Just go already, man.

Michael Adams wants you to know at heart he’s another Dawg fan, nothing more, nothing less.

“I don’t have many regrets,” Adams said during an interview in his north campus office in his final weeks as president before his retirement on June 30. “You want to know what my biggest regret is? Not getting the final five yards against Alabama. To have gone out in the national championship game, and I felt that night that was the national championship game and I think the following events proved me right. I’m not sure I’m over that one yet.”

See?  That’s just like you or me or any other slob who didn’t preside over the hire of a man who would preside over an embarrassing academic scandal.

But in Adams’ mind, Harrick doesn’t count as his biggest regret because his hire wasn’t really Adams’ fault.

“I said to coach Dooley, ‘Would you like for me to get Jim Harrick in the pool,” Adams said. “He said, ‘Yes. I think the better the pool, the better.’ We interviewed three finalists. Coach Dooley made a recommendation to me for whatever reasons. I think, and still think, that he and coach Harrick got along very well.”

Dooley’s first choice was then Delaware coach Mike Brey, who turned down the chance and eventually landed at Notre Dame. Harrick won the national title at UCLA in 1995 but was fired the next year over expense reports from a recruiting dinner that violated NCAA rules.

“Ultimately on decisions on the head basketball coach and the football coach, I make the decision only from the standpoint of that was my recommendation to the president,” Dooley said.

Adams said Dooley recommended Harrick twice, the second time after Harrick decided he wanted to stay at Rhode Island before changing his mind.

“I think the AD was involved in the hiring, he played the lead role in hiring Jim Harrick, not once but twice,” Adams said. “I think that I can document all that.”

“I think that I can document all that.” ?  Who in the hell talks like that in a beat writer interview?

The sad thing is that he probably did make an effort at the time to document it… just in case.

Weiszer wrote a fair piece, which means what you’d expect.  But there is one uncontaminated bit of good news in it.  We get a vacation.

Adams, who turned 65 in March on what he called his “Medicare birthday,” plans to take a year off from the university. He said he will spend time at his lake house and travel next year to Australia, New Zealand and California and may write books.

Don’t feel any need to rush back on our account.

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Why is the Tennessee fan base different from any other?

Now if somebody were to ask you what sets Vol fans apart from the rest, you might point to any number of things, ranging from attire to musical taste to an extreme tolerance for student-athlete hi-jinks.  Someone else might suggest it’s about class.

Seriously.

But Butch Jones is here to tell us that’s all wrong.

Tennessee remains a long way from getting to that championship level, but Jones believes he eventually can get the Vols to that point. He believes Tennessee’s fans are patient and passionate enough to understand the program’s short-term challenges and long-term potential.

“I think the thing that separates our fan base from a lot of other fan bases is we’re very knowledgeable,” Jones said.

Why, yes, that’s it.  At least if you mean “knowledgeable” in the sense of being consistently disappointed in the direction of the program for the last decade, it is.  There really aren’t too many other fan bases who can share Urnge Nation’s depth of experience lately.

Although I suspect that when Jones says knowledgeable, he really means tolerant.  Good luck with that, brother.

Hell is Seat 37-F.

Hands down, this is the most Bianchi-ist thing Mike Bianchi has ever written.

Everybody knows Nick Saban is not really the devil.

Urban Meyer is.

He was only half kidding.

If you love somebody, set them free.

Mike Gundy’s decided he wants to be this year’s Randy Edsall.  Wes Lunt is a quarterback who’s left the OSU program, and his list of schools blocked by Gundy numbers an astounding 37.

Now it’s not all Gundy’s fault.  He can do this because the system lets him.  Still, there’s something wrong when the same guy who flirted with taking a job at Tennessee just a few months ago can now block a kid from enrolling at the same place.

Maybe Gundy was one of the coaches who called Jimbo Fisher to give him some moral support about Matthew Thomas.

Air Raid 1.0, just another boring SEC offense

Once upon a time, Heisman Pundit gave Michael Elkon a history lesson about the SEC.

Your claim that Spurrier changed offenses more than Meyer did in the league is absurd. The proof is in the offensive numbers, the titles and the Heisman winners. For instance, the Heisman is only won with superb offensive numbers. That’s a truism. So, it’s no shock that the only SEC Heisman winner between 1986 and 2007 came from Florida, the only SEC school that had outstanding offensive production. Of course, since 2007, there have been three SEC Heismans, which coincides with the league’s offensive explosion (as I demonstrated by the numbers in my post). Do you think it’s all just a cosmic coincidence?

8. I grant you that Spurrier did introduce the forward pass to the SEC. But those offenses that started passing were nowhere near as innovative as Spurrier’s and they did not keep up with some of the other leagues and that is reflected in the national offensive numbers during that time…

I always think of that when I see a piece on what Hal Mumme and Mike Leach did at Kentucky.

In 1996, as the Bill Curry era limped to a close, a ground-hugging Kentucky offense scored a combined 27 points in its first five games. In ’97, Mumme’s first UK attack scored 28 points in the season’s first three quarters.

Having inherited a team whose offense averaged 12.6 points and 217.8 yards a game, Mumme’s first fancy passing unit put up 31.6 points and 474 yards a game, broke 51 school and 15 Southeastern Conference records and featured the nation’s leading passer.

Other than that, it was just like three yards and a cloud of dust.

How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm once they’ve seen the Flats?

Georgia Tech’s latest recruiting pitch looks like something that was beta tested at Dragon*Con.

I can’t wait to hear from the first recruit who says he was swayed by that.

Get that ball and go.

Going back to something Grantham said the other night…

“We actually created six turnovers and we were plus-3 for the game,” Grantham said. “In this league, when you turn the ball over you’re going to have a hard time winning. The last two years we’ve had 62 (takeaways), which is second only to LSU. If we’re plus-1 since I’ve been here we’re right around 92 percent win. It’s a critical point, we emphasize it and we work it every day. It’s a part of the game. You have to protect the football.”  [Emphasis added.]

… you might find this analysis about SEC turnover margin at MrSEC.com of interest.  Over the last six seasons, here’s what a team’s chances of winning a conference game look like if it wins the turnover battle:

Turnover Margin	Wins	Losses	Winning %
Plus 1	74	29	71.8
Plus 2	52	13	80.0
Plus 3 or more	55	7	88.7

Grantham’s percentage, you may note, is considerably higher than that, which makes sense if you think about it.  Positive territory for turnovers is an equalizer for the weaker teams, and an added boost for stronger ones.  (Of course, there will always be some teams for which you just have to toss the stats out the window.  But I digress.)

Georgia’s been second, third and fifth in the conference in turnover margin during Grantham’s time.  It’s been anywhere from plus-seven to plus-eleven in that period.  Given our expectations for the offense and defense in 2013, maintaining that consistency is likely to be a big deal.  Two keys to that:  on the offensive side, Aaron Murray needs to cut down on the picks, and on the defensive side, somebody needs to step up and assume the mantle from Justin Houston and Jarvis Jones of putting pressure on opposing quarterbacks/backfields.