“It’s a certain cachet or aura. It’s the way a program is perceived by the public.”

Man, Stewart Mandel is still taking a victory lap in Montana.

But one particular question I answered in August 2007 took on a life of its own. A reader asked me to rank the nation’s power-conference schools by “prestige and place in the national scene.” For reasons I can’t recall, I opted to invoke a Medieval feudal system in dividing the 66 BCS programs at the time into Kings, Knights, Barons and Peasants.

Thus, my Program Pecking Order was born.

People took the thing pretty seriously. One Georgia blog actually enlisted a Dawgs fan to go around to sports bars in Montana testing my premise that the “G” helmet is not universally recognizable enough to merit a spot in the top group. (An “A” for effort, though it turned out I was right.)

I suppose I should be flattered.

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“Do you really care about Antonio Callaway?”

Boy, this is some article about the pros and cons of suspending the Florida player in the wake of being cited for marijuana possession.  I laughed; I cried.

No, really.  After reading this, I was laughing so hard it brought tears.

He also has shown lapses in judgment previously. The most prominent of these was the Title IX hearing where Callaway defended himself against sexual assault allegations. His excuse? That he was, “so stoned I had no interest in having sex with anyone.”

Let he who is without judgment lapse cast the first stoner.

By the way, anybody who believes Jim McElwain is going to suspend his best wide receiver against Michigan is probably as high as Callaway was.

The perception of reality, or the reality of perception?

Man, if you’re not on the Kirby Smart bandwagon, that CBS writers poll ranking all the P5 coaches is manna from heaven.

Baiting the click baiter

A CBS writers’ poll that is both, in his own words, “silly”, yet still worthy of a Jeff Schultz piece — man, you have to admire a master baiter working at peak effort.

And you thought the AJ-C was bad.

Boom’s got a bone to pick with the local paper.

“I’ll look at The State newspaper like the National Enquirer now. Seriously. The magazine with aliens and stuff…”

He’s got a point, too.  Sort of.

… He had heard from a police spokesperson that said they told The State newspaper, ‘You really don’t need to run this, because this is the account of one person in the bar that night. One person’s opinion of what happened.’ It was totally incorrect.

“So I called (executive editor) Mark Lett, the editor of The State paper. I said, ‘Mark, you really messed this one up. Deebo Samuel wasn’t there, and I think in the investigation, we’re going to find out Skai Moore didn’t do a whole lot of anything.’ He wanted to stand by the story. He wanted to stand by the incident report, after he was told you don’t need to run this because it’s inaccurate and could be really wrong.

In other words, the paper ran with what the arresting cops reported in a public document.  That may not be what Muschamp wants, but it’s based in reality.  As far as an apology or retraction goes, it the State has gone on to report the facts as they currently stand, that’s probably as far as it goes.  If there’s an apology due from anyone, it’s whoever name-dropped the wrong folks in the incident report.  Good luck with that, Coach.

Before you can Dawgrade…

For the record, I expect Georgia to win its road game in South Bend this season, primarily for reasons stated in this post.  So I have to say I kind of resent being lumped into this broad characterization of the fan base that cropped up in the AJ-C today:

There is almost a universal belief across DawgNation that a win in South Bend will confer a additional layer of legitimacy and success to Smart’s reign at UGA. And a loss could be just as harmful in the opposite direction.

This is a team coming off a 4-8 season we’re talking about here.  The Four Horsemen, it ain’t.  (Of late, it’s not even better than Charlie Weis.)  But, somehow a win over a team that finished with the same record as Missouri will add a layer of legitimacy?  Uh hunh.

Me?  Not buying it.  We all know what’s going to be written if Georgia leaves with a victory over the Irish.  As far as a loss goes, it’ll be a pisser, but that, too, will be because a win’s expected — not to mention that if Georgia somehow recovers from the embarrassment and goes on as it did in 2011 to win the division, most of that will dissipate in the week leading up to the SECCG.

Find another narrative, fella.

Oh, what might have been…

The idea of Alabama settling for the genius after it whiffed on RichRod (and Saban, the first go) is so delicious, that it almost makes Jeff Schultz’ spectacularly bad take on Saban’s eventual hiring seem like an afterthought.