The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!

Actually, it’s the post-spring depth chart, in all its glory.  (Hale’s got it in print here, if that’s easier for you to follow.)

A few noteworthy items:

OFFENSE

• The big one – Murray is listed as the number one at QB.   (By the way, according to Dean Legge, Gray was #2 before Mettenberger’s dismissal from the program.)
• The mild surprise – Tavarres King is the number one at SE, ahead of Durham.
• The position of strength – Man, that list of TEs looks badass.

DEFENSE

• The defensive line is thin.
• Christian Robinson is #1 at Mo linebacker, ahead of Dowtin.
• Hamilton is running #2 – at free safety.
• It’s nice to see Quintin Banks on a two deep.  Let’s hope he can stay healthy this year.
• Cuff is indeed one of the starting corners.  That was one helluva spring.

You can hear what Richt has to say about the current depth chart here.

What are y’all’s thoughts?

One of these two pundits is wrong.

Here’s what Ivan Maisel had to say yesterday about the SEC East:

… From four months out, the SEC East race may be the most interesting in the nation. Florida has a lot of talent and little experience. Georgia, trying to bounce back from an 8-5 season, just discovered it wasted a lot of spring snaps on a quarterback who’s no longer on the team. Tennessee is starting over. Who’s to say the Gamecocks can’t make a run?

Meanwhile, over at College Football News, Barrett Sallee yawns.

Florida is down by Florida standards. What team wouldn’t be after losing the population of a small country to graduation and the NFL Draft? But that doesn’t mean that the division is ripe for the picking. In reality, it’s the contrary. While Florida may be down a bit, the gap between the Gators and the rest of the pack is as wide as ever…

Barring an unforeseen disaster, Florida is going to win the SEC East. They have loads of talent in Gainesville. Granted, a lot of it is raw talent, but guys like Andre Debose and John Brantley are more than capable of stepping up. Is it enough talent to get the Gators in National Championship contention? Maybe. But the talent level in Gainesville, coupled with the uncertainly in the rest of the division, should give the Gators their third straight trip to Atlanta.

Obviously, I prefer Maisel’s vision. It’s the romantic homer in me.

But it’s not just that.  I don’t want to accuse Sallee of having an agenda, but it’s hard for me to understand how Georgia takes a hit for its “questionable defense” while schools like Arkansas (of which he says, “It’s true, the Razorback defense would have trouble stopping a Pop Warner team, but sometimes you can win games by simply outscoring your opponent.”) and Auburn (even Sallee acknowledges “depth issues” there, which is a diplomatic way of putting it) not only get a pass, but are described as being in the mix to chase down Alabama.  A little intellectual consistency wouldn’t hurt.

When the hammer comes down…

Among his other skills, Derek Dooley displays an exquisite sense of denial with this quote:

… Dooley is also a strong proponent of sanctions and/or penalties following the coach who commits them, especially when that coach leaves for another school. In other words, if the NCAA finds that Kiffin and his staff were guilty of any wrongdoing, then they’re the ones who should have to pay the heaviest price.

“I think that’s something they need to look at,” Dooley said. “That’s not right, when coaches can leave and start over and the institution gets hit. That needs to be examined.”

So does Mike Hamilton’s head, but I doubt that’s happening any time soon.

However reprehensible Junior & Company’s behavior may turn out to be once fully vetted, let’s not try to act like the school was some innocent bystander which just happened to be hanging around the crime scene.  Tennessee knew what it was getting with Ed Orgeron.  Nobody expressed concern about the hiring of Steve Rubio.  Everybody was fine with the Laner’s antics when he insisted they were planned.

Those hooker-now-claims-she-was-a-rape-victim stories tend to be a hard sell.

But that’s only half of the story.  Dooley wasn’t exactly buying a pig in a poke when he took the Tennessee job.  He’s a bright guy.  Assuming he’s read even half the press about Kiffin that I have, he knew what was going on and he knows that Hamilton empowered Junior.  So the righteous indignation really isn’t very convincing here.

Jim Delany doesn’t have time for that Dale Carnegie… stuff.

You’ve got to hand it to Jim Delany.  He likes to let everybody know he’s the biggest prick in the room.  He allows the Big Ten-expansion-sooner-than-later story sit out there for three days before debunking it, so every other conference in America can twist in the wind a bit.

You get the inevitable angst from the little guys.

“The sense of what his commissioner colleagues would appreciate is, ‘What is the timeline? What can we tell our members?’, WAC commissioner Karl Benson said. “[Delaney] said he is still on the same 12- to 18-month timetable. I hope we can narrow that or shorten that.”

Like he cares about what you want, Karl.

“I still think I have a lot of friends and colleagues in that room,” Delany said referring to one of the resort’s conference rooms where the commissioners met most of the day. “There’s not really a lot of tension, there’s a lot of interest.”

Then there are the prisoners on death row, simply awaiting final word.

What a dichotomy. With the ACC having diluted its product after expansion, the Big East became the best basketball conference in the country. Meanwhile, its football could be on life support.

“We’ve lived through it,” said Marinatto, a senior associate commissioner for the league since 2002. “We’ve come out in better shape than we’ve ever been in our 30-year history. All the people who exaggerate the future in a negative way, I can’t buy into it.”

They are not exactly dead men walking around this resort but they are looking dazed and confused.

“How do you keep a school?” Craig Thompson asked. The Mountain West commissioner could see his league poached by the Pac-10, Big 12 or some unseen force, all because of the Big Ten.

“You don’t keep an institution. If there is a better place, it’s like marriage. You try to make the best house and home for your family but if there is something else that looks better you move on.”

There’s going to be a lot of marriage counseling, then, in the coming months. It’s going to be public and for a lot of the participants, it’s not going to end well.

“You’re not here to cover the BCS. You guys are here to cover [expansion],” Marinatto told reporters. “It’s not the elephant in the room anymore.”

Don’t worry, Commish. When the axe falls, the media will be there to say a few choice words over the body.

And then you’ve got the SEC.  Mike Slive is making a list and checking it twice.

… SEC commissioner Mike Slive intimated for the first time that a war of titans might be on: “If there is going to be a significant shift in the conference paradigm, the SEC will be strategic and thoughtful to make sure it maintains its position as one of the nation’s pre-eminent conferences.”

…

“I won’t sit back,” Slive said, “and just ignore what is going on around me.”

Brace yourselves for at least another 12-18 months of cock teasing.  If Delany times things right, he should be able to start the dominoes falling just in time for the Mountain West Conference to claim its automatic qualifying BCS slot.  And when the dust settles, that slot and five dollars will get you a mocha latte at Starbucks.

Mix and match

Ye gods, will somebody please hire this man a fashion consultant before it’s too late?

… Richt asked fans to clap if they wanted another blackout.

Then he asked those to clap if they don’t want a blackout.

The anti-blackout crowd, by my ears, sounded a bit louder.

“What I’m thinking is if the seniors really want one, we might do it, but they’re going to have to earn maybe making it to Atlanta or beyond to get a blackout,” Richt said. “What I’m thinking about doing, and it won’t happen this year…it wouldn’t be a bad idea if we have red, black, white jerseys and maybe a red helmet or maybe another color helmet, I don’t know, black helmet. And then just say this is part of what we do and then maybe make them match. Not to save them for any one special game…

I mean, that Grambling look is so out these days.