What, no vomiting?

#DawgNation In case you're wondering what we do this time of year, here's a little taste of our offseason program. youtu.be/o8Kfe4qZmoA—
Mark Richt (@MarkRicht) February 21, 2013

I just want to see how the kid with the major league Afro at the :51 mark gets his helmet on.

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Keepin’ up with the Saban, Plains edition

Looks like the bet-hedging proceeds:

McGee played at Auburn MT JoelAEricksonAU: Auburn has hired Columbus-Carver coach Dell McGee in an off-the-field position, McGee confirmed—
Marc Weiszer (@marcweiszer) February 21, 2013

I wonder if Auburn is one of the schools that’s told McGarity they’ve got his back in overturning the new NCAA recruiting rules.

More to come, no doubt.

Big 12 championship – it’s not us; it’s you.

Big 12 commissioner attributes conference’s decision to back off holding a championship game to ratings/attendance concerns over other conferences’ championship games rather than acknowledging the stupidity of such a game for a conference with a round robin regular season schedule.

A dollar here, a dollar there… and pretty soon you’re talking about a real headache for McGarity.

Yesterday’s discussion about Georgia’s spending got off the beaten track a wee bit with an argument over the merits of Cam Cameron’s career, so let me try making my point another way.

In 2014, LSU will pay its offensive coaching staff over $3 million.

In case you’re wondering, the last time LSU finished higher than Georgia in total offense was the 2007 season.

Victim of life’s circumstances

You’d think with all the freelancing the NCAA does with its rules and regs these days, Kolton Houston’s situation didn’t have to come down to this.

Thursday morning buffet

Get ‘em while they’re hot.

• Are the NCAA natives getting restless about Mark Emmert’s leadership?  This article would indicate so.
• John Feinstein thinks Mike Krzyzewski has the answer for the NCAA’s problems:  there should be three separate organizations, not one, running college sports.  Oy, vey.
• Athens, Tennessee Chamber of Commerce invites Nick Saban to give a speech at its annual dinner.  A certain part of the Vol fan base objects.  But it’s worth noting that Saban’s on track to outdraw last year’s speaker by a margin of about 4-1.  That speaker?  Phil Fulmer.
• As the Big Ten allegedly pursues a 20-school conference strategy, John Pennington points out why there’s little to suggest that’ll succeed over the long haul.
• Smart Football takes a look at one of my favorite developments in offensive strategy, packaged plays.
• David Ching tracks 70 players from Georgia whom ESPN ranked as top-10 in-state prospects between 2006 and 2012.  The results, as they say, may surprise you.
• Greg McGarity is working hard on overriding those new NCAA recruiting guidelines.
• But if that doesn’t work, Gentry Estes is confident “Georgia’s football program will do what it needs to do to keep up”.  (Although he offers no specifics as to why that’s so.)

A program’s gotta do what a program’s gotta do.

Marc Weiszer has a great post up about something that hasn’t gotten much attention – the number of top-rated JUCO signees in Georgia’s most recent recruiting class.

The late addition of defensive lineman Toby Johnson to Georgia’s signing class on Tuesday gave the Bulldogs four players ranked among Rivals.com’s top 25 junior college prospects, more than any other team in the nation.

Auburn has three and Ole Miss, Oklahoma and Kansas two each.

Johnson from Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College is ranked No. 8. Receiver Jonathon Rumph from Holmes (Miss.) Community College is No. 9, safety Shaquille Fluker from East Mississippi Community College is No. 22 and nose guard Chris Mayes from Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College is No. 25. Georgia also signed safety Kennar Johnson from Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Georgia had only two junior college players on its roster last year—nose guard John Jenkins and offensive lineman Mark Beard.

The Bulldogs added just one junior college player in each of its four previous signing classes: Beard in 2012, Jenkins in 2011, safety Jakar Hamilton in 2010 and kicker Brandon Bogotay in 2009.

That’s obviously a big change in signing tactics.  And it’s made all the more interesting by something else Weiszer notes.

This wave of junior college players came after a clause was put in Richt’s contract last year saying that “the recruitment of junior college student-athletes will be kept to a minimum, as determined by Richt and the Athletic Director.”

Clearly, Richt and Greg McGarity determined that the Bulldogs needed to tap into help this time around from the junior college ranks.

That may be our first clear sign that Georgia football has entered a post-Michael Adams era.

Envy and jealousy: come on in, the water’s fine!

As Kyle King takes his farewell tour at Dawg Sports, I thought this brief comment about the new “Recreation and Wellness Center” being constructed on the Plains might be a source of amusement for a man who hates Auburn with a passion:

So Auburn did took the next logical step and built…  a 45 person, tiger-paw-shaped hot tub that is bound to have the most disease-ridden water in Alabama – no small feat – within days of entering into service.

Not a bad takedown, if I say so myself.

Great moments in sports marketing

Florida Atlantic sells the naming rights for its stadium to a multi-national private prison corporation that describes itself as the “world’s leading provider of correctional, detention, and community reentry services.”

Shockingly, it’s getting pushback.  I don’t know why.  Personally, I think “Owlcatraz” kicks ass.

I bet their no pass-out policy’s a bitch, though.