States like California, Texas, Florida, and Georgia are usually among the first mentioned when you’re talking about the places with the most concentrated football talent. But which state put the most players into the first round of the 2009 NFL Draft? Yep…tiny New Jersey.

• Eugene Monroe
• B.J. Raji
• Knowshon Moreno
• Malcolm Jenkins
• Brian Cushing
• Donald Brown
• Kenny Britt

Texas was next with six first round picks. I don’t know if it’s more amazing that New Jersey had the most first round picks or that the states of Florida and Georgia didn’t manage a single first-round pick between them.

Rutgers football has had some of their best seasons (relatively speaking) over the past couple of years, and how much better would they have been keeping all of that Garden State talent at home? Schiano has a reputation for being able to recruit down in Florida, and it’s certainly worked to bring that program up from next to nothing, but we’ll see if the recent success of Rutgers can keep some local talent from crossing the Delaware. About a third of the first round picks came from the relatively small New Jersey-DC-Maryland-Virginia area, and tidbits like that can’t sit well with fans of certain mid-Atlantic region schools.

It’s also worth noting that only three first-round picks, all from California, came from hometowns west of Texas. At least as far as the first round was concerned, you could draw a line from Dallas to New York City and come within a couple hundred miles of most of this year’s top NFL picks.

It was pretty much a formality. Courtney Kupets has won the 2009 Honda Award as the nation’s top collegiate gymnast. She was a finalist for the award as a freshman, won it as a sophomore, and was on her way to repeating last year before a season-ending injury. Teammate Katie Heenan kept the award at Georgia in 2008. Kupets joins Kim Arnold as Georgia’s only multiple Honda Award winners.

This award cements her place at the top of collegiate gymnastics, and she’s now eligible to be considered for the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year Award given later this spring. She’s deserving of that award as well; she’s already the most accomplished collegiate gymnast ever, and the case can be made for her place in the discussion of the best college athletes in any sport.

Photo: UGA Sports Communications

McFarlane Toys is known for their incredibly detailed action figures. They have action figures for everything from The Godfather to Elvis.

They also have an extensive catalog of professional sports action figures, and they’ve just announced a line of six-inch figures portraying only six NFL stars in their college uniforms. Hines Ward is one of the six.

Going by the promo pictures (a couple are below…visit the site for more), it’s a winner and is pretty damn accurate – right down to the infamous black stripe. Though to be complete, they’d have to have another figure of Ward throwing a pass and still another running the ball. The figures should be available around August. Pricing isn’t set yet, but their other sports figures go for about $10.

Longtime University of Georgia radio announcer Larry Munson will be inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame during the organization’s 50th Annual Awards program scheduled May 2-4 in Salisbury, NC.

“This is an overwhelming tribute, and I am honored to be selected to this group of outstanding and accomplished professionals,” said Munson. “To be elected to any Hall of Fame is quite humbling, but to be chosen to the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame is the ultimate honor.”

One of AJC recruiting writer Michael Carvell’s final online posts last week was a suggestion for Mark Richt to thumb his nose at an NCAA bylaw that would force Richt to miss the graduation ceremony of incoming freshman lineman and Troup County valedictorian Chris Burnette. The story of Richt and his promise to attend Burnette’s graduation isn’t new in these parts, but Carvell’s recommendation that Richt should accept a minor violation and go anyway breathed a little bit of new life into the story.

David Pickle, the NCAA’s managing director of publishing, responds to Carvell’s suggestion and provides the NCAA’s perspective as well as clarification on the rules and processes involved. Once you get past the insitutional defensiveness, the response makes several key points:

• The decision for Richt not to attend was not an edict handed down from the NCAA; it was an (apparently correct) application of the rules by the UGA compliance office.
• As Carvell noted, Georgia could ask the NCAA for a waiver. They had not asked for a waiver at the time of Carvell’s post.
• The NCAA isn’t completely rigid when it comes to the application of its rules. To quote, "One of the hallmarks of Myles Brand’s administration as NCAA president has been to provide flexibility to schools when the circumstances of a situation appear to fall outside of the intended scope of a rule."
• At least in the opinion of the author, it would be entirely "appropriate" for a waiver to be granted in this case.

So it’s not exactly correct that an NCAA bylaw is forcing Richt to break his promise. The ball seems to be in Georgia’s court. A waiver would allow Richt to attend the graduation, and it would be with the NCAA’s blessing instead of in defiance of the bylaws. Academics gets its time in the spotlight, there’s no violation, and everyone’s happy. A waiver at least deserves the effort.

Your move, Georgia.

Is Courtney Kupets the greatest college athlete ever?

It’s obviously a loaded question. So many people in so many sports over so many years. To even begin to make a claim like that, you’d have to consider her place as…

• The best Georgia gymnast. You’re talking about the sport’s most dominant program over the last 20 years. The list of All-Americans, national champions, and former Olympians is miles long. Still, it only took one year for her to match the Georgia record of three individual national titles in one year. She broke that record this year with four titles.
• The best collegiate gymnast. Georgia might have the best program, but there have been incredible individual performers at many other programs. Kentucky’s Jenny Hansen was named the NCAA’s top gymnast over the past 25 years in 2006 after winning eight individual titles during her career. Kupets matched and then topped that mark this weekend with nine career individual titles and also matched Hansen’s three career all-around titles. Without her season-ending injury in 2008, Kupets might have walked away with double-digit individual national titles and as the sport’s first four-time all-around champion.
• The best Georgia athlete in any sport. Names like Walker and Wilkins come to mind when you think about Bulldog greats, but you have to dig deeper when you’re looking for the most accomplished Bulldog athletes. There are swimmers like Kristy Kowal and Courtney Shealy. Few had the impact that Vicki Goetze had on Georgia golf. John Isner is just the most recent legend cranked out by Georgia tennis. Teresa Edwards is one of the most recognized women’s basketball players in the world.

Still, when you look at team and individual accomplishments, it’s hard to come up with a better choice than Kupets. She’s done all she can do. Even more, she came back from a Achilles tear as a junior to have her best season as a senior.

When it comes to the best college athlete ever, the question becomes muddier. It’s hard to top someone like Cael Sanderson who never lost a wrestling match in college. There have also been dominant individuals in team sports – Mia Hamm was a standout on a team of standouts that won four national titles. For all I know, there might be some Stanford water polo player who was better. There’s no question though that Kupets at least belongs in the discussion.

With the economy and a recently-implemented ticket priority system to blame, South Carolina “is not likely to sell all of its football season tickets” for the 2009 season. It would be the first time since Lou Holtz arrived a decade ago that the Gamecocks have not sold out of their approximately 57,000 season tickets.

In response, the program has retooled its advertising budget to promote season tickets, and they are also targeting younger alumni and loyal fans who didn’t have access to season tickets before.

For years whenever the topic of the Internet and forms of communication more advanced than a rotary phone came up, coaches frequently reverted to playing the dumb jock.

Gawrsh, I cain’t even program a VCR…what’s this"e-mail" thing ?

To be fair, this kind of response was mostly a defense mechanism and usually not exactly honest. If a coach admitted he surfed the message boards or read e-mail, he might be pressured to validate and respond to some of the ridiculous criticism and rumors that float out here. Every message board hero would think he had a direct line to the ol’ coach. Most coaches were at least briefed about the online chatter.

So, yeah, it’s kind of strange (and amusing) to see the coaches follow each other into the world of tweets and pokes. A decade ago these guys would be cracking jokes about not being able to turn a computer on.

Of course in reality many of these Twitter pages and Facebook accounts are manned by some intern or other ghostwriter. I don’t know and don’t really care if Mark Richt even knows how to sign on to Twitter or post something on his blog. The change is that coaches are at least starting to become more open about lending their names if not outright participating in the online world. The transition of cutting-edge technology and social networks from something used by fans on the fringe to a strategic opportunity to build the program is just about complete.

And why not? The costs are negligable. It’s where your recruits and an increasing number of your fans with disposable income are. It’s to the point now that if your program and coach doesn’t have some sort of online presence beyond the cookie-cutter official Web site, you’re at a competitive disadvantage.

Now it’s time for the NCAA and the sideline to catch up. The New York Times had a great piece last fall outlining the organization’s resistance to certain technologies, especially those which might give a team an advantage during the game. Laptops upstairs in the box are verboten. Texting with prospects is outlawed. The reasoning ranged from the absurd…

"(A game is) like going into a test," said Ty Halpin, the N.C.A.A.’s associate director of playing rules administration. We don’t let you bring in a computer and an iPod when you take an exam."

…to the practical…

There is a concern that an onslaught of technology might give richer colleges a competitive advantage over schools that cannot afford the latest equipment, further driving a wedge between the haves and have-nots in the sport.

I definitely understand that concern. The software and hardware for instant video analysis and real-time collaboration isn’t cheap. At the same time, an initial investment in technology can give smaller programs tools and expert systems which might make their lower-paid and less-experienced coaches more effective and competitive against the big programs. It’s not like the big programs don’t already leverage technology to their own advantage; as the Times points out, most big programs have advanced video systems that help them with preparation. Teams can bring to the box unlimited analysis, charts, and scouting on paper (something that’s also typically not allowed in an exam, Mr. Halpin), but they can’t bring the same information in on a laptop.

Mike Bellotti told the Times he planned to raise the issue in front of the rules committee, but it seems as if no action was taken during the committee’s February meeting.

How long will it be before a tablet PC replaces the clipboard on our college football and basketball sidelines?

Pete Carroll is right: every team in America might now be able to break down Georgia film now and study how the Dawgs run the same few vanilla plays and base defenses with half the team sitting out. Especially since no Georgia game over the past eight seasons has been on TV. I can just imagine the scene last October when a breathless Florida assistant burst into Urban Meyer’s office and panted, “Can you believe it? CBS! Those idiot Bulldogs are actually playing LSU on national television! The fools are showing us everything!!!”

Carroll doesn’t seem too concerned when it comes to people getting a look at his own program. The Trojans have quite a liberal open-practice policy.

Only a few dozen fans showed up for USC’s morning practice today, a big change from Sunday night when an estimated 1,000 people or more pushed onto Howard Jones Field. … “In the NFL, for all those years, there were always people at practice during camp,” (Carroll) said. “So this isn’t that unusual. I think it’s unusual to go the other way, to tell you the truth.”

Last week the N.C. State compliance office warned a student over a Facebook group made as part of an effort to recruit a top basketball prospect to the school. It seems like a pretty far-reaching restriction on speech, but the University and the NCAA hold that the action amounted to someone acting as a booster who attempted to influence the recruiting process.

Even as the NCAA and its members struggle with how to handle emerging technology, you can see where they’re coming from if you understand the accepted broad definition of a “booster.” For example, here are the guidelines used by the UGA compliance office to determine who is a booster. If you…

• Participated in or been a member of an organization promoting Georgia Athletics
• Contributed financially to the UGA Athletic Association, the Bulldog Club, individual athletic programs or any other Georgia Athletics or sport-specific booster organization
• Assisted in the recruitment of prospects
• Provided NCAA permissible benefits to enrolled student-athletes or their families
• Are a former UGA student
• Promoted the UGA Athletic Association in other ways

…then you are a booster according to UGA, and your interactions with student-athletes and prospects are covered by NCAA rules. Until the NCAA catches up to current technology (and what bureaucratic organization ever does?), members like N.C. State have to apply the existing rules to seemingly-harmless situations with sometimes absurd results. A Facebook group urging a prospect to go to N.C. State seems fine, but does a full-page newspaper ad? What’s the difference?

But that doesn’t mean that NCAA members and even the NCAA itself aren’t using the same technology. Coaches and even entire conferences have joined up with Twitter and Facebook, and the NCAA’s official blog has its own Twitter account.

The BCS has seen to it that the college football season no longer ends on its national holiday of January 1st. That’s the price we pay – the money involved means that the programming has to be spread over as much prime time coverage as possible, and the season drags out for another week.

Even with a couple of BCS games along the way that additional week between the New Year’s Day bowls and the BCS Championship has a lot of down time, and ESPN is helping minor bowls leapfrog the major bowls on the 1st to play on dates that are to the advantage of the bowls, the host cities, and – of course – the network.

At first it was bowls like the International and GMAC which few had heard of and even fewer watched. Last year the Liberty Bowl moved to January 2 and will remain there for another year.

Now the Alamo Bowl will join the January 2nd schedule. January 2, 2010, is a Saturday, and the press release notes that the 8 p.m. slot on ESPN will be “unopposed from any other college or NFL football games on network television.”

So far, that’s two bowls that will be on ESPN’s January 2nd college football schedule. The Cotton Bowl will also be played on January 2nd for the second straight year. Will others be tempted to move to the more convenient Saturday date?

Sports talk station 960 the Ref out of Athens is finally streaming online.

If you think Atlanta sports radio has little to offer (and I do), give the guys in Athens a listen. The Ref also carries UGA sporting events – we’ll see if those are streamed as well or if UGA forbids it in favor of their own G-Xtra service.

At any rate, The Ref is at the very least a better daytime alternative and probably just doubled its audience. Welcome, guys.

When the Lady Dogs starters get introduced before games, they run out along a red carpet that lists the years of Georgia’s Final Four and SEC championship seasons. That carpet hasn’t needed to be updated for years. Since coming up devastatingly short of both an SEC Tournament title and a Final Four trip in 2004, the Lady Dogs haven’t come close to challenging for either.

It’s been ten years since Georgia’s last visit to the Final Four – the longest drought under Andy Landers. The last SEC championship for the program was in 2001. It’s not that the program has disappeared in the meantime. They’ve made the NCAA Tournament every year and only last season had a streak of Sweet 16 appearances snapped. But there’s no question that the program has slipped, and getting it back won’t be a simple one-year fix.

When Dennis Felton was let go earlier in the year, it was easy to conclude that recruiting and attrition were at the heart of the problems that led to the end of the Felton era. Other than a brief period in 2006-2007, Felton was never able to assemble and retain anything resembling a complete team. Signing and keeping quality players has been an issue with the men’s team for decades. But now the same problems are creeping into the women’s program despite a tradition of success.

The Georgia women’s basketball team announced yesterday that sophomore guard Angela Puleo would be leaving the program. Puleo was put into a tough situation out of the gate as a freshman. In most programs, she would have been brought along as a situational 3-point shooter off the bench. But the roster situation at Georgia thrust her into a starting role immediately, and it was impossible to fill the shoes of Cori Chambers, the most prolific outside shooter in Georgia history.

Puleo’s departure means that the entire 2007 recruiting class of four players, rated by some as a top 10 class, has dissolved and will contribute nothing to the program as juniors and seniors. Puleo will transfer. Jasmine Lee was dismissed. Nicole Stroud’s career was cut short by injuries. Top 20 prospect Brittany Carter barely contributed as a freshman and transferred after one season.

The impact of the evaporation of that 2007 class is more significant when placed alongside the classes that surrounded it. Put it this way: Georgia will have a nice senior class next season of Angel Robinson, Ashley Houts, and Christy Marshall. There will only be three other players on the roster with any meaningful experience – starting or otherwise. Once again incoming freshman will be counted on for significant minutes.

For a number of reasons we’ll get into below, Georgia had hit a dry patch in recruiting. The obvious example is Lawrenceville’s Maya Moore leading UConn to the national title last night. But it’s no longer just other elite programs prevailing over Georgia for local talent. Georgia Tech welcomed the #6 class in the nation in 2008 which featured three players from Georgia all rated among the nation’s top 100 prospects. Meanwhile the Lady Dogs’ sole signee in 2008 was a guard from Alabama. That’s turned around this year with a top 5 class, but can the staff keep it up? And can they avoid the attrition in the incoming class that wiped out the promising 2007 class?

Attrition is as much a part of recruiting as actually signing the classes, and it’s a problem that has hit the Georgia women’s program hard in recent years. Even if Georgia missed out on other prospects, those they’ve signed have been plenty good enough to keep the program competitive. The trouble has been keeping them around. Below is a list of some of the players Georgia has signed but lost over the past few seasons before their eligibility expired. Some played for a while; others never made it into school.

• Recina Russell – Big 10 freshman of the year
• Brittany Carter – national Top 20 prospect
• Amber Holt – JUCO All-American
• Angela Puleo – starting shooting guard
• Jasmine Lee
• Nicole Stroud
• Erica Brown – McDonald’s All-American guard

That’s quite a team in and of itself. It’s unfair to put this attrition all on the coaches. Recruiting is an inexact science, and you can never predict who will be able to cut it at the next level. Injuries, academics, and personal issues are risks you take, and they’ve all played a role in this attrition. Regardless, the sum of this attrition and the results in recruiting has been to leave the program with little depth at best and with critical holes at worst.

Part of the problem has had to do with turnover on the staff. In 2005, longtime assistant and top recruiter Michael Shafer was hired away by Richmond. Since then the Georgia staff has been a story of on-the-job training for a number of inexperienced assistants. I don’t think there’s any coincidence that the dropoff in talent has happened under an unsettled and green staff. Finally in 2007 Landers hired Kim Hairston away from Cal, and Hairston’s experience began to pay off and was in part responsible for the incoming top 10 recruiting class. The question remains whether enough has been done to shore up the staff. It’s still relatively inexperienced, and player development has been questionable. With Mark Fox’s arrival on the men’s side, we’re getting a reminder just how important the composition of the staff is to success on the court and in recruiting.

As is always the case with stories like this, bad luck seems to find its way into the picture. Mike Mercer’s knee injury brought a cruel end to a promising season and was, in retrospect, the beginning of the end for Dennis Felton. Similarly, an unprecedented rash of injuries to the Lady Dogs frontcourt in 2005 affected the program for years. Talented players like Tasha Humphrey and Megan Darrah were forced to play out of position for much of their careers, and those teams were never complete enough to advance beyond the Sweet 16.

If all of this sounds like a lack of faith in Andy Landers, it shouldn’t. I believe he’s more than capable of turning it around. The addition of Hairston and the incoming recruiting class is evidence that there’s plenty of fight left. It’s more than just one class and one season though. The top 5 class coming in will temporarily raise the talent level, but the departure of the rising senior class will require another big recruiting effort in order to sustain anything that’s started next season.

One of the reasons that Arizona State won’t be as touted for their trip to Athens this fall as they were at the beginning of last season is the departure of starting quarterback Rudy Carpenter. The competition to replace Carpenter thinned out a little this week when Jack Elway, John’s son, decided to leave the team after getting burned out on football. He’ll remain enrolled at ASU. From what we saw last September, deciding to hang around Tempe is not a bad decision.

In an episode of great unintentional comedy, check out this thread from a Nevada message board to see an April Fool’s joke that took an unexpected turn, oh, about last evening some time.