For some reason, I thought I had read that they’d be in blue jerseys. I guess Nike had other ideas. The pictures we saw the other day must have been older or alternate versions.

This item on the Senator’s buffet reminded me of a comment I read yesterday.

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.

Media outlets reported Caldwell’s connection to Ware back in May, but UCF officials stated that they had not been contacted by the NCAA. That has now changed. The New York Times explains Caldwell’s alleged role in steering Ware to UCF:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.