Furman Bisher should have just stopped after admitting, "I have no idea how a search firm operates." Far as I’m concerned, that would have saved him from the unfortunate paragraphs that followed in another attempt to stir the Bobby Knight pot.

If a veteran of sports journalism is unfamiliar with the use of search firms in the hiring process, there’s no shame if someone reading this wonders just how widespread the practice is. Hardly a sign of incompetence or fear, the enlistment of outside help is increasingly important as the salaries and stakes involved continue to grow. Below is a very incomplete list of high-profile hires made with the assistance of a search firm. You might have heard of one or two.

• Paul Johnson, Georgia Tech football
• Bruce Pearl, Tennessee basketball
• Lane Kiffin, Tennessee football
• Bob Stoops, Oklahoma football
• Rick Neuheisel, UCLA football
• Urban Meyer, Florida football
• Mack Brown, Texas football
• Butch Davis, North Carolina football
• Randy Shannon, Miami football
• Kevin White, Duke AD
• Bo Pelini, Nebraska football. Bisher thinks that Vince Dooley would never have used a search firm. Would it surprise him that Tom Osborne did?
• John Pelphrey, Arkansas basketball
• Les Miles, LSU football (same firm was used to bring Saban to LSU)
• Bobby Petrino, Arkansas football
• Gene Chizik, Auburn football
• Scott Drew, Baylor basketball
• June Jones, SMU football
• Tom O’Brien, N.C. State football
• Mark Dantonio, Michigan State football

The point isn’t whether those were all good hires. It’s that the use of a search firm or consultant is so commonplace now in major college athletics that the exceptional cases are when a search firm isn’t used. Here is an example of the influence just one consultant can have on the career of a coach and the landscape of a sport:

A Neinas search can vault a coach into the national spotlight overnight. Take the meteoric rise of Florida’s Urban Meyer, who boosted his annual salary 12-fold after emerging as the winner of two Neinas-led searches. In 2001, Bowling Green, without Neinas’ help, hired the former Notre Dame assistant for his first head coaching post at an annual salary of $165,000. After a Neinas search, Meyer jumped to a $500,000 salary with Utah in 2002. After another, he landed his current $2 million-a-year job with Florida.

One final thing…Bisher wrote:

Could it be that when Vince Dooley hired Mark Richt to coach football at Georgia he went through a “search” firm? Of course not.

But of course Dooley did.

The past two to three weeks we have conducted a national search for a new head football coach. We talked to a lot of people and did hire Chuck Neinas as a consultant, and it was very helpful to us. In any event, I am pleased to announce that Mark Richt — offensive coordinator at Florida State, has been offered and accepted the position of head football coach at the University of Georgia.

If you’ve read one Georgia story this offseason, you’ve read 50 about how different things are in Athens now that the team and coaches have had a while to reflect on the 2008 season. You’ve probably even heard about specific changes like the smaller workout groups with more individual focus. David Hale, as is often the case these days, provides the jumping-off point.

February 2009:

It’s been a common refrain in Georgia’s locker room this offseason, but everyone seems to agree the team is working a lot harder than it did a year ago. Cox said the new focus has been obvious during seven-on-seven drills, when even the young players have stepped up to show their skills.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? We want to hear positive things coming out of these important offseason workouts. But if it all sounds vaguely familiar, it should.

Mark Richt, March 2008:

"I’m really encouraged by everybody’s attitude and effort. I’m getting a lot of good vibrations on our leadership."

Matthew Stafford, March 2008:

"I think the guys have really stepped up, realizing that with the high ranking comes a lot of responsibility to be on meetings on time and try to help the team as much as we can. That’s a good sign instead of guys slacking off and saying ‘We’re No. 2 and we can do what we want.’ It’s not that way at all. The feeling around the team is the reason we got to that point is working hard, so we’ve got to do more of the same."

My plea to the Georgia media: enough. Is there ever an offseason in which the team isn’t working as hard as it ever has? Have we ever had an offseason update that didn’t include some variant of the phrase "stepping up"? It’s not that anyone’s being dishonest. The quotes are accurate of course, and as Hale says the refrain is common enough that we know the message isn’t being distorted. That’s how the team feels right now. A team that is positive and motivated about the challenges ahead sure beats the alternative. It would be interesting – and refreshing – though to see a reporter or two push back on this familiar storyline.

It’s a long way between the optimism of February and the harsh realities of the season. The camaraderie that is so tight and laser-focused now will be tested over the next few months by injuries, disciplinary actions, academic challenges, and ultimately by the games themselves next autumn. It only takes a few months for the tightly-knit team in March to degenerate into a team that was so clearly rudderless after the Kentucky game.

I’m usually a positive, optimistic guy. A Disney Dawg. Locke rather than Hobbes. I want to believe that working harder and better than ever will translate into different and better results this season than it did last season. I’m excited about the season and Joe Cox. This year though I’d much rather see great leadership, fundamentals, and hard work in action six months down the road before we start patting the team on the back for those traits in February.

The offer of an athletic scholarship seems like it should be a pretty cut and dried process, but it can be as muddy as the flip side of the process – the commitment.

We hear about offers (especially in basketball) to younger and younger prospects to the point where the NCAA is considering regulating contact with seventh-graders.

But a formal written offer can’t be made until September of the prospect’s junior year. So, yes, there are non-binding verbal offers as well as commitments. Often these "offers" come with plenty of strings attached. We’d like to offer you a scholarship – if we have one available, if you bring your grades up, if you have a strong senior season, if we don’t sign two other guys at your position, etc. Many prospects stop listening after "we’d like to offer you a scholarship," and so there is often confusing and conflicting information about a prospect’s status. Sometimes even the prospect himself isn’t the best source to find out if there is an offer on the table.

That brings us to the case of Kwame Geathers. If the last name is familiar, that’s for good reason. His brother Robert played at Georgia and is now in the NFL. His other brother Clifton is a contributor at South Carolina. That’s quite a strong family legacy, and Kwame seems to be just as good of a prospect.

Geathers has still not signed with a school, and Georgia has always been among those listed as a favorite. Georgia’s continued interest and Geathers’ status as a top prospect led many to assume or report that he had an offer from Georgia.

Then questions emerged around Signing Day. Did Geathers even have an offer? Even his high school coach was unsure. It turns out that Geathers didn’t have an offer. That led to another round of conflicting information. Rivals.com National Recruiting Analyst Mike Farrell reported that "Georgia apparently is out of room and had to pull its offer (to Geathers)." That wasn’t the case, and Steve Patterson of UGASports.com had to set the record straight yesterday. Georgia has room not only for Geathers but also for unsigned TE Orson Charles.

There’s still more. Today we learn that Geathers did in fact finally get that Georgia offer on Thursday. But now he is postponing his decision again as he weighs a recent visit to Tennessee. Once assumed to be a Georgia vs. South Carolina battle, Geathers is now considering Georgia, Tennessee, and Central Florida.

RELATED: Read some additional thoughts about the recruiting process over at HP. Interesting thoughts about the emerging “‘soft offer” to go along with the “soft commitment”. I’m not sure it will catch on though. There is a much greater stigma attached to pulling an offer as there is to switching a verbal commitment. Coaches might be getting tired of it, but in the public perception it’s still the coach making $2 million per year vs. a prospect who is often a lower-income minority.

Georgia Tech’s 2009 football schedule is out, and it features two Thursday night games (natch), an opener against Jacksonville State, and nonconference games with SEC powers Mississippi State and Vanderbilt.

The relevant bit for us: before hosting Georgia, Tech will have a November 14th game at Duke and then a bye week. That’s a lot of time to think about the Georgia visit. In contrast, Georgia will host Auburn and Kentucky in the weeks leading up to the Tech game. Then again, how much good did a bye week do us in 2008?

While the current basketball team continues to go through the motions on its way to an inauspicious finish, the program did get a bit of good news. Fall signees (G) Demario Mayfield and (C) Daniel Miller both plan on sticking with Georgia and will play for the new coach.

“I’m still 100 percent going to Georgia,” said Mayfield, who also had offers from Clemson, South Carolina, Auburn and Florida State.
…
“Even with (Felton’s dismissal), I am still going to Georgia,” (said Miller).

Now while neither is in the Derrick Favors class of instant program-changing prospects, each is considered to be a quality player. The AJC notes that Miller “is now considered the nation’s eighth-best senior center prospect by ESPN.” Mayfield’s offer sheet speaks for itself.

This news already puts the new coach a step ahead of the last time we changed coaches. The Georgia administration did everything but pack the bags of the 2003 recruiting class to encourage them to transfer to other programs. As a result, Dennis Felton had to piece together an entire recruiting class within a couple of months in the wake of a scandal that made national news. That first class ended up being Levi Stukes, Steve Newman, Corey Gibbs, and Marcus Sikes. Stukes and Newman were the only contributors from that class, and they became the core of the team as sophomores.

With Miller and Mayfield solidly committed, the new coach can focus on other needs in the spring period. The most obvious need is shooting help from both the 2 and 3 positions, and the ability to sign a scorer from the wing will be an immediate and early test for the new coach.

First read pwd’s take on why we’d rather certain basketball programs do well down the stretch. That’s exactly right. It’s just like competing for an at-large tournament spot. If you’re a bubble team, you want the favorites to win their conference tournaments. Otherwise they get knocked down to at-large status and take a bid that could have been yours. Similarly we want to avoid as many high-profile coaching vacancies after this season as we can because that’s our competition for available coaches. Who we get depends on who would even consider the Georgia job, and that pool shrinks if there are openings at places like Maryland or Arizona.

Meanwhile it wasn’t the best week for many of the prospective candidates.

Anthony Grant’s VCU team lost a key midweek conference game to UNC-Wilmington. VCU is 10-3 in conference and 17-7 overall.

Sean Miller’s Xavier team rose into the Top 10 but were upset by Duquesne last week.

Lon Kruger’s UNLV team have lost their past two games by a combined four points. They’ve dropped from 5-2 in conference to 5-4.

Even Oliver Purnell, whose Clemson team beat the daylights out of Duke last week, couldn’t avoid the upset bug. Clemson blew a 19-point lead at home and lost to FSU.

But Jeff Capel and Oklahoma are riding an 11-game winning streak and are 23-1 overall. Speaking of Capel, the Oklahoman has a look at what is attractive about the Oklahoma job and what might drive a successful coach away. Naturally it’s written from the Oklahoma perspective, but the things that make Oklahoma a great job could so easily apply to Georgia. Of course Georgia has nowhere near the basketball tradition of Oklahoma as a program; that’s not my point. Just consider these lines:

When you’re in a league like we’re in… It’s not the strongest year for the SEC, but it’s usually at least on par with the Big 12. …when you have the resources like we have… Georgia doesn’t lack for resources, and it’s shown the willingness recently to invest in hoops. …an athletic director and athletic department like we have… Again, Damon Evans is saying all the right things about supporting basketball, and the athletic department is positioned to make the necessary investments.

Lloyd Noble Center isn’t a basketball cathedral and can’t be turned into one in these economic times, but it’s still not a bad place to watch a ball game. And OU’s practice facility is state of the art. Ditto Georgia. Stegeman isn’t the new UVA arena, but the improvements to the seating area have made it a good place to watch a game. And I’d put UGA’s new practice facility up against any in the nation.

Capel sits in fertile recruiting territory. Not many areas produce basketball talent on a year to year basis than Georgia.

Big-time football means big-time money for resources, facilities, even contracts. Yep. We know.

Again, I don’t claim that Georgia is on par with Oklahoma right now. It is still, to some extent, “career roulette.” We have to admit that. We don’t have nearly the tradition of success on which to stand. But I couldn’t help reading those points that were compelling evidence to keep Capel in Norman and realize how, almost point for point, how they apply to Georgia. We’re in a strong league, in fertile recruiting territory, and we have an athletic department squarely in the black that sounds as if it is willing to commit to a successful basketball program. When people talk about lofty expectations for the Georgia program, those are the reasons why we think Georgia could, under the right circumstances, become every bit the program that Oklahoma is. It’s also why we might get a coach like Capel of the #2 team in the nation to at least listen.

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 bad news if you used to scalp student tickets to get into the game, but otherwise the new online system seems to be a good step forward. The Red & Black agrees.

Instead of waiting in line at Stegeman for hours in the summer heat, “tickets” will be bought online, added to the student’s account, and a scanned student ID at the gate will verify the admission – there will be no paper student tickets. There will also be a pool of unused or returned student tickets if someone can’t use the tickets they purchased.

One development I really like is the official recognition of first-come, first-served seating in designated student seating areas. Of course much of student seating has operated more or less along these lines for years, but doing away with reserved student seating in certain sections will only encourage students to arrive early for the games. (Now if they could only do something about the alums…) If there’s going to be a challenge, it’s going to be enforcing that the first-come, first-served seating only goes to students. I’m surely not the only one who knows fans who have tickets elsewhere in the stadium but head over to the student section as soon as they’re in the gate.

As for the rest of us, don’t forget that the Hartman Fund deadline of February 15th is just ten days away.

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.

The benefit of pulling the trigger now is that Georgia has plenty of time to consider prospective coaches. Most candidates will be coaching for at least another six weeks. Damon Evans can be as thorough as he needs to be with the decision, and the fact that Georgia is looking for a coach will be on the minds of interested candidates right away.

Rather than focusing on a random list of names at this time, I’ll be satisfied with this assurance from Evans’ press conference this morning (courtesy of Anthony Dasher of UGASports.com):

“I’ll say this. Our commitment and my commitment to build University of Georgia basketball is strong. And when I say strong, I’ll add very strong to that. We are going to go out and get the best possible person for this job. That may mean we have to commit more resources than we have in the past but I don’t want to hold us back from doing what we need to do to have a successful men’s basketball program.”

Translation: we’ll pay – and pay well – for the right coach.

• 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?