Item: Jim Calhoun gets into it with a reporter over his $1.6 million salary while the state of Connecticut faces a massive budget deficit.

Comment: At first glance, this isn’t the conversation one wants to hear when hoping that Georgia will aim high for its next basketball coach. On the other hand, Calhoun’s right. How many other state employees have the ROI of a successful major sport coach?

Item: The Music City Bowl’s decision to invite hometown feel-good story Vanderbilt contributed to a $17 million decrease in the local economic impact of the game. "It was really a worst-case scenario," said Scott Ramsey, Music City Bowl president.

Comment: It’s refreshing to see Vandy draining money from someone other than the SEC for once.

Item: Will Georgia miss Stafford or Moreno more in 2009?

Comment: We’ll miss both at times, but I agree that Moreno is the slightly bigger loss. Georgia has had some good seasons without a standout tailback (2003, 2005), but the Georgia offense really clicked in 2002 and 2007 when Smith and Moreno got it going. The point about the offensive line is worth noting. Even though Searels and his troops did very well under the circumstances, Stafford and Moreno often made the line look better than it was. There were plenty of scary moments over the past two years. Now the tables are turned and the linemen will have more experience than the guys they are protecting and blocking for. A good line can make even a serviceable quarterback look like an all-conference candidate (right, JPW?).

Item: North Carolina is facing questions about its ability to present competitive counteroffers after three assistant coaches departed the program within a month. "There is a dollar difference, I can’t deny that,” AD Dick Baddour admitted.

Comment: No one is immune from the pressures of the marketplace, but Georgia twice dodged that bullet during the offseason. Rodney Garner showed that sometimes factors other than money come into play.

"The attraction of Georgia to me is Mark Richt," Garner said. "I’m going to be honest with you, I love the community and I love the institution, but I work for a great man and that’s the main reason I stayed."

Richt’s approach and way of doing things seems to work as well in the volitile world of recruiting as it does in retaining his best assistants.

Georgia’s women’s basketball team lost 57-46 to LSU last night. If you’ve seen the team much this season, there’s no need to go into the details of the game. It’s been the same story all year. If you thought the men struggled on offense Wednesday night (and they did), you should have stuck around.

In a little more than a week, Andy Landers will be inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame – deservedly so. It’s one of those cruel coincidences of timing that his program just lost four consecutive games in a season for the first time in his 30 years of coaching at Georgia. Without a win at Auburn or Kentucky (who just beat Tennessee) in the next week, he could head into the Hall of Fame ceremony with an unprecedented 6-game losing streak.

That this is the first time a Landers team has had to deal with a prolonged losing streak speaks to the consistency that has led him to 700+ wins and enshrinement in the Women’s Basketball and Georgia Sports Halls of Fame. But every time the Georgia starters run out on that red carpet listing the championship and Final Four seasons, it’s a reminder that the droughts between SEC championship and Final Four teams continue to grow.

It’s been that kind of year where the team just doesn’t have the pieces to take advantage of some great opportunities. The SEC has no dominant teams; even LSU and Tennessee are down. Georgia will host the NCAA Tournament opening round in a few weeks, but odds are now that they won’t be among the field for only the third time in tournament history. The future seems brighter with only one graduating senior and a solid incoming class, but it’s still going to be a long way back to the top of the SEC.

A semi-related question: after two more losses this week, will the voters have the guts to drop 18-8 Tennessee out of the Top 25?

It’s official: Team Tornado is no more. As sirens sounded across the UGA campus, we hoped that the stars were aligning for the first SEC winning streak since that amazing weekend last March. It didn’t turn out that way of course. It might seem pointless to really dwell much on this team with the season all but over, but I might as well get it all out after a game like last night. When one of the highlights was the crowd singing “Happy Birthday” to Mark Richt, you know there wasn’t much else to cheer about.

• This morning Billy Donovan woke up next to a bottle of scotch and tried to reassure himself that his team didn’t just get lit up a few days ago by a team that didn’t break into double figures Wednesday until five minutes remained in the first half.
• It is c-r-i-m-i-n-a-l that Travis Leslie sat on the bench for the first 33 minutes of the game. I understand that there might be attitude and off-court issues with him. If that’s the case, suspend him, and I doubt anyone would have a problem with that. But if you’re going to play him, play him. He came into the game and had the energy that had been missing from the floor for the first 75% of the game. He rebounded and finished with as many offensive boards as anyone on the team in just seven minutes of action. He made things happen in the transition game. He’s not perfect by any stretch, but you can’t convince me that he shouldn’t be one of the first players off the bench.
• Trey Thompkins is probably the best post player to come through Athens in the 20 years I’ve been watching Georgia basketball. He needs to reexamine his love affair with the three-point shot. It’s not that he can’t hit it, and it’s good that he has that range in his game. It’s just that he’s come to lean on the shot a bit too much, and it’s creating some bad habits in his offense. It’s almost as if he’d rather settle for the outside shot sometimes instead of working for position inside. That’s a habit that the new coach needs to address early on.
• As if Georgia didn’t have enough trouble scoring in the first half, at one point midway through the half, Georgia had a lineup on the court that included Swansey, McPhee, Brewer, Barnes, and I believe Jackson. If you can find the go-to guy on offense within that group, you know something the rest of us don’t.
• This is a generic comment about basketball in general – there is a special place in basketball hell for a post player under the basket who brings a ball from chest level down to the floor. If he takes a dribble in that position, snipers should be involved.
• I do credit the guys for the comeback and the fact they didn’t pack it in. When Auburn opened the door by shutting down on offense, Georgia responded. That said, there is no reason for the lack of effort and intensity in the first half. Defense was Swiss cheese, and the offense was lazy: it’s bad enough to start the game 2-for-18 shooting, but it’s ridiculous that half of those 18 attempts were from behind the arc.
• Dustin Ware had 10 turnovers a few weeks ago at South Carolina. In the three games since the freshman has had 15 assists to just four turnovers. He’s scored in double figures in the past two games. He’s more than earned the starting job, and his progress has been a bright spot. It’ll be fun to watch him over the next few seasons as he continues to gain confidence and improve his defense.
• We knew coming into this season that offense, particularly from the guard position, would be spotty. What’s been disappointing has been the defense. Even on his earlier teams with far less talent, you could count on a Dennis Felton team to exhaust themselves on defense even if it came at the expense of scoring. Somewhere along the line that message was lost, and there is nothing special about the defense we’ve seen lately. When you have a weak offense and can’t play man defense, you end up with a season like this.

It’s amazing to think that if Georgia could have only kept it within 20, they might have had a chance at the end.

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.

Signing Day has mostly come and gone, though there are still a few big undecideds out there. Georgia currently has eighteen signees which is second only to 2005 as the smallest class in the Richt era. The Bulldogs’ attrition from seniors and NFL-bound underclassmen was relatively small but still significant. Of course the real value of the class won’t be known for years, but there are still some initial impressions about the group as a whole after a long day.

Positives:

• Quality. Even though it’s a relatively small class, Georgia still has one of the top 10 recruiting classes in the nation. The late addition of someone like Orson Charles could boost that ranking even higher.
• Zero defections. All of Georgia’s verbal commitments ended up signing with the Dawgs.
• Needs met. It was hairy for a while, but the signing of Marlon Brown gave Georgia two receivers and filled one of Georgia’s bigger needs. The all-important quarterback position is solid, there were some nice additions to the defensive backfield, and the interior offensive line is stout.
• Impact players. Though the Dawgs are no longer in the spot of needing immediate help along the lines, there will be opportunities for newcomers to make an immediate impact. Receiver and defensive back are two of those positions, and Marlon Brown and Branden Smith fit the bill perfectly.

Negatives:

• Needs not met. Though overall Georgia got a lot of help where they needed it, there were a couple of holes. Montez Robinson was a big pickup at defensive end, but he was the only end signed after Toby Jackson failed to qualify out of prep school. Austin Long was the only offensive tackle signed, and if you doubt that’s a position of need, look at the juggling that occurred once Sturdivant went down last year.
• Academics. Georgia already lost one high-profile commitment (Jackson) due to academic issues, and an already small class could be further reduced later in the summer as high school grades are finalized.
• Closing the borders. Six of the top ten and 13 of the top 20 prospects in the state left Georgia. The good news is that the seven who did remain in state all chose Georgia. If it helps, the Dawgs did sign the top two prospects in Tennessee – a nice welcome for Lane Kiffin as he begins to target the state of Georgia.
• Tilted to the offense. Branden Smith excepted, it seems as if more of the marquee players in the class were on the offensive side of the ball. Though there will almost surely be big contributors down the road among the defensive signees, a defense that needs to take a big step forward in 2009 will have to rely mainly upon returning players for that improvement. On the bright side, there is some impressive firepower being stockpiled by the Georgia offense.

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.

The Dennis Felton era at Georgia is over. It began under a cloud and never really emerged. There were fits and starts but ultimately setbacks that eroded what progress had been made. A program that wanted to return its focus to the court couldn’t avoid damaging off-court incidents that cost it some of its best players. Fair or not, Felton was behind the 8-ball from the beginning, and his program never gained enough positive traction to bootstrap itself up from the pit in which it started.

In the short-term, the most important thing will be keeping much of the current team and recruiting class in place. This isn’t 2003 – there is no scandal from which to run away. Any releases this time, if requested, should be evaluated much more closely than during the "let ’em all go" period following the last coaching change. The collapse and loss of an entire recruiting class put Dennis Felton in an even tougher spot when he took over, and this is no time for history to repeat itself. The new coach will have enough challenges out of the gate, and keeping the core of the team intact should be a priority. The news that Pete Hermann will be taking over as an interim coach is a good sign. Hermann is respected and is the best person to keep the team from disintigrating.

A college head coach wears many hats, but the job boils down to this: get good players and put them in a position to succeed on the court. Much of the analysis of the Felton years will focus on the latter (win totals, lethargic offense, etc.), but what did him in was the inability to attract and retain enough quality players to field a consistently competitive team.

It was a two-fold problem. First was getting the players to begin with. The stigma around the program in 2003 didn’t help, and it begat a cycle where no one wanted to play for a bad team, so the team remained bad. There were a handful of recruiting successes. The first was Sundiata Gaines, a point guard from New York. Felton landed a handful of the top players from talent-rich Gwinnett County. Channing Toney, Louis Williams, Mike Mercer, and Billy Humphrey were all quality signings. The Dawgs even pulled in a top JUCO forward, Takais Brown.

It’s there that we come to the second part of the problem – retention. If you look over the list of Felton’s better signings, few lasted four years in the program. Louis Williams of course went right to the NBA as expected. Toney transferred, and Mercer, Humphrey, and Brown were all dismissed from the team. Georgia was actually making progress two seasons ago, but the knee injury to Mercer started a freefall that saw the 2007 season end just short of the NCAA Tournament, the dismissal of three key contributors within a year, and put Georgia in its current situation of almost no backcourt production. In this sixth season under Felton, only four players made it through four years with the program (Gaines, Bliss, Newman, and Stukes).

Is Dennis Felton a good coach? We might not be able to answer that. I don’t think anyone can argue that he had a complete team with which to work except for maybe a brief period in 2006-2007. But that of course is as much a part of the job as anything else. He was, by my own observation, an intelligent man with a good grasp for the game. That didn’t matter as long as the personnel remained incomplete.

To be fair and clear, this is not a new problem that began with Felton. Even Georgia’s more successful coaches faced recruiting problems. Tubby Smith did well with a solid senior class in his first season, but there is no question that his second team overachieved. Good coaching? Sure. Good recruiting? Not so much.

Even Jim Harrick couldn’t turn the tide. In fact, the situation Felton inherited was exacerbated by Harrick’s own recruiting problems. Between the 2000 class that gave us Rashad Wright and Chris Daniels and Felton’s first class in 2003 that included Levi Stukes and Steve Newman, Georgia did not add a single four-year player in 2001 or 2002 that stuck with the team. The Hayes twins were the only significant additions during those lean years. The result was that after the departure of the 2004 senior class, Felton was left to rebuild a program with only his rising sophomores.

When top-rated Atlanta center Derrick Favors chose Georgia Tech over Georgia recently, his reasoning was an indictment not only of Dennis Felton but also of Georgia basketball history.

"Just the history, how many guys Georgia Tech put in the NBA and how many guys Georgia put in the NBA."

Ouch. It’s that simple. Over the lifetime of a current high school senior, how many Bulldogs have made any kind of impact in the NBA? Maybe three: Shandon Anderson, Jumaine Jones, and Jarvis Hayes. Anderson and Jones aren’t in the league anymore, and Hayes is an 8 PPG guy. Georgia’s most celebrated players since Hayes are tough point guards Wright and Gaines – solid and admirable college players but not exactly pied pipers for NBA-quality talent. That legacy didn’t start with Felton, but it certainly didn’t improve with him either.

The situation at Georgia is and always has seemed ideal for success. You’re smack in one of the most talent-rich basketball regions in the nation. You have an athletic department with deep pockets that has shown its commitment to basketball with one of the best facilities in the nation. You have a large fan base that has shown it will support a winner and can turn Stegeman Coliseum into a vibrant home for college hoops. Thanks to a strong overall program, you have instant brand recognition. Even though the SEC is down this year, you still play in a major conference with plenty of TV exposure. Yet for all of these advantages, Georgia basketball has never been a consistent winner, and it starts with recruiting.

Job #1 for the next Georgia coach will be to do what no recent Bulldog coach, not even Smith or Harrick, was able to do: stop the flow of Georgia talent out of the state. Get that done, and all of the pieces are in place for a successful program.

On a personal note…

I can only speak for myself, but I found Dennis Felton to be an engaging and passionate man who had the highest goals and expectations for Georgia basketball. He jumped into a dire situation with great enthusiasm. Even with the wheels coming off he handled himself with professionalism and class. Though it didn’t work out, he ran his program openly and above-board. He’ll be just fine.

Dawg fans have pounced on incoming freshman quarterback Zach Mettenberger’s observation about the already-noticeable difference in this year’s Bulldogs.

Last year I was around a lot, and the leadership wasn’t too great last year. I’ve been here three weeks and I can already tell that the leadership and the seniors, they want to win a championship again. They want an SEC championship. They want a spot to play for the national title. So far, the leadership has been outstanding in my opinion.

His comment is getting a lot of favorable play because it gives us another plausible explanation (and scapegoat) for what went wrong last season and also gives us hope for the coming season. The coaches remain the same and we lose several key contributors, but maybe a little shift in leadership and attitude will help to turn things around. It certainly helped Florida (though a couple of new coaches didn’t hurt the Gators either).

You didn’t have to be an Elite 11 recruit to wonder about Georgia’s leadership issues last season. We’ve been over that ground several times. We’ve also heard that things are a bit different this offseason, and the imperative is coming as much from the coaches as it is the player leadership. It’s positive to hear all of the right things coming from the players, but the leadership and attitude has yet to be tested against a very difficult 2009 schedule.

But seriously – three weeks? It’s not that Mettenberger might be entirely off-base, but is an incoming freshman who hasn’t even gone through a full practice yet really in the position and the place to contrast team leadership? Mettenberger’s proximity to campus and family ties to the athletic department did give him a chance to be around the program much more often than a typical prospect. There’s still a difference between being around the program and being in the program.

We struggle trying to make a connection between penalties, discipline, and ultimate success on the field. Georgia’s high number of penalties in 2008 led some to try to make the link to off-season disciplinary issues and create the perception of a lack of control in the program. But do a lot of penalties automatically hurt a team? You’d think so, but it’s not necessarily the case. Here’s where this year’s final top 10 rank among the fewest penalties per game:

• Florida: 105
• Southern Cal: 114
• Texas: 77
• Utah: 96
• Oklahoma: 105
• Alabama: 5
• TCU: 119
• Penn State: 3
• Oregon: 99
• Georgia: 116

60% of the top 10 were among the 20 most penalized teams in the nation including TCU who were dead last. All but two teams (and the entire top 5) were in the bottom half of the FBS.

That doesn’t mean though that those committing few penalties are bad teams. Obviously Alabama and Penn State did well. For teams like Arizona, Iowa, Boston College, and Vanderbilt, committing relatively few penalties was probably a factor in their overachieving success last season.

There just seems to be little rhyme or reason in the impact penalties have on a team, and I think that’s more to do with the fact that we measure raw penalties and yardage rather than trying to understand the impact of individual penalties. Take the BCS Championship. You have a meaningless celebration penalty on Tebow after the game was in hand. Then you have a Duke Robinson hold on a first quarter pass play that turned a long reception into a punt, ending an Oklahoma scoring drive and starting Florida’s first scoring drive.

On the ledger the Tebow and Robinson penalties count the same. The Tebow penalty was even more costly – 15 yards versus 10. The difference in their impact on the game was far different. If you watched the game, you know that, but the box score tells us that Florida was the more penalized team in the championship game by more than a 2-to-1 margin (8-81 yards vs. 4-31 yards). The 30 or so yards negated by Robinson’s penalty are gone from the record.

Many of Georgia’s 2008 penalties were inconsequential. Many more were not. The facemask calls after third-down stops, the pass interference in the Florida game – all had big impacts. Until we have some kind of a metric for the cost of individual penalties, it’s hard to say with any authority that it’s bad to be one of the more penalized teams even though everything you know about football leads you to that assumption. Is there a better way?

While I’m on a little NFL kick here…

I’m generally a playoff proponent and don’t have much of a problem with the two lowest seeds still alive for a shot at the Super Bowl.

Is it necessarily a good thing that so often this time of year the weather is as much of a story and a factor in these playoff games as the teams themselves? The Super Bowl gets it right and is played in warm weather (or at least a dome), but the pros seem to take such pride in the fact that occasionally some of its most important games are played in weather that neutralizes or handicaps its best players and teams.

How many big BCS games have really been impacted by weather?

I should admit straight off that I am of a like mind with other Georgia fans when it comes to how I *hope* the game turns out. I’d be giddy for days if we saw another 1995 national title game. I am also free of any confusing loyalties based on conference affiliation (though take what I wrote there about Ole Miss and Bama and reverse it, please). Tonight the SEC can rot. I think we’ll survive.

Bias can work both ways. It would be easy to jump from Georgia fan -> JEAN SHORTS -> Florida will lose. But the other side of bias is that we’ve seen, traumatically, what Florida can do. We’re not observers; we’re survivors. Victims. So it would be pretty easy to assume that every other school would kneel before Zod just as the rest of the SEC did in the second half of the season.

When so much of the attention is on individuals (Tebow vs. Bradford), it’s usually something else that will prove to be more important. We saw that in our own bowl game. It was all about Moreno vs. Ringer, but the difference in passing games is what ultimately separated Georgia from Michigan State.

Take the running game. Oklahoma will be absent DeMarco Murray, but Chris Brown is more than capable of carrying the load. A defense just can’t sit back and pick on Bradford; there’s a 1,100 yard rusher to worry about. Similarly, Florida isn’t just Tebow. They’ll use a cocktail of five or six players to move the ball on the ground from nearly every position and formation. Better defenses have slowed the Oklahoma running game, but Florida can hit you in more unpredictable ways.

The most interesting matchup tonight will be Florida’s defensive pressure against Oklahoma’s heralded offensive line. Brian Orakpo was able to break through, but the Gators, while talented, don’t have an Orakpo. We’ll see how creative Charlie Strong and company can be in creating pressure.

I’ve seen it mentioned a few times that Oklahoma didn’t see anything comparable to the Florida defense. That’s true, at least in conference play. Florida ranks high in both scoring defense and total defense. But the Sooners did play TCU with a defense that finished above Florida in both catagories. TCU showed, in games against Utah and Boise State, that their defense ratings weren’t flukes. The fact that TCU held Oklahoma to “only” 35 – their lowest total of the season – leads me to think that the score predictions I’ve seen with Oklahoma scoring in the 20s to low 30s just don’t hold water.

Who wins? I still have to go with Florida. Call it survivor shock. It might be their defense, running game, punt block unit (watch out for that), return teams, or even boring old Tebow, but they’re a complete team with the mindset to win. Doesn’t mean I won’t be hating life, especially when a blare of trumpets from the clouds heralds the announcement that the core of the team will be back next season.

And I say that as someone who watches a good bit of local high school ball on CSS.

Sportscasters have been making up words for years. There is a website dedicated to awful announcing. How many times have you heard “defensed” instead of “defended” or “get untracked” instead of “get on track?” This is football, not English class, right?

One of the FOX crew, Matt Vasgersian I believe, went into new territory last night. While pointing out the statistical advantage Ohio State had at one point in both yardage gained and time-of-possession, we were told that the Buckeyes had “out-yardaged” and “out-time-of-possessioned” the Longhorns. I almost expected to be told at the end of the game that Texas had out-touchdowned Ohio State.

I wonder if he was the same guy who later was unsure whether Ohio State would go for two after a touchdown closed the Texas lead to 17-15.

I imagine that most Georgia fans had some version of this internal (or, depending on company, external) discussion going on today.

“Now THAT is Georgia defense.”
“Where the heck was that in the other 12 games?”
“How many times are they going to have to bail us out?”
“Is this the result of a few people getting healthy, or did someone light a fire under this defense over the past month? “
“…or is it the result of playing a one-dimensional Big 10 offense?”
“If we join the Big 10 and give them a total of 12 teams, would the Big 12 mind?”

(Radi Nabulsi / UGASports.com)

It was a throwback to earlier in the decade or at least to September 13th and the game at South Carolina. Sloppy Bulldog offense leaned on the defense time after time until the offense could make a play. I’m sure the enjoyment of the win for some was tempered with the thought, “some of this in the second half on November 29th would have been nice.” The performance of the defense didn’t make up for whatever happened in the regular season and likely won’t make those losses any less painful, but most Georgia fans can let it go long enough to recognize a job well done.

Whatever you have to say about the game, it came down to this one series for me:

1st and Goal at GA 6: Javon Ringer rush for 3 yards to the Geo 3.
2nd and Goal at GA 3: Javon Ringer rush for no gain to the Geo 3.
3rd and Goal at GA 3: Brian Hoyer pass incomplete to Blair White.

How many times this year did we see the Georgia defense deflate after a turnover and/or a costly penalty? We had both here. A Stafford interception was returned to the 12, and a personal foul moved the ball to the Georgia 6. It was the third time that Michigan State had the ball on Georgia’s half of the field. The Dawgs kept Ringer out of the end zone, sniffed out the pass on 3rd down, and made MSU settle for the tying field goal.

You can say what you like about the quality of the opponent. As with Hawaii last year, watch how quickly a respectable ranked foe in a major bowl gets spun (even by our own fans) as a team barely worthy of a September cupcake game. But this hunkerdown-ness was something that was absent from even the Kentucky game. To see it show up time after time on Thursday against a decent team shouldn’t be discredited. Late or not, it was welcome.

We welcome Javon Ringer to the Ron Dayne Club. The standout tailback was held to 47 yards on 20 carries – a little short of a perfect afternoon. It’s not that Knowshon Moreno was that much more productive on the ground, but Georgia at least had a passing game on which to fall back. Ringer was the heart and soul of the MSU offense, and they got away from him. The Bulldog defense held Ringer to his second-lowest output of the season, and the result for the Spartans was much the same as it was the other two times this season in which Ringer ran for fewer than 21 carries.

MSU was one-dimensional, but when the defense was coming off a horrible effort against the ultimate in one-dimensional football, you can’t take it for granted that the strength of an offense would be shut down or that the weakness won’t burn you. MSU had their chances in the passing game, but the Bulldog defense made enough plays and got enough pressure to make it a non-issue.

One final note on the defense: Georgia had 18 sacks in 12 regular season games in 2008. They’ve had a combined 14 sacks in the past two bowl games. If someone could smuggle a calendar that reads “January 1” out to Stillwater in nine months, it would be most appreciated.

What to make of the 2008 football season continues to be a hot topic, and the Senator has a good roundup of much of the thinking out there. The Senator isn’t alone when he admits that he “(finds himself) in an awkward middle ground right now.” There was a lot of good that happened (when was the last time we won three straight over Auburn?), but when viewed through the lens of preseason expectations we can’t help but talk about degrees of disappointment.

The Senator’s subsequent post about the basketball program and the “mirage” of the SEC Tournament win actually has a lot to do with the football discussion.

9-3 muddies the waters when we talk about the football program just as the SEC Tournament title clouded the basketball discussion. Neither are anything we’d give back, and we can’t pretend (or would want to pretend) that they don’t exist. Fans love to live in the world of black-and-white, and these realities make big inconvenient globs of gray.

It’s more dramatic in the basketball case, but I can’t help thinking how differently we’d be looking at this football team but for three – just three – plays against South Carolina, Kentucky, and Auburn. Nobody is pretending that all is well with the football program, but the fact that we pulled out those three games and finished with 9 (and possibly 10) wins does make it possible to convince ourselves that what we need are tweaks and not massive changes. That, I believe, is the source of the “awkward middle ground” the Senator is talking about. The uncomfortably close distance between 9 or 10 wins and a New Year’s Day bowl and a 6-6 disaster isn’t fun to think about.

The seasons of Auburn and Tennessee are worth considering. We’d rather be 9-3 than 5-7, and if the occasional 3 or 4 loss season is as bad as it gets under Richt, I’ll take it. If we’re able to honestly assess and tweak the program within that framework, then fine. But the record can’t be a distraction. It’s great that we’re 9-3 (with a chance for 10), but the record can’t become a blind spot that keeps us from the moment of clarity that can come from a real disaster of a season.