It’s official: Georgia Tech lies, cheats.

And is fined $100K, forfeits the 2009 ACC title and gets put on four years’ probation for its troubles.

Another proud moment on the Flats.

2011 SEC Coaches Preseason All-SEC teams

You’ll find all three teams here.  No huge surprises on the Georgia front:  Murray, Glenn and Charles on first team offense; three players take up four of the first team special teams slots; a big fat goose egg on the first team defense.  Overall, it’s a good showing, as no team in the East has more selections than the Dawgs’ nine.

As for the rest of the conference:

• Arkansas’ depth is impressive.
• Worst showing?  Tennessee, with only two.  How the mighty have fallen.
• Florida, with six players, is seventh overall.  I thought Corch was a great recruiter.

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UPDATE:  Jerry Hinnen adds his thoughts here.  I second his endorsement of Justin Hunter, who I think is poised to have a big year.

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Some days, you know it’s going to be fun to blog.

This sort of popped up out of nowhere.

Georgia Tech is expecting to receive at 10 a.m. news from the NCAA into alleged violations committed by the football program within the past several years.

The nature of the violations isn’t known. It isn’t known if this is the beginning or end of an inquiry or investigation.

We may not know, but we can always hope.

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UPDATE:  Lots of rumors swirling.  This one’s as good as any.

Sources say NCAA probe revolves around Georgia Tech's 2009 season. "ACC Title may be in jeopardy" #GATECH

— Zach Klein (@ZachKleinWSB) July 14, 2011

You know what would be hilarious?  If Tech had to vacate wins from the 2008 season.

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UPDATE #2:  This, too.

… What gets me is this: Atlanta is home to one of the more significant newspapers in the Southeast. It’s also home to two sports talk radio stations and major market television stations. Several regional and national college football pundits are based here. And we’re just finding out about an NCAA investigation into a BCS-level program on judgement day? That’s some good work. But I’m sure that if you wanted Brent Benedict’s thoughts on the situation, the Atlanta paper could have that for you by close of business today.

Strong.

The Football Outsiders guys have their own way of measuring strength of schedule.

Strength of Schedule (SOS) ratings are based on the final FEI ratings for each season, though they do not represent the average strength of a team’s schedule of opponents. Instead, they are uniquely designed to measure the difficulty of a schedule from the top down, with more significance given to the toughest opponents faced. The SOS ratings below represent the percent likelihood that an elite team (two standard deviations better than average) would go undefeated against the given team’s entire schedule. Win likelihoods are influenced by home/away/neutral game location and postseason games are included.

So what do you get when you go back and apply that metric to the last nine seasons of college football?  You get eight of the top ten toughest schedules on average over that period being played by SEC teams.  So just smile the next time somebody mentions that home game against Coastal Carolina.

Oh yeah, Boise State pops up at #97 on Bill’s list.  That’s only 65 slots south of Vanderbilt.

It’s not like it’s the first time it’s happened.

Patrick Garbin takes a trip down memory lane and looks at the seasons when Georgia was thin in the backfield and on the offensive line.

It’s probably going to wind up being my own personal preseason meme, but note what he has to say about the 2003 Dawgs:

… In 2003, Georgia returned little at running back (135) and, more importantly, were extremely inexperienced along the offensive line (no returning starters; just two with starting experience, totaling only four career starts). Inexperience was certainly evident as the Bulldogs’ 3.36 rushing average at the end of the season was a team low since 1970 while the 47 sacks Georgia yielded (an obvious major contributor to the meager per-rush average) remains the most allowed on record for a single year.

So, to those Dawg fans who are crying and moaning about the losses of Ealey and/or King, there appears to be a more important offensive unit at Georgia to worry about.

Still, that bunch wound up with 10 wins, a trip to Atlanta and a top ten finish in the national polls.  Is there anybody who wouldn’t settle for that in 2011 right now?

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UPDATE:  Ben Dukes isn’t impressed with all of the featured back talk.

I smell Pulitzer.

Pardon me if I chuckle, but does anyone here think this will end well?

Marching through Sherman

Gamecock Man has the details on Steve Spurrier’s latest oversigning move.  It ain’t pretty, but it’s clear the OBC doesn’t give a rat’s ass anymore what anyone else thinks about it.

I assume this means the school’s administration is all in, too.  That’s the culmination of a trend that started a while ago.  No doubt it’s even easier to buy in when you’ve got that first division title winking at you in some trophy case in Columbia.

Getting in bed with the Longhorn Network

This piece about how the powers that be at Texas A&M are beginning to get stirred up over the steps the WWL is taking to ensure the success of its new broadcasting joint venture with Texas seems to have drawn more attention over its TAMU-to-the-SEC speculation (and the hint that there are NCAA troubles coming down the pike sooner rather than later for a number of SEC schools) than what is to me the truly troubling aspect of what ESPN is up to as it seemingly goes balls out to promote all things Texas.

Stewart Mandel is one of the few so far who gets that.

… And that’s the part that should really be troubling not just to Big 12 fans, but to college football fans everywhere. From the moment this 20-year, $300 million deal was announced, it’s been astounding just how deeply the company is getting into bed with one of the schools it covers journalistically. Granted, conflicts of interest are unavoidable in sports media these days. This website is owned by a company (Time Warner) that holds the rights to NBA, PGA and NASCAR programming. But ESPN isn’t just testing the separation between church and state with Texas; there isn’t one. Case in point: The ever-popular GameDay crew (Chris Fowler and Co.) will be appearing live from Austin for the channel’s Aug. 26 debut. ESPN and Texas are now one and the same, and you can’t tell me it won’t affect the way GameDay, SportsCenter, Outside the Lines, et. al., cover Mack Brown’s program. In a sport where many fans already live in a constant state of paranoia that the media is propping up someone else at their expense … well, ESPN is flat-out doing it. It should make for some interesting signs the first time GameDay goes to Norman.

Perhaps the best way to look at the Longhorn Network is as if it’s akin to a nuclear reactor planted on a creaky fault line – in this case, the junction of ESPN in its varied roles as journalist, entertainment source and facilitator.  You figure that something’s gotta give at some point in time.  Maybe it’ll take having a direct hand in blowing up a BCS conference for that to happen.  In the meantime, expect to hear a lot of disgruntlement.  Justifiably so.