Georgia Football Ticket Cutoff Scores 2013

Get all the gory details here.

“The time has come for the NCAA to get back to its original purpose.”

Whatever that is.  In the meantime, say hello to the NCAA Accountability Act, which modestly proposes the following:

* Requires annual baseline concussion tests for college athletes. The NCAA currently recommends colleges perform baseline tests and about two-thirds of the schools do so, according to a 2010 NCAA survey.

* Requires four-year scholarship for athletes participating in contact/collision sports that are irrevocable based on athletic skill or injury. Contact/collision sports are defined as boxing, field hockey, football, ice hockey, lacrosse, martial arts, rodeo, soccer and wrestling.

* Prevents an in institution from implementing a policy that prohibits institutions from paying stipends to college athletes.

* Ensures athletes and universities must have the opportunity for a formal administrative hearing prior to any NCAA punishment for an alleged violation, and at least one appeal and “any other due process procedure the Secretary determines by regulation to be necessary.”

Yes, you can remember those olden days when the NCAA required its member schools to pay stipends to student-athletes.  But I digress.  The bill is coming from pols who sound like they have a couple of axes to grind with Emmert’s organization.

Earlier this year, Dent called on the NCAA to reinstate 40 football scholarships at Penn State over the life of the sanctions, saying athletes had nothing to do with the Sandusky scandal. Beatty, a co-sponsor of the bill, was an Ohio State vice president when quarterback Terrelle Pryor and several teammates were sanctioned by the NCAA for selling memorabilia.

So how many other members of the House bear a grudge?  “It’s not clear how much support Dent and Beatty have from other members of Congress.”  What, nobody thought to bring Joe Barton on board?  And where’s Orrin Hatch when you need him?

Clearly, Reps. Dent and Beatty have their work cut out for them.

2013 Preseason Coaches Poll

It’s out.  Georgia’s fifth, roughly the same spot it started last season.  The Dawgs start off the season playing numbers seven and eight.  There are five SEC teams in the top ten and six in the top thirteen.

Hope I’m wrong, but I’m afraid the only parts of this exercise that’ll matter in two months will be that Ohio State and Louisville will be riding higher than they deserve off those soft schedules.

A “sexy developing rivalry”?

While some of the reasoning in this post over at Saturday Down South is a little silly – Georgia isn’t talking more about South Carolina than Florida in preseason pressers right now because of the passion of the rivalry, but because it’s the second game of the season – I don’t deny that the series has gotten more heated and that Spurrier is the major cause for that, both because he’s an ass and because he’s raised the play of the program.

But I look at this series the same way I did the one with Tennessee from ’92 until Fulmer left.  It became a big deal because the division title was in play (okay, not every year, but work with me here, peeps).  Fulmer’s personality added some zest to the recipe, but I’d never put the UT rivalry on the same pedestal with Florida or Auburn, even though they’re all conference rivals.  The same goes for South Carolina.  And the thing is, besides Spurrier, South Carolina’s never really had others who’ve irritated me like some of the Vols have over the years.  (Before you go there, Garcia was comic relief.)

So I can’t call this one “sexy”, really.  How do you guys feel about it?

Logan Gray may be gone, but his spirit lives on.

I give up.  Evidently Mark Richt has decided that Georgia’s punt returners can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

Better safe than sorry.

When it comes to punt returns, Georgia head coach Mark Richt said Monday night that’s a route he has no problem traveling down.

“The most important thing after a punt if we’re returning a kick is for us to have the ball,” Richt said. “A couple of years ago they’d line up to punt two us, fake it, and we had times we fumbled the ball. That was problematic so our main goal was at the end of that play if we force a team to line up in a punt formation the very next down we want to have the ball.”

In other words, this staff isn’t capable of finding anyone who can field punts cleanly and be a legitimate threat to return them.  Or it doesn’t feel the need to make the effort to find someone who’s capable of doing both.

Now I can see Richt making the argument that the offense is so explosive that the biggest sin the punt return unit could make would be to turn the ball over, except this mindset didn’t pop up yesterday.  It’s something we’ve seen over several seasons now.  Several less offensively explosive seasons.

I just don’t get it.  This is the program that produced Thomas Flowers and Damien Gary.  What happened?