If there’s one stat from the Boise game that gives me hope, it’s this:

Doug Martin: 24 carries, 57 yards. Long 9.

Martin is a legitimate tailback who averaged 6.3 YPC in 2010. You saw how good he can be on his touchdown run – he bounced outside and beat Branden Smith to the corner. He wasn’t the reason why Boise State won.

You didn’t hear a lot from Geathers, Jenkins, or many of the Georgia defensive linemen on Saturday, but that’s not unexpected. The usual role of the DL in the 3-4 is to get a push and watch the linebackers clean up. Sure enough, there was Christian Robinson with a career-high 13 tackles and Jarvis Jones with an impressive 11 tackles (and 17 helmet adjustments) in his debut. Somewhere in there was pretty solid play in the middle by the defensive line. The Dawgs were rarely, if ever, gashed for long runs up the middle. Tackling, though there were a couple of breaks and misses, was generally solid. Put another way – for the problems they had getting worn out, covering the short routes, and dealing with the loss of Ogletree, they weren’t the “soft” group that they were a year ago.

The disappointing part is that Georgia didn’t come with much pass pressure behind that line, so we’re left with a perception that the line play was less-effective than it was. Georgia did have some success when they brought overpowering numbers, but apparently that’s not to be considered a most-of-the-time strategy. Boise’s up-tempo system certainly also contributed to Georgia’s lack of pressure. Against a quarterback that’s potentially mistake-prone, you’d hope they would be more aggressive.

Marcus Lattimore is too good of a back to neutralize, but Georgia should at least be more disruptive against inside runs and the zone read play that killed them a year ago. Can they be effective enough to force Garcia to have the kind of game that Kellen Moore put up a week ago?

In a way, I’m glad that the offense has been under such scrutiny this week. Not that the defense is perfect, but I place special emphasis on the offense against South Carolina. Georgia’s output in Columbia last year was their worst against South Carolina since 1904. Lattimore or no, that’s not going to win games.

Despite the anemic output, the Dawgs were still in the game entering the fourth quarter. (This was another game where the failure to finish goes back to the failure to start.) You can point to the killer fumble or the absence of A.J., but you don’t expect to be in such a hopeless position when you only allow 17 points. This isn’t to discount the Garcia-Lattimore-Jeffrey show (not forgetting wildcards like Sanders). Their presence and ability makes it even more imperative that Georgia score more than the 18.1 points they’ve averaged against the Gamecocks under Mark Richt.

To that end, it looks as if Richt and Bobo will be sticking with the no-huddle approach that didn’t work so well a week ago. There are some good explanations why it wasn’t effective. Boise’s hurry-up offense, as explained by Kellen Moore, aimed to “get the defense into more base coverages and base defenses. They don’t have time to throw in their unique blitzes and things like that when they only have a short few seconds to call plays.” Sound familiar? Georgia’s approach to the no-huddle didn’t look to gain that same kind of schematic advantage. Instead, Georgia was focused more on the quantity of plays run. But by using a slower no-huddle that “90 percent of America” uses according to Coach Richt, they still let the Boise defense dictate the play and ended up running only 60 plays with little to show for them.

If no-huddle, damn-the-torpedoes it is, all is still not lost. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the shotgun or hurry-up, but there are problems if it plays against Georgia’s advantages on offense. (It’s fair to say that these “advantages” are still theoretical since we haven’t seen much of them.) Georgia’s primary formation against Boise was the shotgun, three receivers, one TE lined up tight, and one back.

The use of three receivers exposed one of Georgia’s weaker positions. King didn’t have his best game. Mitchell was a revelation but still got lost on a few routes (the perils of playing a true freshman.) Brown, Wooten, and King combined for 4 catches and 28 yards. Hopefully that will be the low-water mark for the group, but it’s significant enough to ask whether Georgia would have been better off trading a receiver for Figgins more often. There was a tangible benefit in the running game, Figgins also could have helped in pass protection, and we know he can catch the ball. If Charles is, more or less, going to be a third receiver, treat him like one and add a fullback.

The Dawgs altered that grouping on Boykin’s touchdown run. Figgins replaced the tailback. Boykin shifted to give Georgia a two-receiver, two-back look just before the snap. The tight end blocked inside, and the right tackle, along with Figgins, pulled outside to give Boykin the lane he needed.

Granting the fact that Figgins is still new to the fullback position, this is the kind of stuff that got fans and coaches excited thinking about the possibilities of an experienced tight end in a full-time fullback / H-back role. We saw precious little from Figgins Saturday after Boykin’s run, but it’s hard to do much from the bench. Yes, there’s a trade-off: someone has to sit, and there are matchups to consider. I’m just not so sure that with Charles in the game, the receiver situation what it is, and the need for better protection that Figgins shouldn’t see more time.

The shotgun look Georgia ran against Boise doesn’t have to be as vanilla as the Dawgs made it out to be. Murray isn’t Cam Netwon and can’t take the constant pounding running the ball that a 240 lb. quarterback could, but he’s still a rushing weapon. Georgia’s running plays out of the formation were all to the tailback and usually into the teeth of the Boise defensive line. There were many opportunities where a zone read option for Murray might have produced a big play.

The tailback also has a role in the passing game beyond blocking. On Monday night, I liked how Maryland used swing passes out of the backfield with some success. Their tailback ended up with four receptions from such passes – that would have been second-best for Georgia against Boise and more than any wide receiver. Crowell supposedly has above-average hands, but the offense didn’t do much to get him out in space where he’s at his most dangerous. Samuel had Georgia’s only two receptions out of the backfield, and only one late in the fourth quarter went for any yardage. With Crowell’s hands and Figgins’ experience at tight end, Georgia should be able to augment its receiving corps and attack aggressive defenses with more passes out of the backfield from its spread look.

I’m ticked to have to be writing about this during a game week, but it’s pretty much unavoidable. I’m not especially concerned with the mechanics and drama, but it seems inevitable that the SEC has opened the door to expansion. I won’t pretend to guess where it will stop, but I doubt that 13 is the magic number. I’m a lot more concerned with what it will mean for Georgia. What will their division and schedule look like in the coming years?

Divisional Lineup

The structure of the SEC’s divisions depends of course on whether the SEC stops at 13 teams, adds a 14th team, or goes all the way to 16 teams. The extent of realignment will also depend on which team(s) get added. If you add an eastern school such as West Virginia, no one would have to change divisions. If the 14th team is another former Big XII member, the conference would be unbalanced to the west, and you’d expect a school like Auburn to be moved to the SEC East. That wouldn’t affect the Auburn-Alabama rivalry (or even Florida-LSU) as long as the “permanent rival” system remains a part of the scheduling.

If Auburn moves to the East, that would require Georgia to take on a new permanent rival. To cause the least amount of disruption, that new opponent would probably be the new school, Texas A&M. Trips to College Station every other year?

How many conference games?

Coaches are predisposed against a ninth conference game, and with good reason. It takes away a certain amount of freedom in scheduling, and it by definition would spread more losses around a conference. If other conferences don’t follow suit, you’re at a relative disadvantage. Mark Richt put it this way: “As far as I’m concerned, you can add more teams, but I just don’t want to play any more league games.” It’s not just a question of bowl eligibility for a number of borderline teams, though that’s certainly a factor. BCS bids can also be torpedoed by those extra games.

A nine-game schedule is almost unavoidable if you go to 16 teams, especially if the permanent rival is maintained. You’d never play anyone else from the other division otherwise. But let’s assume a 16-member SEC and a nine-game conference schedule. Under the current SEC system of a divisonal round-robin, a permanent opponent, and a rotating cross-divisional schedule, it might be over a decade between trips to places like Baton Rouge, Oxford, and Fayetteville.

Why? Here’s a sample 9-game SEC schedule against a 16-team league. Assume for now that Auburn stays in the West.

• Year 1: 7 games against the division. 1 against permanent rival (vs. Auburn). 1 other cross-divisional game (@ Ole Miss)
• Year 2: 7 games against the division. 1 against permanent rival (@ Auburn). 1 other cross-divisional game (vs. Ole Miss)
• Year 3: 7 games against the division. 1 against permanent rival (vs. Auburn). 1 other cross-divisional game (@ Alabama)
• Year 4: 7 games against the division. 1 against permanent rival (@ Auburn). 1 other cross-divisional game (vs. Alabama)

Under that model, it would be Year 15 before you saw Ole Miss again as you rotate home-and-home through the other 6 teams in the West. The only way around that is 1) Increase the number of conference games to 10. Good luck with that. 2) Eliminate the permanent rival and add another rotating cross-divisional opponent. Possible, but you’d kill some of the conference’s oldest rivalries (UT-Bama, UGA-Auburn). 3) Don’t play a true round-robin against the division. That would free up a cross-divisional game or two, but it would kind of defeat the point of having divisions and divisional champions.

The Division as Entity

This is a side-effect of expansion we talked about a bit last summer. As conferences become larger and more abstract, the identites of the individual division becomes stronger.

The larger megaconference is just an administrative abstraction between its divisions. It exists for revenue-sharing purposes and for the clout it brings negotiating for collective deals and postseason positions.

Look at our schedule example above – a school you play twice a decade isn’t much different than Clemson or some regional rival from another conference. The only bond is that the paycheck comes from the same address, and you bump into each other in the buffet line at the spring meeting.

Consider an SEC West of the current members plus Texas A&M and Missouri. That’s a pretty good 8-team league unto its own. It wouldn’t be a stretch to rate it above the Big East and, in many years, the ACC. The idea of the Pac-16 pushing for two BCS automatic bids gave us a good chuckle last summer, but many of these eight-team divisions will have the membership and mass of what we’ve heretofore considered power conferences. I don’t suggest you’ll see the SEC East Network any time soon – the SEC is still the brand, and the conference will still do the negotiating and finance. But I do think we’ll come to look at divisions, even more than we already do, as more or less distinct entities that begin to take on identites of their own.

Who knows – in 15 years, we might be talking about the decentralization of the megaconferences as the divisions start to chart their own courses.

By this time a lot of us already have ways to watch games via satellite at our tailgates. If you don’t, or if you’re tired of aiming a dish and want a way to simplify your setup, DISH Network has a new product aimed at us: the Tailgater Portable HDTV System.

(Note: this isn’t an ad or a review. I’m not being compensated for this post, I’m not a DISH subscriber, and I don’t have this product.)

For $499, you get an HD receiver and the “Portable Antenna” which is basically a satellite dish mounted inside a plastic weather-resistant bubble. You set the antenna on the ground as much as 50 ft from the receiver, and it will automatically lock in on the satellite.

You’ll still need a TV and a power source – either an inverter or generator will do. You’ll also have to pay for programming of course. Current DISH subscribers can piggy-back on their current subscription. If you have a certain model of DISH receiver, the portable antenna itself is $350. If you’re not a DISH subscriber, they do a very cool thing and allow month-to-month subscriptions. You can activate it from September-December and then cut it off until the next football season comes around.

Georgia released an updated depth chart today, and it creates almost as many questions as it answers. Weiszer’s observations are good ones, and here are a couple more.

• The absence of Drew isn’t a big deal; it just reflects his injured status (same with Malcome). Richt said at his press conference today that Drew would play on Saturday.
• Two of the bigger questions in the offseason have been who will be the “other” receiver and cornerback. King and Boykin were pretty well established at their spots, but the departure of A.J. Green and Vance Cuff left vacancies at the other starting spots. I’m encouraged to see Marlon Brown and Branden Smith step into those roles. Both are two of the top prospects Georgia has recruitied at their respective positions over the past several years. It’s good to see that top talent finally come into its own in their junior seasons.
• Speaking of the secondary, Sanders Commings looks to be one of the more important players on the team that the average fan doesn’t know much about. Not only is he listed as the starting safety; he’s also one of the top cornerback reserves.
• The starting line has the possibility of being very good if it can stay healthy. The sum total of the experience of the second-team line is the three 2010 games in which Dallas Lee saw mop-up duty: Louisiana-Lafayette, Vanderbilt and Idaho St. The rest of the second team are true freshmen and one highly-rated redshirt sophomore who’s yet to see any game time due to a long recovery from back surgery.
• As for the whole Rambo thing, I’ve wondered if something is up. But while Richt continues to be maddeningly cryptic about the whole thing, Rambo remains on the depth chart. Carlton Thomas, who most definitely is suspended for the opener, is not listed. It leads me to wonder if Rambo isn’t seeing some sort of alternate discipline like the loss of his starting position or even a partial-game suspension.

If Georgia’s 2011 offense includes a higher-tempo or no-huddle look, it’s not exactly a big secret anymore. Whether or not Richard Samuel intended to let the cat out of the bag, his Q&A with the AJC didn’t leave much room for doubt.

Q: Surely some things have changed. How much would you say is different?

A: I’d just say the signals mainly; actually the whole play-calling situation. We’re doing a lot of no-huddle and a lot of high-tempo stuff, and that’s new to us. There are a lot of sight adjustments, so you have to be paying attention and focused and listening and hurrying up.

Georgia isn’t the only team in the game that might speed things up. Boise is hardly known for its tempo or no-huddle look. Their identity is much more about motion, misdirection, and getting superior numbers. But one game last year gave future Boise opponents a lot to think about.

In a November game against Hawaii, Boise State put up 737 yards of total offense (a school record), and Kellen Moore threw for an otherworldly 507 yards – in just three quarters – by breaking out the no-huddle. Before you start with the “yeah, but the schedule…” stuff, Boise’s output was more than twice what Hawaii allowed on average. That would be impressive for a team running a system that it had spent all year perfecting, but Boise’s gaudy production came via a gameplan on offense that was “a little bit outside of who we are,” admits coach Chris Petersen. “It’s hard when you don’t major in that.”

It’s important to note that Boise’s use of the no-huddle was a strategic counter to Hawaii’s tendency to use multiple looks on defense to create confusion. By speeding things up, the tables are turned, and the defense is forced into a reactive mode. Kellen Moore explains, “The tempo helps get the defense into more base coverages and base defenses,” he said. “They don’t have time to throw in their unique blitzes and things like that when they only have a short few seconds to call plays.”

If Georgia’s defense is effective early at disrupting Moore, don’t be surprised to see the Broncos try to speed things up to get Georgia’s defense back on their heels. Offensive coordinator Brian Harsin plans to have the no-huddle ready to use. “I think it’s a good changeup for us to have in there,” Harsin said. Georgia should have a little more familiarity with their defense in coordinator Todd Grantham’s second year, but there are still enough newcomers at all three levels of defense to cause missed assignments if there’s much pre-snap confusion.

There’s a down side to speeding things up on offense. If you’re not successful sustaining drives and scoring, your defense is put right back on the field. Worst case for Georgia? A reprise of two common 2010 maladies: a defense that hasn’t solved its third-and-long problems coupled with a an up-tempo offense that struggles out of the gate could have the Georgia defense sucking wind by halftime. Forget finishing strong – Boise is a team that has been very effective at jumping out on their opponents, and a no-huddle strategy that turned out like the scenario above would look a lot like this.

Of course the opposite is what Georgia hopes will happen, and that was the story of the 2005 game. If the Bulldog defense can get stops, it will give its own offense a chance to set the tempo. None of this is groundbreaking stuff (who knew defense likes three-and-outs?), but the Bulldog defense will have a lot to say about whether Georgia’s offense can run at its preferred tempo. That’s why Blutarsky had this reaction to Samuel’s news: “Richt likes what he’s seeing out of the defense.” You can’t use tempo as an attacking strategy if you’re having to use tempo in a defensive way to preserve the legs and lungs of your defense.

Fundamental to any successful up-tempo offense is communication from the sideline to the field and a quarterback who can process the play and the defense in a few seconds. The quarterback’s job is a little easier if the defense is forced by the tempo into more basic looks, but he still has to be familiar enough with his own system to get everyone lined up and adapt from play to play. That’s not much of an issue for Boise State. Kellen Moore is about as experienced as they come in college, and he should be on the same page with Petersen. Aaron Murray isn’t as experienced within his system as Moore, but he’s at least settled in now. Richt won’t have to limit the scope of what he asks from Murray, and Murray should be able to make his own adjustments.

Earlier this year we heard about NFL teams considering replacing their ponderous paper playbooks with tablet versions. That’s become a reality: Tampa Bay has gone paperless and issued iPads with playbooks to each of their players.

The Bucs were smart and went beyond just a straight up playbook alternative. The iPad platform allows the team to offer players access to “video files of games, and practice and situational videos of any NFL team.” As a player studies the playbook, he can call up a practice video to see how that play is executed. He can also pull up a clip of how an opponent defends a certain formation.

The iPads also come with a security advantage. Once a paper playbook gets shared or stolen, it’s gone. iPads can be remotely wiped by the owner.

We’re still waiting for this technology to make it onto the field and look forward to specialized applications to help coaches with real-time decision making. It won’t be long.

Tablets are also making it into college programs, though on a much smaller scale. We’ve talked about their use in recruiting. Nebraska alum Ndamukong Suh outfitted the Huskers’ locker room with 123 built-in Apple iPads. Due to compliance concerns, the tablets are mounted and can’t be removed. That takes away a lot of the advantage, so players can’t use them for personal use or even film study outside of the locker room. In that capacity, they’ll be used mostly for communication between players, coaches, and academic personnel.

That’s unfortunate, because the portability and convenience of the tablet is perfectly suited for the student-athlete who might only have a few minutes on some remote part of campus to study a play or a video clip. I understand the compliance concern (Hey! Here’s an $800 piece of electronic equipment for you.) This is something that’s just going to have to evolve over time as the NCAA and colleges become more familiar with and smarter about the technology.

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

Mark Richt announced yesterday the four captains for the 2011 season:

• CB/R Brandon Boykin
• P Drew Butler
• C Ben Jones
• DE DeAngelo Tyson

The four shouldn’t surprise anyone – most fans know what they mean to the team on the field, and being voted captain shows what they mean to their teammates.

The honor is especially poignant for Tyson. A lot of players even from the best backgrounds don’t make it as far as Tyson has. But Tyson didn’t have anything close to a normal upbringing. All but deserted by his family, Tyson was a product of foster homes and DFACS with little direction. After earning national recognition in high school and committing to Georgia, Tyson nearly threw it away. Thanks to the Joseph’s Home for Boys in Statesboro and a strong support system at his high school, Tyson was able to make it to Georgia. Now he’s a senior starter at his natural position and respected enough in the eyes of his teammates to become a team captain.

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

Georgia has the nation’s best uniform, the nation’s best mascot, and one of the top ten stadiums in the nation. And they’ll be featuring exactly zero of those next weekend.

Thankfully the partisan Georgia crowd will be there to provide some of the comforts of home. One of the things I like about a big nonconference game on campus is a chance to show off everything that makes your campus and stadium great, and Georgia has plenty of that. If games like this are in part about building Georgia’s brand, they’ll be doing it without the hedges, the silver britches, and even an Uga. But if people come away with nothing more than an impression of quality football from Georgia, I’ll be plenty happy.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Pat Summitt and her family as she begins life with the devastating diagnosis of early-onset dementia. Though Georgia’s rivalry with the Lady Vols has often been bitter on the court, there’s never been any question about the standards of professionalism, character, and excellence that have been set by Summitt and her program. There’s not a women’s basketball fan (or any serious sports fan for that matter) who shouldn’t respect what Summitt has accomplished and what she stands for.

Summitt plans to continue to coach for as long as she is able, and she’ll have an experienced and capable staff on which to lean. We’ve seen other coaches, notably N.C. State’s Kay Yow, become inspirational figures as they coached on while fighting other diseases. Summitt’s experience with her condition, as it plays out in the public eye, could likewise do much for education and awareness, fundraising, and hopefully one day a treatment and a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.

There’s a tendency in these kinds of posts to keep writing and say something stupid, so we’ll leave it at this: read this piece by Summitt collborator and friend Sally Jenkins. Summitt’s approach to her diagnosis and disease is right in character, but I came away with an immense respect for her son Tyler.

The AJC and a few others on the Georgia beat have noted that Boise State will not make any players available to “opposing media” before the Georgia game.

It’s silly to begin with and probably makes perfect sense to a media market small enough to be so easily segmented. It will be interesting to see who turns out to get that label. Obviously the Georgia beat writers qualify, but would someone like Barnhart? Technically he’s a national guy now, but his background is all about southern football. But Boise isn’t doing themselves any favors. There isn’t a bigger concentration of college football passion than there is in the South, and that passion supports a strong media presence. Many of those members of the media aren’t only influential outside of the South; they also vote on everything from the AP poll to the Heisman.

Heisman votes are distributed by region. As you might imagine, results often quite different from region to region as votes naturally go to players with whom the voters might be more familiar. The inverse is true also – players, unless they’re runaway favorites, tend to do less well in the Heisman voting the further they get from their region. You can see in 2009 that Ingram carried most of the east and even the midwest, but he did no better than 3rd on the west coast and in the southwest.

That said, if you had a chance to get your Heisman candidate in front of media from regions across the country, it might stand to reason that the media – many of whom vote on postseason awards – will become more familiar with that player. Their profile of your star player might be a good addition to his press portfolio. Probably the last thing you’d want to do is alienate an entire region of media and voters, especially when it’s likely that your star will struggle to have many more high-profile television appearances in the region.

A link yesterday from the Senator led to this feature on Boise State’s right tackle Charles Leno Jr. Leno will be making his first start against Georgia, and he’ll have the job of protecting the left-handed Kellen Moore’s blind side.

That’s not the only interesting situation on the Boise State offensive line. Senior center Thomas Byrd is an all-conference performer who has started since his freshman year, and the Broncos are 37-2 when Byrd starts. But Byrd has been dealing with “a troublesome knee that prevented him from practicing in the spring and has forced coaches to manage his practice time.” He’s managed the injury and is expected to play and start, but his endurance will be something to watch during the game. As it is, at he’ll be undersized at 5’11” and 288 lbs. against Georgia’s Geathers and/or Jenkins.

It got all but buried last week during the Miami bombshell, but UCF is also in quite a bit of hot water. The program received a letter of inquiry last week aimed at possible recruiting violations in football and men’s basketball.

Ordinarily issues of compliance at Central Florida wouldn’t get a mention here, but the central figure in this case was was a name that came up earlier this year in a recruiting story that involved Georgia’s basketball program. According to ESPN, “Allegations are believed to center on Ken Caldwell, a 42-year-old Chicago native and former AAU basketball coach who has been tied to Central Florida’s recruitment of several basketball players and at least one football player.”

You might not remember Caldwell’s name, but you Kevin Ware might ring a bell. Ware is a promising guard from Georgia, rated among the top 100 prospects in the nation for the incoming class. Ware originally committed to Tennessee, but he re-opened recruiting once Bruce Pearl left the Volunteer program. After he was granted his release, Ware immediately listed four programs that would get consideration: “Louisville, UCLA, Georgia and Central Florida.” Three of those schools made sense: UCLA and Louisville are traditional basketball powers. Georgia was the up-and-coming hometown school coming off an NCAA Tournament bid. But UCF? The story took an even bigger twist when Ware committed to the Knights in one of the bigger recruiting coups in program history. Things became much more clear when Caldwell’s role was uncovered.

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

Central Florida, it turns out, had an ally in its recruitment of Ware: Kenneth Caldwell, a Chicago man with a substantial criminal record and apparent ties to a prominent sports agency. Ware said Caldwell called him repeatedly to talk up Central Florida, traveled to Atlanta to meet with his family and even arranged joint phone conversations with the university’s basketball coach, Donnie Jones, and his staff — contact prohibited by the N.C.A.A.

Once Ware became aware of Caldwell’s shady background, he backed out of his commitment and opened things up once again. In the end Ware settled on Louisville over his other finalists, including Georgia. Another top UCF prospect allegedly with ties to Caldwell, QB Damarcus Smith, hasn’t enrolled yet due to academic issues.

So we got to see the uniforms for the season opener on Saturday. Of course change brings backlash, and these uniforms don’t have many outright fans. Those who don’t like them more or less fall into two groups: the traditionalists who abhor any change, and those who think the solid red look is just plain ugly. Judging by the number of redesigns I’ve seen on the message boards and blogs this weekend, I’d have to guess that most people are actually OK with alternate uniforms as long as they looked like the ones they wanted.

The uniforms are said to be a nod to elements of Georgia’s past, but they remind others of everything from an ACC school to mid-century Ohio State to, well, this. Me? I don’t particularly like them, but it’s also not going to make the Ugas buried in Sanford Stadium roll over simultaneously. Georgia isn’t the first school to change things up for a game at the behest of a corporation, and it won’t be the last time it’s asked to do something like this.

A game like this should need no additional juice, and it’s unfortunate (and more than a little unseemly) that a game of this magnitude is being upstaged to some degree by Nike’s graphic design department. But that’s what this uniform change is all about: it’s tribute paid to Nike. Thanks in large part to Nike’s relentless marketing and ubiquitous merchandising, Georgia is consistently one of the nation’s top 10 programs in merchandise sales. That’s true even in the lean years. We’re told that “the 14 profitable Division I programs earned up to ten percent of their revenue from merchandise sales,” and that’s several million dollars to a program like Georgia.

Georgia fans and their kids, if they aren’t already, will soon take to the store and the computer to look for the jersey, gloves, and whatever else is mass-produced with this design on it. That includes many of those fans who are holding their noses and hope the uniform never sees the light of day or dome again. Buying Georgia stuff is what we do. In that respect, I’m surprised we don’t see uniform variations more often than we do. It’s not unheard of in the SEC.

Many Georgia fans now have a distaste for uniform changes thanks to the 2008 Alabama game. I think it’s important to distinguish that these uniforms aren’t a sign that Georgia is going back to that well (unlike this silly idea). The idea came from outside the program, and both teams will be participating. If the players like the look, so much the better, but none of that will replace the work that’s been done over the past seven-and-a-half months. Georgia didn’t lose to Alabama because of the jersey color; they lost to a team that was more talented, better prepared, and better coached on that day. I’m a little less persuaded by “the players like them” arguement than others are. If this offseason was about anything else, it was about getting back to business and putting the adults back in charge of the program. Hopefully Christian Robinson’s attitude is a common one – no one looks good missing a tackle or a block.

Personally, I hope we see a lot more of the new uniforms – at least on the Sanford Stadium video board. We could sure use some fresh highlights.

UPDATE: And if you were wondering what Boise’s version of the uniform looks like, here it is. Looks very similar to Georgia’s. Two thoughts hit me when seeing them: 1) I hope Georgia doesn’t see this combination of orange and blue and think back on this game, and 2) Georgia got the better deal out of these uniforms.