The Saturday, Sept. 4, SEC football game between Georgia and the University of Louisiana-Lafayette in Athens will be televised by the SEC Network with kickoff set for 12:21 p.m. ET.

Previously announced early season Georgia games included South Carolina in Columbia (Sept. 11) and Arkansas in Athens (Sept. 18), both at 12:00 noon on either ESPN or ESPN2. The Oct. 30 Georgia-Florida game in Jacksonville will be televised by CBS at 3:30 p.m. ET.

Personally, I love it…I’m going to try to pull off the double-header with Georgia’s opener and the LSU-UNC game at the Dome.

The good news, if preseason honors mean anything to you, is that six Bulldogs earned a place on the coaches team, and that’s the third-highest of all SEC teams. It’s down from nine honorees last year, but they went three-deep last year. It’s only a two-deep this time. Green, Boling, Walsh, and Butler all earned first-team honors, and Glenn and Boykin were on the second team. Boykin was included as a returner and not as a cornerback.

I don’t think anyone will be or should be surprised by finding zero defenders on the preseason all-conference teams. Many of the key contributors last year – namely the defensive tackles and Curran – are gone. You could argue for the recognition of Justin Houston, but remember that he has taken exactly zero snaps in a game at his new linebacker position. The uncertainty of the effectiveness of the new 3-4 defense as well as the requisite shuffling of positions leaves the Bulldogs with few known entities that would stand out to preseason voters.

Of course the hope is that the Dawgs go from zero to multiple defensive all-conference players after the season. If the 3-4 proves to be effective, Georgia’s defensive stars will draw plenty of attention, especially if the pass rush takes off. There are several guys to watch, and Houston, Boykin, and Rambo are the obvious choices. Don’t be surprised if DeAngelo Tyson ends up on a postseason team – the anchor of the 3-4 is going to have plenty of chances to make a name for himself this year. Who else might break through in 2010?

The State newspaper in Columbia looked at the problem from a South Carolina perspective and updated some of the information we had relied on for our earlier posts. The market remains soft for several major programs in the area hoping to sell the remainder of their season tickets.  Specifically:

• “Season ticket sales at USC are down 9 percent from last year and have dropped about 20 percent since 2008…There are entire sections in the upper deck at Williams-Brice Stadium that are nearly vacant.”
• “Tennessee invited fans into Neyland Stadium last month to check out the more than 1,000 seats available.”
• “At Clemson, ticket sales have dropped 13 percent since 2008.”
• “The Yellow Jackets have sold about 900 fewer season tickets than they had at this point last year.”

The State’s article goes on to look at some of the factors behind the lagging sales as well as some of the marketing approaches teams are trying to stir up demand. Lots of good info, and they could have stopped there.  But one more school was cited as evidence of “flagging ticket sales.”

Georgia recently lowered its cost for a first-time season ticket buyer to $1,550 — down from $10,651 two years ago and $4,205 in 2009 — after more than 2,000 Bulldog fans chose not to renew their tickets.

In an article about how area schools are struggling to find buyers for, in some cases, over 1,000 unsold season tickets, they mention Georgia:  a school that not only sold out of season tickets without offering them to the general public but which also had to refund season ticket orders to Hartman Fund donors below a certain minimum score.

Hartman Fund minimum donation levels to purchase or renew season tickets run $250-$400 for seats outside of premium club areas.    That means that a first-time donor this year had to donate at least four times the minimum just to have the right to order season tickets in the far reaches of the stadium.

True, it’s not the outrageous demand of 2008 that saw first-time cutoffs of over 10,000.  But it’s still not evidence of scarce demand.  The explanation that over 2,000 fans chose not to renew season tickets sounds dire until we understand that there is some amount of turnover every year.  Even in the record demand season of 2008, over 800 season tickets weren’t renewed. 2,000 non-renewals in a season ticket pool of about 53,000 is less than a 4% churn and just slightly higher than a typical year.

This all might sound like small potatoes, but in an environment where the most absurd situations can be used to feed the hot seat meme, it’s an easy game of connect-the-dots for a lazy columnist to point to such articles as indicators that fans are bailing on the program.  Georgia’s season tickets are sold out, and they have been since they were first offered to Hartman Fund donors in March. 

One game that has never quite gotten its due is the win over Arkansas in Fayetteville. I know that it seemed dodgy. You had Cox playing out of his mind and standing toe-to-toe in a shootout. You had Richard Samuel hit the hole and have his one shining moment at tailback. It’s not that you wondered how Georgia got out of there with the win; you saw the offense score at will. It was just so unexpected and, as it turned out, oh so necessary. It’s not that Georgia beat an SEC contender, but the 2009 Dawgs lost games against lesser teams. In retrospect, the win seems even more improbable because Georgia had to overcome two huge factors that usually meant success for the 2009 Razorbacks:

• The game was Arkansas’ only home loss of the season. The Razorbacks have won just a single road SEC game under Petrino – a close 25-22 win in 2008 against an Auburn team circling the drain. But they were much better at home last season and ended up routing South Carolina, Mississippi State, and Auburn in Fayetteville.
• The game was Arkansas’ only loss in which Ryan Mallett completed over 50% of his passes. Mallett of course had a ridiculous day against Georgia with 21-of-39 passing (53.8%), 408 yards, and 5 touchdowns. As TSK notes, “Arkansas was 7-1 in games in which Mallett completed more than 50 percent of his passes.”

Arkansas’ trip to Athens in 2010 is going to be a popular upset pick – if Arkansas isn’t outright favored. The Hogs will be 2-0 after a pair of cupcakes. Mallett’s likely to be ultra-accurate and put up huge numbers in those wins. The Bulldog defense might or might not be better than the unit that gave up 41 a year ago, but they’ll still be in their first few games under a new system and going up against an extremely talented passer. Georgia will have been tested on the road at Columbia, and it will be Arkansas’ first road game of the year. A win over Georgia would certainly be a win that legitimizes the preseason hype poured on Arkansas this year, but will they have learned how to win big games on the road, and is their defense going to be any better against a Georgia offense that will be plenty loaded itself?

But South Carolina’s title serves to underscore an unpleasant point around these parts. Georgia is joined now only by Vanderbilt as the only SEC East programs without a national title in any of the “big 3″ men’s sports since SEC expansion in 1992. Seven of the 12 SEC members have managed the feat, and Auburn would really like to remind you of their 2004 football season. A club whose other members include Vandy and the Mississippi schools is not the company Georgia wants to be keeping.

As Kyle noted the other day, track season wrapping up means the end of competition for Bulldog student-athletes for the 2009-2010 academic year. No one from Michael Adams to Damon Evans is pretending that it was a great year for Bulldog athletics, and even another second-place finish for the SEC All-Sports trophy does little to mask the disappointment.

The final standings for the NACDA Director’s Cup will be released on July 1st. Georgia is currently in 17th place with only baseball left to figure in to the final tally. It’s possible that both LSU and Texas could pass Georgia based on their participation in the baseball postseason. If that occurs, Georgia would drop below their 18th place finish last year for the worst performance as a program in well over a decade. We’ve been over this ground before, but it’s not an impressive trend for the athletic department under Damon Evans. But, hey – we’re still rolling in cash, right?

But with this week’s news that there will be at least two vacancies in the Big 12, already an AQ conference, was there an effort made on either side to get Boise (and possibly fellow MWC member TCU) into the Big 12? True that Boise and other MWC members don’t measure up in terms of basketball or other sports, but this is a football-driven expansion boom. I hope someone asks the question – otherwise this just seems like moving into a nicer apartment in the same complex.

The race towards megaconferences might have one interesting side-effect: the rise of the divisions as their own unique entities underneath the umbrellas of the larger conferences.

In a 16-team conference, you’ll have two eight-team divisions. Yes, there are alternative structures (see Clay Travis’s 4×4 arrangement), but most conferences will choose the traditional model and tie everything together with a championship game.

Currently the Pac-10 is the only major conference that has a nine-game league schedule, and that is (was) in order to facilitate a round-robin schedule. The practice actually puts the league at a disadvantage relative to other conferences in terms of bowl eligibility. It will be interesting to see if the expanded Pac-10 continues the nine-game schedule or if it bows to pressure to be at parity with other leagues who can schedule eight conference games and use that other game for a nonconference opponent of varying quality.

The number of conference games is a big deal to coaches and a key point going forward with expansion. Mark Richt said recently, “As far as I’m concerned, you can add more teams, but I just don’t want to play any more league games.” Richt can’t be alone in that sentiment – unless the nine-game schedule is imposed on all conferences as the new norm, those signing up for an extra conference game are making things tougher for their teams.

But an eight-game slate in a 16-team conference all but cuts off one side from the other. You’ll have seven league games in your own division and then one against the other side. If that one game rotates, it ends any traditional rivalries against teams in the other division. Even with nine conference games, you’re still only playing two schools out of eight from the other division, so things aren’t all that much better in either scenario.

At that point, the larger megaconference is just an administrative abstraction between its divisions. It exists for revenue-sharing purposes and for the clout it brings negotiating for collective deals and postseason positions. I realize we’re not that far away under the current structure, but the solidarity of a single Big 10 or Pac-10 is gone now. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But for the conference championship games, we’re almost back to the days of eight-team conferences.

Divisions in our future of 16-team conferences will take on a much greater importance. They’ll be relatively more isolated and even develop identities of their own. The Pac-10 will have its Route 66 / Tom Joad schools and then the Pac-8 schools of the 1960s and 1970s. Nebraska’s division of the Big 10 will certainly have a different feel than one oriented around the Rust Belt. Give me Alabama and Auburn in the SEC East, and we’ll send LSU a postcard every now and then.

This idea about giving the new Pac-10 two automatic BCS berths is definitely full of itself, but it’s going to be the kind of thing you’ll hear more often as these 8-team divisions begin to take on lives of their own. The Senator asks, “What in the hell do they even need a conference for in the first place?” This is a perfect example of the conference-as-abstraction that allows two more or less distinct entities to pool together for TV deals and revenue sharing and still claim two separate places in the lucrative BCS.

I know that other Georgia fans and I are wondering if the SEC will dip their toe into the expansion market and push towards 14 or 16 teams. It’s not too early to start thinking about what we’d like our SEC East “conference” to look like.

“The league would allow the Aggies to offer an interesting alternative to Lone Star State recruits enthralled by the SEC schools they grew up watching on television.”

Right now the Aggies are second-tier in a Big XII dominated by the Longhorns. If we’re being honest, they’ve even been passed by Texas Tech recently. If they join the others in the exodus to the Pac-10, they remain an afterthought along for the ride. But if they split off and join the SEC, they take a step from out of the shadow of the other Texas schools. Sure, they still wouldn’t be the marquee in-state destination for top prospects as long as Texas remains a title contender. But membership in the nation’s top football conference would be a selling point that would at least make the Aggies a unique option in their area. It’s over 330 miles to Baton Rouge and over 500 miles to any other SEC destination – that’s a lot of fertile recruiting territory to occupy for a prospective SEC member.

After Washington plated three runs in the bottom of the first, it looked as if this year’s WCWS opener would follow the same script as last year’s.  Erin Arevalo came in as a relief pitcher and settled things down on defense, but Georgia’s bats remained silent against All-American pitcher Danielle Lawrie.

The Bulldogs cracked the scoreboard in the fourth with a solo shot by Kristyn Sandberg, but they had to work out of a jam in the bottom half of the inning.  Arevalo shut the door, and the Huskies couldn’t add to their lead.  Georgia posted two more runs in the fifth thanks to a barrage of pesky singles and the speed of Taylor Schlopy on a force play at home.

It was fitting that Georgia’s hottest batter broke open the game in the sixth inning.  Megan Wiggins golfed a low pitch over the center field wall to provide the final margin. 

Freshman Allison Owen answered the bell in the final two innings.  With Arevalo struggling in the 6th, Owen entered the game and got out of a bases-loaded jam with a key strikeout.  Owen finished off the game by striking out the side in the seventh.

Georgia’s next opponent is another familiar foe.  Tennessee and Georgia split four games during the 2010 season, but Tennessee bounced the Dawgs from the SEC Tournament and is the most recent team to beat the Bulldogs.  Tennessee, like Georgia, is red-hot in the NCAA Tournament and has yet to lose a game.  They swept #2 seed Michigan on the road to get to the WCWS and destroyed Arizona 9-0 in their WCWS opener.

Georgia and Tennessee will play at 9:30 on Friday night (ESPN) with an important advantage at stake.  The winner will remain in the winner’s bracket, earn a day off on Saturday, and will only have to win one game on Sunday to advance to the championship series.  The loser will have to come back on Saturday and win that game and win twice on Sunday in order to advance. 

Softball

The Georgia softball team completed an impressive sweep of Cal on Saturday to earn a consecutive trip to the Women’s College World Series. Can’t blame the ESPN crew for trying to build up as much SEC vs. Pac-10 drama as they could, but Georgia made sure that the series was as far from dramatic as you can get. The Bulldogs won the series by a combined 17-1 score, and they had each game more or less in hand by the second inning. LF Megan Wiggins was the star with a fantastic diving catch in the field and a grand slam in Saturday’s clincher. With Taylor Schlopy and Alisa Goler, I can’t imagine a more potent top third of a lineup in the nation.

Georgia gets to face a familiar postseason foe in the WCWS. Top seeds Alabama and Michigan were upset in their super regionals over the weekend, but third-seeded and defending champion Washington avoided the upset bug and will be Georgia’s opening opponent in Oklahoma City as they were a year ago. The Huskies lost their first super regional game to Oklahoma but stormed back with consecutive shutouts.

Georgia lost their opener to Washington last year but battled back through the loser’s bracket to earn another shot at the Huskies. Georgia won 9-8 in a thrilling extra-innings game to setup yet another game against Washington with a trip to the national title game on the line. Washington proved to be too much and went on to beat Florida for the title. If Georgia can take one positive from last year’s experience, it’s that they got to untouchable Washington pitcher Danielle Lawrie for ten earned runs over those final two games. They were also the only team to defeat Washington in the WCWS. Georgia’s offense is every bit as potent as it was last year, and they’ll have a bit of confidence going up against a familiar and talented foe.

Georgia faces Washington at 9:30 on Thursday evening, and the game will be on ESPN2.

W Tennis

The weekend was topped off with an individual national title: sophomore tennis player Chelsey Gullickson pulled off upset after upset during the women’s singles tournament and defeated Cal’s Jana Juricova 6-3,7-6(7)to claim the program’s third individual championship. Her quest to add a doubles title fell just short as her team fell in the national semifinals.

Though Gullickson was ranked a respectable 12th in the nation, her path through the field included four matches against higher-ranked players.

Gullickson’s road to the national championship featured six wins including over top-ranked Irina Falconi (Georgia Tech), second-ranked Juricova, fourth-ranked Hilary Barte and eighth-ranked Allie Will (Florida).

A national title that included wins over Florida and Tech? Chelsey Gullickson accomplished every Bulldog’s dream.

…and Bass Fishing?

How good of a weekend was it? Georgia’s Ben Cleary and Bo Page even claimed the 2010 BoatU.S. Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship. (h/t David Hale)

Phil Steele tips his cap to this line of thinking by naming Georgia one of his possible surprise teams for 2010. Steele doesn’t go all the way and predict Georgia to be a top-10 team, but that’s understandable. Many are the preseason polls who went out on a limb for Georgia in 2008 and 2009 and were rewarded for it with consecutive seasons that finished below expectations. But Steele is at least acknowledging that the potential is there for Georgia to make some noise this year if a few questions get answered affirmatively.

There are enough differences between Oklahoma and Georgia to see why pundits like Steele aren’t as bullish on the Dawgs as they might be on the Sooners. It starts at quarterback where Landry Jones earned enough playing time last season to be considered a returning starter. Aaron Murray is pretty much where Jones was a year ago, but Murray at least has the advantage of knowing he’ll start as a freshman.

There’s also the difference in how each team got to 8-5 last year. Oklahoma lost four games to top-20 finishers by a combined 12 points. Georgia got routed by Florida and a middling Tennessee team and lost to unimpressive LSU and Kentucky teams. Oklahoma was missing its Heisman candidate quarterback and all-star tight end. Georgia had some injuries along the way including a key left tackle, but they came by their 8-5 honestly. Both teams can claim a certain amount of unluckiness – Oklahoma’s injuries and close losses and Georgia’s improbable turnover margin – but that’s football.

We can’t forget about the schedule. Georgia might have traded Oklahoma State and LSU for La.-Lafayette and Mississippi State, but they’ll still face four of Steele’s top-25, only one of which will be in Athens. We have no qualms with Oklahoma’s very respectable schedule, but they’ll face just two of Steele’s top-25 along the way, both of which will either be a home or a neutral game.

Stability is probably the biggest difference. Oklahoma had a small change on their defensive staff (welcome Willie Martinez!), but coordinator Brent Venables has been in place since 2004. Georgia will undergo a wholesale transformation of the defense, and it could be cause for concern that Georgia will be one of the few SEC teams to play three conference games in September – two of which will be on the road, and two of which will be against a Steele preseason top-25 team. The defense won’t have much time to find its legs.

Oklahoma will be a highly-ranked team heading into the Texas game if they can get through September and a decent nonconference slate unscathed. Georgia likewise should be on the rise and prove Steele right if the defense can survive September and head to Boulder without a blemish.

While the Bulldog nation has been fending off bored columnists talking about the temperature of Mark Richt’s seat, Damon Evans hasn’t received much scrutiny. Much of that has to do with having a lot to like: the program remains financially strong, the APR results are worth bragging about, and Evans’ first high-profile hire, Mark Fox, seems to have been a good one. We looked at this topic last year on the occasion of Evans’ fifth anniversary as athletic director. There has been a downward trend in Georgia’s national Directors’ Cup standing, and I can’t imagine that the overall performance of Bulldog programs will improve that this year. The summary remains the same: everything else is stellar but actual athletics aren’t doing so well, and the trend remains downward.

It’s probably a surprise then to learn that Georgia finished second in this year’s SEC All-Sports trophy. The Bulldogs finished a distant second behind Florida, but there was also a healthy margin between Georgia and third-place Tennessee.

How did they do it? It should shock no one that Georgia’s women’s programs led the way. The gap between the Florida and Georgia women’s programs was much narrower than the overall gap, and Georgia’s women’s programs finished on average over two places higher in the SEC standings than the Georgia men. Despite that, it wasn’t as bad as you might think for the Bulldog men. Even with the major sports having sub-par seasons, Georgia’s men’s programs finished tied for fourth with Tennessee.

Here’s a look at how the Bulldogs did against the rest of the SEC this year. We use regular season standings where possible, but some sports like golf and swimming use a season-ending tournament or meet to decide the champion.

• Football: T-4th (T-2nd SEC East). Champion: Alabama
• Men’s Basketball: 11th (6th SEC East). Champion: Kentucky
• Women’s Basketball: 5th. Champion: Tennessee
• Baseball: 12th (6th SEC East). Champion: Florida
• Softball: 4th. Champion: Alabama
• Men’s Tennis: 3rd (3rd SEC East). Champion: Tennessee
• Women’s Tennis: T-2nd (T-2nd SEC East). Champion: Florida
• Men’s Golf: 1st (SEC Tournament). Champion: Georgia
• Women’s Golf: 4th (SEC Tournament). Champion: Alabama
• Women’s Soccer: 5th (3rd SEC East). Champion: Florida
• Women’s Volleyball: T-5th (4th SEC East). Champion: LSU
• Gymnastics: 3rd (SEC Championships). Champion: Florida
• Men’s Swimming/Diving: 3rd (SEC Championships). Champion: Auburn
• Women’s Swimming/Diving: 1st (SEC Championships). Champion: Georgia
• Men’s Track & Field: 5th (SEC Outdoor Championships). Champion: Florida
• Women’s Track & Field: 5th (SEC Outdoor Championships). Champion: LSU
• Men’s Cross Country: 5th (SEC Championships). Champion: Alabama
• Women’s Cross Country: 4th (SEC Championships). Champion: Florida

Note: Equestrian is not an SEC sport, but c’mon – they’re national champs.

Other than men’s basketball and baseball, most Georgia programs finished at least in the top half of the conference. Those results probably buoyed Georgia’s place in the All-Sports competition versus programs who might have done well in a few sports but poorly in most of the others.

While maintaining second place in the SEC All-Sport standings might be a nice surprise, it’s very possible that Georgia, for the first time in well over a decade, could dip out of the national top 20 in this year’s Directors’ Cup. Georgia was 25th after the conclusion of the winter sports, and they’ll be helped by several postseason appearances among the spring sports. It’ll be close.

Still, most fans just consider the strength of the football team a proxy for the state of the athletic department. What’s your verdict?

Oklahoma doesn’t have to be a great team; they only have to be better than everyone on their schedule. Here’s their path:

Sept. 4 — Utah State
Sept. 11 — Florida State
Sept. 18 — Air Force
Sept 25 — @ Cincinnati
Oct. 2 — Texas (Dallas)
Oct. 16 — Iowa State
Oct. 23 — @ Missouri
Oct. 30 — Colorado
Nov. 6 — @ Texas A&M
Nov. 13 — Texas Tech
Nov 20 — @ Baylor
Nov. 27 — @ Oklahoma State
Dec. 4 — Big 12 Championship (Dallas)

The nonconference schedule is respectable but not ridiculously daunting. The visit from FSU will tell us a lot, but it will be a home game for Oklahoma and still early in Jimbo Fisher’s turnaround project. The trip to Cincinnati looks interesting, but it’s not last year’s Bearcat team.

Hopes for a championship season, as usual, come down to the Texas game. Both teams will have been tested by some quality opponents by that point. The Longhorns are the best team on the schedule, and claiming that win after an undefeated September would have the Sooners shooting up the Top 10.

If Oklahoma can make it past Texas, the rest of the schedule becomes a challenge of avoiding the upset. Several of those teams will have fair seasons, but none should be favored over a top 15 team. Yes, A&M should be better, and it’s a road game. A visit from Texas Tech could prove interesting if only for the Tuberville factor. The rivalry game with OSU is another challenging road game, but this Cowboy team doesn’t come into 2010 with nearly the expectations of the 2009 squad. They wouldn’t have to face Nebraska until a potential meeting in the Big 12 championship game.

We’ll know by the end of September whether or not Oklahoma is able to claim contender status. There are several potential pitfalls along the rest of the way, but a team with Top 10 aspirations should be able to circle the FSU and Texas games and then take care to not get caught asleep on the road. Even a loss to Texas doesn’t necessarily sink the Sooners. If the season proves to be as wide-open as 2007, a single loss could still leave them in good shape to win the conference and rise to the top of the rankings.