From the news-to-me department…I happened to flip to the ACC baseball tournament over the weekend and caught Virginia Tech’s nod to the classic Houston Astros uniform. Just outstanding.

While most of us spent the weekend next to the grill, the pool, and hopefully mindful of the reason for the long weekend, many of the remaining Bulldog athletes in action decided that winning was the best way to enjoy the holiday weekend.

Softball

The Georgia softball team completed an impressive sweep of Cal on Saturday to earn a consecutive trip to the Women’s College World Series. Can’t blame the ESPN crew for trying to build up as much SEC vs. Pac-10 drama as they could, but Georgia made sure that the series was as far from dramatic as you can get. The Bulldogs won the series by a combined 17-1 score, and they had each game more or less in hand by the second inning. LF Megan Wiggins was the star with a fantastic diving catch in the field and a grand slam in Saturday’s clincher. With Taylor Schlopy and Alisa Goler, I can’t imagine a more potent top third of a lineup in the nation.

Georgia gets to face a familiar postseason foe in the WCWS. Top seeds Alabama and Michigan were upset in their super regionals over the weekend, but third-seeded and defending champion Washington avoided the upset bug and will be Georgia’s opening opponent in Oklahoma City as they were a year ago. The Huskies lost their first super regional game to Oklahoma but stormed back with consecutive shutouts.

Georgia lost their opener to Washington last year but battled back through the loser’s bracket to earn another shot at the Huskies. Georgia won 9-8 in a thrilling extra-innings game to setup yet another game against Washington with a trip to the national title game on the line. Washington proved to be too much and went on to beat Florida for the title. If Georgia can take one positive from last year’s experience, it’s that they got to untouchable Washington pitcher Danielle Lawrie for ten earned runs over those final two games. They were also the only team to defeat Washington in the WCWS. Georgia’s offense is every bit as potent as it was last year, and they’ll have a bit of confidence going up against a familiar and talented foe.

Georgia faces Washington at 9:30 on Thursday evening, and the game will be on ESPN2.

W Tennis

The weekend was topped off with an individual national title: sophomore tennis player Chelsey Gullickson pulled off upset after upset during the women’s singles tournament and defeated Cal’s Jana Juricova 6-3,7-6(7)to claim the program’s third individual championship. Her quest to add a doubles title fell just short as her team fell in the national semifinals.

Though Gullickson was ranked a respectable 12th in the nation, her path through the field included four matches against higher-ranked players.

Gullickson’s road to the national championship featured six wins including over top-ranked Irina Falconi (Georgia Tech), second-ranked Juricova, fourth-ranked Hilary Barte and eighth-ranked Allie Will (Florida).

A national title that included wins over Florida and Tech? Chelsey Gullickson accomplished every Bulldog’s dream.

…and Bass Fishing?

How good of a weekend was it? Georgia’s Ben Cleary and Bo Page even claimed the 2010 BoatU.S. Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship. (h/t David Hale)

If the case can be made for Oklahoma to come out on top in 2010, do the Bulldogs dare to dream about returning to championship-level football this year? After all, the Dawgs are coming off an 8-5 season just like the Sooners. Georgia’s losses to the NFL Draft were mainly in the later rounds; Oklahoma will have to replace four first-round picks. Georgia returns tons of proven talent on offense, some of the nation’s best special teams personnel, and expectations are sky-high for the new defense.

Phil Steele tips his cap to this line of thinking by naming Georgia one of his possible surprise teams for 2010. Steele doesn’t go all the way and predict Georgia to be a top-10 team, but that’s understandable. Many are the preseason polls who went out on a limb for Georgia in 2008 and 2009 and were rewarded for it with consecutive seasons that finished below expectations. But Steele is at least acknowledging that the potential is there for Georgia to make some noise this year if a few questions get answered affirmatively.

There are enough differences between Oklahoma and Georgia to see why pundits like Steele aren’t as bullish on the Dawgs as they might be on the Sooners. It starts at quarterback where Landry Jones earned enough playing time last season to be considered a returning starter. Aaron Murray is pretty much where Jones was a year ago, but Murray at least has the advantage of knowing he’ll start as a freshman.

There’s also the difference in how each team got to 8-5 last year. Oklahoma lost four games to top-20 finishers by a combined 12 points. Georgia got routed by Florida and a middling Tennessee team and lost to unimpressive LSU and Kentucky teams. Oklahoma was missing its Heisman candidate quarterback and all-star tight end. Georgia had some injuries along the way including a key left tackle, but they came by their 8-5 honestly. Both teams can claim a certain amount of unluckiness – Oklahoma’s injuries and close losses and Georgia’s improbable turnover margin – but that’s football.

We can’t forget about the schedule. Georgia might have traded Oklahoma State and LSU for La.-Lafayette and Mississippi State, but they’ll still face four of Steele’s top-25, only one of which will be in Athens. We have no qualms with Oklahoma’s very respectable schedule, but they’ll face just two of Steele’s top-25 along the way, both of which will either be a home or a neutral game.

Stability is probably the biggest difference. Oklahoma had a small change on their defensive staff (welcome Willie Martinez!), but coordinator Brent Venables has been in place since 2004. Georgia will undergo a wholesale transformation of the defense, and it could be cause for concern that Georgia will be one of the few SEC teams to play three conference games in September – two of which will be on the road, and two of which will be against a Steele preseason top-25 team. The defense won’t have much time to find its legs.

Oklahoma will be a highly-ranked team heading into the Texas game if they can get through September and a decent nonconference slate unscathed. Georgia likewise should be on the rise and prove Steele right if the defense can survive September and head to Boulder without a blemish.

Let’s face it – it’s been a disappointing year for most Georgia sports programs. For most fans it all begins and ends with football, and the 2009 season wasn’t won of Georgia’s best. The men’s basketball program took a step forward and has us excited about the future, but the best they could do last season was to play spoiler. The baseball team just wrapped up a season whose futility was historic. Even stalwarts like gymnastics faltered during the past year. Michael Adams summed it up at today’s Athletic Association Board of Directors meeting: “It’s not been our best year on the field.“

While the Bulldog nation has been fending off bored columnists talking about the temperature of Mark Richt’s seat, Damon Evans hasn’t received much scrutiny. Much of that has to do with having a lot to like: the program remains financially strong, the APR results are worth bragging about, and Evans’ first high-profile hire, Mark Fox, seems to have been a good one. We looked at this topic last year on the occasion of Evans’ fifth anniversary as athletic director. There has been a downward trend in Georgia’s national Directors’ Cup standing, and I can’t imagine that the overall performance of Bulldog programs will improve that this year. The summary remains the same: everything else is stellar but actual athletics aren’t doing so well, and the trend remains downward.

It’s probably a surprise then to learn that Georgia finished second in this year’s SEC All-Sports trophy. The Bulldogs finished a distant second behind Florida, but there was also a healthy margin between Georgia and third-place Tennessee.

How did they do it? It should shock no one that Georgia’s women’s programs led the way. The gap between the Florida and Georgia women’s programs was much narrower than the overall gap, and Georgia’s women’s programs finished on average over two places higher in the SEC standings than the Georgia men. Despite that, it wasn’t as bad as you might think for the Bulldog men. Even with the major sports having sub-par seasons, Georgia’s men’s programs finished tied for fourth with Tennessee.

Here’s a look at how the Bulldogs did against the rest of the SEC this year. We use regular season standings where possible, but some sports like golf and swimming use a season-ending tournament or meet to decide the champion.

• Football: T-4th (T-2nd SEC East). Champion: Alabama
• Men’s Basketball: 11th (6th SEC East). Champion: Kentucky
• Women’s Basketball: 5th. Champion: Tennessee
• Baseball: 12th (6th SEC East). Champion: Florida
• Softball: 4th. Champion: Alabama
• Men’s Tennis: 3rd (3rd SEC East). Champion: Tennessee
• Women’s Tennis: T-2nd (T-2nd SEC East). Champion: Florida
• Men’s Golf: 1st (SEC Tournament). Champion: Georgia
• Women’s Golf: 4th (SEC Tournament). Champion: Alabama
• Women’s Soccer: 5th (3rd SEC East). Champion: Florida
• Women’s Volleyball: T-5th (4th SEC East). Champion: LSU
• Gymnastics: 3rd (SEC Championships). Champion: Florida
• Men’s Swimming/Diving: 3rd (SEC Championships). Champion: Auburn
• Women’s Swimming/Diving: 1st (SEC Championships). Champion: Georgia
• Men’s Track & Field: 5th (SEC Outdoor Championships). Champion: Florida
• Women’s Track & Field: 5th (SEC Outdoor Championships). Champion: LSU
• Men’s Cross Country: 5th (SEC Championships). Champion: Alabama
• Women’s Cross Country: 4th (SEC Championships). Champion: Florida

Note: Equestrian is not an SEC sport, but c’mon – they’re national champs.

Other than men’s basketball and baseball, most Georgia programs finished at least in the top half of the conference. Those results probably buoyed Georgia’s place in the All-Sports competition versus programs who might have done well in a few sports but poorly in most of the others.

While maintaining second place in the SEC All-Sport standings might be a nice surprise, it’s very possible that Georgia, for the first time in well over a decade, could dip out of the national top 20 in this year’s Directors’ Cup. Georgia was 25th after the conclusion of the winter sports, and they’ll be helped by several postseason appearances among the spring sports. It’ll be close.

Still, most fans just consider the strength of the football team a proxy for the state of the athletic department. What’s your verdict?

Phil Steele has credibility to burn among the college football punditry, so his preseason placement of Oklahoma at #1 has us all scrambling today to justify the pick. Oklahoma? Not Alabama or Texas or Ohio State? In a season that seems as up in the air as any since 2007, there’s not much conventional wisdom to tell us otherwise. Matt Hinton looks at some of the factors that led to an 8-5 season last year in Norman and concludes that “a healthy, rejuvenated Oklahoma makes about as much sense at No. 1 as anyone else.”

Oklahoma doesn’t have to be a great team; they only have to be better than everyone on their schedule. Here’s their path:

Sept. 4 — Utah State
Sept. 11 — Florida State
Sept. 18 — Air Force
Sept 25 — @ Cincinnati
Oct. 2 — Texas (Dallas)
Oct. 16 — Iowa State
Oct. 23 — @ Missouri
Oct. 30 — Colorado
Nov. 6 — @ Texas A&M
Nov. 13 — Texas Tech
Nov 20 — @ Baylor
Nov. 27 — @ Oklahoma State
Dec. 4 — Big 12 Championship (Dallas)

The nonconference schedule is respectable but not ridiculously daunting. The visit from FSU will tell us a lot, but it will be a home game for Oklahoma and still early in Jimbo Fisher’s turnaround project. The trip to Cincinnati looks interesting, but it’s not last year’s Bearcat team.

Hopes for a championship season, as usual, come down to the Texas game. Both teams will have been tested by some quality opponents by that point. The Longhorns are the best team on the schedule, and claiming that win after an undefeated September would have the Sooners shooting up the Top 10.

If Oklahoma can make it past Texas, the rest of the schedule becomes a challenge of avoiding the upset. Several of those teams will have fair seasons, but none should be favored over a top 15 team. Yes, A&M should be better, and it’s a road game. A visit from Texas Tech could prove interesting if only for the Tuberville factor. The rivalry game with OSU is another challenging road game, but this Cowboy team doesn’t come into 2010 with nearly the expectations of the 2009 squad. They wouldn’t have to face Nebraska until a potential meeting in the Big 12 championship game.

We’ll know by the end of September whether or not Oklahoma is able to claim contender status. There are several potential pitfalls along the rest of the way, but a team with Top 10 aspirations should be able to circle the FSU and Texas games and then take care to not get caught asleep on the road. Even a loss to Texas doesn’t necessarily sink the Sooners. If the season proves to be as wide-open as 2007, a single loss could still leave them in good shape to win the conference and rise to the top of the rankings.

Yes, the 2014 Super Bowl will be at the Meadowlands, and the two teams playing won’t get nearly as much attention during the buildup as the weather forecast.

Weather has played a large part in NFL regular season games and even playoff games, but by and large the choice of Super Bowl locations has served to minimize the weather factor. There have been a few Super Bowls where rain has come into play, but more often than not we’re talking about a game in a dome or a temperate climate.

 I agree with Pat Forde and others who say that this is how it should be. Football is no more a cold-weather sport than it is a broiling-sun-of-September sport. Waxing nostalgic about the Frozen Tundra or the Ice Bowl is a nice way of saying that weather, rather than the players on the field, was the story of the game. We can put up with that en route to the Big Game, but the star of the Super Bowl itself needs to be Brady or Manning or Brees and not Jim Cantore.

This is one thing the SEC gets right – weather has never been a concern for the SEC Championship since the game moved from Birmingham to the Georgia Dome. It’s going to take a tornado to make the biggest game in the nation’s premiere conference anything but a test of elite coaches and players. The Dome has helped the conference showcase its best teams in ideal conditions, and it’s also allowed the associated Chick-fil-A Bowl to become about as successful as a second-tier bowl game can.

The future of the SEC Championship came up a week or so ago when Atlanta Falcons officials stated a preference for a new open-air stadium in downtown Atlanta. A new stadium wouldn’t necessarily mean the end of the Dome, but the management of two large facilities could reasonably strain resources. A Georgia Dome in disrepair might not remain the ideal location for the SEC Championship, and everyone from the Superdome to open-air facilities across the Southeast would be lining up to host the game.

Falcons officials might or might not care about the future of events like the SEC title game, but anyone involved with Atlanta government or sports management should. Had the Falcons pursued an open-air stadium rather than a dome to replace Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, Atlanta would have missed out on the Olympics, several Final Fours and conference tournaments, and it might not enjoy its exclusivity with the SEC football championship.

If public money and oversight is going to be involved in any new stadium for the Falcons, state and city officials can’t accept anything less than a multi-use facility with a retractable roof. Tony Barnhart nails it:

A big part of what has made the SEC championship game one of the great success stories in sport is that weather is not a factor. Weather has been a factor for the Big 12 and the ACC and the results on those championship games has been mixed at best. The SEC, in my opinion, will not play this game in an open air stadium…. My recommendation: Do exactly what Indy did. It kept the RCA Dome in place and built Lucas Oil Stadium right next to it. The transition was pretty seamless and now Indy has one of the best setups in the country. If there is a Big Ten championship game in the future, it’s a pretty good bet that it will be in Indy.

A city like New York might be able to get away with hosting a Super Bowl in its open-air stadium, but even that’s controversial. New stadiums in Phoenix and Dallas have raised the bar in attracting prime sporting events. If future SEC expansion does end up including schools like Texas and/or Texas A&M, Dallas would instantly become a rival to host SEC events that by default have gone to Atlanta. Barnhart’s suggestion is the blueprint for Atlanta remaining the focal point, if not the headquarters, of the SEC.

This is already bordering on the ridiculous, but Auburn is not next in line should the 2004 title become vacated. In every other competition this side of fantasyland, the title would pass to the runner-up of the championship game. That’s Oklahoma – you know, the team chosen to play in the game over Auburn (and Utah).

It hasn’t been the best of years for Bulldog sports, but several programs still have their championship aspirations alive.

Georgia softball won a number of new fans last year with their deep run in the Women’s College World Series, and they’ve had another strong season. They’ve been strong out of conference with sweeps of ACC and Big 12 champs Georgia Tech and Texas, but they only managed 4th place in an ultra-competitive SEC. To illustrate how ridiculously strong the SEC is, Georgia finished 4th in conference and was bounced in the first round of the SEC Tournament, but they received the #6 national seed heading into this year’s NCAA Tournament. That means that Georgia will host both an NCAA regional and, should they advance, a super-regional.

The softball regional begins this weekend – times and ticket information are available here. Georgia will host Radford, Elon, and FSU in their regional.

Men’s tennis has advanced to the Round of 16 in the NCAA Tournament and will host a huge match on Friday evening when Florida comes to town. The Gators, as the #6 seed, are favored over the eleventh-seeded Dawgs. Georgia had a nail-biting 4-3 win over FSU to get this far, and they’ll need a strong home crowd on Friday evening to take on a Florida team that has swept both of its opponents so far. The match will be at 6 p.m. – ticket information is available here.

Georgia will be hosting both the men’s and women’s tennis championships from May 20-31, and it’s a great event whether or not the Bulldogs are still in it. The women were eliminated before this championship round, but the men will try to play the spoiler on their home court. You’ll find live scoring, brackets, highlights, and ticket information here.

Women’s golfer Marta Silva Zamora plays on as an individual at the NCAA championships, but the team failed to qualify for the team championship round for only the second time since 1998. Men’s golf resumes play this weekend at the NCAA South Central Regional in Bryan, Texas. The top five teams from the regional will advance to the national championships. The Georgia men won the SEC championship back in mid-April but haven’t had a competition since.

The site Lost Letterman has a list up of the top 10 football players in Major League Baseball. None of them were Bulldogs, but it did make me think of the relationship between Georgia football and the game of baseball.

When you mention the nexus of baseball and Bulldog football, the name George Lombard probably comes to mind first – at least for fans of my generation. Lombard was a top tailback prospect out of Lovett in 1994 but opted for baseball when the Braves took him in the second round. The Bulldogs ended up turning to freshman Hines Ward at tailback in 1994 before Robert Edwards emerged at the start of the next year. Lombard eventually made it to the majors and played for four big league clubs between 1998 and 2006. His best year was probably 2002 where he played in 72 games for the Detroit Tigers. Lombard has been out of the majors since the end of 2006 and was released by the Cleveland Indians organization in 2009. He’s currently the hitting coach for the class-A Lowell Spinners of the Boston Red Sox organization.

Older fans of course remember Buck Belue who himself was a second round pick in 1978. Buck is most famous for his role on the 1980 national championship football team, but he was also an All-SEC baseball player who initially chose baseball after leaving Georgia.

The most recent Bulldog football player to choose baseball was Xavier Avery. He signed with the Dawgs in 2008 but opted for baseball after the Baltimore Orioles drafted him in the – wait for it – second round. Avery hasn’t made it to the majors yet, but he’s working his way through the Orioles organization in the two years since being drafted. He’s currently playing in the outfield for class-A Frederick.

Georgia’s even seen a baseball player come back to football. We’ll leave it for you to debate how that worked out.

Any others?

The buildup and reaction to the buildup of Arkansas can’t be avoided this week, so we’ll look at the Razorbacks this way: will their schedule help or hurt a team with such increasing expectations? Last season we looked at the Arkansas schedule and saw a stretch where survival was the best they could hope for:

They’ll start the season 1-0, but delivering on the hype surrounding Ryan Mallet and finishing 7-5 or better might require them to come out of that stretch at no worse than 3-4.

That’s just what happened. Arkansas emerged from their gauntlet at 3-4 thanks to wins over Texas A&M and Auburn and then proceeded to run off a string of wins that was only interrupted by an overtime loss to LSU. The friendlier second half of the season helped them rebound and build the kind of momentum that has people talking entering the 2010 season. Will their 2010 schedule be as tough? It’s not as bad, but it presents a similar challenge.

Sept. 4: Tennessee Tech
Sept. 11: Louisiana-Monroe (Little Rock)
Sept. 18: at Georgia
Sept. 25: Alabama
Oct. 9: Texas A&M (Southwest Classic – Arlington, Texas)
Oct. 16: at Auburn
Oct. 23: Ole Miss
Oct. 30: Vanderbilt
Nov. 6: at South Carolina
Nov. 13: UTEP
Nov. 20: at Mississippi State
Nov. 27: LSU (Little Rock)

Non-conference

It’s manageable. The games with Texas A&M and UTEP stand out. Texas A&M should be improved and looking for payback after last year’s big loss to Arkansas. The game in Arlington isn’t exactly an Aggie home game, but it’s still Arkansas’ only trip away from home outside of the SEC. UTEP could put up enough points to make things interesting.

Conference

It’s not that road games at Georgia, Auburn, or South Carolina are easy, but the conference slate lines up about as well as it could for them. Florida drops off the schedule, and they pick up Vanderbilt. They get to play the Alabama-LSU duo within the state of Arkansas.

The challenge

The schedule is once again pretty front-loaded though it’s not as daunting as last year’s grind. They’ll have the chance to run off some wins starting with the Ole Miss game, but in what shape will they arrive at that game? They’ll have to upset Alabama or win on the road at Georgia to avoid starting 2-2 overall and 0-2 in the SEC. More road challenges against A&M and at Auburn present opportunities to pick up another loss. What would a 3-3 start do to this preseason momentum?

Arkansas was an outstanding 8-1 last year at home and neutral sites (making that Georgia win all the more incredible). That 0-4 road mark is what will have to change in order for the Hogs to take the next step this year. Of course each of their four road games last year was against a team who spent time in the Top 10, and that won’t be the case in 2010.

If the Hogs can get through the first half of the season at no worse than 4-2, the schedule affords Arkansas a chance to get to nine wins. South Carolina and Mississippi State are potential pitfalls if only because they’ll be road games. The season finale with LSU is usually interesting, and the unknown direction LSU will take this year adds to the buildup. Will it be, as it was in 2002, a game between two good teams to decide who goes to the Dome? Or will Arkansas have a chance to bury Les Miles?

Getting to the midpoint of the season in good shape will depend on how well the Hogs can do outside of their state. If they can’t get past Alabama in Fayetteville, they’re going to have to win 2 of 3 on the road against Georgia, A&M, and Auburn in order to emerge at least 4-2 with hopes of a breakthrough season more or less intact. Their 7-5 regular season a year ago was progress, but just maintaining that kind of record would be a disappointment this year. If they leave Auburn at 3-3 or worse, they’ll have very little room for error down the stretch to come out of the season with a record to match the preseason hype.

Congratulations to Georgia’s NFL Draft picks for 2010:

• Rennie Curran: 3rd round (Tennessee)
• Geno Atkins: 4th round (Cincinnati)
• Reshad Jones: 5th round (Miami)
• Jeff Owens: 7th round (Philadelphia)
• Kade Weston: 7th round (New England)

Congratulations also to Michael Moore (Detroit), Prince Miller (Baltimore), and Bryan Evans (Cincinnati) who all signed free agent deals after the draft. Moore is excited to be teaming up with former Bulldog Matthew Stafford in Detroit, and at least one analyst is high on Bryan Evans’ chances with the Bengals.

Mark Richt has now had 51 players drafted in 9 NFL drafts. He’s had as many as 8 and as few as 4 taken in a single year. There have been 8 first-round picks and 24 players selected in the first 3 rounds. Those are impressive totals, but do they smooth over more recent problems?

In 2008 we pointed out how the draft was much kinder to Richt’s players through 2005. Bulldogs were still being drafted, but the balance had shifted from the earlier rounds to the later rounds. From 2002-2005, Georgia had 14 players selected in the first three rounds. From 2006-2008, that number dropped to 4. The stellar class of 2009 alone eclipsed that number with 5 of Georgia’s 6 draftees coming in the first three rounds.

The 2010 draft looked more like those 2006-2008 years. Georgia still had a respectable 5 players selected, but only one came in the first three rounds.

It’s not a surprise that somewhat tepid draft results have come during some tumultuous seasons in Athens. With the exception of 2007, the program hasn’t measured up to what it was through 2005. And, with the exception of the 2009 draft, the Bulldogs have landed in fewer of the valuable high round selections.

The future isn’t bleak – Georgia will likely have a couple of higher round selections in 2011, especially if A.J. Green decides to come out. A year or two of sub-par draft results doesn’t necessarily reflect on the talent or coaching going on – you might just have a young team or low numbers of draft-eligible players in a given year. But over 4 or 5 years, the trend becomes a little more alarming.

The question of talent or coaching was beaten to death as we suffered through the disappointing 2009 season, but it’s unavoidable when talking about draft picks. Through 2008, defense dominated Georgia’s first and second round picks (8 defenders vs. 4 from the offense). That’s changing – Georgia’s three highest picks from the 2009 draft played on offense, and Georgia’s best prospects for 2011 – at this point – are Boling and Green. After having eight defensive players taken second round or better through 2006, Georgia hasn’t had one since Tim Jennings was taken in the second round of the 2006 draft.

You might see that as justification for changing the defensive staff. After all, several of the players in the meantime were highly rated prospects. Rashad Jones carried the mythical five stars, and others weren’t far behind. It’s not that Georgia’s had chopped liver for defensive talent – all five players taken in 2010 were from the defense, and several defensive players drafted since 2006 (Howard, Chas. Johnson, Moses, and now possibly Curran) have all been good, productive selections. Having three defensive tackles taken in a single draft is a big deal regardless of the rounds. The defense should have been better than it was.

But there is still a question, regardless of coaching, whether Georgia is still getting the kind of defensive talent that it did 5+ years ago. There are signs of life across the board – Houston, Rambo, several of the corners – and a lot of promising young players. Perhaps the new defensive staff can make the difference in these guys being higher round picks with guaranteed money and a likely spot on the team versus lower round picks who will find themselves in fierce competition for roster slots. Successful teams in the SEC consistently have those elite defenders, and Georgia used to.

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament will expand to 68 teams in 2011 and will feature four play-in games to meet each of the top four seeds. It’s not the 96-team nightmare many feared, but I doubt that this move will silence talk of further expansion down the road.

Perhaps the bigger news is the new 14-year $10.8 billion broadcasting deal with CBS and Turner. Under the terms of the agreement, all tournament games will be available on one of four networks (CBS and three Turner stations – TBS, TNT and truTV (the former CourtTV)). The deal also means that CBS will eventually lose its exclusive control of the national title game.

Through 2015, CBS will cover the regional finals, the Final Four and the championship game. But starting in 2016, CBS and Turner will split the regional finals and the Final Four, and the national championship game will alternate annually between CBS and TBS.

That’s similar to the move of the BCS from strictly broadcast (FOX/ABC) to cable (ESPN). You’ll have to have cable or satellite to find much of the NCAA Tournament in the future. ESPN was another potential destination for the NCAA Tournament, but the CBS/Turner deal won out.

The deal is worth $771 million per year. That’s up nominally over 40% from the $545 million the former deal paid, but that previous deal was signed 11 years ago. You’ll have to do the math to see if the tournament has kept up its value in real terms (vs. inflation), but at first glance it doesn’t seem as if the tournament is worth a great deal more now than it was at the end of the 1990s.

Did you know the NFL Draft starts tonight? It’s not Saturday – the NFL changed the format up this year to put the first round in prime time. We wish all of the Bulldogs up for the draft luck – Curran, Atkins, Owens, Moore, and Jones could all hear their name called. Georgia had six players taken in the 2009 draft – including five in the first three rounds. It doesn’t look as strong this year, but there should still be another solid group of Red and Black headed to the NFL to join the long list of players already in the league.

Credit to David Hale for not only dignifying the question but taking the time to do some very serious thinking about the subject. I admit that I can’t give the topic of Mark Richt having lost control of the program the same kind of respect. The thing is – I’ve heard the same hand-wringing ever since RingGate following the 2002 championship season. Every time something new comes up, the same people run around shrieking “HE’S LOST CONTROL! HE’S LOST CONTROL!” I’m numb to it.

Hyperbole about the Georgia program being out of control usually comes from one of three sources:

1. Media talking heads looking to stir the pot. And, oh, do insecure fans take the bait.
2. Fans of rivals relishing the chance to play gotcha.
3. Georgia fans, still in middle school, upset that the latest incident has cost them an opportunity to trash talk rivals about their own problems.

Concern about an “out of control” program begins for rational adults when Richt facilitates, covers up, or overlooks illegal or detrimental behavior. When that happens we’ll have something worth talking about. I don’t mean to diminish the seriousness of the individual offenses or deny the appropriateness of justice. But if we’re talking about these incidents in the context of Richt’s control of the program, you’re going to have to find some specific flaws within the organization or culture of the program for me to put any portion of this on Richt.

It’s not an offseason without talk of conference realignment. The conferences themselves are chipping in this year by talking about everything from the strategic (where does Notre Dame fit in?) to the desperate (Central Florida would just be perfect for the Big East). Talk of Big 10 expansion is heating up, and Joe Paterno – long a proponent of expansion – sees a future with “12, 14 team conferences and maybe even 16 team conferences.”

At that point, the notion of a conference has little to do with traditional alignments or even regional homogeneity. When the idea of a 14-team conference came up, Brian Cook wrote that “the thing about 14 teams is at that point it’s hardly a conference, it’s two conferences with a scheduling agreement and a weird playoff at the end.” It’s a revenue-sharing agreement and an administrative abstraction.

When you look at a conference that way, is the BCS alliance itself just a few steps away from becoming a 64-team league managing its own scheduling, TV deals, and – yes – postseason. Of course it’s not likely that those in charge of the major conferences will give up their fiefdoms that easily, so the alliance of power conferences will remain the guiding force of college football.

In that spirit, why limit this growth to the Big 10? Matt Hinton speculates about the dominoes that might fall if the Big East is raided once again. He writes somewhat tongue-in-cheek about “visions of a land ruled by imperialist super conferences.” The Big 10 might kick things off, but will their move stand alone or cause ripples that realign the other major conferences?

If you’re disposed to favor a playoff, this gravitational attraction of teams into larger and larger units might not be the worst thing. If the BCS conferences realign to, say, four 16-team conferences, the skeleton of an eight-team playoff is taken care of. Each conference would have a championship game of its divisional winners, and you’re left with four conference champions to do with as you please. Because the NCAA has abdicated when it comes to a Division I football championship, the power lies with those conferences to restructure the BCS as the conferences realign.

If the Big 10 does kick off another round of realignment leading to one or more superconferences, the wall between those on either side of the superconferences will continue to grow to the point that those outside of a hypothetical group of 64 superconference teams might as well form their own subdivision within Division I. Hurt most by the realignment will eventually be those left in the shells of conferences like the Big East. Those programs will go from being revenue-sharing partners in a BCS conference to fending for themselves on the wrong side of the superconference velvet rope.

One conference that’s been conspicuously absent from expansion talk has been the ACC. The Big 10 is positioning itself as a possible first superconference. The SEC is strong enough to be one of the players in realignment. You’d figure the Pac 10 would survive in some form. The Big 12 is questionable but has a major player in Texas. Most assume the Big East would be the likely victim of any Big 10 expansion, but what becomes of the ACC in our group of four 16-team superconferences? What would you think of an SEC with Clemson, Georgia Tech, FSU, and Miami?