Complain, and ye shall receive.

Who says Mark Richt never shows emotion?  Remember this?

… For football coach Mark Richt, the top priority has been an indoor facility. For several years, the coach has bemoaned the fact his program is one of only two in the SEC without such a facility (Florida is the other.) In August the normally reserved Richt let loose with his frustration over not having a facility after a practice was rained out.

“It’s just a royal pain to have to deal with this kind of stuff,” Richt said Aug. 24 “It would be nice to have a little indoor facility nearby where you wouldn’t have to spend your whole life trying to figure out a new plan. It’s very frustrating. It gets very old, and I’m about tired of it. Maybe one day we’ll get that done.

And maybe that day is near.

Georgia athletics director Damon Evans told the athletic association board Wednesday at its fall meeting that football facility upgrades are a serious possibility.

“We are in the exploratory stages,” Evans said. “Our goal is to do what is the most necessary for our football program to allow us to compete at the highest levels.”High atop that list of necessities are a new indoor facility, a new weight room, new training room and improvements to Sanford Stadium.

“We are out there studying it,” Evans said.

The goal is to prioritize the needs and then present that list to the athletic association board when it meets again in the winter. From there the board, along with Evans’ guidance, will attack those priorities and figure out how to make them into a reality.

Whatever works.  I wonder if Dink NeSmith thinks it’s that easy to have your wishes granted.

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Lookin’ for logic in all the wrong places

Shorter John Lindsay:  since every team in the top 16 sucks, college football should have a 16 team playoff to see which one is the least sucky.

(Red) Zoned in

Say what you will about Mike Bobo’s stint as offensive coordinator so far, there’s one area where Georgia has shown significant improvement in that time:  red zone offensive efficiency.

Through last weekend, the Dawgs rank first in the SEC in that category, scoring 23 out of 24 times, a percentage of 95.8.  And it’s not because they’re settling for field goals, either.  Of the 23 scores, 17 are TDs.

For comparison’s sake, here are Georgia’s numbers from the past  five seasons (that’s all that’s tracked on the SEC’s site):

• 2002 – 78.5%, 5th in the conference
• 2003 – 85.2%, 6th in the conference
• 2004 – 80.0%, 7th in the conference
• 2005 – 80.4%, 6th in the conference
• 2006 – 82.6%, 4th in the conference

If the current percentage holds up, it would be the highest ever compiled in the conference in the period of ’02-’07.  Not too shabby…

Polling, schmolling

For all the griping we see about the polls and the BCS, here are a couple of contrarian views worth a mention.

• The Sports Economist points out that there may be a benefit to the current method of polling.

“Wanna vote?  It don’t cost nothin’…”

•  Capitalism rocks!  You could always resort to letting the invisible hand of the market rank college teams.

Tech football: subtraction by subtraction

Earlier this week, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution took a look at the vaunted Georgia Tech passing game in 2007. The statistical story isn’t very pretty.

But the AJ-C dodged the big question in its article.

The burning question keen observers of the Georgia Tech program had was why Taylor Bennett languished so long on the bench behind every Georgia fan’s favorite quarterback, Reggie “Dog” Ball. There could only be two answers, neither of them flattering for the Tech program. Either Bennett wasn’t good enough to beat out Ball, or Chan Gailey, whether out of loyalty, inertia or blindness, is an idiot.

For Tech loyalists, the answer was easy. The graduation absence from campus of Reggie Ball, together with the departure of the down-counting challenged Patrick Nix, would more than offset the loss of the incomparable Calvin Johnson. Addition by subtraction, baby! (And you know those Tech folks are great with math.)

So let’s take a look at the tale of the tape. Match Tech’s stats from last season, (which, granted, didn’t wind up being a full slate of Reggie Ball) with the stats for the Jackets through last week, to get a head to head offensive comparison:

Rushing

• 2007, 208.57 ypg, 17th nationally
• 2006, 162.43 ypg, 35th nationally

Passing

• 2007, 164.86 ypg, 108th nationally
• 2006, 169.64 ypg, 91st nationally

Total

• 2007, 373.43 ypg, 73rd nationally
• 2006, 332.07 ypg, 67th nationally

Passing Efficiency

• 2007, 100.78 (rating), 113th nationally
• 2006, 114.95 (rating), 95th nationally

I think it’s safe to say at this point that, at least with regard to choosing his starting quarterback, Chan Gailey isn’t a stupid man.