Georgia’s elimination from the College World Series brought the sports year to an end for Georgia’s athletics teams. Summer is a dry, dry desert for fans of college sports. But we’re only about six weeks away from football practice (doesn’t seem that long now, does it?). As you’d expect after such a good year for so many of Georgia’s teams, the high points definitely outnumber the lows.

High Points:

• SEC All-Sports Trophy.
  For the first time, Georgia unseated Florida as the SEC’s best all-around athletic department. It’s a paper award, but it speaks to the all-around strength of the University’s sports programs.
• Gym Dogs dominance.
  They didn’t lose a meet in 2006 and handled the pressures of being #1 from start to finish while defending their national title. The Gym Dogs have been good before, but they are now set up for an incredible run. If health holds up, they’re looking at a dynasty.
• SEC football title.
  Dawg fans lived without a conference title for 20 years. Now they’ve played for three titles since 2002 and won twice. D.J. Shockley and company defied the conventional wisdom that they should be down after losing Greene, Pollack, Davis, and Thurman and instead returned to the top of the SEC. Only a midseason injury to Shockley kept the 2005 season from being even better.
• Diamond Dawgs to the College World Series.
  What a ride. Up, down, and then way up. The Diamond Dawgs seemed dead in the water around mid-April, but they put it together down the SEC homestretch to earn hosting rights for the NCAA Tournament. The momentum took them all the way back to Omaha with two dramatic postseason series against Florida State and South Carolina. Three trips to the College World Series in six years clearly marks the glory days for Georgia baseball.
• Jennifer Dahlgren.
  Who? Jennifer Dahlgren. Just the Women’s Field Athlete of the Year, the best in the nation in women’s track and field. She won national titles in weight throw and hammer throw and set several SEC and NCAA records. Many didn’t notice, but women’s track at Georgia had probably their best year ever this year and finished ninth at the NCAA championships this spring.
• Rolling in the cash.
  The Dawgs are just as successful at the bank as they are on the field. It might prove to be just a temporary blip, but Georgia made headlines as the nation’s most profitable athletic department. The recent strength of the football program as well as a restructuring of the seating priority system has donations soaring while expenses have been kept sane.

Low Points:

Georgia takes the field for the Sugar Bowl

• Late-season collapse in men’s hoops.
  A respectable nonconference performance which included a nice rout of Georgia Tech had fans pretty pumped about the prospects for improvement over the dismal 2004-2005 season. Road SEC wins at Vandy and South Carolina gave the Dawgs their first taste of success away from home in years, and they were at or near .500 in the conference for some time. Entering February, talk of an NCAA Tournament bid was still very much realistic, and an NIT bid was safely in the bank. Georgia lost seven of their final eight games and even that NIT bid slipped away from them. The frontcourt collapsed often, and the guard play was far too inconsistent to carry the team. After a February 4th win at Vanderbilt, Georgia was 4-5 in the conference. Georgia dropped their next three games including an abysmal loss at home to Vandy, and Dennis Felton faced a minor backlash after getting on fans to appreciate what was going on in the program right as the season went in the tank.
• Stunning Sugar Bowl loss.
  Georgia was living large after its SEC Championship beating of LSU. The Sugar Bowl was set up to be a coronation of Shockley and team in their own backyard. With BCS teams like Penn State, Ohio State, and Notre Dame out there, the choice of West Virginia as the opponent was almost a letdown. In short, it was every bit Apollo Creed vs. Ivan Drago, lacking only James Brown descending into the Georgia Dome during pregame. West Virginia knocked Georgia to the canvas in the first quarter, and the upset win is still causing ripples into the 2006 season. West Virginia is now positioned as a favorite on the national scene this year with Louisville as their only quality opponent. Steve Slaton and Pat White are now household names, and coaches flocked to Morgantown in the offseason to bask in the offense of Rich Rodriguez. Though a ten-win season is never a low point for a football team, the way the 2005 season ended shook the Bulldog nation. It was the outcome many national observers expected from the Boise State game.
• Lady Dog injuries.
  Tasha Humphrey exploded onto the scene as a freshman, and with a pair of outstanding senior guards it was clear that only a little more frontcourt depth would place Georgia back among the nation’s elite teams. Coach Andy Landers added two big players to the post, and summer practices during 2005 saw a deep, talented team that could succeed against almost any style of play. Then the unthinkable happened. Not one, not two, not three, but four frontcourt players became unavailable for the season either through injury or attrition. The team was left with one frontcourt starter, one frontcourt reserve, a wing player thrust into the role of power forward, and zero depth behind that. After that lack of depth was exposed in the season opener against Baylor, it seemed like a promising season was all but gone. Instead, the Lady Dogs regrouped, made one of their more consistent runs ever through the SEC, competed with elite teams, finished third in the SEC, and advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16. By the time the season ended with a heartbreaking loss to Connecticut, Georgia had turned this low point into one of the better stories that Georgia athletics has seen in years.

Count me among those who wonder why there is such venom from (American) football fans whenever the World Cup comes around. I don’t mean indifference or even a mild distaste; I mean a full-on “get this queer sissy-boy Communist boring ‘sport’ back on the Mexican-speaking channels where it belongs.” I’ll admit that most of what I see is regional. Despite thriving youth soccer programs and top collegiate programs in the Mid-Atlantic and South, the hatred of the sport by a lot of the football fans is almost palpable. Georgia’s own Lewis Grizzard summed up the feeling of the typical Southern football fan, “If soccer was an American soft drink, it would be Diet Pepsi.”

It works the other way too. I know that during the World Cup overzealous soccer evangelists come out of the woodwork. These people are as annoying to me as they are to most. No, soccer is not about to take over the nation. No, we don’t have a duty to watch the Americans. No, people can have plenty of sophistication and education and still not get into soccer. It happens, so stop trying to convince America that it must accept soccer. I think that some of the venom directed towards soccer is brought on by these evangelists, but honestly – there’s not that many of them, and most of us just want to watch and ejnoy the World Cup in peace.

But nothing puzzles me like the sports fan who goes out of his way to tell you how much some other sport sucks. We all have sports we follow and don’t follow, but that’s not good enough. Tennis / soccer / hockey / NASCAR / women’s sports / curling is booooooooring. Its fans are stupid gay redneck snobs. You know how it goes. It’s not just football fans either. I’ve spoken with many women’s basketball fans who would love to see football go away (despite football’s role in providing most collegiate athletic opportunities for women).

I’m glad to see some other college football bloggers talking about the Cup and even being way more into it than I am. I’ve found a few more sites I’ll be reading regularly come the fall, and I’m sure that there are others I don’t even know about. It makes sense to me, because the atmosphere around even the worst World Cup game is every bit as good as what you get on an SEC football Saturday. If anyone should get the passion of the World Cup and appreciate the obnoxious and vocal crowds rivaling Baton Rouge on Saturday night, it seems like it should be college football fans.

Boise State’s trip to Athens to begin the 2005 was seen as a possible watershed moment. More than a few people were calling the game the biggest in Boise State’s history. It was a chance for the wunderkind coach to take his scheme against a vulnerable old-guard program who had just lost no small amount of talent and leadership to the NFL. Favoring Boise State in this game was the fashionable off-season upset pick entering the 2005 season. The pressure was clearly on Georgia – how would they deal with the innovative and super-productive Bronco offense, and how tight would Georgia play if they found themselves in a dogfight in their own stadium with such an upstart? If Boise won, it would be a huge step towards legitimacy among the top programs after a near miss at the end of 2004 against Louisville.

I saw things a bit differently. Because of everything that was at stake, I thought a great deal more pressure was on Boise State not so much because of the quality of the opponent but because of the importance that they had placed on that game. I asked, “what does it mean if you come up short?” As it turned out, that pressure did them in, and the collapse was personified in the complete meltdown of quarterback Jared Zabransky. It was Georgia that put on the offensive dispay as D.J. Shockley demonstrated that he could handle the reigns of his team.

All that’s history now, but what a difference a year makes for Boise State. Hear that silence? That’s the hype for Boise State in 2006. Their high-profile head coach has left for Colorado (and will make for interesting storylines when he brings that team to Athens this year). Phil Steele includes the Broncos in his 2006 preseason rankings, but so far he’s the only one to do so. You won’t find them on anyone’s list of “it” teams anymore, and the great hope for the non-BCS conferences has moved on to others like TCU.

At best, Boise State is on the periphery of the discussion this year as observers wait to see if a new coach can continue the impressive run of relative success this decade. At worst, the consecutive losses to Louisville and Georgia deeply wounded the program. A chance to recapture the magic fell just short in the bowl loss to Boston College, and while the architect of the offense remains as successor, the guru is gone. Talent at quarterback and receiver is aging rapidly, and it will be interesting to see if the new staff can keep the players coming. Success can be fleeting and elusive for even the most successful programs. It’s infinitely more fragile for the programs taking risks to build something special from nothing.

I have nothing against Boise State. I enjoy(ed) watching them play and succeed. But the people who latched onto the Broncos as a representative of something bigger than they were put Georgia squarely in the crosshairs, and I can’t deny that I took a great deal of satisfaction from watching the Dawgs respond to the challenge as they did.

Last year everyone wondered if Boise State could beat Georgia and take the next step as a program. Now I wonder just how far that loss to Georgia set the Boise State program back and if they will ever recover to reach the level of expectations and optimism they had in the summer of 2005.

The SEC baseball tournament begins this Wednesday as always in Hoover, Ala. Georgia will open on Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. (ET) against sixth-seeded Vanderbilt. Georgia will start Mickey Westphal, and Vandy will likely turn to their ace, 6’6″ fireballer David Price. Georgia beat Price 9-7 in Nashville earlier in the season.

Generally speaking, there aren’t many more useless things than a conference baseball tournament, particularly in the SEC. The season has determined the conference champion. Most of the NCAA positioning has been settled. An SEC team that qualifies for Hoover as one of the top eight teams in the league has usually wrapped up an NCAA bid. The sixteen teams across the nation who will host a first-round NCAA regional have stood out well enough by this point.

What makes baseball different than, say, a basketball tournament is pitching. Fatigue is a factor in other sports, but only in baseball could you see your best player available for only part of a game once every three to five days. In a conference tournament, teams that advance any distance, especially those who have to fight back from the loser’s bracket, will spend a lot of pitchers. The problem is that the NCAA Tournament begins the very next week with its own potential double-elmination marathon.

Georgia’s recent history provides a good illustration. En route to their CWS trips in 2001 and 2004, Georgia won a combined ONE game in the SEC tournaments. Did Georgia have a poor team? Of course not – they were regular season conference champions and advanced to Omaha. But they placed the right relative importance on Hoover and didn’t last long. In the subsequent NCAA regionals, they needed every bit of pitching they could find as they had to survive double-elimination and come from behind to advance.

Are there benefits to winning or even advancing deep in the SEC Tournament? Maybe. Georgia is definitely a candidate to be one of the eight national seeds who would potentially host a two-team Super Regional prior to the College World Series. A good showing in the conference tournament might help that bid, but I’m skeptical. I think it’s clear that the SEC tournament is an eight-team crap shoot with eight teams who all approach the tournament with the same conservative eye towards the NCAA regionals. Winning it is nice, but I think it’s about as meaningless as not winning a single game.

Do I hope the Dawgs perform well in Hoover? Sure. They’ve never won the conference tournament, and it would be the one missing crown to add to several regular season titles, CWS appearances, and the national title. Will I be broken up if they’re done by Friday? Not at all.

It’s tough to admit this, but I’d have to say that Tech is considered the better program over the long term. It has a lot to do with consistency. Tech has made every NCAA Tournament since the 1990s, and it’s news when Georgia can make it to the NCAA Tournament in consecutive seasons. Tech typically begins the season ranked highly and never falls very far through the regular season. Whether they choke in the postseason or never quite put it together despite some incredible talent, they are at least still there every year. Georgia, admittedly, is not.

But head-to-head tells a different story. Georgia has a clear advantage in recent years. It’s not total domination, but it’s not a fluke either. Since 2001, Georgia is 13-8 against Tech. They are 10-6 in the regular season and 3-2 in the postseason. Georgia is 3-2-1 in regular season series and has twice eliminated Tech from the postseason.

2001: Georgia wins the season series 3-0. They eliminate Tech from the Athens regional with a convincing win en route to the College World Series.

2002: Tech wins the season series 2-1 with several close games. They then beat Georgia twice in the stifling heat of the Atlanta regional, eliminating the Dawgs from the NCAA Tournament. In the final game, Tech builds a big lead, and a late Georgia comeback falls just short. This is Tech’s best season against Georgia since 2001.

2003: Georgia sweeps the season series 2-0. No game is played in Athens – it was cancelled due to final exams. Georgia fails to make the postseason.

2004: Tech wins the season series 2-1. The Turner Field game is the rubber match, and Tech ends a big Georgia winning streak. The Dawgs get the last laugh in the postseason, sweeping Tech 2-0 in the NCAA Super-Regional in Atlanta. Jonathan Wyatt hits his first career home run in the second game to clinch the series. Georgia advances to the College World Series.

2005: The season series is split 1-1. Again, no game is played in Athens – this time because of rain.

2006: Georgia takes the season series 2-1. Each team wins big on its home field, and Georgia wins in 11 innings at Turner Field. Both teams seem likely to make the postseason, but it’s not clear yet if their paths will cross again.

There you have it. Aside from 2002, Georgia has been at the very least an even match for Tech lately.

I’m a guest on this week’s edition of UGASports LIVE radio show, discussing football scheduling and defending my “do what the system rewards” approach.

If you’re not a regular listener to UGASports LIVE, check it out. It’s a two-hour long show put together by the guys who cover the Bulldogs and Bulldog recruiting for UGASports.com. And it’s free. This is a goldmine of information. You can also subscribe to it as a podcast via iTunes or directly using this RSS file.

First, thank God it’s over. There will be a few days of post-mortem analysis of course, but the worst is past us. The “mock draft” has become as annoying of a sideshow to actual sports as poker-as-sport and fantasy leagues.

For those of us used to seeing Dawgs go in the first round lately and with so much hype around certain players, it would be easy to say that this was a disappointing draft for the Dawgs and to note how a few players we had seen mentioned as early draft picks slid to later rounds. In the end, everyone we expected to get drafted was drafted. Given the lack of SEC superstars that went early in this year’s draft, it should be a very competitive league with lots of young talent in the upcoming years.

2007 might not be as prolific a draft year for Georgia, but they will still have several top prospects led by bookend defensive ends Quentin Moses and Charles Johnson. For now, we’ll thank an outstanding senior class that leaves as one of Georgia’s winningest. They put up four 10-win seasons, three SEC Championship appearances, two BCS bowl appearances, and two SEC titles…not bad at all. My take on those who were drafted…

Leonard Pope. There is a sentiment going around that Pope’s drop to the early third round was a sign that he came out too early and should have spent another year improving. I’ll ignore the non-football questions (were there academic/financial pressures for him to leave early?) and take a contrary view. I think Pope made his money during the last part of the 2004 season. If anything, all he did in 2005 was maintain his stature – aside from a career-best 8 rec. and 102 yards against Auburn, the past season wasn’t very remarkable for Pope. 39 catches, 541 yards, 4 TDs. Nice, very nice – yes. Vernon Davis? No. Had Pope returned for his senior season, he would still be in an offense that would get him 3 or 4 catches a game, and he would have a much less-experienced quarterback and offensive line working with him. Despite his rapid development at the end of 2004, he never took that next step in 2005 to become the sure first-round pick many expected him to be. I don’t think another year would have changed that. He, in my eyes, didn’t become a better all-around tight end than Randy McMichael, and McMichael was a fourth-round pick. All that said, Pope is coming into a great situation in Arizona. They signed a great tailback, got a steal with Leinart at #10, and have plenty of good receivers. If their line is decent, Pope can become part of a very effective NFL offense.

D.J. Shockley. Nice pick by the Falcons. My (lack of) enthusiasm for the NFL makes this a golf clap instead of dancing in the streets, but I’m glad D.J. has an opportunity to begin his professional career near his home and family. This is a really low-risk pick in the 7th round. At worst, the Falcons have a versatile player they can use on the practice squad or develop in NFL Europe. At the same time, the Falcons play nice public local relations by taking a favorite player from the state’s largest and most passionate fan base. They silence a point of criticism from the local media. Win-win all around. The only negative I can think of is that Terence Moore probably considers himself a kingmaker now.

Tim Jennings. Last Dawg offered in 2002 to first Dawg drafted in 2006. What more can you say? Jennings was thrown to the fire right from the start in 2002 and was in the game at critical points during that nailbiting fourth quarter in Columbia. He played a huge role against Ole Miss with an interception returned 64 yards for a touchdown. This improbable cornerback turned that early experience into a starting job. All he did was get better and better, and it culminated in a fantastic senior season. I will always believe that the outcome of the 2005 Auburn game would have been much different had Jennings not injured his ankle that week. There was the acrobatic interception against Arkansas. Then there was his game-saving interception of Reggie Ball to save a win over Georgia Tech. He topped off his career by anticipating a pass from the red meat that was an LSU backup quarterback and sealed a rout in the SEC Championship game. His stature was small, but he was big play all the way. That ability to go after interceptions and make those game-changing plays might be the reason he was selected over teammate Demario Minter, a more prototypical cornerback who only had two career interceptions and dropped to a fifth round pick.

Kedrick Golston. Yes, he dropped to the sixth round, but Georgia was a completely different team when Golston (and Gerald Anderson) was on the line. Golston came into Georgia with an injured leg that would end careers for a lot of people, and he spent his college years recovering from that auto accident and learning how to play football with that reconstructed leg. He now has a chance at a professional career, and that’s a pretty strong statement about everything he worked through. Golston will always be remembered as a top in-state recruit who made it cool to pick Georgia at an uncertain time in program history. He challenged other Georgia prospects to consider what kind of program UGA would have if the best that the state had to offer stayed home. With all that Georgia accomplished during his time in Athens, he did plenty to help realize that vision.

Max Jean-Gilles and Greg Blue. A year ago, it was assumed that when these two All-Americans passed on the NFL draft to return for their senior seasons, they were giving up potentially very high draft position. This weekend, they were drafted in the fourth and fifth rounds. Did they get worse? Lose favor? Not really. If their was a downside to their decision to return, it was that the holes in their games which had always been present had another year to be exposed. Blue has been known as a devastating hitter for years, but his pass coverage and speed have always been questionable. Jean-Gilles has huge potential as a road-grader type of lineman, but conditioning has always been a concern since he showed up from Miami. He eventually played significant minutes at Georgia, but constant battles with weight which continued through the NFL combine had to scare off some teams that expect to see their linemen pull and sprint on quick-developing plays. Max and Greg were both outstanding college players who did certain things very well, better than anyone else. Their draft value declined because what they did well wasn’t necessarily broad in scope, but they will be great value picks for teams that can find ways to use them in roles suited to what they do really, really well.

The ridiculous hype around the commitment of Jimmy Clausen to Notre Dame (addressed well by Dennis Dodd here and skewered nicely by Georgia Sports Blog here) has made for great comedy over the past few days as Clausen looked more like Liberace than an elite QB showing off his rings. Georgia fans have been party to several recruiting spectacles over the years, and I’d like to take a stab at what I think are the top 5. This list has nothing to do with hype vs. production – some panned out and others didn’t. I’m talking about five guys who when they committed or signed put the Bulldog hype machine into overdrive. I’d be interested to hear about any others from the 80s or even from the pre-Herschel era.

5. Jasper Sanks

“The next Herschel Walker” label has cursed many Georgia tailbacks with inflated expectations, but none felt the crushing weight of these expectations like Sanks. Recruiting lore tells us that Georgia targeted Sanks over fellow in-state prospect and future Vol Jamal Lewis. Georgia had the back they wanted to carry on the Robert Edwards legacy, and the dancing in the street began. Things turned sour almost immediately. Sanks failed to qualify out of high school and went off to Fork Union for a year of prep school. His freshman year in 1998 was essentially wasted by the coaching staff when he saw spot duty in what could have been a redshirt season. His career peaked in 1999 with around 900 yards of rushing (the highest single-season rushing total between Garrison Hearst in 1992 and Musa Smith in 2002), but that 1999 season was also marred by two critical fumbles* against Florida and Georgia Tech.  Sanks, plagued by weight and conditioning issues throughout his career, eventually gave way to freshman Musa Smith in 2000 and was eventually dismissed from the team late in his senior season of 2001.

4. Eric Zeier

In 1991, Ray Goff decided to completely change the Georgia offense. The SEC was in a period of transition, and the Dawgs were under pressure to modernize their offense in the post-Dooley era. Goff hired Wayne McDuffie to be the mastermind behind the new offense that would eventually earn the nickname “Air Georgia”. But McDuffie needed a different kind of quarterback to run his offense. The option-style quarterbacks of the past didn’t have the passing skills to run the system. Around the end of 1990, McDuffie got his quarterback – Eric Zeier of Marietta. Eric Zeier had taken root in Marietta after living on a military base in Germany and had set the Georgia high school community buzzing about his arm in just a few short years. He arrived on campus to find an established starter and a full-blown quarterback controversy, but he grabbed control of the starting job by leading the Dawgs to an electrifying upset win over #6 Clemson. Though his last two seasons at Georgia were a disappointing jumble of offensive imbalance and defensive ineffectiveness, Zeier left Georgia as a hero and made sure that there would be no looking back towards the offenses of the Dooley era.

3. Marcus Stroud

By early 1996, Georgia’s situation with Florida was dire. Not only had the Gators won six straight over the Bulldogs, but the Gators had also come into south Georgia to get a verbal commitment from superstar defensive tackle prospect Marcus Stroud. But on Signing Day, Stroud pulled one of the all-time recruiting surprises when he switched his commitment to Georgia. The moment was captured for posterity with a Sports Illustrated cover, and Stroud became the poster boy for the hope that things would change against Florida and that Georgia was on the way back up. It was an immediate triumph for new coach Jim Donnan, and Stroud played a part in ending the losing streak against Florida in 1997. He’s now one of the top defensive tackles in the NFL and has done plenty to live up to that SI cover.

2. Andre Hastings

Another Sports Illustrated tie-in vaults Hastings up to #2. When SI includes you on a future NFL All-Pro team when you’re still in high school, the hype machine has hit full stride. Andre Hastings was one of the top receiving prospects in the nation as demonstrated by the Sports Illustrated publicity, and the recruiting battle was fierce. To make things worse, Hastings didn’t sign on Signing Day and had coaches like Bobby Bowden and Lou Holtz (not to mention Georgia’s staff) hanging on his decision. The signing of Hastings and Garrison Hearst was one of the first huge recruiting coups for second-year coach Ray Goff. Hastings didn’t really take off until Zeier and “Air Georgia” arrived in 1991, but by 1992 he was clearly one of the best receivers ever to play at Georgia. He and Hearst left for the NFL after that junior season which put Georgia back into the Top 10. Hastings was a third-round selection of the New Orleans Saints and, while never the All-Pro forecasted by SI, had a fair NFL career with a couple of teams.

1. Herschel Walker

According to some recruitniks, the pursuit of Herschel Walker did more than anything else to usher in the attention paid to the “second season” that is football recruiting, especially in the football-crazy South. The battle between Georgia and Clemson for Walker lasted well past Signing Day until almost Easter of 1980. The stories of Mike Cavan pulling out all the stops to land Walker are legendary. Without the Internet to spread news, the fanatics starved for updates on Walker’s decision, and the fledgling recruiting industry was given a huge shot in the arm.

Within a few years of Walker’s decision, the magazines, newsletters, and 900 numbers fed this hunger among the small but passionate group of recruitniks until the Internet revolution of the mid-1990s began to bring the recruiting process to the casual fan. Now prospects use the machine of the recruiting industry to create their own hype by holding Signing Day press conferences or making their decisions on television. The system has evolved (or, more accurately, devolved) to the point where a high school junior makes his decision public at the College Football Hall of Fame, sending pundits shrieking about the “biggest commitment in 25 years”.

Ever notice how when the scheduling discussion comes up, one of the most common words used is “embarrassing”? I’m sorry – it’s not Mark Richt’s problem that something like a football schedule causes shame and office scorn that you have trouble coping with.

It’s OK to admit it – we’re selfish when it comes to scheduling. That’s the nature of a fan. We want to see a great game every week (though woe to all if they lose), we want to travel to some new football shrine or at least get a good golf trip out of it, and we want to shut up the damn Tennessee fan down the hall who goes on and on about how they played Notre Dame. That’s fine – just as long as we admit that the best interests of the team is way down the list of priorities.

One of the favorite offseason pasttimes is fantasizing about nonconference schedules. When the topic comes up most people end up with similar-sounding lists (Michigan, Texas, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, and on and on). Traditional powers, traditional settings.

I don’t get the appeal of Big 10 teams – I’ve seen plenty of them in Florida bowls lately. Personally, I’d like to see North Carolina and Army – two of the best settings in college sports and two programs with plenty of history (but unfortunately not much presence now). I always wonder why UNLV never makes the cut. Vegas, baby. Vegas.

The sad, unspoken reality of these what-if exercises is that most, if not all, of these dream matchups will never take place.

Now look over at basketball. UNC-Illinois. Duke-Texas. UCLA-Memphis. Kansas-Kentucky. UConn-LSU. Gonzaga-Michigan State. That was just this past season. UConn and Tennessee play almost annually in women’s hoops. Interesting, quality interconference games are so common in November and December in college basketball that they are taken for granted.

Why? Why does college basketball get a good look at who the really relevant teams are early in the season and football is in a situation where good matchups like Texas-Ohio State are the exception? It can be boiled down to a single point – losses are a killer in college football. Football rewards above all the undefeated record. Even giving some consideration to strength of schedule, there aren’t many seasons that will produce more than one or two undefeated teams in college football. If you’re in a major conference, that’ll get you into the national title game whether you schedule Ohio State or Savannah State. I don’t buy the Auburn 2004 example as a case where strength of schedule would have changed things. No one short of the 1985 Bears was going to leapfrog undefeated Oklahoma and USC teams. Who could have moved aside USC or Texas this past year?

To change that kind of inertia, you must change incentives. EDSBS has this exactly right. People (and organizations) do what will be rewarded, and you can’t really blame them for gaming the system. You can pout about it being unsporting or appeal to ego or manhood or whatever you’d like, but that doesn’t change the optimal way to approach the system, at least for a top SEC team.

Georgia’s response has been perfect: to get the schedule police off their back, they arrange to play Arizona State and Colorado. Recognizable names, power conferences, distance, some football credibility. But unless those programs take a major step forward, Georgia should be comfortably favored against both teams. Still gaming the system, and now they get a pat on the back for it.

Football ends up with the case of the regular season meaning almost everything but gets fewer interesting matchups as a result. Basketball has the opposite problem – Carolina can travel to Kentucky for a showdown between the two winningest programs in history, but the result doesn’t mean much more than poll and seeding position down the road.

Ideally, since we’re dreaming, how about a relegation-based method that’s used in European soccer leagues? Imagine a fluid “conference” of the best programs where Texas, USC, Ohio State, Georgia, and so on play every year as long as they remain good. Each year, the bottom few drop down and make room for up-and-coming programs from the next level. Teams would be allowed one rival game outside of the conference. Teams at any level would play among their peers, making for interesting games and competition down the line. Of course there are complexities that make such a system difficult, if not an impossibility, but it’s about as likely as a blossoming of great nonconference schedules under the current system of incentives.

It’s still a week away, and I’m already sick of the NFL draft. I think Martha Stewart is the only media type who hasn’t weighed in yet with a mock draft.

I want the best for the NFL-bound Dawgs, but that’s about the extent of my interest. I’m really not concerned who Arizona will take in the 6th round. I don’t care if Vince Young goes 2nd or 5th. Please…give us back our sports TV and talk radio.

It’s a good thing that the Black team’s first play on Saturday was a 67-yard play-action touchdown pass from Matthew Stafford to Mikey Henderson. In one swift stroke, the hype surrounding both Stafford and Henderson was validated, and that was at least something to take from G-Day. Forget that the coverage was horribly blown or that neither Henderson nor Stafford really set the world on fire for the rest of the game. One play was enough.

That’s how it is with intra-squad scrimmages. If the offense does well, is the defense a weakness? If the receivers light it up, do we have a Swiss cheese secondary? And so it was with G-Day – enough rough edges to keep the pessimists sleepless and enough bright spots to get us salivating. Some storylines by position:

Quarterbacks

I’m glad to see a consensus forming around the opinion that Stafford didn’t so much dominate and grab the starting job as everyone else just took a step backwards. Drops aside, it took Tereshinski four series to complete a pass. Cox was intercepted so much that he should be the MVP for the defense. Cox’s performance was unfortunate. He led his units on some pretty nice drives but got nothing out of them and actually gave up points. As for Tereshinski, we saw more of what we saw in the Arkansas and Florida games: a limited arm, preference for the tight ends and other intermediate passes, and very low point production. He did have some of the better pocket presence of the quarterbacks and stepped up for a few nice passes.

Stafford’s performance was all about comfort. Coach Richt pointed out how well he had taken to ball fakes, and that was clear on his first pass. But a bobbled snap and some tipped passes showed that he is still finding his way around the pocket. As I expected, he’ll also have to learn when the play is over and when to throw the ball away or take the sack. Still, if this is just a matter of comfort and experience, it will take a lot to convince me that he shouldn’t be the starter.

Backs

It was the Jason Johnson show. Like Johnny Brown and Ronnie Powell before him, this reserve fullback from Chicago exploded to lead the backs in rushing and also had some nice catches out in the flat. We’ll see a bit of Johnson during the season, but with Southerland and dozens of tailbacks out there, it will be tough to find him much playing time.

As for the running backs, it is becoming pretty clear that at the very least Brown and Lumpkin are heads and shoulders above the rest. Lumpkin has great power and can very often make the first guy miss – a very important skill – and Brown has the explosiveness to break off a big run, though he sometimes gets trapped behind the line. The days of the “three-headed monster” are coming to a welcome close. The depth will still be there, and it will become even deeper with the addition of Moreno this fall. That depth is invaluable and will likely come in very handy at some point this season. The majority of the carries should go to Brown and Lumpkin though, and I hope that even among them one will continue to stand out.

Receivers/Ends

I need to go back and look at this more closely, but I don’t recall a single outright drop by a wide receiver. There were several contested balls that weren’t caught of course, but the open catches were made. That wasn’t the case with the tight ends. Three huge drops punctuated the first half, and Milner once again cost Tereshinski the opportunity to get on track early. Chandler likewise had two first half drops, one of which earned some mild criticism from Coach Richt on the TV broadcast. Chandler had a much better second half and ended up with one of the higher receiving totals of the afternoon. We’ll probably get a chance to see what the freshman Ward can do at TE.

The receivers as a group didn’t have a poor day. Mikey Henderson maintained good balance on his touchdown reception. Kenneth Harris proved to be incredibly dependable and pretty fearless going across the middle. If Georgia has some receivers who can be effective downfield, there is a huge role for Harris underneath. Kris Durham showed some very nice hands if not blazing speed. Gartrell got in there for a few good grabs. Receivers had a bit more difficulty with passes to the outside. Massaquoi was more or less shut down by Paul Oliver. Quarterbacks had placement problems on many passes. Out routes were frequently jumped. Overall, I didn’t see receivers outworking defensive backs to make plays, but they did make the catches when the ball was delivered to open spaces.

Offensive line

Some good, some bad. The line was most effective on the delay running plays. Pass protection was iffy, but you never know how much of that is the line and how much of that is some outstanding defensive ends knowing the plays they see in practice every day. Shackleford probably had the most disappointing day.

Defensive line

Nice performance. The ends are solid, and tackles Owens and Weston really impressed. The DL frequently had to hold back and keep from unloading in the backfield. We’ll see how the depth holds up here, but I’m very encouraged by the top of the depth chart.

Linebackers

Very active. The position changes seemed to have worked out well. Tony Taylor looked much more at home as did Jarvis Jackson and were very disruptive against the pass. Marcus Washington looked good as well.

Defensive backs

Clearly the story of the day was the play of the cornerbacks. Paul Oliver has blossomed into Georgia’s next dominant corner, and he has the size to bang around with the bigger receivers. Flowers was also effective. The biggest buzz of the day might be about high school senior freshman Asher Allen. Allen was involved on the broken play that allowed the first score of the game, but he was also involved on a number of nice defensive plays including a 100+ yard interception return for a touchdown on an underthrown fade pass from Joe Cox. On that play, Allen got a chance to show the speed which has him a candidate to return kicks. Safeties weren’t as spectacular, but they were still decent. Battle, Byrd, and Kelin Johnson got their nose in on several plays.

Special teams

The kickers don’t get a chance to show much, but it was good to see that Bailey is OK after Asher Allen forgot compounded his mistake on the long touchdown pass by rushing (and running into) Bailey on the extra point. Asher also got a lot of time fielding punts and looked shaky on several of them. We saw on his interception return that he has the speed to be a great return guy, but he’ll have to work on becoming sure-handed back there first.

It’s a big weekend in Athens on both the academic and athletics sides.

Academics first – two people at the top of the political food chain stop into town:

• Former President and Mrs. George H.W. Bush, Gov. and Mrs. Sonny Perdue, and a host of other dignitaries converge on campus today to pay tribute to the late Sen. Paul Coverdell at the dedication of UGA’s new $40 million Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences.
• 2004 vice presidential candidate John Edwards will deliver the keynote address at the UGA Law School’s Working in the Public Interest conference.

The Coverdell Center is an important addition to campus. We’ve seen this structure go up in the Coliseum parking lot for the past couple of year, but I don’t think many of us know about the hi-tech science that is going to be going on in there.

On to athletics. Three major events from which to choose:

• G-Day of course will draw the most people to campus on Saturday afternoon.
• The NCAA Gymnastics Southeast Regional will also be held on campus Saturday night
• Georgia’s track teams will also host the Spec Towns Track & Field Invitational

All that’s missing is some tennis and a baseball series. It’s spring, and Athens is in bloom.

One of the great stories of this year’s basketball season was the Army women’s team. The Army program was more or less in wretched condition, and new coach Maggie Dixon, at 28 years of age, took over the team just 11 days before the start of this season. What happened was an improbable storybook season – Army came from nowhere to win their first regular season and tournament Patriot League titles and earned the program’s first-ever NCAA Tournament bid.

Dixon was hailed for her turnaround job. Her brother, Jamie Dixon, is the head coach at Pitt, and both Dixons led teams to the NCAA Tournament this year, earning quite a bit of national attention. The entire Army and West Point communities rallied around the success of the women’s team. When they won the conference championship, Army cadets – the guys – rushed the court to hoist the triumphant women on their shoulders.

On Wednesday, the 28-year-old Dixon collapsed during an afternoon tea after suffering an “arrhythmic episode to her heart.” She passed away Thursday night.

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski followed the Army story during the season and has a very fitting tribute to Dixon’s passing.

In the span of three weeks, this incredible story right out of a Disney script has turned into a gutwrenching tragedy.

I’ve tried to remind people many times over this offseason of the QB battle before the 2001 season. Richt had just taken over, and he had to choose between redshirt freshman David Greene and junior Cory Phillips. A freshman DJ Shockley would redshirt. Phillips of course had game experience starting several games over the last half of the 2000 season. In hindsight, it seems like an easy decision. But as late in the process as a couple of weeks before the season opener, Richt kept the competition alive and still referred to the two as “co-starters”.

The situation in 2002 was a bit more muddled. Greene was the starter, but Phillips had slid to third team behind the impressive freshman Shockley. Though Greene kept his starting job, this time was the birth of the infamous rotation that would define the Georgia quarterback position for three seasons. Had an early-season foot injury not derailed Shockley in 2002, the line between starter Greene and backup Shockley might not have been so tidy.

All this is to put the current quarterback derby in perspective. Richt has not two or even three but four candidates to evaluate. He has been deliberate not to shake up the depth chart during spring and has used words like “marathon” to describe the extent of this process. Those expecting serious movement or shuffling of the depth chart much before mid-August will likely be very disappointed and unnecessarily frustrated. With several candidates, Richt has said that the process might even stretch into the season.

That’s where I have a bit of concern. I can’t see very much good coming from a midseason change unless that transition is planned and very well explained beforehand. If someone starts the season and loses the job because of poor play (or even, God forbid, a loss), he and Richt will be crucified for having the wrong guy out there to begin with. If on the other hand the starter is undefeated and playing reasonably well and still gets replaced, there will be plenty of outcry from the “if it ain’t broke…” crowd that was out in full force during the David Greene years. A tough situation either way if this isn’t settled in large part before the season.

Coach Bobo has at least indicated that the decision might at least be pared down to two guys at some point in the preseason. That’s a good step, but it means that the race for the #2 spot is just as interesting and has some pretty important implications of its own. Consider…

• Barnes. It’s not necessarily his last chance, but not making the top two means that at least one younger player has moved ahead of him. In order to start or see significant playing time, he’d have to improve enough to beat out younger players in the future. A thumb injury late in spring practice probably doesn’t matter much to the coaches, but not seeing him in action at G-Day will definitely leave him out of the fan discussion as they parse every snap of the spring scrimmage.
• Tereshinski. Not making the top two means he would have been dropped from the pre-spring starter to the third team. It’s not unprecedented – see Cory Phillips who went from significant starting action in 2000 to the third team in 2002. And no one, I would hope, thinks any less of Phillips’s contributions to the program. It has been assumed that Tereshinski would simply be left behind in the wake of the freshmen, but he’s had an outstanding spring and is not going down without a fight. But you’ve seen him on the field for three years – would you expect any less than a strong fight from him?
• Cox. Not making the top two is a little less dramatic for Cox. He’ll still have plenty of time to rise on the depth chart. But another season back on the scout team might be a little frustrating. He’s been described as steady, smart, accurate, and consistent. Comparisons to Zeier and Greene don’t hurt either.
• Stafford. The wunderkind. The book on Stafford is becoming pretty clear, and it makes perfect sense. Part of becoming a college or even pro quarterback is learning when to take a sack or throw the ball away because the play is busted. The 60-yard jump balls across his body that made for great high school highlights turn into interceptions in college. But, honestly, if this is the main shortcoming in Stafford’s game right now, he’s ahead of most college juniors out there. It’s hard to imagine Stafford not making the top two, but if he doesn’t, it’s an instant sign that he’ll be redshirted. On the other hand, if he is among the top two it would be a huge waste of a potential redshirt season if he does not see significant playing time or even a starting role.

Lots to think about. But as this plays out, just keep Richt’s track record in mind. He’ll take his time, but he’ll also have the right guy(s) out there at the end of the process. It will be interesting to see the reactions (and overreactions) to what we see tomorrow. For most, it will be our first glimpses of Cox and Stafford, and we’ll see how Tereshinski looks now that he has stepped out from role of backup and caretaker. It’s unfortunate that Barnes won’t be part of the discussion, and I hope fans don’t totally write him off because he is not part of the action tomorrow.