Steve Spurrier is in a little bit of a pickle (h/t The Wiz).

Spurrier promised four-star receiver Alshon Jeffery that Jeffrey could wear the #2 jersey if he signed at South Carolina. Of course promising a jersey number is nothing new and pretty insignificant on the hierarchy of promises a coach will make to close the deal.

The sticky wicket here is that #2 is retired in Columbia in honor of Sterling Sharpe. Sharpe claims that he wasn’t approached to sign off on Spurrier’s promise, and he’s not at all thrilled about the idea of seeing another Gamecock wearing #2. Spurrier, meanwhile, is floating the idea that has caught on at other schools of retiring a jersey and not a number. Georgia also no longer retires jerseys, but they also had to deal with a bit of discomfort when superstar prospect Ernie Sims had his eye on #34 a few years ago.

My guess: Jeffrey ends up with another number. After all, once the letter of intent is signed, there’s no going back.

You’ve all probably heard about or even seen the video in which Lane Kiffin takes smug satisfaction in busting Urban Meyer on a minor recruiting violation.

“Just so you know, when a recruit is on another campus, you can’t call him,” Kiffin said. “I love the fact that Urban had to cheat and still didn’t get him.”

The only problem: it wasn’t a violation, and Meyer wasn’t cheating.

Kiffin’s accusation is false, because there is no NCAA rule that prohibits a coach from calling a prospect while he’s visiting another school during a contact period. This past weekend was a contact period.

So not only did Kiffin taunt and poke a stick at the defending SEC and national champ, he showed off his inexperience and lack of knowledge of the recruiting rules in spectacular fashion. Florida AD Jeremy Foley didn’t miss the opportunity to score his own points in defense of his head coach:

There was no rule violation and we have confirmed this with the Southeastern Conference. It is obvious that Coach Kiffin doesn’t know that there is not a rule precluding phone contact with a prospect during an official visit on another campus during a contact period…His comments not only slandered our coach, but he violated SEC rules by publicly criticizing another coach and institution.

This is going to be fun. Tennessee’s not going to fade away as a competitive threat, but we can’t say we weren’t warned about what kind of coach Tennessee would be getting.

It’s been an eventful few days around the Georgia basketball coaching search. Just to recap:

• Furman Bisher, who hasn’t covered Georgia basketball since it was played at Woodruff Hall, started the Knight-to-Georgia talk on Saturday.
• Georgia players expressed interest in the idea of playing for Knight. Corey Butler demonstrated why players usually aren’t in the best position to make these kinds of decisions. "To be honest, I don’t know that much about college basketball," he said. "I just play it."
• The governor of Georgia, a former UGA football player who probably couldn’t find Stegeman Coliseum if you dropped him off at the Georgia Center, is reported to be a possible broker of a deal if Knight decides to persue the job.
• Dick Vitale joined the campaign. Just take it easy on all of the "General" references though…we’re a little nervous in these parts about generals born in Ohio.
• Through everything, both Knight and UGA maintain that there has been no contact.

Say what you want about the opinions of everyone from Furman Bisher to Dick Vitale, but the one thing they have in common is that the best interests of the Georgia basketball program are secondary at best to them. Knight’s friends in coaching and in the media will support him in anything he wants to do. Local media have to be drooling over the thought of the Knight circus coming to town. Knight is certainly an accomplished and respected coach, but Damon Evans and those making this decision cannot allow themselves to be the rubes who allow this torrent of outside interests to shove someone into the job who might not be the best fit for the long-term success of the program.

Look, I’m not saying that Knight is a bad coach. How can anyone say that? The question isn’t whether Knight can improve Georgia basketball. First, it can’t get much worse. Second, it’s not a Knight-or-nothing discussion. Knight can and likely would improve the program. So can some of the other candidates mentioned. Given the downward trend during Knight’s last few years in Lubbock, the abrupt way in which he left the program, and the current struggling state of that program, it’s valid to ask whether someone else might be just as able to turn the program into a winner while doing a better job of positioning the program five years from now.

But at least he’d be entertaining.

If I’ve heard one line more than any other this week, it’s that one. Knight would be exciting! He would fill the stands if only because people want to see the inevitable explosion. He’d put Georgia on the map. You know what else would do all of that? Winning.

We’ve seen that even a moderately successful program will pack Stegeman Coliseum. The interest in and demand for Georgia basketball in 2002 and 2003 was sky-high. Every single SEC game was sold out. That was a team that barely cracked the Top 25. Harrick’s bittersweet final home game against Florida in 2003 was basketball at its best, and the Coliseum was second to none that night for a big-time college hoops atmosphere.

Fans weren’t scalping tickets during those years to see the antics of the coach on the sideline. They weren’t there to see tantrums and gimmicks. Though there was a strong personality coaching the team, fans packed the house to see a winning team, quality basketball, and a group of guys playing their tails off. Right up until the end the interest that was building in Georgia basketball was happening for all the right reasons.

So what now?

Georgia is not going to hire anyone now and not without talking to several candidates. (They’re not, right? Right!?) It’s going to be at least six weeks before those candidates begin to become available. Between now and then the attention around Knight will die down and shift. Hey, look, now he’s interested in the Alabama job.

This week’s news hasn’t been without its benefits. It can’t hurt to have the Georgia job as a story on most national sports shows over the past few days. Instead of some bogus test making the Georgia program a national joke, we’re hearing now how great an opportunity it is. And it is. At the same time, the frenzy that would otherwise be around the usual list of hot candidates is squarely on Knight. That’s a good thing – Georgia can go about its search, and those men can continue coaching their teams with much less distraction.

• How the UGA Athletic Association can use the “sovereign immunity” defense with a straight face and no shame against Decory Bryant. Come off it, UGA.
• How this “100-0 win” story ends up with the winning coach getting canned for refusing to apologize for his team’s accomplishment. I doubt you’d find this outcome next fall after any lopsided Texas high school football games. The best lesson from all of this comes from the team that was held scoreless. They brushed it off and moved on – losing and losing big was nothing new to them. Too bad everyone else felt the need to manufacture outrage and go after the scalp of the guy put in the position of playing such a mismatched opponent.
• What’s so wrong about Rep. Jack Kingston opposing a resolution honoring the national champion Florida Gators. Congrats to the Gators and all, but that doesn’t mean that Georgia fans have to like it. It’s a “no” vote, folks, and about as meaningful as any other rubber-stamp resolution that goes through the Congress. It’s not like significant (any) time or money was put into this thing.

  For those who like to complain that the Congress should find something more important to do with their time, the representatives don’t seem to be the only people with their priorities out of whack.

  Kingston spokesman Chris Crawford said the congressman got more phone calls on that vote than just about anything else he did that year — from Georgia fans congratulating him, and Florida fans chastising him.

It’s been a tough basketball season, so allow us to bask in the meaningless glow of being a team that beat the team that knocked off #1 last night. Congrats, Hokies. That December 9th win is looking to be Georgia’s highlight of the season thus far.

Haves and have-nots on the same campus…

University of Tennessee officials are discussing how the athletic departments could increase efficiency and possibly generate more funding for academics as the UT system grapples with a projected state funding shortfall of at least $66 million.

In fiscal 2008, the UT athletic department generated a net surplus of about $5.04 million before making transfers of $4.54 million to support the UT system and Knoxville campus programs. Its operating budget is $87.8 million. Surplus funds go into what is “essentially a rainy-day fund” for the department, spokeswoman Tiffany Carpenter said.

You had to figure that in these tough times the disparity between athletic department performance and academic budget shortfalls would emerge as an issue. Georgia is in a similar boat as the university system faces large budget cuts while the UGA athletic department enjoys surpluses that makes Tennessee’s surplus look meager. Both the Tennessee and Georgia athletic departments are more or less distinct entities that aren’t supported by public money, and they do contribute millions of dollars back to their respective universities.

Regardless, the contrast between the financial performance and needs of the academic and athletics departments of these major universities will only continue to sharpen. Tennessee’s athletic department has made its own cuts and is looking at other ways to raise money for the university, but they have been anything but frugal when assembling their new football staff this month. SEC athletic departments will have even more money to spend as new television deals kick in, but public universities dependent upon taxpayer money will have to fight for their share of a smaller pie.

The Wiz turns cartographer today and builds to a familiar challenge that, for once, points the spotlight of shame at someone other than Georgia.

We’d like to see SEC teams, with their wealth of talent and top-notch teams, get out and show other parts of the country how great they are at playing football. BCS champion Florida, for example, hasn’t played an out-of-state nonconference game since Sept. 21, 1991, when it lost at Syracuse, 38-21.

Since that 1991 trip to Syracuse, the Gators have played for four national titles and won three. They’ve produced two Heisman winners and won all of their eight SEC titles. Even in their 9-4 seasons they managed to remain relevant. If schedule has been a hindrance on their rise to elite status, I haven’t seen it.

Why does everyone get so hung up over distance when it comes to the quality of schedule? Florida’s annual game against FSU put the Gators against a top 5 opponent almost every season during the 1990s. No other program had such a consistently tough nonconference opponent. Would it have been better or more impressive if they had played a 5-7 Arizona State team?

Does anyone see an incentive for Florida to leave the state? If they want quality competition, Miami and FSU are in their worst seasons at least among the ranks of the bowl-eligible. The Gators certainly don’t need any more help in the exposure department. Why travel the nation to showcase your program to elite prospects when your state produces more than any other?

Schedules are not created equal, and some of the 2009 hopefuls will take very different approaches to how they navigate the season. Southern Cal and Texas can tell you that getting through the conference slate can be the real challenge, but the nonconference games can have an impact not only on the record but also on how the program is perceived by peers and pundits.

(By the way, I can’t help responding here to Kyle’s claim that the BCS "encourages…strong scheduling in ways a playoff never would." The primacy of the regular season and the stigma of even a single loss provide a strong disincentive to schedule tough opponents. I understand that there are reasons for doing so, but the system hardly "encourages" it. What the system encourages above all else is playing in a major conference and navigating the season with as few blemishes as possible. College basketball has a playoff and, by consequence, less emphasis on regular season games, but the tradeoff is that big games like last weekend’s Duke – Georgetown matchup are commonplace in college hoops.)

Here are the nonconference schedules of the top 6 contenders next season (according to Mark Schlabach). Most (save Texas) have at least one decent challenge, but on the whole it’s pretty much status quo.

Texas:

• Wyoming
• La. Monroe
• Central Florida
• UTEP

Comment: To be fair, Texas did have Arkansas back out, and the ‘Horns are looking to improve their schedule over the coming years. But we’re focusing on 2009 here, and the Big 12 opener against Colorado should be the only thing standing between Texas arriving at the Red River Shootout with an unblemished record, a very high ranking, and a slew of lopsided yawners under their belt.

Southern Cal:

• San Jose St.
• @ Ohio State
• @ Notre Dame

Comment: As usual, the Trojans have a respectable nonconference slate, and only one of the games is at home. The Pac 10 plays nine conference games (there’s a novel idea for the superconferences), so SoCal only has three games to schedule.

Ohio State:

• Navy
• Southern Cal
• Toledo
• New Mexico State

Comment: Southern Cal stands out of course, and assume that everyone will head into the season chalking that up as a loss. The rest of the nonconference schedule is light. Who in the Big 10 will be able to stop an improved Pryor and his team? Michigan’s not there yet. Penn State’s losses are big. Iowa loses their threat at tailback. Any conference loss would have to be considered a big upset. Go ahead and pencil in the Buckeyes for Pasadena – but for which game?

Alabama

• Virginia Tech (in Atlanta, Ga.)
• Florida International
• North Texas
• UT-Chattanooga

Comment: The Tide used a big win over an ACC team to launch their 2008 return to glory, and they’ll go back to that well in 2009. The rest of the schedule is miserable, and their SEC slate doesn’t include Florida or Georgia.

Oklahoma:

• BYU (in Dallas, Tex.)
• @ Miami (Fl.)
• Tulsa
• TBA

Comment: Even with one game TBA, Oklahoma already has one of the better schedules of the contenders. Their decent schedule in 2008 gets credit for landing them at the top of the one-loss teams, but winning their conference didn’t hurt either. They’ll be the more battle-tested team when they play Texas, but will it matter?

Florida:

• Charleston Southern
• Troy
• Florida International
• FSU

Comment: Urban Meyer’s not dumb. Win the SEC with one loss or less, and you could play high school teams from region 4-AAA and stand a good chance at making the national title game. The Gators can focus on repeating as SEC champs and won’t have to face Auburn, Alabama, or Ole Miss during the regular season. The Gators won a national title in 2008 with only a middling Miami bulking up the schedule, so what’s the incentive to toughen the schedule again?

Though no one will include them among the list of 2009 contenders, offered without comment is Georgia:

• @ Oklahoma State
• Arizona State
• Tennessee Tech
• @ Georgia Tech

A quick look at how the NFL draft and transfers will affect some teams in Georgia’s neighborhood next season. This list is surely incomplete, and corrections / additions are welcome.

Auburn

• DL Sen’Derrick Marks (NFL)
• DB Jerraud Powers (NFL)
• LB Tray Blackmon (CFL)
• WR Chris Slaughter (left team)
• DB Ryan Williams (left team)

South Carolina

• DB Emanuel Cook (NFL)
• TE Jared Cook (NFL)
• DB Captain Munnerlyn (NFL)
• QB Chris Smelley (transfer)

LSU

• WR Brandon LaFell (NFL)
• DL Ricky Jean-Francois (NFL)
• QB Andrew Hatch (transfer)

Florida

• WR Percy Harvin (NFL)
• QB Cameron Newton (transfer)

Alabama

• RB Glen Coffee (NFL)
• OT Andre Smith (NFL)

Vanderbilt

• DB DJ Moore (NFL)

Arkansas

• TE Andrew Davie (NFL)

We struggle trying to make a connection between penalties, discipline, and ultimate success on the field. Georgia’s high number of penalties in 2008 led some to try to make the link to off-season disciplinary issues and create the perception of a lack of control in the program. But do a lot of penalties automatically hurt a team? You’d think so, but it’s not necessarily the case. Here’s where this year’s final top 10 rank among the fewest penalties per game:

• Florida: 105
• Southern Cal: 114
• Texas: 77
• Utah: 96
• Oklahoma: 105
• Alabama: 5
• TCU: 119
• Penn State: 3
• Oregon: 99
• Georgia: 116

60% of the top 10 were among the 20 most penalized teams in the nation including TCU who were dead last. All but two teams (and the entire top 5) were in the bottom half of the FBS.

That doesn’t mean though that those committing few penalties are bad teams. Obviously Alabama and Penn State did well. For teams like Arizona, Iowa, Boston College, and Vanderbilt, committing relatively few penalties was probably a factor in their overachieving success last season.

There just seems to be little rhyme or reason in the impact penalties have on a team, and I think that’s more to do with the fact that we measure raw penalties and yardage rather than trying to understand the impact of individual penalties. Take the BCS Championship. You have a meaningless celebration penalty on Tebow after the game was in hand. Then you have a Duke Robinson hold on a first quarter pass play that turned a long reception into a punt, ending an Oklahoma scoring drive and starting Florida’s first scoring drive.

On the ledger the Tebow and Robinson penalties count the same. The Tebow penalty was even more costly – 15 yards versus 10. The difference in their impact on the game was far different. If you watched the game, you know that, but the box score tells us that Florida was the more penalized team in the championship game by more than a 2-to-1 margin (8-81 yards vs. 4-31 yards). The 30 or so yards negated by Robinson’s penalty are gone from the record.

Many of Georgia’s 2008 penalties were inconsequential. Many more were not. The facemask calls after third-down stops, the pass interference in the Florida game – all had big impacts. Until we have some kind of a metric for the cost of individual penalties, it’s hard to say with any authority that it’s bad to be one of the more penalized teams even though everything you know about football leads you to that assumption. Is there a better way?

Georgia basketball fans haven’t had much good news lately, but Wednesday could provide some of the biggest news in program history.

Superstar hoops prospect Derrick Favors will announce his college decision on Wednesday evening at 6:30. He will select from between Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Memphis, and his coach is trying to arrange to have the announcement at ESPN Zone in Buckhead. There is no understating the impact that the #1 prep player in the nation could have on a program like Georgia.

If you’re trying to read the tea leaves, Georgia is out of town at Vandy on Wednesday night while Tech hosts Duke in Atlanta at 7:00.

Regardless of his choice, you’ll get to see him in action on Thursday night on ESPN2.

I can’t let it go just yet after reading a few items of news like this.

You might think of your outgoing transfers as head cases, malcontents, dead weight, or simply bad fits, but one thing they shouldn’t be is "chattel". If schools are going to put these kinds of restrictions on transfers, I’m even less inclined to be sympathetic when the programs complain about unsigned prospects changing their minds and requiring a bit of hand-holding during the recruiting homestretch.

It’s mine, you understand? Mine! All mine! Get back in there! Down, down, down! Go, go, go! Mine, mine, mine! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

Consequences, schmonsequences, as long as I’m rich.

While we’re on the subject of chattel and recruiting, let’s come back to the story about South Carolina and Tucker High School. It’s always good to get a laugh at the expense of South Carolina and Spurrier, but I’m not really concerned about South Carolina’s blunder. Recruiting is about relationships, and they blew it. I’m more interested in the high school coach declaring his school off-limits for a specific college program.

It’s fine for Tucker’s coach to say that the Gamecocks are "no longer welcome" at the high school. It’s his decision who he welcomes into his office, and it’s a bridge burned. But it is most certainly not his place to dictate that "South Carolina will not be recruiting any more Tucker players."

It’s easy to accept and get behind since we’re talking about South Carolina, but a high school coach deciding who may not recruit a prospect seems about as meddlesome as the college coaches putting restrictions on transfers. Of course a prospect might and often does seek the counsel of a coach, and that’s the prospect’s choice, but a coach only does a disservice to his players by inserting himself as a gatekeeper before the fact. It’s not his call whether or not South Carolina recruits any more Tucker players.

Six weeks.

The AFCA has forwarded a proposal (h/t Get the Picture) to conference commissioners for an early signing period for college football. The proposed signing day in the “third week of December” would come approximately six weeks before the current signing day on the first Wednesday in February.

There’s an early signing period in sports like basketball of course, but the difference between those signing periods is closer to six months rather than six weeks. What’s so important that the coaches can’t wait until the February signing period? “What we’re seeing is oversigning and late switches,” claims Notre Dame’s Rob Ianello.

I’ve written plenty before about why I’m suspicious of the coaches’ motives with an early signing period, and Ianello’s comments do little to show me that those concerns are unfounded. Even as the coaching ranks shuffle as staffs are assembled into December and January, coaches would rather that prospects give up the last bit of leverage and unrestricted choice they’ll enjoy for the next three-to-five years. Six measly weeks.

Ianello’s flippant question, “Is it a reservation or a commitment?” might be better asked of the highly-paid coaches that are so put upon by the current recruiting timetable.

A rare kind word about a player about to redefine the word "overexposure"…

When I see the headline in the AJC that the "NFL doesn’t know what to do with Tim Tebow," that comes across to me as a bug with the NFL and not a flaw with Tebow.

I get why certain things don’t work in the leap from college to the NFL. The mismatches in talent that are exploited and punished in a variety of collegiate schemes aren’t there in the pros, so every team more or less runs its own variation on the same West Coast-y system used by every other team, and the blandness has persisted long enough for us all to understand what a "pro-style" quarterback or offense means – and what they don’t mean.

It’s not just Tebow of course, and it’s not just football. Every incoming tailback now would love to be "the next Reggie Bush", but the real Bush is close to becoming little more than a punt return specialist at the next level. There are questions about Tyler Hansbrough’s ability to play in the NBA. It’s still fundamentally football or basketball, but at times like this the college and pro games seem like very distant cousins.

There are many reasons why a college player might not excel in the pros just as most of us could name a few local high school stars who faded in college. But if NFL teams are struggling with the "risk" and "uncertainty" of how to use a player like Tebow while peers Stafford and Bradford are can’t-miss top picks, that’s not exactly a positive comment on the imagination of NFL front offices.

An NFL general manager’s comment that, "It’s not like you’d be taking Joe Flacco," kind of says it all, doesn’t it?

So at least there’s that. After an inexplicable 7-point jump in the coaches’ poll (that Cap One win must’ve been more impressive than I remember), Georgia finishes the season ranked at #10. (#13 in the AP.)

That’s little consolation when you’re living in #1’s subdivision.