Buttah and buttah

Chris Hawkins, sports memorabilia collector and all-around good guy, is facing felony drug charges stemming from a Georgia arrest in April, 2009.

With Facebook friends like these, A.J….

Wednesday lunch buffet

Feel free to tackle as many of these as you can.

• Good look at defending the play-action bootleg.  (Aaron Murray ran that play beautifully on Georgia’s first scoring drive; unfortunately he and Orson Charles couldn’t quite hook up.)
• Steve Spurrier says that Marcus Lattimore reminds him of Emmitt Smith.
• Arkansas’ players believe they can run the ball against Georgia’s defense as well as South Carolina did.  (One difference:  nobody will mistake Ryan Mallett for Stephen Garcia running the football.)
• Todd Grantham thinks they’re certainly going to try.
• Meanwhile, Aaron Murray is hoping he can torch the Arkansas defense just like Joe Cox did.
• Tommy Tuberville has his first big conference game this week.
• New NCAA prez wants all to know there’s a new sheriff in town.  That may not bode well for Georgia’s appeal of the A.J. Green suspension.
• Chris Hawkins, on the other hand, doesn’t think the jersey sale was “that big a deal”.  Funny how that works.
• Kind of a strange quote from Mike Bobo about the game plan for Aaron Murray this week:  “I don’t really know how you’re going to open it up with him. I guess just allow him to make some more plays would be the answer.”

He’s on the mother.

The Wolf Huntley Johnson is representing Chris Rainey in his criminal stalking case.

That’s all you had to say.

Defensive coordinator watch

I mentioned back in January when Richt was receiving hiring advice/criticism from AJ-C columnists that I’d keep track of how his eventual choice for defensive coordinator stacked up against the three established names that Richt was rumored to have made offers to:  Smart, Chavis and Foster.

So, as promised, here’s the first installment (stats via the NCAA):

TOTAL DEFENSE

• Alabama, 12th
• Georgia, 16th
• LSU, 33rd
• Virginia Tech, 45th

SCORING DEFENSE

• Alabama, 1st
• Georgia, 17th
• LSU, 24th
• Virginia Tech, 80th

Yeah, it’s early, but those numbers are nothing to be ashamed of.  And Grantham hasn’t publicly freaked out about his players, either.

Somebody doesn’t have time for that movie, TV crap.

Do you sense a rising level of frustration on the Flats after last weekend’s embarrassing loss?  Well, if you do, don’t expect Paul Johnson to do much about it.

“From the looks of the game, I can certainly motivate better,” Johnson said. “But you know what my experience has been in 31 years? That’s movie, TV crap. You’d better be able to motivate yourself. I’m not going to motivate you 12 Saturdays a year. Anybody that thinks you’re going to go into the locker room and somebody’s going to punch the locker, or cave in the blackboard or head butt somebody and everybody’s going to go ‘AAAAAAAAHHHH!’ It’s make believe. It doesn’t happen.”

Somehow I’m guessing there’s a happy medium between ‘AAAAAAAAHHHH!’ and Chan Gailey’s treat-’em-like-pros, hands-off approach.  Too bad if Johnson can’t find his bearings to get there.  It sounds like it may be dawning on him that he’s not coaching midshipmen anymore.

And this from a guy who worked for one of the greatest motivators in the history of college football.

Revisiting Martinez, B.C. (Before Crompton)

In his Georgia-Arkansas preview, Matt Hinton writes,

… Ryan Mallett and his nuclear arm unloaded on the Bulldog secondary for 408 yards and five touchdowns with no interceptions last year in Fayetteville, including eight completions that covered at least 20 yards on a 41-point night for the Razorback offense. It was arguably the worst defensive effort in Mark Richt’s nine-year tenure at UGA, the moment the dam holding back anti-Martinez sentiment was permanently breached…

Ehhhh, I’m not so sure about that last bit.

Don’t get me wrong – Martinez’ career trajectory had been on a sadly downward arc for some time before the Arkansas game.  Georgia fans had seen a number of cracks in that dam Hinton alludes to (although it seemed for a brief stint in the second half of the 2007 season that some repair work had been effective).  But it’s hard to see last year’s game in Fayetteville as The Moment.  First of all, Mallett was insanely accurate with his tosses in the first half; I’m not sure any SEC secondary would have had much success defending some of those throws.  Secondly, it’s kind of forgotten in the scoring barrage, but Georgia’s defense finally got some traction against Mallett and the Arkansas passing attack in the fourth quarter (he went 2-11 passing for only 18 yards and was sacked once).

So, no, I think there was still something standing, holding back the waters, until Georgia visited Knoxville a few weeks later.  That’s when Willie lost Dawgnation for good.  (And, I suspect, lost his head coach, too.)

A tale of two Florida quarterbacks…

In what may be as pure an act of pandering as I can imagine, ESPN proves it has no sense of shame whatsoever.

My hero

Fair warning:  after this, you better watch what you say about Todd Grantham around here.

… Asked about Spurrier’s crack after Tuesday’s practice, Grantham grinned.

“It was kind of an out-of-left-field comment,” Grantham said. “I kind of took it more as a shot at the NFL. I wasn’t really sure if it was because of his lack of success there or not.”

Spurrier went 12-20 in two seasons with the NFL’s Washington Redskins, in 2001 and 2002.

Grantham said someone texted Spurrier’s comment to him after Saturday’s game.

“I appreciate his assistance,” Grantham said, with a wide grin. “But we actually knew what plays they were running. They actually run that play in pro ball. Our offense actually runs that play too. We’re kind of on top of our game. We kind of knew what was happening. So I read it.”

Oh, yeah, he’s good.