Why it is so easy to mock the NCAA.

Georgia gets hit with two serious sounding Level I secondary violations due to (1) Mark Richt giving out his phone number and (2) not knowing how to use his cell phone correctly.

The fact that Georgia isn’t going to be penalized for this isn’t a feature, either.  Why have the stigma if there are no consequences?

The NCAA rulebook makes the IRS tax code look simple.

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Did Richt jump or was he pushed?

Ah, the happy talk commences.

… The overhaul of the Georgia football team was a slow one. Rather than a Saturday night massacre, it happened in piecemeal fashion, one change at a time. Almost all the players left with a push; after a 6-7 record, a low-key housecleaning was taking place.

“I felt like it was building up (the last few years), and it was time to happen now,” junior tight end Orson Charles said. “Last year we had a couple people who didn’t want to follow, and they were still on the team. My freshman year they were still on the team. And this year, I guess Coach Richt said, ‘No, not this year.’ ”

Departures aside, I give Richt credit for presiding over a quiet offseason in Athens.  But ultimately how much of the credit is he entitled to take?

… Richt said earlier this summer that players have realized there was a connection between the on-field losing and off-field problems. It was also clear that athletics director Greg McGarity and school president Michael Adams gave Richt their own nudge about the behavioral issues. McGarity, hired just before last season started, quietly urged Richt to clamp down.

A couple of running game “did you know?”s

First, take heart, Georgia fans:  recently, very highly touted freshman running backs do trend towards being good first-year contributors for their teams.

Second, would you have guessed this?

… Last year the Vols were the SEC’s worst rushing team. They averaged less than 2 yards per attempt in eight league games.

It’s hard to imagine that a team was worse than Vanderbilt in any offensive category last season.

The Addazio effect

In one year, John Brantley managed to go from being the second best quarterback in the SEC to the fourth best quarterback in the state.

Is the world catching up to Paul Johnson’s triple option?

Good teams seem to be figuring something out.

… In fact, the numbers are trending downward. In 2008, Georgia Tech went 3-1 against ACC opponents with a .500 record or better and only 2-2 in 2009. Last year the numbers were even worse as the Jackets went only 1-3.

So do teams with a chance to prepare.

… Since Johnson took over at Georgia Tech in 2008, the Yellow Jackets are 21-6 when teams have one week of practice or less to prepare.

Compare that to a 5-8 record against FBS opponents that had more than a week to prepare. Making matters worse, Georgia Tech is 0-3 in bowl games under Johnson, having been outscored 80-24 in the three contests.

Throughout his tenure the Yellow Jackets have averaged 3.0 rushing touchdowns per game when facing a team with a week or less of preparation. That number drops more than half of a rushing touchdown (2.3) in games against teams with more time to prepare.

They score significantly fewer points when teams have the extra prep time, averaging 23.0 points per game in such contests, compared to 30.7 in all others.

There’s some overlap between the two, certainly.  But that still doesn’t bode completely well for the Jackets in 2011.

This season, Georgia Tech has three games (NC State, Virginia, Virginia Tech) in which its opponents will have more than one week to prepare for the Yellow Jackets. With Georgia Tech, Johnson is 3-4 against those three teams.

Luckily for Johnson, there may not be many other ACC teams with above-.500 records his team will play.  But those two trends indicate that October could turn out to be a tough month for Tech.

It’s not exactly like selling rings on eBay…

But it’s interesting what you can find for sale on the Internet sometimes.  Or free, for that matter.

This is some or all of the ’04 Georgia playbook, if you’re curious.

Wicked.

It’s too bad he’s such a whiny-assed bitch, because Desmond Howard has a good point with this:

“But if you want to play the education game, then check this out. If they get my likeness for life, then they should be committed to my education for life. So if Mark Ingram 20 years from now, when they’re still selling his jerseys in Tuscaloosa, says ‘You know what? I want to get my Ph.D.’ Guess who should pay for that? They should be committed to his education for life. They’re still selling his jerseys.”

I could not agree more.  Well, actually, I could:  if the school is still selling those jerseys when the player’s kids are college-aged, they should get a free ride, too.  It’s the least a system that professes to promote both amateurism and academics should do.

Not that it’s gonna happen any time soon, though.

The Hat and the drudge

Judging by this, if you were at a cocktail party with Bobby Petrino and Les Miles, there’s no question around whom the crowd would congregate.  Petrino is a soul-crushing robot.  Les Miles is Les Miles.  Compare.

Obviously, you all travel a lot. Do you have a must-stop restaurant that you have to hit if you’re nearby?

Petrino: (Nothing came to mind.)

Miles: I will occasionally get excited to taste a rib joint in some distant area with a mustard sauce, just if I can get to it. Sometimes there’s a seafood joint on the ocean that’s got a great view, and if I happen to go by there, and I can get crab cakes or something like that, I’ll do that. But there’s no specific spot.

Les Miles, in search of the perfect mustard sauce.  Petrino just asks a graduate assistant to run out and grab him the special at Subway.

What’s one of your favorite songs, or name your favorite musician.

Petrino: Oh, gosh, going way back. It’s hard for me to pick one favorite. I’m not a big music guy.

Miles: I love Lil Wayne, I’ve listened to him a bunch most recently. I like Akon. I’ve really kind of got away from hip-hop, and I listen to country. I listen to Kenny Chesney pretty routinely. I enjoy a variety of music, it’s not just one guy. There for a while, I was all over Toby Keith. I kind of move with what’s going on.

If they lived in the same apartment complex, Petrino would be the guy going upstairs Saturday midnight asking Miles to turn the music down.

This is my favorite response, though.

Which SEC stadium has the most hostile environment?

Les Miles, LSU: By far and away, LSU’s. There was a piece on my desk. Somebody took a poll. It was the top 10 most intimidating venues in the world. The first one was a soccer stadium in Turkey where automatic weapons were discharged in the stands. Wembley Stadium [in London] was third. The tenth spot on that list was old Yankee Stadium. And fifth was LSU Tigers, at Death Valley, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

You know he spent some time trying to figure out a way to introduce automatic weapons fire at a game in Death Valley after reading that, right?

Of heroes, legends and leaders

You know what the biggest difference between the SEC and the Big Ten is?  The SEC has its share of assholes, but at least they’re not insufferably pompous about it.

Why I blog about what I blog about.

Man, this Joe Posnanski post is so good.  First, because of the questions he asks,

Ask yourself this: What would happen if tomorrow every single player on the Auburn football team quit and re-formed as a professional team called the Birmingham Bandits. Who would go to their games? Anyone? How much would those talented young men get paid?

…

Ask yourself this: Say the first, second and third All-America Teams in college football tomorrow went into the NFL. They just left. How many fewer fans would the college games draw? How many fewer people would watch Texas and Tennessee and Iowa?

Ask yourself this: Why do we care about college football? We know that the skill level in college football is vastly inferior to the skill level of NFL teams. Heck many Heisman Trophy winners are not even NFL prospects. Yet, by the millions, we watch. We cheer. We buy. We rejoice. We gripe. We wear. We eat. We live it. Many of us even argue that we PREFER the quality and style of college to pro, we LIKE watching those games more. But is it the quality and style we prefer or is it passion, youth, exuberance and that we feel closer to the game?

And, then, by the way he answers them.

No, college athletics is not ABOUT the players. College athletics is FOR the players, but that’s a different thing, and that’s a distinction we don’t often make. College football only works on this grand scale, I believe, because it’s about the colleges. The alumni connect to it. The people in the town connect to it. The people in the state connect to it. People are proud of their connection to the University of South Carolina and Clemson, they are inspired by Alabama and Auburn, Penn State and Notre Dame and Stanford, they identify themselves through Missouri and Wisconsin and Florida and Texas A&M. The players matter because they chose those schools, they play for those schools, they win for those schools and they lose for those schools too. Everyone, of course, wants them to be the best players available, and some are willing to cheat the current system to get those players. But soon the players move on, and the love affair continues, just as strong, just as vital. The CONNECTION is what drives college football.

I really don’t want to get in the way of what he writes (make sure you read the whole thing), except to say this:  YES.