The Wiz turns cartographer today and builds to a familiar challenge that, for once, points the spotlight of shame at someone other than Georgia.

We’d like to see SEC teams, with their wealth of talent and top-notch teams, get out and show other parts of the country how great they are at playing football. BCS champion Florida, for example, hasn’t played an out-of-state nonconference game since Sept. 21, 1991, when it lost at Syracuse, 38-21.

Since that 1991 trip to Syracuse, the Gators have played for four national titles and won three. They’ve produced two Heisman winners and won all of their eight SEC titles. Even in their 9-4 seasons they managed to remain relevant. If schedule has been a hindrance on their rise to elite status, I haven’t seen it.

Why does everyone get so hung up over distance when it comes to the quality of schedule? Florida’s annual game against FSU put the Gators against a top 5 opponent almost every season during the 1990s. No other program had such a consistently tough nonconference opponent. Would it have been better or more impressive if they had played a 5-7 Arizona State team?

Does anyone see an incentive for Florida to leave the state? If they want quality competition, Miami and FSU are in their worst seasons at least among the ranks of the bowl-eligible. The Gators certainly don’t need any more help in the exposure department. Why travel the nation to showcase your program to elite prospects when your state produces more than any other?

Schedules are not created equal, and some of the 2009 hopefuls will take very different approaches to how they navigate the season. Southern Cal and Texas can tell you that getting through the conference slate can be the real challenge, but the nonconference games can have an impact not only on the record but also on how the program is perceived by peers and pundits.

(By the way, I can’t help responding here to Kyle’s claim that the BCS "encourages…strong scheduling in ways a playoff never would." The primacy of the regular season and the stigma of even a single loss provide a strong disincentive to schedule tough opponents. I understand that there are reasons for doing so, but the system hardly "encourages" it. What the system encourages above all else is playing in a major conference and navigating the season with as few blemishes as possible. College basketball has a playoff and, by consequence, less emphasis on regular season games, but the tradeoff is that big games like last weekend’s Duke – Georgetown matchup are commonplace in college hoops.)

Here are the nonconference schedules of the top 6 contenders next season (according to Mark Schlabach). Most (save Texas) have at least one decent challenge, but on the whole it’s pretty much status quo.

Texas:

• Wyoming
• La. Monroe
• Central Florida
• UTEP

Comment: To be fair, Texas did have Arkansas back out, and the ‘Horns are looking to improve their schedule over the coming years. But we’re focusing on 2009 here, and the Big 12 opener against Colorado should be the only thing standing between Texas arriving at the Red River Shootout with an unblemished record, a very high ranking, and a slew of lopsided yawners under their belt.

Southern Cal:

• San Jose St.
• @ Ohio State
• @ Notre Dame

Comment: As usual, the Trojans have a respectable nonconference slate, and only one of the games is at home. The Pac 10 plays nine conference games (there’s a novel idea for the superconferences), so SoCal only has three games to schedule.

Ohio State:

• Navy
• Southern Cal
• Toledo
• New Mexico State

Comment: Southern Cal stands out of course, and assume that everyone will head into the season chalking that up as a loss. The rest of the nonconference schedule is light. Who in the Big 10 will be able to stop an improved Pryor and his team? Michigan’s not there yet. Penn State’s losses are big. Iowa loses their threat at tailback. Any conference loss would have to be considered a big upset. Go ahead and pencil in the Buckeyes for Pasadena – but for which game?

Alabama

• Virginia Tech (in Atlanta, Ga.)
• Florida International
• North Texas
• UT-Chattanooga

Comment: The Tide used a big win over an ACC team to launch their 2008 return to glory, and they’ll go back to that well in 2009. The rest of the schedule is miserable, and their SEC slate doesn’t include Florida or Georgia.

Oklahoma:

• BYU (in Dallas, Tex.)
• @ Miami (Fl.)
• Tulsa
• TBA

Comment: Even with one game TBA, Oklahoma already has one of the better schedules of the contenders. Their decent schedule in 2008 gets credit for landing them at the top of the one-loss teams, but winning their conference didn’t hurt either. They’ll be the more battle-tested team when they play Texas, but will it matter?

Florida:

• Charleston Southern
• Troy
• Florida International
• FSU

Comment: Urban Meyer’s not dumb. Win the SEC with one loss or less, and you could play high school teams from region 4-AAA and stand a good chance at making the national title game. The Gators can focus on repeating as SEC champs and won’t have to face Auburn, Alabama, or Ole Miss during the regular season. The Gators won a national title in 2008 with only a middling Miami bulking up the schedule, so what’s the incentive to toughen the schedule again?

Though no one will include them among the list of 2009 contenders, offered without comment is Georgia:

• @ Oklahoma State
• Arizona State
• Tennessee Tech
• @ Georgia Tech

Congratulations are in order for Andy Landers who became the second-fastest women’s college basketball coach to reach the 800 career win mark last night. The Lady Dogs rolled over Savannah State 74-28.

It can’t be easy for such an accomplished coach during what can kindly be called a transitional year for the program. The easy win last night was the first breather in a long time for a team that had lost three straight before last Sunday’s nailbiter of a conference win over South Carolina.

The Lady Dogs are back in action on Sunday at Florida (2 p.m., Fox Sports South). Landers is 42-7 all-time against Florida, but this weekend’s game will test that phenomenal record. For once, Florida is ranked and Georgia is not. A road win over a ranked SEC opponent would be a tremendous boost for a team that has quite honestly struggled against quality competition this year.

The NCAA has ruled that seventh graders are now considered prospects for the purposes of college basketball recruiting.

The organization voted Thursday to change the definition of a prospect from ninth grade to seventh grade — for men’s basketball only — to nip a trend in which some college coaches were working at private, elite camps and clinics for seventh- and eighth-graders. The NCAA couldn’t regulate those camps because those youngsters fell below the current cutoff.

What’s scary about the question “where does it stop” asked by the NCAA’s Joe D’Antonio isn’t the question itself. What’s scary is that he couldn’t give an answer. According to D’Antonio, the new age limit might be considered for other sports down the road, including football. Just to be safe, you might want to hold off on sending a baby gift to Candace Parker and Shelden Williams.

A quick look at how the NFL draft and transfers will affect some teams in Georgia’s neighborhood next season. This list is surely incomplete, and corrections / additions are welcome.

Auburn

• DL Sen’Derrick Marks (NFL)
• DB Jerraud Powers (NFL)
• LB Tray Blackmon (CFL)
• WR Chris Slaughter (left team)
• DB Ryan Williams (left team)

South Carolina

• DB Emanuel Cook (NFL)
• TE Jared Cook (NFL)
• DB Captain Munnerlyn (NFL)
• QB Chris Smelley (transfer)

LSU

• WR Brandon LaFell (NFL)
• DL Ricky Jean-Francois (NFL)
• QB Andrew Hatch (transfer)

Florida

• WR Percy Harvin (NFL)
• QB Cameron Newton (transfer)

Alabama

• RB Glen Coffee (NFL)
• OT Andre Smith (NFL)

Vanderbilt

• DB DJ Moore (NFL)

Arkansas

• TE Andrew Davie (NFL)

Rashad Jones, back in control of his better judgment, will return to the Georgia team for his junior season after flirting overnight with declaring for the NFL draft.

His decision leaves QB Matthew Stafford, CB Asher Allen, and RB Knowshon Moreno as the Georgia players declaring for early entry. The deadline for announcing has passed, and we’ll have a look soon at how some of our competition fared.

We struggle trying to make a connection between penalties, discipline, and ultimate success on the field. Georgia’s high number of penalties in 2008 led some to try to make the link to off-season disciplinary issues and create the perception of a lack of control in the program. But do a lot of penalties automatically hurt a team? You’d think so, but it’s not necessarily the case. Here’s where this year’s final top 10 rank among the fewest penalties per game:

• Florida: 105
• Southern Cal: 114
• Texas: 77
• Utah: 96
• Oklahoma: 105
• Alabama: 5
• TCU: 119
• Penn State: 3
• Oregon: 99
• Georgia: 116

60% of the top 10 were among the 20 most penalized teams in the nation including TCU who were dead last. All but two teams (and the entire top 5) were in the bottom half of the FBS.

That doesn’t mean though that those committing few penalties are bad teams. Obviously Alabama and Penn State did well. For teams like Arizona, Iowa, Boston College, and Vanderbilt, committing relatively few penalties was probably a factor in their overachieving success last season.

There just seems to be little rhyme or reason in the impact penalties have on a team, and I think that’s more to do with the fact that we measure raw penalties and yardage rather than trying to understand the impact of individual penalties. Take the BCS Championship. You have a meaningless celebration penalty on Tebow after the game was in hand. Then you have a Duke Robinson hold on a first quarter pass play that turned a long reception into a punt, ending an Oklahoma scoring drive and starting Florida’s first scoring drive.

On the ledger the Tebow and Robinson penalties count the same. The Tebow penalty was even more costly – 15 yards versus 10. The difference in their impact on the game was far different. If you watched the game, you know that, but the box score tells us that Florida was the more penalized team in the championship game by more than a 2-to-1 margin (8-81 yards vs. 4-31 yards). The 30 or so yards negated by Robinson’s penalty are gone from the record.

Many of Georgia’s 2008 penalties were inconsequential. Many more were not. The facemask calls after third-down stops, the pass interference in the Florida game – all had big impacts. Until we have some kind of a metric for the cost of individual penalties, it’s hard to say with any authority that it’s bad to be one of the more penalized teams even though everything you know about football leads you to that assumption. Is there a better way?

A cornerback with zero interceptions in the most recent season has declared for the NFL draft.

Asher Allen dropped the bombshell this afternoon. We wish him well, but I have to admit that the decision is puzzling.

Asher was one of the bright spots on the defense last year, and it’s arguable that replacing him will be a bigger challenge than replacing Stafford or Moreno. The heirs to the offensive stars might not be direct swappable replacements, but they were at least in line. I’m not so sure we can say the same for the cornerback position.

Georgia basketball fans haven’t had much good news lately, but Wednesday could provide some of the biggest news in program history.

Superstar hoops prospect Derrick Favors will announce his college decision on Wednesday evening at 6:30. He will select from between Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Memphis, and his coach is trying to arrange to have the announcement at ESPN Zone in Buckhead. There is no understating the impact that the #1 prep player in the nation could have on a program like Georgia.

If you’re trying to read the tea leaves, Georgia is out of town at Vandy on Wednesday night while Tech hosts Duke in Atlanta at 7:00.

Regardless of his choice, you’ll get to see him in action on Thursday night on ESPN2.

I can’t let it go just yet after reading a few items of news like this.

You might think of your outgoing transfers as head cases, malcontents, dead weight, or simply bad fits, but one thing they shouldn’t be is "chattel". If schools are going to put these kinds of restrictions on transfers, I’m even less inclined to be sympathetic when the programs complain about unsigned prospects changing their minds and requiring a bit of hand-holding during the recruiting homestretch.

It’s mine, you understand? Mine! All mine! Get back in there! Down, down, down! Go, go, go! Mine, mine, mine! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

Consequences, schmonsequences, as long as I’m rich.

While we’re on the subject of chattel and recruiting, let’s come back to the story about South Carolina and Tucker High School. It’s always good to get a laugh at the expense of South Carolina and Spurrier, but I’m not really concerned about South Carolina’s blunder. Recruiting is about relationships, and they blew it. I’m more interested in the high school coach declaring his school off-limits for a specific college program.

It’s fine for Tucker’s coach to say that the Gamecocks are "no longer welcome" at the high school. It’s his decision who he welcomes into his office, and it’s a bridge burned. But it is most certainly not his place to dictate that "South Carolina will not be recruiting any more Tucker players."

It’s easy to accept and get behind since we’re talking about South Carolina, but a high school coach deciding who may not recruit a prospect seems about as meddlesome as the college coaches putting restrictions on transfers. Of course a prospect might and often does seek the counsel of a coach, and that’s the prospect’s choice, but a coach only does a disservice to his players by inserting himself as a gatekeeper before the fact. It’s not his call whether or not South Carolina recruits any more Tucker players.

If you’ve wondered why Buck was off the air (or even if you haven’t), the AJC has the details.

Six weeks.

The AFCA has forwarded a proposal (h/t Get the Picture) to conference commissioners for an early signing period for college football. The proposed signing day in the “third week of December” would come approximately six weeks before the current signing day on the first Wednesday in February.

There’s an early signing period in sports like basketball of course, but the difference between those signing periods is closer to six months rather than six weeks. What’s so important that the coaches can’t wait until the February signing period? “What we’re seeing is oversigning and late switches,” claims Notre Dame’s Rob Ianello.

I’ve written plenty before about why I’m suspicious of the coaches’ motives with an early signing period, and Ianello’s comments do little to show me that those concerns are unfounded. Even as the coaching ranks shuffle as staffs are assembled into December and January, coaches would rather that prospects give up the last bit of leverage and unrestricted choice they’ll enjoy for the next three-to-five years. Six measly weeks.

Ianello’s flippant question, “Is it a reservation or a commitment?” might be better asked of the highly-paid coaches that are so put upon by the current recruiting timetable.

While I’m on a little NFL kick here…

I’m generally a playoff proponent and don’t have much of a problem with the two lowest seeds still alive for a shot at the Super Bowl.

Is it necessarily a good thing that so often this time of year the weather is as much of a story and a factor in these playoff games as the teams themselves? The Super Bowl gets it right and is played in warm weather (or at least a dome), but the pros seem to take such pride in the fact that occasionally some of its most important games are played in weather that neutralizes or handicaps its best players and teams.

How many big BCS games have really been impacted by weather?

A rare kind word about a player about to redefine the word "overexposure"…

When I see the headline in the AJC that the "NFL doesn’t know what to do with Tim Tebow," that comes across to me as a bug with the NFL and not a flaw with Tebow.

I get why certain things don’t work in the leap from college to the NFL. The mismatches in talent that are exploited and punished in a variety of collegiate schemes aren’t there in the pros, so every team more or less runs its own variation on the same West Coast-y system used by every other team, and the blandness has persisted long enough for us all to understand what a "pro-style" quarterback or offense means – and what they don’t mean.

It’s not just Tebow of course, and it’s not just football. Every incoming tailback now would love to be "the next Reggie Bush", but the real Bush is close to becoming little more than a punt return specialist at the next level. There are questions about Tyler Hansbrough’s ability to play in the NBA. It’s still fundamentally football or basketball, but at times like this the college and pro games seem like very distant cousins.

There are many reasons why a college player might not excel in the pros just as most of us could name a few local high school stars who faded in college. But if NFL teams are struggling with the "risk" and "uncertainty" of how to use a player like Tebow while peers Stafford and Bradford are can’t-miss top picks, that’s not exactly a positive comment on the imagination of NFL front offices.

An NFL general manager’s comment that, "It’s not like you’d be taking Joe Flacco," kind of says it all, doesn’t it?

You probably didn’t expect news about coaching changes to come from the offense, but that’s what we have tonight. UGASports.com is reporting that, effective June 30, receivers coach Dr. John Eason will step into the Director of Football Operations position left vacant by the retiring Steve Greer. In this administrative role, Eason will no longer be an assistant coach but will still be around the program to share his experience and mentor the student-athletes.

Running backs coach Tony Ball will slide over to coach receivers, and graduate assistant Bryan McClendon will join the staff full time as an assistant coaching running backs.

You might ask why they’d move the running backs coach to receivers and put the former receiver McClendon over the running backs. There are two reasons on the surface. First, Ball had coached receivers at Louisville and Virginia Tech since 1995 before he joined the Georgia staff in 2006. He has more career experience coaching receivers than running backs. That experience will be very important in a year in which the Dawgs will go through some big changes in the passing game.

Second, running backs coach is often seen as a position for a recruiter. There’s still plenty of coaching to do, but running backs might be a better “entry-level” position for a new assistant, especially one who shows such promise as a recruiter. McClendon is a product of Atlanta, and he’ll no doubt help to strengthen Georgia’s presence in the metro area. Everything I’ve heard about him since he began as a graduate assistant indicates that he’s an up-and-comer, and I’m glad that he’s able to continue his career at Georgia. By catching the 2005 game-winner at Tech, he’s already several credits up in my book.

Mark Richt said after the season that he didn’t expect any changes on the staff during the offseason, but here we are. Of course this isn’t exactly a house-cleaning, and stability was one of the attributes that kept Garner and Searels at Georgia. But with the door open now, is this the end of the changes?