Checking it twice

It always seems like this is the time of the year for list making.  The season’s approaching, but it’s not quite arrived, the players are working away out of our sight… and bloggers need something to write about.

Here are a couple of good ones.

• HeismanPundit ranks the fastest players in college football.  It’s worth looking at just to check out that Jeff Demps YouTube clip.  Holy mother of crap, that kid is fast.  My hope is that he gets even faster, so he’ll dump football for track.  Jeff, there’s nothing I’d like better than to be rooting for you to be representing my country in the Olympics.  Just sayin’, man…
• And Kyle over at Dawg Sports ranks the teams on Georgia’s ’08 schedule in order of toughness.  I know he hates Auburn, but the toughest game of the year? (David Greene disagrees.)  And ‘Bama in Athens tougher than LSU in Baton Rouge, or Florida anywhere?  Chalk it up to reasonable minds differing.  It should generate a good discussion, in any event.

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I beg to differ.

This is an “inarguable top ten list” of D-1 head football coaches?  I don’t think so.

Skip the homer part – Mangino at #4 and Richt nowhere to be seen? – for a minute.  How do you leave Jim Grobe off of a list like that?

Wake Forest winning an ACC championship in the early twenty first century is a more remarkable accomplishment than anything Jeff Tedford’s program has done to date.  And, yes, I know the ACC is down these days, but the fact that we have to contemplate Wake’s ability to compete seriously every year now is as high a praise as I can think of for the man.

Try again, dude.

(h/t MGoBlog)

Keeping our fingers crossed

Let me just say that with as much as we hope to see Georgia accomplish this season, I hope for the best for Larry Munson.

Nearly six weeks away from Georgia kicking off the 2008 football season, Bulldogs athletic director Damon Evans sounds cautiously optimistic that legendary radio voice Larry Munson will return behind the microphone for the start of his 43rd season.

“I’m anticipating that Larry will be there,” Evans said. “Larry’s the play-by-play guy for the University of Georgia and I’m excited that he is. The most important thing is I want Larry’s health to be good for him and whatever Larry decides, we’ll deal with it and move forward. Right now that’s what the expectations are.”

What a story it would be if the Dawgs were able to play on the big stage this season and he were there to call it…

Ranking the BS

Which is the bigger load of hooey – Steve Spurrier’s revisionist history…

Spurrier laughed off the idea that turning the Gamecocks into Southeastern Conference contenders would be anything but a gradual, step-by-step process. “Did you think there was a team here ready to win the SEC?” he said.

or Athlon’s fictional review of the Georgia fan base?

Combine the noted fickleness of Georgia’s fan base and its obsession with running backs, and it’s little wonder Moreno got less attention in Athens during spring practice than his new backup, Caleb King.

Tough call.  Spurrier is obviously taking some heat on the recruiting trail about his commitment to the job and the lack of progress the program has made to date, so it’s understandable that he’d like to forget about the overly optimistic assessment of his team he made before the start of last season.  Athlon, on the other hand, just sounds like it’s making things up as it goes along.

Tanned, rested and ready…

Mark Richt, that is.

Michael Lough of the Macon Telegraph has the story of Richt’s appearance in Macon last night.  Lots of good stuff in there, but my favorite part has to do with freshman center Ben Jones.

… Chris Davis is leading the way at center, but true freshman Ben Jones is improving and making quite an impression.

“Ben is so mean,” Richt said. “On the field, he’s nasty. He wants to whip you, and he wants to tell you about it afterwards.”

That excited the crowd as Richt chuckled.

“I told him, ‘When you get here, you’re probably going to get into a few fights (in practice),’ ” Richt said. “Ben got his tail whipped a bunch in the spring, but he kept scrapping.”

Feel free to compare coaches’ offseasons with this guy’s story.