room also mean the team will take the field from the opposite open side of the stadium? We’ll find out in a year or two when the new locker room is complete.

Sony Michel is expected to be out 6-8 weeks after breaking his arm last weekend. That timetable has him back just before the season opener, but it’s worth remembering that it’s 6-8 weeks until he’ll be cleared for participation, and his return to playing form could take a while longer. We trust that the medical staff will be working with Michel to minimize weakness and atrophy and expect that Michel will play with a cast or brace for a few weeks. It wouldn’t be the first time.

All that’s to say that even if Michel is cleared and plays in the opener, he’ll probably be in a similar situation to Chubb: medically cleared but closely supervised, protected, and even limited. That has obvious direct bearing on the tailback situation – Brendan Douglas and a handful of freshmen (redshirt and true) might play a larger role in the early part of the season. Douglas himself had offseason wrist surgery, but he was able to participate in spring practice.

But beyond the tailback position the availability of Michel and Chubb will impact other roster decisions and even the identity of Georgia’s offense. A diminished (or at least unproven) rushing threat will place additional pressure on a passing game with questions of its own. Determining the receiver depth chart behind Godwin will be a priority of preseason camp. Tight ends look to be a potential strength, but they’ll have to be far more productive than a year ago.

Will the tailback situation and Michel’s status affect the quarterback competition? With a potential lack of experience at both tailback and receiver, you might lean towards a quarterback with starting experience. Lambert won ten games as a starter and dramatically improved his TD/INT rate. The offense wasn’t nearly as productive, but it also didn’t make the crippling mistakes that cost games. That unaesthetic formula got the team to ten wins despite Chubb’s injury and coaching turmoil.

Keep in mind that we’re not talking about a long-term solution, and we recognize that the team could undergo quite a transformation from the beginning of the season to its end. At this point I’m more interested in getting to the Ole Miss-Tennessee stretch when Georgia should be healthier and more potent at tailback and more settled at quarterback.

What gives me pause about Lambert as the “safe” option is, of all things, the 2013 Vanderbilt game. It’s not necessarily because of the loss (special teams had plenty to do with that); it’s the way Vanderbilt defended Georgia. Without Gurley and Marshall and with several receivers sidelined, Georgia simultaneously lacked a strong running game and a deep threat. Sound familiar? Vandy didn’t sell out against the run but were able to limit the Dawgs to just 107 rushing yards. With no deep options in the passing game, it felt as if Aaron Murray were trying to throw in a phone booth. Completions came in small, frustrating chunks, and Murray’s 4.1 yards/attempt has to have represented one of his least productive game.

So entering 2016, I wonder if Georgia’s probable tailback roster can take advantage of an expected weakness in the UNC rush defense. If not, Gene Chizik will likely follow that Vanderbilt plan and force Georgia to make plays downfield. That challenge lends itself not to Lambert but to other quarterbacks on the roster. There could be risks – the inconsistency of Ramsey or the inexperience of Eason – but the alternative is a stagnant offense against an opponent that can put up some points.

The less likely Chubb and Michel can play a significant role in the opener, the more likely we are to see Eason. Lost production from the backfield will have to come from the passing game, and I think we’ll need more than we saw towards the end of 2015. Kirby Smart, as a new coach, has the goodwill to take that kind of risk in the opener, and he’ll then have two winnable games to prepare the offense for what could be the toughest stretch of the season.

The Senator is correct – if you need an alternative approach to player discipline after the Baylor and Mississippi State stories this week, Dan Wolken’s piece on Mark Richt is right up your alley. Richt sometimes took some heat for his decisions, but that was because those decisions were often more transparent than they would have been at other schools. Georgia faced many of the same incidents that other programs face: drinking and drugs, weapons, and unfortunately even domestic violence. Wolken does a good job highlighting the differences in Richt’s approach that made it very unlikely Georgia would ever face the ugly consequences that Baylor experienced.

If I have one disagreement though it’s the implication that it was Richt’s approach to discipline that was a bridge too far with Georgia fans. It wasn’t the “warped mindset” of win-at-all-costs fans that brought about a change here. He’s right – many fans did take pride and “puff(ed) out their chests” because of how the program operated and the man in charge of it. At the same time, that pride all too easily became a crutch and an excuse for the program’s lack of greater success. How could Georgia compete with [] when we insisted on such higher standards? At least we do things the right way…

If only that were the problem with Richt.

Wolken presents the internal struggle faced by Georgia fans this way: “Georgia fans will forever be torn over their devotion to the so-called ‘Georgia Way'(*) and their burning desire to be a little more like Alabama.” It’s a false choice. Richt’s way of doing things was not antithetical to the effort we’re seeing from the new staff on the recruiting trail. You don’t have to sell out your values to avoid a staff on the verge of, in their own words, mutiny. There’s nothing unethical about coming to play with a full roster or consistent special teams.

Let’s put it this way: Richt was not fired for the things he did “the right way.” He was fired because he didn’t do enough of them.

Disciplinary issues were, if anything, a secondary concern. Certainly there was some frustration with Georgia players disciplined for offenses that might’ve earned them a lesser (if any) penalty at another school. It was also frustrating to see several of these players end up on opposing sidelines. Add in frustration with the administration, University policies, and local law enforcement. All of that frustration was (is) very real, but it contributed very little to the motivation behind a coaching change.

This isn’t the first time Wolken hasn’t quite hit the mark on dissatisfaction with Richt, but he’s certainly not the only one who sees the coaching change as a rejection of Richt’s way of doing things. I don’t, and focusing on the Georgia Way vs. Alabama Way dichotomy loses sight of the much more fundamental issues that led to the end of the Mark Richt era at Georgia.

(*) Just what “The Georgia Way” is deserves its own post – it’s come to represent everything from the truly good to a snarky epithet used when the program shoots itself in the foot (again).

I’m OK with the idea of an increase – it’s been over ten years, and Georgia has lagged behind much of the SEC. The kind of program we want costs big money. And, yes, most of that increase will go to things that fans won’t (directly) see or benefit from.

The kicker to me has to do with a story from May:

Smart likes the idea of beginning a season against a top opponent to put his players on a big stage. It can also add more attention to the program than it otherwise may get to start a season.

Even as the cost to attend home games rises, many of the more attractive games going forward are likely to be off-campus. For Smart, it makes sense for the reasons outlined above. He saw the benefit of the big neutral site games while at Alabama. It also makes sense for Georgia’s bank account: neutral site games come with premium ticket prices and bring in more money than a home-and-home series would with the same opponent.

Fans will be asked to contribute more for what’s likely to be a lesser home schedule. You’ll have the usual SEC slate, and Tech will visit every other year, and more attractive opponents in Athens are likely to be few and far between. Alabama under Nick Saban has hosted only one power conference opponent at home: Penn State in 2010. (That’s no knock on their schedule; they almost always have a challenging opener.) Georgia will have a visit from Notre Dame in 2019 which was arranged before Smart took over. But if you want to see some of the better non-conference games on Georgia’s future schedules, be prepared to travel and pay on top of your increased donation and season tickets.

Put a few recent Kirby Smart quotes together.

First this one:

“We could literally work our window, we have a 14-day window where we can do camps, we could work every day somewhere else and never have them at our place.”

Then this one:

“What people don’t get is that you don’t have to send your whole staff. You can send one coach. You can send five coaches. We’re going to have representation at a lot of them, but which ones specifically I can’t tell you.”

And finally…

“‘Where do I send my coaches. Where do I send my support staff? Where is it a priority to send them?.'” he said. “We’ve only got so many guys who can go out, so where do we send them?”

It’s pretty clear that most coaches (with a few high-profile exceptions) were just fine with the satellite camp ban. But the ban has been lifted, and coaches – Kirby Smart included – are lining up to participate, if only to play defense against rivals and competitors coming to town. As Smart explains, you have a scarce resource (the availability of coaches) and a skyrocketing supply of opportunities that will only increase under the current rules.

Smart’s mention of “support staff” interests me though. If these camps prove fruitful, bigger programs will tackle this camp issue the way they tackle most issues: money. The head coach will attend a few select camps, assistants – individually or in groups – will work several others. But for the large number of smaller camps where just having a presence would do, I could see these programs hiring dedicated staffers to represent the program. (It’s a happy twist that SEC schools would love to see the ban back in place but are among the few with the resources to hire staffers and attend more camps.)

This idea isn’t completely out of left field. Some Georgia die-hards might remember Ray Lamb who worked as the program’s director of high school relations under Mark Richt. Lamb conceded that “the NCAA reduced the role I was in to virtually nothing,” but a similar staffer (or group) charged with cultivating relationships with these camps could take on the additional duties still allowed by the rules that were part of Lamb’s job. It could be an accomplished coach from the high school ranks like Lamb who would be known among the camp organizers. It could also be a recent alum with his eye on a coaching career and a name that’s familiar to prospects.

I don’t know what NCAA regulations would have to say about this idea. Smart mentioning support staffers leads me to believe that there is at least some opening for consideration. There are of course rules about which coaches can and can’t recruit off campus, but these are instructional camps. We also don’t know if these camps will prove to be worth the trouble. I have my doubts – the real work is done on campus and during the recruiting process. But if there’s something of substance to be had there, big programs are already spending money on more trivial things than getting additional face time with prospects.

Bill Connelly’s gone back through at least 1991 re-ranking teams using the S&P+ metric. It’s been a fun read. There are national stories to revisit, you can chart the rise and fall of SEC powers, and of course there’s the Georgia angle.

What was Georgia’s best team since 1991? It wasn’t 2007 (10th in the national S&P+ rankings) or 2012 (7th) or even the SEC championship teams of 2005 (7th) and 2002 (5th). Jim Donnan’s best team, 1997, came in 12th, a finish that would be eclipsed in five of Mark Richt’s first seven seasons.

Georgia’s best team, according to this metric, was the 2003 SEC East championship squad (*). That team finished in a three-way tie for the division title and advanced to the title game thanks to its high BCS ranking. The 2003 Dawgs finished with three losses with two coming against eventual national champion LSU. But that team still earned a #4 spot in the S&P+ rankings thanks in large part to the best Georgia defense since…you tell me.

Connelly helpfully provides the offense and defense S&P+ rankings along with his overall list, and it’s no surprise that the 2003 defense was the second-best in the nation behind only LSU. That was a nasty defense from the opening shutout at Clemson to the dominant second and third quarters in Knoxville to Odell Thurman chugging his way 99 yards down the sideline against Auburn. That defense was packed with playmakers and future pros from the defensive line to linebacker to the slobberknocking secondary.

The 2000 rankings also caught my eye. That was a strange year with a polarizing coach and quarterback, a star tailback in the doghouse, a devastating loss in the second game of the season, midseason quarterback turmoil, and a year-end collapse that led to a coaching change. Not the most stable of seasons.

The 2000 defense was talented (hence Donnan’s infamous “55 years” comment) but still very much symptomatic of the season’s instability. It was led by the third coordinator in three years after the disaster of 1999 (61th rated defense.) It relied on a converted wide receiver to start at safety. It was put in difficult spots by an offense that ranked only 41st.

But with the offense in turmoil and the head coach under fire, the 2000 defense was still tenth in the nation (again, according to S&P+.) Things slid on defense towards the end of the year as they slid across the board, but it all comes back to the Tennessee game. The Dawgs don’t snap the decade-long losing streak without, as Larry Munson called them that night, “the beautiful defense” making stop after stop.

The defense was led that year by Gary Gibbs, a former Oklahoma head coach who had been out of coaching for several seasons. Donnan had worked with Gibbs at Oklahoma on the great Sooner teams of the 1980s and brought in a known veteran coach with a more professional reputation to follow the (putting it kindly) contentious Kevin Ramsey experiment of 1999. Hiring Gibbs worked – in just one season Gibbs improved the defense from 61st to 10th in the S&P+ ranking.

Unfortunately Gibbs’ improvement on defense wasn’t enough to overcome the unraveling on the other side of the ball. It did lay a nice foundation for what was to come. The defense only slid to 17th in 2001 in Brian VanGorder’s first season as coordinator, but it really came into its own with defenses ranked #5, #2, and #3 from 2002-2004. Since those three seasons though, only the 2011 defense (S&P+ 8th) was more highly rated than Gibbs’ only showing in 2000. He’d go on to coach an SEC champion unit at LSU in 2001 before making the jump to the NFL.

(*) – As good as that 2003 team was, it was only the 47th best team of the 2000s. While Georgia was consistently good enough to have the 8th best program of the 2000s in average S&P+ percentile rating, there haven’t been any truly great Georgia teams on the level of 2005 Texas or 2001 Miami that we hold up as some of the best of the 2000s. We talk about a few of those teams – 2002, 2007, 2012 – being a couple of plays or breaks away from playing for larger things, but even those very good teams would have been punching above their weight.

Pity Kirby Smart – all the guy wants to do is talk and coach football, and in four months he’s had to devote unnecessary time and energy to blowups over transfer policy, the state legislative process, and now entertainment contracts. And to be sure some of the distraction falls back on Smart. Every little thing is not Something That Has to be Handled. Making it seem so gives agency to the energy sucks all too willing to turn every news item into the next frustrating distraction.

At most places the news that artists often have boilerplate appearance riders wouldn’t move the needle very much. But Georgia isn’t most places, and so the Ludacris contract must become a commentary on everything from Georgia’s open records law to the management of the athletic department. That might be a difference from Smart’s previous employer, but dealing with this different and often dysfunctional landscape is still part of the adjustment.

That this contract has become another distraction is unsurprising. It’s the natural conclusion of a deal that got rubber-stamped in the panic after a promoted pre-game concert was canceled and then saved just days before the event. It’s not as if the University had never hosted a Ludacris performance on campus with a very similar rider. For that Homecoming performance in 2010, shortly after Greg McGarity became athletic director, the University Union or Homecoming committee or whoever signed off on the contract, scratched a few offending items, and the show went on.

And for something so unimportant. Look – I was glad Ludacris performed and enjoyed what I could make out over the sound system pointed in the opposite direction. But as Smart admitted, the show “probably was overrated” in terms of drawing fans. I can’t see anyone making up their minds to attend G-Day based on a 15-minute appearance announced two days prior.

You can only guess how or if they’ll try to top 93KDay next year, but we can imagine that a pregame concert won’t be a part of the plans.

There’s a phenomenon with landfalling hurricanes called a storm surge. You’ll get a gradual rise of water as the storm gets closer, but as the center approaches there can be a sudden and much more dramatic rise.

That’s what it seemed like on Saturday as the crowd filed into Sanford Stadium. There was a steady stream of fans filling the first two levels during warmups and then the surge happened. In about 15 minutes shortly after 3:30, the crowd went from an impressive spring game showing of 70,000 or so to an overflow crowd of about 95,000. Fans who couldn’t find seats were perched on the stair tower leading to the 600 level. More fans were on the bridge. Others had to be turned away at the gate.

The game gave us a few things to talk about on the football side – the quarterback battle, the emergence of a few wide receivers, the promising use of tight ends, and some concern about a thin defensive front and pass rush. But really the story of G-Day was the crowd. It was sensational and made an impact on past, current, and future Bulldogs. It became an event. The challenge was made several months ago by the new coach, and fans met the challenge. We forgot our cynicism for a day and bought in, sending the message to Kirby Smart that the support was there. Now it’s his turn.

Just a few days after announcing that the planned pre-game entertainment for G-Day had fallen through, someone stepped up and delivered a heavyweight. It’s a shame he won’t have but 15 minutes.

GDay: 3:45p@ludacris

Be there.

Saturday | Sanford Stadium | #93KDay pic.twitter.com/T0DH7md3OA

— Georgia Bulldogs (@UGAAthletics) April 14, 2016

It’s probably the most anticipated and almost surely going to be the most attended spring game in Georgia history. Fans have been looking forward to this weekend since Kirby Smart challenged fans back in December to fill the stadium. We’ve gone from “he’s kidding, right?” to a full-on commitment by the university and athletic department to prepare for a capacity crowd. Whether we get a full house or merely a very large turnout won’t be known until Saturday, but the push for 93K has been a bountiful source of energy for the young Kirby Smart era. Fans, alumni, students, players, and recruits have responded to the call, and now it’s Smart’s turn to show us what all the hype has been about.

• How many show? Kirby Smart has challenged Georgia fans to fill Sanford Stadium. I’m cynical about these things – we’ve struggled to fill the stadium even for recent late-season SEC games. But with no cost to attend, G-Day will pull from a deeper pool of fans. I also wonder about student attendance. It’s typically low for G-Day, but students like to be part of an event (as do we all.) I think the school would be happy with anything over 70,000. That would put Georgia ahead of most SEC schools and would effectively double the usual G-Day turnout. It would give Smart the kind of environment he’s looking for. If you see the upper East stands start to fill, mission accomplished.
• No, really, how many show? This piece mentions something that’s been on my mind for a while: Sanford Stadium doesn’t have turnstiles. Without a ticket to scan or collect, there’s no way to measure attendance. Any figure you see will be a guess.
• How crazy does it get? UGA officials claim to be ready for a typical home game crowd. There will be differences – parking and seating will be free-for-alls. Many of us are so set in our gameday routines that there will be some scrambling if our usual tailgating spot or seat isn’t available. Fans have been encouraged to arrive early, and the later start time should help space out arrivals. I do hope people take advantage of the gates opening at 1:00 and the pregame activities going on in and around the stadium. I’d really hate to see 50,000 people expect to go through the gates at 3:45 with no clue as to where they’re sitting.
• Pregame? A athletics administrator confirmed that “the university is looking for a musical act to perform in Sanford Stadium before the event.” So much for that. People are saying Georgia dropped the ball, but I consider this a bullet dodged. As diverse as musical tastes are, I was kind of dreading what kind of act they were going to come up with. I also wasn’t looking forward to competing for seats with people who were just coming to see (name of band.) Keep it about football.
• What’s in it for us? This will come off like the annoying Entitled Fan, but if the fan base is going to make the effort it’s reasonable to expect a little more than the usual spring game. Smart might not agree that there’s such an obligation. Since my usual G-Day checklist starts with “no injuries,” I’m a little conflicted here. I’m not expecting a surprise cameo from Chubb, but something besides walk-ons draining a running clock is called for. Smart’s not that aloof, is he?
• What’s different? A spring game isn’t likely to simulate the pressure of a close SEC game, but we should still expect to see some signs of how Kirby Smart has made his mark on the team. One of the lasting impressions from Smart’s introductory press conference was his pledge to be “hands on with the whole program.”
• Who took advantage of the coaching change? With so much turnover on the staff, the opportunities for second chances abound. Maybe there was a player in someone’s doghouse. Perhaps a certain coaching style just didn’t click. I’m interested to see if there are a couple of players who were buried on Richt’s depth chart for one reason or another who found new life with a new coach.
• What about the QBs? Speaking of new life, fans expecting Lambert and Ramsey to be put out to pasture by now will be very disappointed. Those are the two quarterbacks getting most of the work with the first team, and Jacob Eason is, as should be expected, a very talented early enrollee still making the transition. The situation might and likely will change before September, but for now it seems to be Lambert’s offense. Will a new offense and coach allow Lambert to improve enough to come out on top of a second straight quarterback competition?
• Lineman. The departure of both starting tackles gives new line coach Sam Pittman an immediate challenge. The team will be experimenting with line combinations right up through this week, so it’s anyone’s guess who will get the starting nod on Saturday. That’s not so important since we’re likely to see many combinations of linemen for both teams. The interior of the line has the most experience but even there we’ll see experimentation especially if Wynn and Pyke move from guard to tackle.

I could go on at most every position (WRs? ILBs?), and we’ll have plenty to talk about once the film is in. But really this G-Day is about the event itself: the challenge by Smart, the response by the fans, and the commitment by the school. We’ll see how each measures up and then enjoy a little football.

I really need to stop getting a post 95% done and leaving it in the draft folder for a few weeks.

Georgia’s coaching change implied many things, and the repudiation of the Mark Richt way of doing things in favor of a more Alabama-style approach is close to the top of the list. We’ve seen more visible and exhaustive recruiting with a budget to match. We’ve seen the support staff grow and investment in a more experienced strength and conditioning staff. You don’t have to connect many dots to see how these changes might make Georgia more competitive.

Even some uncomfortable and controversial policy revisions might make sense in the context of a more competitive program. If certain offenses merit a suspension at one school and not another, sure – claiming a competitive disadvantage doesn’t seem a bridge too far.

Is a restrictive transfer policy one of those difference-makers for a championship program? Did Alabama reach the top thanks to Henry, a ridiculously good defensive front, and preventing a disgruntled third-teamer from looking at Tennessee or Arkansas?

On one hand, Kirby Smart’s revised transfer policy that blocks certain transfer destinations is fairly standard, and it does level this particular playing field. It’s not just Georgia dealing with these policies. Just this month Michigan had to reconsider its own transfer restriction. Louisiana Tech is deciding which course to chart with its signees after a coach resigned.

On the other hand, what’s the payoff for taking a step backwards? Is it worth this contorted rationalization? Even if this policy change is a proxy for a larger turf war, it’s at the expense of the student-athletes and their very finite resource of eligibility.

Just so we remember – almost any transfer (excepting those with rare hardship waivers) must still sit out a year. That’s true even with a release from the current school. Without a release that wait increases to two years. Unless the transfer is to a school in a lower division (FCS, Div II, JUCO, etc.), anyone who has made up his mind to transfer is already willing to sacrifice some eligibility and has accepted that price.

Georgia might seem to have taken the lion’s share of criticism for a commonplace policy, and that doesn’t sit well with a lot of us. But it makes sense – when the program takes a stance outside the norm with a policy it considered the right way to do things and walks it back, that draws attention and raises questions. Will this experience be instructive when the program reviews other controversial policies that Kirby Smart might consider a disadvantage?

Finishing on a slight tangent – it’s stories like these transfer restrictions that come to mind every time I hear coaches talk about early signing periods and the grind of having to “babysit” commitments right up through Signing Day (and, as we’ve experienced the past two years, beyond Signing Day.) Just as you start to have some sympathy for the coaches’ position, you’re reminded what signing that Letter of Intent means. Once you’re in, you’re in. Your choices can be limited for any reason up to and including the new guy wanting to mark his territory. I don’t blame prospects for considering their options as long as they can and using what leverage they might have while they still have it.

There is no shortage of positions to discuss as spring practice opens, but the secondary seems to be pretty far down the list. Georgia has several starters returning in the defensive backfield, and it wasn’t a weakness in 2015. It’s a stat we heard and read up to and through the bowl game: Georgia has the nation’s #1 pass defense. That’s true even after giving up 281 passing yards in the bowl game: Georgia allowed only 156.5 yards per game through the air. Only five teams allowed fewer than 170 yards per game.

It’s a bit of a puzzle when you ask how Penn State came back throwing so well against that defense with a backup quarterback. Didn’t Tennessee’s Josh Dobbs throw for 312 yards? Didn’t Alabama’s Calvin Ridley have 5 catches for 120 yards against that secondary?

Surely the coaching changes had an effect in the bowl game: Pruitt was both defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach. But Georgia’s schedule explains how they came out of the season allowing fewer passing yards than anyone: every passing offense Georgia faced was in the bottom half of the FBS.

There are 127 FBS teams. The “best”* passing offense Georgia faced was Alabama’s which rated 68 out of 127. The 74th-best Penn State passing offense was enough to be the second-best that Georgia faced. Five of Georgia’s thirteen opponents were 100 or lower. Teams like Auburn, Georgia Southern, and Georgia Tech just don’t throw often or well enough. It’s no surprise that run-heavy Tech and Georgia Southern were among the bottom five nationally in passing.

So you can be the nation’s “best”* pass defense either by defending the pass well or by the good fortune of facing a lot of teams that don’t throw all that much. In Georgia’s case, it was some of both. There were some good players: Sanders continues to be an interception machine. Parrish limits yards after the catch. Mauger has been one of Pruitt’s biggest turnaround stories.

(*) I put “best” in quotes because yards-per-game is not a very good metric for determining how well a team can pass or defend the pass. You’d rather give up fewer passing yards than not, but there are better metrics for efficiency.

The encouraging news is that Georgia did fairly well in the efficiency metrics too. Georgia allowed just 5.91 yards per pass attempt – not the best in the nation (that seems to be Michigan’s 5.41 YPA), but there were only about 11 defenses giving up fewer than 6 YPA. The pass defense was also top 10 according to the NCAA’s efficiency formula.

It’s understandable if, after all that, the outlook for the secondary takes a back seat to the larger questions elsewhere on the team. But with Smart and Tucker bringing a wealth of expertise from a defense that placed so much emphasis on the secondary, I’m interested to see how much more they can get out of Georgia’s returning players. There’s much to build on, but as we saw several times last season against opponents that were somewhat competent passing the ball, there are improvements to be made and opportunities for newcomers to make an impression on the new staff.

Georgia’s women’s basketball program will return to the NCAA Tournament after a year’s absence. The Lady Dogs earned the #8 seed in the Lexington Regional and will open play against #9 seed Indiana in South Bend, IN on Saturday night at about 9 p.m. #1 seed Notre Dame will host the subregional and would likely be Georgia’s second-round opponent on Monday evening if the Lady Dogs advance.

(Complete Bracket Here)

Indiana (20–10, 12–6) took a step forward this year with a fourth-place finish in the Big Ten behind Maryland, Ohio State, and Michigan State. Second-year coach Teri Moren was named Big Ten Coach of the Year after improving on a 15–16 record with some respectable wins over Chattanooga, Georgia Tech, and a nice upset of Michigan State. Moren, an Indiana native, was a part of the Georgia Tech staff towards the end of the last decade and had a large role in the improvement of that program. Indiana was a perfect 14-0 at home but, like most teams were less effective on the road: 5-7 in road games and 1-4 at neutral sites. They’re a relatively young team with only one senior, and sophomores Tyra Buss and Amanda Cahill are the team’s best players. Point guard Buss was a hyped recruit who has delivered. As a sophomore she’s a first-team Big Ten honoree and already averaging over 18 PPG while running Indiana’s ball-screen offense.

Indiana very much has the feel of a young program on the rise trying to find itself with the occasional setback as it learns to win. Georgia, on the other hand, is a squad laden with seniors looking to cement their legacy. Georgia’s seniors began as members of an Elite Eight unit three years ago behind Georgia’s last large group of seniors, and it’s this group’s turn to see how far they can carry the team in the tournament.

New women’s basketball coach Joni Taylor was handed the keys to one of the nation’s most tradition-rich programs, and she faced an immediate challenge to that legacy: since Andy Landers reached the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 1982, Georgia had never missed the tournament in consecutive seasons. Injuries led to losses in 2015 that ended a 20-year appearance streak, and preseason expectations had the team at risk for another season on the bubble.

The team started 2015-2016 with a strong 12-1 record in nonconference play. The SEC schedule started rough with three straight losses to ranked opponents. Georgia notched an important road win at Florida but was 1-4 in conference after five games. They righted the ship with six wins over the next seven games and won their final two home games to lock up a winning record in the SEC. That 9-7 record all but locked up an NCAA Tournament bid. Georgia finished sixth in the SEC and had a shot at a finish as high as fourth on the final day of the regular season.

Georgia’s season was once again shaped by injuries. Starting forward Mackenzie Engram didn’t play again after a respiratory issue in January. Leading scorer and rebounder Shacobia Barbee was lost on Senior Day with a broken ankle. The Lady Dogs went 1-2 after Barbee’s injury, and her absence was taken into consideration in Georgia’s seed. Guard Tiara Griffin was injured in a hard fall late in Georgia’s SEC Tournament loss to Vanderbilt, but she should be available for the NCAA Tournament. One positive for Georgia has been the emergence of all-SEC freshman Caliya Robinson.

The 2016 bid is the 32nd in program history – only Tennessee has more. The Lady Dogs have gone on to reach 20 Sweet 16s, 11 Elite Eights, five Final Fours, and two national title games.

Georgia is one of a record nine SEC teams receiving a bid to the tournament. They’ll join South Carolina (1), Kentucky (3), Texas A&M (4), Mississippi State (5), Florida (5), Tennessee (7), Auburn (9), and Missouri (10).