Other than sorting out the depth chart, injuries are the biggest stories to come out of fall camp. With a single injury on the most insignificant practice play, a season can turn.

Fortunately the injury news has been relatively kind so far to Georgia’s depth chart. There’s only one serious injury so far. Redshirt freshman Walter Hill broke his hand yesterday and will be out 4-6 weeks. Injuries to anyone are a letdown, but it always gets me whenever it’s a redshirt freshman early in camp. These guys put in their time during the redshirt season and spring ball, and then an injury just as they were trying to earn playing time puts them in catch-up mode right out of the gate.

There were a pair of more minor injuries earlier in the week. Freshman A.J. Green was nursing a hip flexor injury, and though it’s not a serious injury the staff is erring on the side of caution when it comes to protecting a player that could make a difference this year. Don’t worry too much – AJ was out there running positional drills yesterday. Also, cornerback Prince Miller came down with a shoulder injury going for the ball. The injury won’t require surgery, but he will be out for a week or so. Meanwhile, Bryan Evans will see the reps as the starting corner opposite Asher Allen.

From the whistling-past-the-graveyard dept., the news isn’t so good for Florida as TE/WR Cornelius Ingram is out with a knee injury. The team is calling it a “strain”, but MRI results are still pending. Harvin might be the most dangerous player on that team, but Ingram is one of the more imposing pass catchers to set foot on a field. He’s got good hands, receiver speed, and can drag five or six undersized defensive backs a good 25 yards or so.

UPDATE: It’s still unconfirmed, but word is starting to spread that Ingram has been lost for the year. If true, count this as one of those big moments of suck that are inevitable each year as bright-eyed optimism for the upcoming season gets an unceremonious kick in the groin. He would have been a high draft pick coming out after last season but chose to return for his senior year.

Not to be crass this soon after the news breaks, but Ingram’s decision to return was high-profile enough that it will be brought up when some other players face the same decision after the 2008 season. There are no guarantees on either side of that decision, but you can bet that “remember what happened to Ingram” will be part of some though processes.

The NFL and its teams have created a fan code of conduct that will serve as the starting point for individual team policies. College football fans will probably tell you that this is just another reason why our game is better, but most college stadiums already have similar policies.

Most of the core guidelines are things that would get you kicked out of any sporting event, but I’d like to see how prohibiting “verbal…harassment of opposing team fans” goes over. The code of conduct also targets intoxication, but I haven’t read anything yet about the NFL discouraging beer sales at games. Strange…it seems like an obvious solution.

• The Georgia Sports Blog has info on the 2008-2009 basketball schedule. Meanwhile, Sundiata Gaines will start his professional career in Italy.
• Costs for that Vince Dooley statue and plaza have doubled to nearly $2 million. What’s an extra million dollars to the athletic board? Ridiculous and wasteful stuff, this.
• Offseason suspensions open the door for a Bulldog legacy.
• WSB will re-air some of the better games from last season over the next few Saturdays leading up to the season opener. The Tech game will get it started this weekend followed by Florida on the 16th and then Auburn on the 23rd.

Didn’t seem to be too much of a jinx back in the day…

Nice article on Andy Landers and his son Drew. Drew has recovered after a very serious car accident last summer.

A comment by Mike Bobo in a Chris Low piece today caught my eye.

The next step for Stafford, according to Bobo, is to become a more efficient quarterback on first and second down.

"That’s his next progression in going from a very good quarterback to a great quarterback," Bobo said. "He’s always been good on third down. But sometimes it gets down to making the average play or the easy play on first and second down."

How good has Stafford been on third down? Again, 63% of Georgia’s completions in 2007 came on third down. It would be interesting to see Stafford’s percentages on the various downs. I don’t necessarily expect that his third down percentage was that much higher because often defenses know that it’s a passing down. We do know that Georgia increased their third down conversion rate from 39% in 2006 to 45% last year.

Before we lose perspective on Georgia’s offseason troubles, let’s remind ourselves exactly what the situation is at this point.

• OG Clint Boling: One game. Impact: minimal. The line won’t miss a beat against Georgia Southern.
• FB Fred Munzenmaier: Two games. Impact: significant. This suspension along with Southerland’s injury has left Shaun Chapas as the only regular fullback for the first few games. The staff has had to shuffle some reserves around just to have enough practice bodies behind Chapas.
• LB Darius Dewberry: Two games. Impact: moderate. Dewberry is one of the top linebacker second-teamers, and the Dawgs will have to look a little more critically at their SLB depth chart. This suspension might get Akeem Hebron on the field sooner than expected.
• SN Jeff Henson: Indefinitely. Impact: minimal. Bo Fowler has stepped in at the long snapper position before and will do it again.
• DB Donavon Baldwin: Indefinitely. Impact: minimal. Depth is always important, but Baldwin is currently listed third on the free safety depth chart.
• DE Michael Lemon: Dismissed from team. Impact: moderate. Georgia fortunately has some depth at defensive end, but Lemon was supposed to be in the mix. His departure isn’t the end of the world, but it isn’t insignificant either.

In case you’re wondering, Georgia’s high-water mark for suspensions entering the season was 2003 when 8 players were suspended for the season opener at Clemson. Defensive starters Will Thompson and Kentrell Curry were also injured for that game, and things were so bad in the secondary that a freshman walk-on named Tra Battle was pressed into service.

The NFL preseason began last night with the Hall of Fame Game between Indianapolis and Washington. Newcomers have the most to prove in these exhibitions, and one Bulldog made the most of his chance. Former Georgia defensive end Marcus Howard got off to a great start and was credited with 1 1/2 sacks.

Colt Brennan came in during the second half and led Washington to a couple of touchdowns only after making sure that Howard was properly restrained on the sidelines in compliance with the court order.

73 staffers at the AJC have accepted voluntary buyouts, meaning that layoffs will be avoided. A Rome (Ga.) Web site reports that among those taking the buyout are well-known sports writers Tony Barnhart and Furman Bisher.

I don’t expect that Barnhart will be put out too much; an SEC expert with the experience and connections of “Mr. College Football” is sure to be snapped up by a national network or publication. For Bisher, you’d have to think that this buyout represents retirement for the Atlanta mainstay. We’ve already seen one additional change on the AJC sports page this summer; Georgia beat writer Carter Strickland has moved on. Chip Towers has picked up the load and is hardly a stranger to the Georgia beat.

No Duke in this year’s preseason coaches’ poll. Was it oversight? Enough is enough? Or…lets make up some completely unsubstantiated rumor: was it a little Spurrier-Tennessee thing with Cutcliffe? Yeah, that sounds sufficiently plausible.

Yeah, that’ll sound pretty good coming over the Sanford Stadium PA on August 30.

Uga VII will debut as the mascot of the nation’s #1-ranked team according to the preseason USA Today coaches’ poll. Next week we’ll begin to see how the Dawgs go about staying on top of the mountain.

At least one AP voter agrees.

Sammons celebrates winning the 2004 Athens Regional.

Sammy set the standard for Georgia catchers in the early part of this decade, and his defense behind the plate was a big part of Georgia’s run to the College World Series in 2004.

Sammons made his major league debut last season for the Atlanta Braves, and he recorded his first career MLB hit.

He was brought back up to the majors this week after Braves’ catcher Brian McCann suffered a concussion. Though he’s known for his defense, his offense broke through Thursday evening, and he notched both his first RBI (with a single in the 4th inning) and home run (2-run shot in the 6th) as a big-leaguer (see video). Sammons finished the night 3-for-4 with 3 RBI and a home run to lead the Braves past St. Louis 9-4.

Congratulations to Clint, and hopefully we’ll see lots more of him in the majors.

I’m not sure which Georgia fans Mark Bradley is talking about. What in recent history has given Georgia fans a reason to take the Tech game lightly?

Don’t worry guys…we’ll be ready.

• 2004: An injured David Greene has to come off the bench to get the win. Still, it took the infamous 4th down blunder to seal it.
• 2005: A tie game was broken in the final minutes when Shockley found McClendon on a bee-yoo-tiful play action pass. Again, it took a play by the Georgia defense (INT by Jennings) to escape.
• 2006: Touchdown! Touchdown! Touchdown! Touchdown! Massakwa. The pull-a-fumble-from-the-pile touchdown will ranks as one of the all-time WTF?!? plays in the rivalry.
• 2007: The widest margin of victory since 2003, but it was a 2-point game at halftime and took Thomas Brown’s 4th quarter score to open it up.

If it comes down to Tech standing in the way of a BCS bid, Georgia and Georgia fans will be plenty ready and into the game. Even if that scenario comes to pass, will the attention on Paul Johnson and his offense overshadow a more important key to the game?

In these rivalries, we tend to focus on personalities, and that sometimes leads us to look at the wrong things. Sometimes not – Cutcliffe really was a factor in some frustrating losses to Tennessee. But take Florida. We obsess over Spurrier, Meyer, and Tebow, but Georgia’s biggest problem against the Gators lately has been on the other side of the ball. While everyone frets over stopping the offensive geniuses, breaking 20 points has been the real challenge in Jacksonville. Though Georgia is 3-15 against Florida since 1990, the series is 3-3 (with Georgia winning three of the last four) over the same period when Georgia scores at least 20.

The same applies and I think will continue to apply to Tech. For a while, it was all about Calvin Johnson, but Georgia was barely able to scratch out 14 and 15 points. The four times Georgia has managed 30+ in the current seven-game winning streak, they’ve beaten Tech by at least 14 points.

Now we’re on to Paul Johnson and dwelling on the impact he’ll have on the Tech offense. Bradley reaches back to 2005 to note Georgia’s difficulty with the spread option against West Virginia, but Georgia did adjust and allowed only ten points over the final 44 minutes of the game. Additionally, Georgia will have seen at least three teams (LSU, Florida, and Auburn) who will run elements of an option offense. The flexbone isn’t the same as the spread option of course, but they test defenses similarly.

So while Paul Johnson is a quality and accomplished coach with an effective contrary offense, yada, yada, yada, recent history tells us that if Tech is going to end the streak any time soon, Dave Wommack will have as much or more to do with it than Johnson.

• We’ve mentioned that the Chapel Bell was sent off for repair during the offseason. It’ll be ready for the season opener, and Travis Fain of the Macon Telegraph has a feature on the work that’s gone into it. Bonus: “It might be a little more melodious.”
• Season parking passes remain: If you want to have parking taken care of before you head to Athens, there are still spaces in the North Campus and Carlton St. (Coliseum) decks. A season pass is $120.
• Mark Richt is all over ESPN radio this afternoon. One nugget – it sounds like the black jerseys are almost a certainty at some point during the year. My guess: Tennessee.

There are two topics that seem to get Georgia fans going more so than other fans: 1) identifying our biggest rival and 2) agreeing on the optimal start time for a home game.

We’ll leave the biggest rival (Tech) for another day, but a news item from Mississippi has stirred the kickoff time pot and has started the discussion back up once again. It doesn’t take much.

Ole Miss has announced that it will move its season opener against Memphis to 6 p.m. It’s not a huge change – the original start time was 5:00. The school mentioned the heat as a driving factor behind the change.

"The heat factor played a major role in this decision," said Ole Miss Athletics Director Pete Boone. "We have experienced exceptionally hot weather in Oxford this summer, and we hope to provide as much relief as possible for our fans in the early-season games."

Not paying $50 to see Ole Miss vs. Memphis would seem like a good starting point for fans seeking relief. There are still tickets remaining – surprised?

Anyway, the news from Oxford was enough to get the attention of Georgia fans who are facing a 12:30 kickoff for their opener against Georgia Southern and a 3:30 start for the Central Michigan game a week later. It’s easy to see why many Georgia fans are steamed. The graph below from the National Weather Service shows a typical summertime temperature forecast. The hottest part of the day is between noon and 6 p.m. (no kidding!) with a peak temperature and heat index around 3:00. After 3:00, the temperature and heat index drop gradually and then begin to fall off after 6:00.

If there’s one weather benefit to an earlier start time, it’s that we should miss any rain. Summer storms usually develop later in the afternoon and into the evening. A 12:30 start should keep things dry unless there’s an organized weather system.

A 12:30 start puts fans in the seats at the beginning of the hottest part of the day and then turns up the heat as the game goes on. A 3:30 start puts fans in the seats at the hottest part of the day and provides only slight relief towards the end. A 6:00 start keeps fans out of the stadium for most of the hottest part of the day, and there’s quite a bit of cooldown by the game’s conclusion. If heat is a concern, Ole Miss’s decision seems to make good sense.

But things are never that simple at Georgia. TV is almost always a factor. Ole Miss’s opener is not televised, so the kickoff time is much more flexible. Georgia’s opener is televised pay-per-view, so you’d still think there could be some flexibility. The Central Michigan game has been picked up by FSN.

Even when you take the heat out of it, there’s still plenty of disagreement about the optimal starting time. It usually breaks down along the lines of age and geography. Older fans are used to the traditional 1:00 kickoff before television began putting games at all hours of the day on every day of the week. There’s also a good chance you’ll be home at a reasonable hour. Younger fans like night games and the all-day tailgate, but the University administration doesn’t appreciate the condition of campus after those late games.

Fans who live in south Georgia have been very vocal in opposition to later kickoffs, and the athletic department does listen to them. That bloc is probably the reason why Georgia has showed restraint in moving kickoff times, but can you blame them? Unless you shell out for a hotel room, you’re arriving home just a few hours from sunrise.

Personally, I’m still of the age where I appreciate a later start. I’m not going to follow up a 7:45 game with a trip downtown anymore, but there’s nothing wrong with a nice, long tailgate. On the other hand, I’m starting to see how tough it is on families the later a game is. I wouldn’t want to keep up with a gaggle of kids through a day-long tailgate and a game that ends after 11:00. It seems as if CBS has it just right with their 3:30 starts…I’ve rarely seen complaints about games starting in the mid afternoon.

Don’t count on Ole Miss’s change to affect any Georgia start time. We’re stuck with 12:30. We’re not the only ones – Florida’s game against Hawaii is also set for 12:30 (due to TV), and they’ll likely have it even worse than we will.