If you believe that Chris Hawkins is a memorabilia collector…

I still have some Hahira beachfront property that I can give you a swell deal on.

Last Friday Chris Hawkins, who purchased A.J. Green’s jersey, leading to the receiver’s four-game suspension, said he never spoke to the NCAA about the case. Hawkins, who paid $1,000 for the jersey, said the NCAA “never really came to me.”

Stacey Osburn, the NCAA’s associate director for public and media relations, responded Monday.

“Actually, the NCAA contacted Chris Hawkins on several occasions to discuss the matter; however, he was not responsive or cooperative,” Osburn said in an e-mail. “He did not return the four different phone calls attempting to gather information. He also canceled a conference call with the NCAA and a member institution, and failed to join the conference call when it was rescheduled.”

Imagine that.

That jersey looks killer on the wall, though, I must admit.

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Aaaaand… the third funniest thing I’ve read today.

Nothing like seeing Paul Johnson mock his own team.  I’m down with that.

Kiffin watch: the second funniest thing I’ve read today.

Awesomely arrogant – or is it arrogantly awesome? – review of the Southern Cal/Virginia game.  Totally.

The funniest thing I’ve read today.

Just click.

Ride the pony.

Denard Robinson’s performance against Notre Dame gives new meaning to the term “eye-popping”.

Check out these two stats:

First, per Bruce Feldman,

Denard Robinson amassed 94% of his team’s O on Sat. Vince Young’s highest gm was % was 84%, same as Tebow’s. Pat White’s was never near 80%.

And it’s not like it was 94% of a little bit, either.

… 502 yards, Denard Robinson compiled more offense by himself than any TEAM in the Top 25. Closest was Arkansas with 499.

Holy smokes.

The big question is whether he can last all season without RichRod getting him killed.

Worse than you thought.

Marcus Lattimore’s day, if you’re a Dawg fan, that is.  At least according to this breakdown from South Carolina beat writer Travis Haney:

… I went through every one of Marcus Lattimore’s 38 touches (37 carries, one reception) in the Georgia win and checked for broken/missed tackles and how many yards the freshman from Byrnes had after first contact.

The final tally: 38 touches, 198 total yards. 29 broken tackles. 127 yards after first contact.

That includes Lattimore’s one catch, a 16-yard reception. He broke one tackle and gained an additional 6 yards on that play.

On his 37 runs, Lattimore broke 28 tackles and gained 121 yards after first contact.

In addition, Lattimore had eight plays of 10 or more yards, including an afternoon long of 24 yards (on the final field goal drive). Lattimore had 12 first-down runs. TWELVE. He added a 13th first down on that catch. (South Carolina had 23 first downs.)

Four of Lattimore’s 12 first down came on third down. (South Carolina converted nine third downs.)
Look at the first and final drives, in particular. He broke 11 tackles on the first drive, gaining 50 yards. Lattimore broke 13 tackles on the final drive, gaining 56 yards…

Reasonable minds may differ on what constitutes a broken tackle, of course (Haney claims he measured things on the conservative side), but that’s still a pretty clear picture of what didn’t go right on Saturday.

Upon further review, some initial personnel observations

I’m slowly picking my way through a rewind of Saturday’s game, but I can already say that Mark Richt is seeing some of the same personnel issues that I saw.

… On the defensive line, he said, “we’ve probably got to get our bigger men in there, ‘Bean’ [Justin Anderson] and [Kwame] Geathers. We’ve got to find a way to get them in the game more, got to find the right combination in some of our looks. That’ll help us.”

Neither Anderson nor Geathers played against South Carolina, according to Georgia’s participation chart. Richt said the Dogs also need to get Abry Jones more playing time on the D-line…

… On the offensive line, Richt said the tackles (Clint Boling and Josh Davis) and the center (Ben Jones) “played pretty good” Saturday. “Our guards struggled more than anybody on offense,” Richt said. “We’ve got to either get better or make some changes there.”

Cordy Glenn and Chris Davis are the starting guards.

I know we’ve heard plenty from Coach Grantham about how a one gap scheme relies more on penetration from the linemen than occupying their offensive line counterparts.  The two problems with that I’m seeing on the replay are (1) South Carolina’s linemen did allow some penetration, but did a good job with their zone blocking of simply moving Tyson out of the middle and (2) Georgia’s inside linebackers weren’t big enough to take on the surge up the middle on a consistent basis.

That being said, one of the adjustments Grantham made in the third quarter was to gamble by aggressively pushing the safeties up into run support.  It worked, too.  (And it’s one reason that we probably shouldn’t fret so much about Rambo leading the team in tackles Saturday.)  That he was able to get away with that and still mix the coverage up in the secondary to the noticeable confusion of Garcia tells me that he and Lakatos know something about what they’re doing.

Richt is also right about Glenn, who looks as if he hasn’t quite recovered from his bout with mono.  Sturdivant didn’t play much on Saturday, but I suspect that if he’s at least serviceable, his time on the field is about to increase significantly.  The o-line has to get much more physical up the middle than it’s shown in the first two games.

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UPDATE: Spurrier tempers his earlier obnoxiousness about Grantham.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a running back break as many tackles as Marcus Lattimore did,” Spurrier said Sunday. “I think the Georgia coaches really had a good scheme of things. Their guys just didn’t tackle him…”

“I’d almost believe the Georgia coaches would say, ‘I can’t remember a game when we’ve missed so many tackles,’ ” Spurrier said. “They really did not tackle well, which is unusual for Georgia teams. The coaches had them in position, but obviously the coaches can’t tackle for them.

“I’ll bet they get that straightened out as they go through the season because they’ve got a good team and they’ll be back having a big year.”

Although, now that I’m looking at the quote, the “unusual for Georgia teams” comment – I’m not sure if he’s being gracious there or being a smartass.  His track record, of course, suggests the latter.

Being proactive in a social media age

Going back to this quote from Bruce Feldman,

… Teams now control more of the access in getting out their coverage. They don’t “need” the newspapers as much as they once did. But with all of that, you also have more accessibility to the players and people involved through technology, which means there’s more potential pitfalls for the colleges to cope with. The Marvin Austin and A.J. Green stories grew out of social networking situations.

… I’m wondering about something.  Richt has said that the program monitors things like whether the players are staying on top of license registration, but is anyone keeping an eye on what gets posted on their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds?  If Chris Hawkins courted A.J. on his Facebook page as he claims he did, had someone at Georgia been tracking that, could the whole mess have been avoided?

I’m certainly not a social media guru – I don’t have a Facebook page – but I have access to someone who is.  My 21-year old who’s a senior in Athens assures me it wouldn’t have been hard to keep up with their exchanges, if Hawkins’ story is true.  I’ll take her word for it.  Maybe it’s something worth attending to.  By the way, should anyone in the athletic department be looking for someone to start tracking social media, she’s happy to offer her services.

SEC Power Poll, Week 2

You know what I’m grateful for this morning? That I don’t write a blog for an ACC school. God help anyone trying to put together a power poll for that conference right now.

Here’s how the ess-ee-see looks to me:

1. Alabama. If it’s possible to toy with a team while simultaneously kicking the crap out of it, that’s what Alabama did to Penn State on Saturday.  I still don’t see the Tide going undefeated – that revamped secondary has yet to be tested in any true sense – but I don’t see any school in the West finishing ahead of them, either.
2. South Carolina. If running the ball and stopping the run is still the key to winning in this conference, then you have to like USC’s chances this year.
3. Florida. Given a second straight week of offensive struggles (I assume we’re done with the Brantley for Heisman talk, right?), this is merely a lukewarm endorsement.  But the Gator defense is playing well and they’re getting it done on the turnover front.
4. LSU. It’s hard to tell if the defense is back, since that was Vandy they dominated.  But it sure looks like they’ve got a quarterback problem.  You wonder how far they can go working around that.
5. Auburn. It wasn’t pretty and Mississippi State has some obvious shortcomings on offense, but an SEC road win is never anything to sneer at.
6. Arkansas. Hogs 2, Cupcakes 0.
7. Kentucky. They haven’t lost and they’ve beaten a BCS conference school, albeit a sorry one.  That gets ’em this spot in the rankings.
8. Georgia. Conventional wisdom before week one:  is the team good enough to work around the learning curve of a redshirt freshman quarterback?  Conventional wisdom after week two:  is the team good enough to compliment the talents of its redshirt freshman quarterback?
9. Mississippi State. Auburn exposed their weakness at quarterback, but this team looks like it has a defense that can play a little.
10. Tennessee. The Vols played their guts out in the first quarter and a half, left everything on the field, had their crowd into it, had Oregon looking confused… and still lost by five touchdowns. That’s Tennessee football, 2010 edition.  Sure, the Vols won’t see another offense the rest of this season as talented as the Ducks, but how likely is it that an already thin team won’t lose a few more players to injury?
11. Mississippi. Masoli looked good.  The secondary didn’t.
12. Vanderbilt. That didn’t take long, did it?  At least they didn’t have to worry about the refs this time.