If you’ve dipped your toe into the waters of the 2010 recruiting pool, you’ve heard of Nick Montana. Yes, son of that Montana. Montana is rated the #12 pro-style passer in the nation by Rivals.com and had offers from, among others, LSU, Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, Notre Dame, and several schools closer to his home in California.

It’s no surprise when a prospect decides to stay within his own time zone, but Montana’s Tuesday commitment to the Washington Huskies is definitely getting a few double-takes. The Huskies were 0-12 last year and haven’t had a winning season since 2002. New Washington coach Steve Sarkisian brings a resume that includes work at Southern Cal with Carson Palmer, Matt Leinart, and Mark Sanchez, and Montana explained, “You just have to look at all the guys he’s put into the pros.” The Montanas are taking the gamble that Sarkisian will bring that same Midas touch with him as he starts to rebuild the reeling Washington program.

Last month we learned that Comcast would add ESPNU before the football season, bringing the SEC television lineup into focus for many in metro Atlanta. Now the AJC confirms the speculation that Peachtree TV will be the outlet of choice for regional ESPN-produced broadcasts. The deal also includes a lot of SEC men’s basketball on Saturdays and Wednesdays starting during conference play in January as well as eight Sundays of SEC women’s basketball.

The national broadcasts will still be on CBS, ESPN, ESPNU, and ESPN2. Think of it this way – instead of WATL 36 or wherever else you used to look for the regional JP games, they’ll be on Peachtree TV now (only at noon instead of 12:30 – oy). The enhanced basketball coverage is especially welcome. It’ll be a double-header every Saturday during the conference schedule as well as one game each Wednesday (in addition to national games on ESPN as before).

Peachtree TV is available in standard and high definition format on major cable and satellite providers in Atlanta. Keep in mind this is for the Atlanta area only – Peachtree TV is a local channel and not a superstation or national network. Fans in other markets will find the games on different stations or as before on Gameplan. We’ll be happy to post those stations here as deals are announced – just send word.

The story of Robert Dozier is pretty well known among hardcore Georgia basketball fans. He signed with Georgia, was denied admission, and ended up at Memphis. It wasn’t exactly a secret that irregularities with Dozier’s SAT score were the source of his trouble getting into Georgia.

With the much higher-profile case of Derrick Rose’s alleged SAT cheating now all over the news, Dozier’s relatively dated and obscure story suddenly seems a lot more interesting and relevant.

Both the softball and baseball teams wrapped up their seasons on Sunday, but the tone with which the seasons ended couldn’t have been more different.

The softball team fell 9-3 on Sunday night to Washington, assuring the Huskies of a spot in the championship series against Florida and ending an exhausting run of four games over two days for Georgia. Along the way the Dawgs eliminated Missouri, upset Big 10 champ Michigan, and pushed a strong Washington team to the brink of elimination by lighting up one of the best pitchers in the game.

Though the two departing seniors were important pieces of the team, the story you couldn’t avoid over the weekend was that everyone else will be back for at least two more years. Finding a new pitching ace will be critical to the team’s future, but the powerful offense will be more or less intact.

All that is no guarantee that the team will be able to go as far or even deeper in the coming years, but you’ve got to like their chances. There’s no question though the Georgia softball is firmly on the national map now, and the underclassmen have a taste of what it will take to win it all.

At the very least, Georgia softball won themselves a lot of new fans from the Super Regional comebacks through the WCWS run. I’m one of them. They were entertaining to watch, played loose even under the incredible pressure of the moment, and love playing for Georgia – how can you not like a player who knows the significance of wearing #34 at Georgia? Names like Schnake, Schlopy, Hesson, and Goler were on the radar of even the football-only crowd this weekend, and they’ll have a lot more people tuning in to see how they follow it up next year.

The outlook was far less sunny for the baseball team after it fell to Ohio State 13-6 in the elimination game. First was the embarassment of losing to a team that set records for futility its two regional losses. But more troubling was the way in which Georgia lost the game. Three errors. Baserunning blunders. Less-than-acceptable effort from an upperclassman starter. I guess you can credit Ohio State for not collapsing after falling behind 5-0 to a team that routed them on Friday, but the loss is as much on Georgia as it is for the Buckeyes rising to the occasion.

Leadership was a frequent scapegoat in the many autopsies of the 2008 football season, and it sounds as if some of the same themes are coming up around the baseball team. Coach Perno has always been frank and direct with his thoughts, but the postgame comments after Sunday’s loss were fascinating in terms of what wasn’t held back.

During the team’s 2007 CWS run, the team certainly leaned on veterans Beckham, Peisel, and Fields. When players like Massanari, Lewis, Cerione, Poythress, and Weaver turned it up in the postseason, the result was a solid team built for a deep run. But absent those 2007 stars, the returning veterans couldn’t carry the team down the stretch and into the postseason.

Will next year continue the even-year success that Georgia has enjoyed this decade? Certainly there’s a strong core of rising sophomores returning, and there’s another strong recruiting class coming in (subject to the draft of course). But who will be considered the leaders of the team? Poythress is surely going to be drafted. Cerione will be a senior, but can a guy who “just can’t handle his emotions” (according to Perno) be looked to as a leader? After he was pulled from the game and Perno’s postgame comments which accused Cerione of “jump(ing) into the fence just to jump into the fence”, part of me wondered if Cerione had played his last game at Georgia. Joey Lewis looks to be the sole everyday player who you’d feel comfortable about as a senior leader, and he might be drafted too.

David Ching has some thoughts and additional information about next year’s roster. Pitching (and especially the bullpen) is a whole other can of worms. McRee’s disappointing season might make him a less-attractive draft pick this year, but can he find the control to go with his pro-quality stuff and emerge as the ace? Can Weaver shake off a woeful end to the season and reestablish himself as the go-to guy in the bullpen?

OK, so the SEC won’t be seeing signing day lists of 30+ players anymore.

I predict it won’t take but a year or two until some enterprising coach gets accused of playing fast and loose with the new rules. After all, the NCAA already limits teams to 25 signees per year. The new SEC rule is a response to the back room accounting that developed as a way to get around the NCAA’s limit. Oh, him? He counts towards last year’s 25.

One thing I haven’t read yet is how this new rule will deal with grayshirting. That’s when a freshman agrees to delay enrollment for a semester with the understanding that he’ll be on scholarship thereafter. Will these marginally-qualified prospects who brought up the rear in the oversigned classes still commit and just be encouraged to wait a semester instead of signing a Letter of Intent?

Somehow the coaches’ poll survived for years without transparency, and I imagine that it’s not exactly going to be the Wild West doomsday scenario now that the transparency has been taken away. It’s not a move in the right direction of course, but it’s not the end of the world either. If bias is a concern, and it probably should be, maybe the two highest and lowest votes for each team could be discarded.

Anyway, the coaches’ poll isn’t the only imperfection among the BCS components. The Harris poll has its own problems, and the various computer polls operate under their own shroud of obscurity. The idea of a selection committee to seed the BCS has been floated before, and that might be the best solution to put polls back into the trivial role they play in other sports. A selection committee would have its own affiliations and biases of course, but they’d at least be sorting out the teams face-to-face.

I understand why Mike Slive wants the SEC football coaches to play nice. His product is the SEC, and real dollars are at stake these days. But as much as “we’re all in this together,” the livelihood of those 12 coaches depends on their ability to outperform the other 11. The pressure to find and exploit an advantage is tremendous, and self-preservation can be a powerful motivator. Slive’s threat of a fine might drive the sniping out of the public eye, but it will just continue to simmer underneath the surface in the underworld of recruiting where negative recruiting is a way of life.

I kind of liked having the tension bubble up into the public eye. Of course it was good fodder for fans, but on a more serious level a peer calling out another coach brought to light some of the tactics and outrageous behavior that goes on in recruiting and elsewhere behind the scenes. If transparency is good for the polls, it can also counter and shame coaches behaving badly. The “pumping gas” row was a great example – it forced a coach out from the shadows to address and defend his recruiting methods in a way the media never could. Those derogatory comments will still be made to recruits, but the ability to confront something like that in a direct way has been diminished.

If there’s one lesson from this Memphis cheating scandal (other than Calipari’s ability to stay one step ahead of trouble), it’s the absolute mockery made of the one-and-done rule. In order to become eligible and get that one year of college at a high-profile program, Rose allegedly not only had someone take his SAT but also had grades changed at his Chicago high school. It might be to the detriment of the college game, but these one-and-done guys have no business in college, and it’s ridiculous that the NCAA – with all of its PR about the “student-athlete” – would be a party to it. Let them go pro, head to Europe, or commit to a college for three years.

Every time I see an article about a “Rooney Rule” coming to college sports, I ask myself, “don’t these colleges already have hiring procedures in place?” Our institutions of higher learning pride themselves on their diverse faculty and student bodies. If anything, they’re sometimes criticized for going too far in the interests of promoting diversity. So to me this seems like an issue of capitulation on the part of college administrators. If diversity in the coaching ranks is a priority, administrators should hold their athletic departments responsible for following the same hiring process as the academic side where you hear much less complaining about a lack of minority representation. Or maybe it’s easier to wait for action to be taken at the conference or NCAA level so that the administration doesn’t run the risk of being seen as meddling in athletics.

SEC commissioner Mike Slive has lobbied for a college football playoff, but even playoff advocates don’t want the government anywhere near the issue.

“The last time I looked, we were in a recession, fighting a war in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Slive said. “We’ve got a health care program that desperately needs help and I would hope that the Congress will make sure that they work on these problems and let us take care of collegiate athletics.”

After learning that Georgia wouldn’t host a regional in this year’s NCAA baseball tournament, the only question was the destination. Georgia will be the #2 seed in the Tallahassee regional hosted of course by #1 seed FSU. #4 seed Marist and #3 seed Ohio State are the other teams taking part in the regional. Georgia will open play against Ohio State at noon on Friday (ESPNU).

If the Dawgs emerge from the Tallahassee Regional, the bracket has them playing the winner of the Oklahoma regional (hosted by the Sooners if they win their regional).

Georgia and FSU have played twice this decade in the postseason. FSU was sent to Athens for the 2006 regionals. The Seminoles beat Georgia 6-4 in a winner’s bracket game, and Georgia had to win two straight over the ‘Noles to advance. Georgia handled FSU 7-1 in the second game the Bulldogs played on Sunday, and they wrapped up the regional with a tight 3-2 win on Monday night thanks in part to a great pitching performance by Trevor Holder.

The most infamous series between the two teams was the 2001 Super Regional in Athens. Georgia advanced to their first College World Series since the 1990 title season, but the big story of the weekend was the arrival of Kudzu Hill and the Georgia crowd as a real advantage for the Diamond Dawgs. FSU coach Mike Martin commented,

”Georgia deserved to win. They played outstanding. The atmosphere was unbelievable. This environment was as tough as I’ve seen in 22 years of coaching. We don’t ever want to come here again.”

Georgia’s homefield advantage came through over the Noles again in 2006, but they’ll need to find their own motivation heading into a tough place to play at Tallahassee. The Seminoles were the top seed of the ACC tournament last week, but they fell to Virginia in the championship game, possibly costing the ‘Noles a national seed. FSU was 42-16 on the year and ranked #12 by Baseball America entering the postseason.

The Dawgs split a pair of games in Tallahassee in 2008.

The Dawgs weren’t one of the top eight national seeds of course, but the SEC is still well-represented among the national seeds:

1. Texas
2. Cal State Fullerton
3. LSU
4. North Carolina
5. Arizona State
6. UC Irvine
7. Oklahoma
8. Florida

Eight SEC teams received bids: LSU, Florida, Ole Miss, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, and Vanderbilt.

It’s been a week of good news for sports fans with Comcast cable. First the cable company and the NFL reached a settlement ending the ridiculous squabble over the NFL Network. Now it’s official that Comcast will add ESPNU to most markets, especially in the South, in time for football season. As an added feature, Comcast will also add access to ESPN360.com which more or less means FREE GAMEPLAN.

I’m glad to see the news, but – honestly – it’s about time. These are basic networks and features that other cable and satellite companies have offered for years. Comcast isn’t doing its subscribers some big favor; they’re playing catch-up to the competition.

ESPNU is important because it’s a key part of ESPN’s $2.25 billion deal with the SEC announced last year (that linked article is a very good summary of what’s going to change). ESPNU is also likely to be the home of several SEC basketball (men’s and women’s) games as well as coverage of “Olympic sports”. Here’s a reminder of how it will break down for football:

• CBS still gets the first pick for the 3:30 slot.
• ESPN and ESPN2 will continue national broadcasts of the #2 and #3 SEC games each week.
• ESPNU will carry at least 13 additional SEC games, and most will be in prime time.
• ESPN will also produce and brand regional broadcasts to take the place of the 12:30 JP games. Word on the DawgVent has these games on Peachtree TV in Atlanta, but they’ll be available on other local stations across the region (just like the JP games were – just check local listings each week). These regional games will also be available as part of the ESPN Gameplan package and also on ESPN360.com.

Got all that? The main point is that there will be a ton of SEC football on TV beginning this fall, and now most major cable and satellite providers will have it all. I only hope that HD feeds are included as well. Since JP/Lincoln Financial went to HD for the regional games last year, a return to standard def broadcasts by ESPN would be a step backwards.

PS…I know I’m asking for some dish evangelism with this post, but my unhealthy attachment to my TivoHD means I’m stuck with cable.

Poor Anthony Grant and Mark Fox. They’re going about the business of getting settled, setting up staffs, establishing recruiting ties, and doing all the right things to get their new programs off on the right foot. Meanwhile John Calipari lands at Kentucky, finalizes the nation’s top recruiting class, and sets the Wildcats up as the presumptive favorite for the national title in Year 1.

Top-rated point guard John Wall ended the speculation today by announcing that he’ll join Calipari’s Kentucky team. He’ll complete a class of six newcomers who are all among the top 40 prospects in the nation according to Rivals.com.

With the SEC still recovering from a down period, Kentucky is now the clear favorite to win the league in 2010. Could they dominate the league like Calipari’s Memphis teams came to dominate C-USA? Given the expectations put on even ordinary Kentucky teams, would anything short of a national title for this group be a big disappointment (not to mention great comedy for the rest of us)? We might only get one year to find out – Wall and others in the class are considered one-and-done prospects who will put in only one season in college before jumping to the NBA.

Calipari has made things tough enough for newcomers like Grant and Fox, but even proven SEC veterans Pearl, Donovan, and Stansbury have to be a little uncomfortable now.

The NCAA’s Double-A Zone has a roundup of articles from conference spring meetings, and the economy is naturally a common topic. The ACC dove right in:

“ESPN.com’s Heather Dinich wrote, “cost containment” is a pressing issue during the first day of meetings.”

The ACC discussed several cost-cutting measures including moving the ACC baseball tournament in 2010 from Boston’s Fenway Park to Greensboro, N.C. But the conference’s coaches and adminstrators aren’t so quick to scale back their annual beach trip spring meeting. The ACC spring meetings are being held at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, and any Dawg fan who’s made the trip to Jacksonville knows that the ACC reps aren’t exactly slumming it. That’s raised some eyebrows…

“I think they need to re-look at this Amelia Island [trip],” (N.C. State college of management department head Art Padilla) said.

That’s not to pick on the ACC…they have a multi-year commitment to the Ritz-Carlton, and I doubt we’ll see very many conferences scaling back to the point of booking meeting space at the local VFW.

Mark Richt took a lot of heat last year over Georgia’s off-field discipline problems, but one thing we didn’t see was responsibility passed on down the chain of command. And you definitely didn’t see the University president calling out a position coach.

Tired of all the trouble that Florida State’s wide receivers are getting into, over and over and over and over again? Well, so too is Florida State President T.K. Wetherell. In a recent interview with the Tallahassee Democrat, Wetherell said it’s time for receivers coach Lawrence Dawsey to “step up” his efforts to control his players.

Jeez…and we think we have a meddling president. But more to the point, is Bobby Bowden actually responsible for anything at Florida State anymore other than seeing through an appeal to the NCAA in order to salvage his legacy?

You’ve got to hand it to Gary Stokan. It takes some incredible sales and persuasion skills to get Georgia fans and administrators to even consider giving up a home game to play a regular season neutral site game 90 minutes down the road in Atlanta.

I can understand why schools like Alabama and Virginia Tech might like to play in Atlanta. It’s a beachhead into some very good recruiting turf. It’s also the only neutral site game of the season for those schools, so the impact to the home schedule is more acceptable.

But Georgia? Why would a program give up a game at one of college football’s top 10 venues in order to play just down the road at a smaller stadium with a lesser game day experience? Why would we entertain the thought of playing a game against a quality opponent in our own backyard while limiting the number of fans and season ticket holders who would be able to attend and diluting our home advantage? Why would we tell the Athens economy – heavily dependent on the University and Georgia football – to stuff it while serving to line the pockets of the Atlanta Sports Council and their Atlanta partners?

Recruiting? It’s not as if prospects from the state of Georgia are unaware of the University of Georgia. Clearly any opponent would have more to gain on the recruiting front. Again, it’s an issue of surrendering a big home field advantage. At Sanford Stadium, Georgia could actually host recruits for such a big game and use the occasion as an opportunity to sell the overall program and campus. That’s not possible at the Dome where recruits would have to watch from the stands or at home.

I also think the exposure angle is overblown. Instead of getting to show off Sanford Stadium and Athens rocking for a big game, we’d be showcasing the Georgia Dome and Atlanta. The same television coverage of a game at the Dome would be there for a quality game in Athens.

This isn’t a strength-of-schedule question. Is it implied that Georgia couldn’t otherwise attract a big opponent to play in Athens? I don’t buy it. If we can find a big opponent, why wouldn’t we want every possible advantage to actually win the game while showing off one of college football’s greatest settings? Yes, a return trip would be in order. That’s how these things work, and, besides – aren’t high-profile road games supposed to be good things for us these days? Playing a tough opener is fine…just do it in Athens. If we’re going to play in the Dome, let it be in December.

I don’t blame Stokan. He’s looking out for his city and the people who pay him. I’m just surprised that Georgia fans and especially those in charge of the program would be so willing to line up to be used.

Of course I’m pleased that Georgia fared well in the current APR figures. With graduation set for this weekend the APR release is a timely reminder of what’s most important to many of Georgia’s student-athletes. But as schools nationwide release and compare their progress rates, remember that the APR is a measure of academic progress and not necessarily of quality.

While I’m not claiming that Georgia (or anyone else) has an inflated APR because their players are all basketweaving majors or that those with low APRs are all struggling with astrophysics degrees, we also know that all majors and all universities are not the same. Progress towards any degree is better than no degree at all, so congratulations are still in order for those, especially the student-athletes, who are responsible for this good news.

We’ve discussed before that academic progress can be another area where money matters. We shouldn’t be surprised that just a single BCS conference school, Ole Miss, is among those getting dinged for a subpar football APR. Only two were penalized last year. Though the big schools appear more often on the men’s basketball list, the schools most likely to be penalized by the APR remain those smaller state schools who are less likely to have the fleet of tutors or academic centers that keep student-athletes on track.

The income disparity between the big programs and conferences and everyone else has been a hot topic lately for obvious reasons. The APR news is just one more data point. If you have the money to maintain a strong academic support system (and you place any kind of priority on academics), you probably did just fine on your APR numbers. It will be interesting to see on the heels of this news if some of the smaller conferences and schools begin to turn the BCS discussion from a debate about postseason structure to a more nuanced question of academics and socioeconomic opportunity.

It’s not hard to sound like the adult in the room next to people that equate a wildly successful and growing sport with a disaster of an economic system, so John Swofford came across pretty well last week.

There are many valid points and counterpoints when it comes to the playoff discussion, and folks coming at the problem from any angle have to concede the many tradeoffs that come with any postseason proposal. Swofford and others are appearing on behalf of the BCS have put forward some very familiar (and valid) defenses. The logistical concerns involved with a college football playoff are, I think, very underrated.

But Swofford’s concern that a playoff is a threat to the future of bowl games, though one of the most-reported parts of his testimony, was probably also the weakest.

Sponsorships and TV revenue that now go to bowl games would instead be spent on playoff games, "meaning that it will be very difficult for any bowl, including the current BCS bowls, which are among the oldest and most established in the game’s history, to survive," said BCS coordinator John Swofford in prepared testimony. "Certainly the twenty-nine games that are not part of the BCS would be in peril."

It’s not that a playoff wouldn’t impact the bowl landscape. It’s reasonable to expect that. But would it really be the end of bowls as we know them? Even if so, why should we care?

The BCS that Swofford defends is already a clear line of demarcation between the haves and have-nots of college football. If you wanted to devise a system that marginalized all but a select group of bowl games, you could hardly do better than the BCS. "Old and established" bowl games such as the Cotton and Citrus that as recently as 20 years ago played a role in deciding the national championship are now afterthoughts. Even New Year’s Day, once the sacred national holiday of college football and home of many of these traditional bowls, has been trampled as the BCS stretches the season an extra week in order to milk as much prime time as possible.

If Swofford’s reasoning is correct, why hasn’t all of the money and sponsorships and TV interest shifted to that top tier of bowls, the BCS? To be certain, those bowls have become very big money-makers. At the same time, other bowls continue to flourish despite being relegated to exhibition status. New ones are added almost every year so long as a sponsor and a time slot on ESPN can be found. It’s surprising that some of college football’s most influential figures can underestimate the demand that’s out there for the game.

No matter how much we romanticize them, bowls, at their most basic level, are business arrangements between a host city and sponsor, a TV network, and the teams playing in the game. If that arrangement works, the bowl succeeds. Even games that result in a financial loss for some of the parties aren’t necessarily a failure. The imputed value of the exposure and the ability to say you played in a bowl is worth something. Several bowls have survived and become annual traditions. Others have failed (anyone remember the Cherry Bowl?) Others take their place with all the tradition of a delivery pizza or a dot com. The process carries all of the same nice warm, fuzzy charm as a stock exchange.

Swofford’s job is to protect the business interests of the BCS conferences and their bowls and network partners, and that’s fine. Business is good. Congress has to realize that there are real economic reasons why the BCS works, and there will be much resistance to change from the key players who have a lot at stake. Just don’t expect us to believe that the BCS is concerned with any bowls other than the big five…we may be fools, but we’re not members of Congress.