Last season’s big story

Weiszer:

In an area that looks at the SEC and the rivalry against Florida, I couldn’t help but notice these facts about the Georgia-Florida series highlighted: “Georgia has won its last two games against Florida,” and “UGA leads the rivalry with 49 wins, 40 losses 2 ties.”

Who would have thought, given the history the last couple of decades in the series, that Georgia could now put the rivalry back in a good light for the Bulldogs?

This, more than anything else, is why I can’t understand how anyone who claims to be a Georgia fan can be disappointed by last season.

It’s Nick Saban’s world and Mack Brown’s just living in it.

So what does it say when the guy running the richest football program in the land admits he’s not keeping up with Alabama?

Man with a plan

Interesting quote from Richt explaining the rationale behind this year’s decision to sign a higher number of JUCO recruits than usual (more junior college players for 2013 than the last four recruiting classes combined):

“If you remember, we had some guys from the ‘Dream Team’ class that, you know, some DBs that ended up not being with us anymore. So those are guys that would’ve been ready to step into the role (as a starter next year with) a little bit more maturity. Since we had a void in that area, we wanted to make sure we brought in some guys that were a little bit older and a little bit more mature in their ability to play the game. But the other thing we knew is that we were going to try to sign a very large class. And the goal was to break up the class. [Emphasis added.] We didn’t want every single guy to be a freshman. We wanted to break it up a little bit, where it we’d have enough junior college guys that would be two years old older than the other guys in the class.

“The other thing that really came out really well for us was the midyear enrollees. Having 13 come in (and enroll in January) was tremendous for us. All of those guys seem to be doing extremely well. And that broke up our big class as well. We have 13 guys now, and we’re indoctrinating them the Georgia way academically and physically — and they’re getting a head start on football, of course.

“So now that rest of the class is going to be closer to 20, instead of 32 or 33 rolling in all at one time. We’ve got it broken up because of the number of midyear players, which I think is working out very well for us so far.”

That’s pretty well thought out… and it seems to have had its origin in the Nick Marshall dismissal.  I’d like to think that if he was that thoughtful about the overall strategy for the class, he was just as careful in terms of deciding who would receive the offers.  Time will tell, of course, but what I see here looks promising.

The hardest job in college athletics

Georgia Tech employs someone whose title is associate athletic director for sales and fan experience.

“Four tickets, four hot dogs and four cokes” will only take you so far.

The perfect replacement

John Infante’s not predicting the imminent demise of Mark Emmert’s NCAA presidency.  He’s just sayin’.

If it should happen, though, whoever succeeds Emmert at the helm needs to be somebody who’s both feared and respected, who has plenty of experience running a college sports bureaucracy and who knows the NCAA rulebook like the back of his hand.

But I don’t think Nick Saban has time for the NCAA’s shit.