You had me at hello.

David Ching has the transcript at his blog of Coach Searles’ first meeting with the press since becoming the new Georgia offensive line coach.

In response to the question about signing with Auburn instead of Georgia out of high school, Searles had this to say:

… At the time, I was young and dumb and had no sense, so I went to Auburn…

Classic.

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I knew Saban was good, but I never knew he was this good.

Not only can Nick Saban leap tall buildings in a single bound, but he can also change the racial composition of his coaches!

From today’s Birmingham News comes a story about the diversity of Saban’s new staff. In it, we learn of this extraordinary development:

Smart and Middleton are black and the rest are white.

Smart is former Georgia defensive back (and running back coach for one year) Kirby Smart.

Here’s a picture of Smart – or at least what Smart used to look like:

Like I said, the guy is good.

Gator eye candy

Warning: if you’re a Florida football fan, this is so sweet, it may put you into sugar shock:

[h/t Deadspin]

Of course, you realize this means war.

College football recruiting is a funny business.

The whole notion of grown men (really, old men in the case of guys like Bowden and Paterno) selling themselves to 17 and 18 year old boys is a little strange. So is the business of college football fans paying money to services that keep track of how these same 17 and 18 year old boys are responding to the sales jobs (guilty!).

And then there’s Tom Lemming.

Given all of this unbalanced craziness, is it really any surprise that some of these kids, their egos stroked and pampered in ways that would make Donald Trump blush, begin to display a level of self-importance that wouldn’t be out of place for Rush Limbaugh?

Ordinarily, I dismiss most of the stupid things these kids say or do – consider the source, and all that – but sometimes something is said or done that’s so painfully ego driven (Jimmy Clausen, come on down!) or foolishly ignorant that it can’t help but generate a response.

Which brings me to the case of the freshly minted commitment to the University of South Carolina, Clifton Geathers. The Geathers saga is too lengthy to recount here, but suffice to say the key parts are that he first gave a verbal commitment to Georgia (never signed a LOI, though), spent a little time at Hargrave, had some sort of parting of the ways with UGA and wound up in the welcoming arms of Steven Orr Spurrier.

Well and good to all of that, I say. College is an important decision for anyone and if Mr. Geathers honestly feels that South Carolina is the best place to enroll, more power to him.

It’s just that he needs to learn one of life’s more valuable lessons: discretion is the better part of valor. You see, in announcing his decision, it evidently wasn’t enough to be excited about the future. It was also necessary to pee on where he’d been:

“Why USC? It’s a program on the rise,” Clifton said Wednesday. “The Georgia program is on the fall.”

In the immortal words of that noted philosopher and former Georgia football great, Charles Grant, that’s quite a “motivational stone”. If Mr. Geathers doesn’t redshirt this year, look for him to receive a very warm welcome when he makes his first trip to Athens as a Gamecock this September 8th.

And here’s a little history lesson about the program to which he’s just committed. No doubt it’s “on the rise“.