The 2011-2012 men’s basketball schedule was released yesterday. I’m having a tough time getting a consensus on the strength of this schedule. How ’bout you?

• Seth Emerson: UGA men’s hoops schedule: More challenging than expected
• Marc Weiszer: UGA hoops schedule offers `challenge’ for retooled Bulldogs team
• Dawg Sports: Mark Fox’s Georgia Bulldogs Reveal Challenging Basketball Schedule for 2011-2012
• AJC: The Georgia men’s basketball team will travel to Xavier, Colorado and Southern California, among other places, under an ambitious 2011-12 schedule announced Thursday.
• Mark Fox: We’re very excited about the challenge this schedule will present to our young team.

Georgia’s brief scare with Orson Charles’s eligibility came and went quickly yesterday. Charles was put into a potentially bad situation by his former teammate and his high school coach, but he was alleged to have received nothing but a tour of an expensive home and a recruiting pitch from a booster. That’s a problem for Miami, but it has no impact on Orson’s eligibility since he signed elsewhere. Had he signed with the Hurricanes, his visit and contact with Nevin Shapiro would have been a much bigger issue.

With the eligibility scare past and Charles cleared, his relationship with Miami becomes more of a curiosity than a Pandora’s box. Why didn’t he end up signing with a school that he considered his favorite for much of the recruiting process? Miami’s recruiting of Charles is an interesting story, mainly for how it ends. Many of the links I’ll use here are behind the paywall, but you’ll get the gist of it. The short version is this: sometime in late 2008, Miami went from being Orson’s favorite to disappearing completely off the radar.

Miami was Orson’s favorite as early as the first updates on him in March of 2008. Though he mentioned several other schools, including Georgia, he did call Miami “my dream school.” He got his Miami offer at the end of March but made it clear that he wanted to wait and take his visits before deciding. Over the spring and summer, he made several trips to Miami but also got out to see other schools like FSU, Florida, and Georgia. Charles’s visit to Shapiro’s house took place after his junior year of high school.

After an unofficial visit to Miami in mid-August, Charles told Rivals.com that he “would put Miami ahead of everybody.” In fact, he was close to committing on the spot but held off. Charles continued to talk about Miami and his “real good relationship” with coach Joe Pannunzio through early November. (Pannunzio, currently director of football operations at Alabama, is one of the individuals named by Yahoo! Sports in their investigation of the Miami program.)

Things really began to change during that November-December 2008 period. The catalyst was the turbulent status of Hurricane QB Robert Marve, a friend and former teammate of Charles. Things went downhill for Marve in 2008, and he was in a fierce competition for the starting job with current Miami signal caller Jacory Harris. Marve was eventually suspended for the team’s bowl game for violation of team rules. Charles maintained as late as December 20th that Marve’s situation, while troubling, didn’t necessarily eliminate the Hurricanes from consideration. “[What happened with Robert] doesn’t really affect me,” Charles said. “It just keeps me guessing. I’m just going to talk to Marve and see what’s going on. But everybody is still in it.”

Subsequent events just after the bowl game only increased the uncertainty at Miami. Offensive coordinator Patrick Nix was let go just before the New Year. That seemed to be the last straw for Marve who decided to transfer. Miami coach Randy Shannon restricted Marve’s transfer options to any school outside the SEC, ACC, and the state of Florida.

Shannon’s treatment of Marve ended Miami’s chances with Charles. Robert Weiner, the high school coach of both Marve and Charles, unloaded on Shannon. According to the Miami Herald, Weiner said that no player of his would play for Shannon, and “Weiner said tight end Orson Charles…definitely won’t be attending Miami now.” Whether Weiner’s definitive statement about Charles came with Orson’s blessing is unknown, but that’s how things played out.

By the end of 2008, Miami was out of the picture. Charles stated that he had decided on his five official visits, and Miami was not among them. Now it’s often the case that a prospect won’t “waste” one of his limited official visits on a favorite nearby school that he’s visited unofficially several times. That didn’t happen here; it looks as if Miami really had been eliminated by that time. The events at Miami certainly finalized things between the Hurricanes and Orson Charles, but it’s unclear whether Charles had begun to change his mind much earlier. A Rivals.com article posted around the same time as Nix’s departure and Marve’s transfer decision had already annoited Georgia as the new “team to beat” for Charles.

Orson’s recruiting process ended up going beyond Signing Day, but he never really wavered from the five schools he named as his official visit destinations shortly after the beginning of 2009. Georgia, FSU, Florida, USC, and Tennessee were his finalists. Eventually Florida State and then Florida were eliminated, and he announced his decision for Georgia over the Vols and the Trojans.

Thomas L. Friedman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist known for, among other things, having a strange preoccupation with China’s authoritarian model of government. Wouldn’t it be great, he asks wistfully, if, just for one day, we could bypass all of the annoying politics and “authorize the right solutions” for our nation? It’s not such a strange notion, actually. How many of us have had a great idea that would solve everything if only the stupid people would do things our way, the right way?

You don’t have to look much further than the topic of a college football playoff to find this at work among sports fans. My idea is so simple and would make everyone three trillion dollars, but the stupid, evil, greedy conferences aren’t smart enough to realize it. If only there were someone who could make them fall in line.

The college football punditry is in this mode now. Blutarsky goes to work on Pete Thamel’s lament that “no one is in charge” of college football. Tony Barnhart joins in with a call for “a commissioner of college football” as a way “to get college football out of the ethical ditch.”

No one ever really says what this commissioner is supposed to do, but we expect that this Solomon will, as Thamel dreams, “look out for the greater good of the game.” (The “game”, incidently, that’s never been more popular, more lucrative, and which has television networks lining up to bid for rights.) Barnhart has a vision that such a commissioner would have “the last word” on such matters as the Cam Newton case. As opposed to the last word belonging to the NCAA’s enforcement division? Is this commissioner supposed to step in and overrule unpopular decisions made by the current governing processes?

Newton wasn’t allowed to play because no one did anything. He was allowed to play after the NCAA applied its own rules (as flawed as they were) and made the appropriate decision based on the information available at the time. So would Barnhart’s commissioner ignore these rules, make up new ones on the fly, or find some miscellaneous reason to suspend someone that looks guilty in order to get the result demanded by the conventional wisdom?

Why not get rid of that tangled mess of NCAA rules and come up with new ones? Barnhart’s vision goes in that direction. Who needs the NCAA?

The sport has become too big to be managed within in the limitations of the NCAA framework. If a way cannot be found to accommodate these schools then they should leave the NCAA and form their own organization and make their own rules.

That idea might have support from both sides of the aisle, as it were, but not for the reasons Barnhart imagines. Top schools and conferences would love to operate without having to subsidize the bottom 75% of the 346 Division I schools. The end result though wouldn’t be the top-down structure Barnhart describes. It would be a federation of a handful of conferences with even greater visibility and influence than they have now.

Barnhart laments that what makes college football great leads to what he sees as a flaw.

At the end of the day, every institution has a right to self-determination. Texas A&M is currently a member the Big 12 conference, not the National Football League. It does not have to subjugate its mission, either academically or athletically, to a larger body unless it chooses to do so. Conference membership is voluntary. The conference serves the collective needs of the institutions. The institutions do not serve the conference. They cooperate, they consult, and they compromise, but they do not serve.

That’s a beautiful summary of college athletics, but somehow the competing self-interests of the member schools and conferences is a problem. Things would be a lot smoother if everyone would just align themselves to the “greater good” enforced by some central figure. Sure, it might not be the best for your school or even your specific conference, but think of the game! That paragraph also captures but doesn’t explore the essential difference between college athletics and a pro league. The schools aren’t franchises and cannot be operated that way.

Barnhart’s description of the conference structure shouldn’t stop where it does. The same language can be used to describe the relationship between the school, the conference, AND the NCAA. The NCAA is run by and serves its members, not the other way ’round. Barnhart suggests that “if NCAA President Mark Emmert wants to get a handle on some of the excesses of college football, then go to the presidents and sell them on the idea for a commissioner of college football.” That’s backwards. If the presidents that make up the NCAA decide there is a problem with “the excesses of college football,” they will empower Emmert or whomever they appoint to take action. From where I sit, they don’t seem to be moving in that direction.

We’re not used to good news on the NCAA/compliance front, so we had to read it a few dozen times. The AJC reports that linebacker Jarvis Jones has been cleared to play and will not have to miss any games as a result of an investigation into possible improper benefits received from a Columbus recreation director.

The investigation stems from a June report in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. While there doesn’t seem to have been much of a dispute about Jones receiving a benefit, there was a question about the existing relationship between Jones and the men alleged to have provided the benefit. According to Eric Baumgartner of the UGA compliance office, “Georgia’s investigation showed that there were not improper benefits for Jones, a sophomore, based on his prior relationships before he became a prospect.” Because there was an established relationship before Jones entered the ninth grade, the benefits were allowed. Ninth grade is when kids become prospective student-athletes in the eyes of the NCAA.

Jones is expected to jump right in and start at SAM linebacker after sitting out the 2010 season as a transfer from Southern Cal. Jones suffered a neck injury during the 2009 season, and the Trojans would not clear him to play. While much is expected of Jones this year, that neck will be something worth watching as his career in the Red and Black gets underway. He’s gone through a full year of practice including spring drills, and no problems have yet manifested themselves. We hear great things about his progress and readiness, and now we learn that Georgia will have one of their fast-rising defensive starters for the season opener.

It should be noted, and it was mentioned by the AJC, that things are still up in the air for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, the incoming Georgia basketball freshman who was named in the same Columbus report. I’m sure most fans consider this case closed now that Jones’s part of it is resolved, but Caldwell-Pope’s availability is central to the outlook of Georgia basketball this year. His absence, relatively speaking, would be of much greater impact to his team than Jones’s absence.

And while we’re at it, it would be nice to get some resolution from the NCAA Clearinghouse on Kent Turene. The longer his exile drags on, the worse it looks for his chances of joining the football team this year.

Hartman Fund contributors got a note from AD Greg McGarity on Monday. The e-mail was just much of the standard compliance boilerplate that is now part of the booster education efforts of any responsible program. Though the actual rules aren’t really this restrictive, McGarity’s note boiled it down to leave no gray area.

Members of The Georgia Bulldog Club can have NO interaction with any prospective student athletes, nor can members of The Georgia Bulldog Club do anything for any current student athletes. If we just remember those two things, we will go a long way in avoiding any NCAA violations in this area of our program.

You can’t blame them for going well beyond the actual letter of the law – every athletic director has to be on edge now. “Improper benefit” violations having nothing to do with the school are all over the news, and “do nothing for anyone” leaves no wriggle room for inadvertent violations. With that in mind, it’s no surprise to learn that going forward pictures will be pretty much the only thing you’ll be taking from Picture Day. Leave the jerseys and footballs at home.

Due to recent public issues surrounding student-athlete autographs across the country, no outside items may be brought to Picture Day. The Georgia Athletic Association will provide each fan with two free schedule posters to be signed by the players and Coach Richt. No other items will be permitted.

Georgia’s more detailed rules and guidelines for boosters can be found here.

Aaron Murray had one of the best years of any Georgia quarterback, let alone a freshman quarterback. His 61% completion rate and 3,049 passing yards placed him among the top 5 in both stats among Georgia quarterbacks of any experience level. Those 24 touchdowns were just one off the Georgia record of 25 set by Stafford in 2008. His TD/INT ratio was an impressive 24/6 during the regular season, and half of those interceptions came during one game.

So when you hear Murray talk about giving himself a “C” for his performance last season, you might get that eye-rolling reaction that comes when the perfectionist A-student complains about only getting a 98 on the exam. He’s right, though. I especially liked the discussion of accuracy. Green, Durham, and other receivers made several nice catches on slightly mis-thrown balls that might have resulted in big yards-after-catch had they been caught in stride. Screen passes were especially problematic.

Getting beyond the mechanics, Murray and his team will also have to work through a more nebulous problem. If Georgia’s emphasis this off-season on the 4th quarter pays off, we’ll see improvements in some of these areas:

• Georgia didn’t beat a ranked team last year but had several late chances to do so.
• Given the opportunity to engineer several significant 4th-quarter drives last year, Georgia came away empty almost every time. Late comebacks against Arkansas and Florida were wasted with key mistakes on Georgia’s final possessions.
• Georgia was 5th best in the SEC at creating redzone chances, but 7th best in getting touchdowns from those chances.
• Georgia was 4th in scoring offense but was in the bottom half of the conference in both first downs and third down conversions.

Travis’s observation that “we stalled on a lot of drives, right when we needed momentum” has some substance to it. It’s important to note that none of those points above are solely on Murray. He didn’t fumble at Colorado or leave a tailback to block a defensive end against Arkansas. Like a baseball pitcher, a quarterback often takes the blame (and also the praise) for the play of his teammates and the decisions of his coaches. Acknowledging that, coming through in those clutch situations is the biggest step forward that Murray and the Georgia offense can take this year. As Arthur Lynch put it, Murray “will judge himself on wins and losses, rather than stats.” Fans and history probably will too.

The Georgia homer in me is just happy to be ranked at any point in the season. The Georgia fan in me who’s spent much of the past seven months trying to reconcile last season wonders what seemed rankable about a 6-7 team that lost its best play on both sides of the ball.

We could get all analytical and wonder if it’s the effect of offseason changes or belief in Mark Richt by his peers or anticipation of the Dream Team or any other factor that led to coaches ranking Georgia. Or we could remember that it’s a preseason poll and that coaches (or their SID interns) put as much thought into it as what they had for lunch. “What do you mean I haven’t ranked Georgia, Florida, or Texas yet? OK…stick them on the end.” Silly and pointless, but not ever going away.

There is one angle worth talking about: if Georgia finishes ranked where they begin, that implies a 3 or 4-loss season. Would you take a 9-3 or 8-4 season right now with this schedule? More specifically, would 8-4 and a #22 ranking mean that Mark Richt is still coaching when the Dawgs head to their bowl game?

A few other thoughts about the SEC in the poll:

• Alabama and LSU are ranked about where you’d expect. The two have been favorites to battle for the West since last year ended.
• That said, a lot of people seem to be sleeping on Arkansas. There they are at #14 and fresh off a BCS win game. Mallett will be missed, but his replacement is capable. They have more preseason All-SEC players than any other team.
• Has Auburn fallen that much to be closer to 6-7 Georgia than someone like Arkansas? I know they lose Cam and Fairley, but I also know that Malzahn can do a lot with a little. Add in a little swagger after the national title, and they’ll be a lot tougher to knock off their perch than these pollsters think. One thing working against them is the conference schedule; 7 of their 8 conference opponents are ranked in this poll.
• On the other hand, I’m not buying Mississippi State. Mullen gets the genius label due to a sometimes-competent offense and a defense that got a good bit better. The man behind that defensive improvement is gone. This is a team that was 4-4 in the league last year, and is there really that much more room for improvement to merit a top 20 ranking? That early game at Auburn will tell us a ton about both teams and whether the preseason read was correct about either of them.

There was a time a few years back where shoulder injuries were the Bulldog medical equivalent to traffic violations. You didn’t leave Athens without one. Unfortunately our favorite malady rears its head again just before preseason practice gets going.

UGA announced today that RFr. inside linebacker Brandon Burrows will miss the 2011 season after surgery next week on his right shoulder.

With the new strength and conditioning program in the spotlight, the program was clear to point out that the surgery will be to correct “chronic shoulder instability.” That’s fine, but a chronic problem might have been addressed during his redshirt season while Burrows was already recovering from knee surgery. It’s just speculation, but you have to guess that something more recent exacerbated that shoulder condition.

We wish Brandon the best in his recovery and look forward to seeing him back in action. It’s been nearly two years since the ACL injury that ended his high school career, so he must be frustrated and more than ready to get out there.

As Seth Emerson reported on Monday,

The four-year-old daughter of new inside linebackers coach Kirk Olividatti has been battling leukemia, Richt announced. Olividatti’s wife Keely hasn’t left the hospital for 30 days, the head coach informed the crowd; she spoke to Richt on Monday, and agreed that Richt could make the daughter Kasyn’s fight public.

You can imagine the incredible strain on the family. Mrs. Olividatti has been by her daughter’s side the whole time as they fight through chemo treatments and their inevitable complications. The Olividattis also have a son back at their home in the Athens area. Coach Olividatti has worn out the highways between Atlanta and Athens managing to do his job while attending to his family now spread out over 60 miles.

If something like this has to happen to a family, it’s a small bit of grace that it happened here. Mark Richt’s assistants are generally loyal for a reason. We learned that during last season first-year assistant Warren Belin was given leave to travel to his dying mother each week. There is an incredible support system that has already sprung into action to aid the Olividatti family during their ordeal.

It also helps that Georgia is in close proximity to one of the nation’s top hospitals for pediatric cancer. The relationship between CHOA and the Georgia football program was already strong, and the Olividattis can at least take solace in the knowledge that Kasyn is receiving the best possible care.

If you’re wondering how you can help, stay tuned.

It’s usually the SEC taking criticism for its scheduling, but this week it’s Big 10 and Big 12 schools whose scheduling philosophies are in the news.

Fans looking for future opponents for a home-and-home series can probably scratch Michigan from their prospect list. Wolverine athletic director Dave Brandon doesn’t plan on playing any non-conference road games other than Notre Dame. (h/t Dr. Saturday)

I don’t believe we can or should go on the road for non-conference games when we can put 113,000 people in our stadium.

Brandon’s doctrine allows for an exception: the occasional neutral-site game like next season’s opener against Alabama in Dallas. But such games aren’t road games; Michigan will split a large payout that will more than compensate for the lost home game. The Wolverines are currently obligated to a game at UConn in 2013, but Brandon is also trying to get that moved to a larger venue with, of course, a higher payout.

Pointing out the obvious financial advantage of hosting as many games as possible is one way to frame a light nonconference schedule. There are much less graceful ways too. (h/t Blutarsky)

Texas Tech had to drop a team from the nonconference schedule because the Big 12 wanted to play a round-robin conference schedule. That team just happened to be non-BCS heavyweight TCU. Tubs, of course, admitted that Tech dropped TCU because TCU “isn’t the type of team we need to play now.”

Georgia’s new approach to scheduling following the “Florida model” is nothing to brag about. It’s also not that rare. When home games mean over a million dollars in revenue and the process values absolute record above all else, it’s good to see other teams from the far corners of the nation be honest about the way they approach the schedule. It might not produce the most entertaining matchups, but it does reflect the incentives at play in major college football.

We’ve had some fun over the past week noting the complete lack of reporting leading up to last week’s announcement of sanctions against Georgia Tech football and men’s basketball. For Georgia fans sick of reading overblown stories about a lineman transfer or the departure of a recruiting assistant, it was hard not to comment on the contrast.

To be fair, this is not about the AJC. Not at all. They’re not the only ones on the Tech beat. Atlanta has 75 different Kings, Kangs, Doctors, and Misters of college football hanging around, and none of them were on this. Atlanta’s sports talk stations couldn’t be bothered. And with TV sports all but outsourced now, you can forget about them breaking any kind of investigative story.

The Senator was right last week to frame this as a bigger issue than laziness at the local paper. Investigative journalism is tough, especially when you have no reason to think anything is out of the ordinary. No one at Tech resigned, there were no self-imposed sanctions announced, and the program went on as if they had done nothing wrong because that was (and remains) their posture on the allegations. About the only way to fall into a story under those circumstances is through a leak. Leaks and loose lips are hardly rare around athletic programs, but this process seems to have been as under the radar as you can get.

In contrast, LSU’s sanctions yesterday came after a well-documented, if not especially scintillating, investigation. In that case, there had been self-imposed sanctions. The staff member involved in the allegations resigned abruptly with his role in the allegations a matter of record at the time of his resignation. Those of us who really weren’t paying attention to LSU might not have been aware of an investigation and pending sanctions aside from the separate Willie Lyles saga, but the reporting had been done.

There’s an interesting case going on up in North Carolina right now. I won’t bore you with the ins and outs of Michael McAdoo’s reinstatement case, but in the context of this post the relevant angle is this:

Unlike honor court cases, state Superior Court proceedings are public, and that required McAdoo to produce the paper at the heart of the academic violations, as well as records of the honor court and NCAA proceedings. Message board commenters on Pack Pride, a sports website devoted to rival N.C. State, seized on the paper, finding several examples of plagiarism.

That’s right: some of the more damning evidence of plagiarism wasn’t found by the school’s own processes or even the local Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill media. It was rival message board denizens with a little too much time on their hands and access to the same public documents anyone else could have read. As the folks at DBR wondered,

It’s also worth asking why PackPride.com embarrassed the entire local media. This was not brain surgery, and you can’t say that it’s because of cutbacks. It’s as simple as googling and using a site like scanmyessay.com. The N&O ultimately did use it, but only after basically being embarrassed into it.

The Andrew Sullivan piece referenced by Blutarsky concluded that, “as it is, most newspaper coverage isn’t much better than a basic wire service.” At least the Atlanta media had the excuse of apparent normalcy at Tech. That wasn’t so in North Carolina where the McAdoo case was very much in the public eye and the documents in question already in the public domain. As Blutarsky observed, developments like this aren’t really worthy of celebration. More than anything, it’s the sad degredation of a resource whose value used to be much greater.

I was willing to let the Tech infractions story come and go last week. After all, I’m sympathetic to the gripes. The initial violation (on the football side anyway) was sketchy. As the institute’s president admitted, it’s likely that the eligibility issue would have been resolved quickly had Tech done things the right way and acted immediately and honestly when the possible violation was brought to their attention.

I was also willing to let the players have their say. Having an accomplishment like a conference title removed from the record naturally provokes an emotional response from those who worked to make it happen. Relax, guys. No one is coming for your rings.

But it’s becoming evident that the program just can’t let it go. And it’s evident that this attitude starts at the top. Paul Johnson right in this respect: no one can take the memories of the accomplishment away, demonstrating how toothless the concept of vacating wins really is. And no one is coming for his ring either (again with this strawman). We pointed out that going forward Tech is in as good of a position as they could expect to be. They don’t face any kind of operational restrictions going forward other than the probation which simply requires them to do things by the book – the same requirement any school has. There is no bowl ban, no restrictions on recruiting, and no loss of scholarships. LSU – a school lauded by the NCAA for their cooperation – could only hope to be positioned as well after hearing their own sanctions.

Johnson’s subsequent tantrum directed at the NCAA though is something I’d expect from an irrational blind-loyalist fan and not from someone charged with teaching his players larger lessons about accountability. Tyler does a good job of dealing with one of Johnson’s most absurd points. Of course Tech gained an advantage by playing Thomas at the end of the year. The ACC championship win, in which Thomas’s long touchdown played a big part, meant millions of dollars for the school. Put another way, is there any way the absence of the team’s best (and only effective) receiver wouldn’t have been a disadvantage?

There’s a common theme in Johnson’s and Sean Bedford’s gripe: the verdict is not fair to everyone who worked so hard and did things the right way. Bedford states:

I have a hard time grasping the notion that one of the proudest moments in my life (and the lives of every other individual that was a part of the team and program in 2009) is apparently worth $312 in your eyes. If that truly is the case, I’d be happy to provide you with that same amount of money (cash or check, your choice) in exchange for the reinstatement of the title my teammates and I earned through our blood, sweat and tears.

It’s understandable why Bedford would lash out at the guys meting out justice at the end of this investigation. But his questions shouldn’t stop with the “pencil pushers” he belittles in his response. He’s right that this all started over a mere $312. Evidently one of his teammates thought so little of everyone’s “blood, sweat and tears” that he was willing to throw it all away over $312 in clothing. Evidently those responsible for the stewardship of his program would put such a promising season at risk by sweeping such a small violation under the rug with the season’s three biggest games looming.

Heather Dinich sums it up: “instead of accepting the penalties and moving on, Georgia Tech has taken the Bedford approach – win as a team, lose as individuals.” Be mad at the NCAA if you like, but your anger should really be directed at the teammates and administrators who let you down.

Check the release for all of the information. Here are highlights:

Boise St.

All Hartman Fund contributors got Boise State tickets. If you received a refund in the past week with an odd amount, it was a refund for the difference between the section you ordered and the section for which you qualified. The cutoffs were:

• Club Level – Patrons with a score of 104,600 or higher.
• Mezzanine Level – Patrons with a score of 45,001 or higher.
• Lower Level – Patrons with a score of 14,000 or higher.
• Upper Level – Patrons with a score of 100 or higher.

There are still a few tickets left for this game: “A limited quantity of Boise State upper level tickets at $55 each will be made available to the general public at 9 am on Monday, July 25. Please visit georgiadogs.com at that time, if you have an interest in ordering additional game tickets.”

Home Tickets

After several years of a cutoff score for new renewable season tickets, the bar was set much lower this year. “2011 Hartman Fund donors, who contributed a minimum of $250 per seat, placed a season ticket order and had a cumulative score of 500 or higher, will receive adjacent renewable season tickets.”

For home single game tickets, there were no single-game tickets available for South Carolina or Auburn. All other single-game ticket requests were filled for Hartman Fund donors.

Season tickets will be mailed the week of August 8th.

Away Tickets

All requests by Hartman Fund donors for Tennessee tickets were filled (incredible!). Cutoffs for all other road games, as well as Florida, will be announced at a later time. Away tickets will be mailed separate from season tickets as usual.

It’s not every day that an ATP World Tour event is held in your neighborhood. With the Atlanta Athletic Club set to host next month’s PGA Championship, the 2011 Atlanta Tennis Championships have moved a few miles south to Peachtree Corners and the Racquet Club of the South. The stadium and the neighborhood look great, and we’re excited about having 40,000 drop people by over the next week.

Qualifying will take place on Saturday and Sunday with the main draw starting on Monday the 18th and continuing through Sunday the 24th. The complete schedule is here. Unfortunately most of the weekday action takes place during business hours, but there will be plenty of chances to drop by both this weekend and next.

Mardy Fish, John Isner, and Lleyton Hewitt headline the 32-man singles event. Even Nicolas Mahut, Isner’s first-round Wimbledon opponent for the past two years, will be there. But Isner isn’t the only Bulldog coming to Norcross. Recent alum and co-captain of last year’s team Drake Bernstein will also be part of the field. Wil Spencer, a rising senior on the current squad, will compete this weekend for one of the four wildcard spots in the draw.

You can find ticket information here. Drop me a note, and I should be able to pass along some deals on tickets.

Georgia placed eight players on the 2011 SEC Coaches Preseason All-SEC Team announced yesterday. Six players merited first-string mention, and two others were named to the second team. Brandon Boykin was named both to the first team (as a returner) and the second team (as a cornerback).

First Team

• Orson Charles
• Cordy Glenn
• Aaron Murray
• Blair Walsh
• Drew Butler
• Brandon Boykin

Second Team

• Ben Jones
• DeAngelo Tyson
• Brandon Boykin

Georgia’s eight selections were fourth-most in the league. It’s up from six a year ago, and it equals the nine preseason all-conference selections in 2009. One trend continues from last year though. For the second year in a row, Georgia has no defenders on the first team. It’s an improvement that Tyson and Boykin made it on the second team this year; the Dawgs placed no one from defense on the preseason all-SEC teams.

Justin Houston emerged last year to earn first-team postseason honors, but he was the only Bulldog defender to make the coaches’ postseason all-conference team last year. Will Boykin or Tyson elevate their game to become first-teamers at the end of this year, or will someone else emerge this season to become one of the best in the league? If the defense is going to take the step forward we expect in Grantham’s second year, it’s going to take more than a pair of second-teamers to get it done.