Yep, Ryan Perrilloux is finally gone from LSU (insert Fulmer on the phone joke here).

Georgia fans are probably relieved that they won’t have to face an obviously talented quarterback in Baton Rouge next year, but the impact on the LSU program is still up in the air. At first glance, it seems like a no-brainer that the Tigers are in deep trouble next year. There is a drop-off after Perrilloux for sure. But there’s also the addition-by-subtraction theory: Perrilloux was clearly a distraction, and ending the lingering uncertainty over his status can help the team move forward. Beyond that, it couldn’t have been a good message for the rest of the team that the staff went out of its way to cover for such a discipline problem.

Still, LSU fans have to be queasy when they look at this depth chart:

• Andrew Hatch: transfer from Harvard. That’s only part of the story. As Opinionated Catholic says, “He is our Harvard Transfer, that played Backup at Harvard, there that never saw anytime in a game while in the Ivy League, that interrupted his college football career by going on a Mormon Mission to South America, in which he got a serious freak injury playing Soccer, and who spent a lot of time rehabing , and played about 3 plays last year for LSU.”
• Jarrett Lee: a four-star redshirt freshman from Texas
• Jordan Jefferson: a 6’5″ four-star incoming freshman from Louisiana

So you have three guys with the combined D-1 experience of Blake Barnes. Scary stuff, but I wouldn’t write LSU off just yet. They have enough talent on that team, especially on defense, to challenge for the SEC West. If they can find a competent, poised quarterback who avoids costly mistakes and meltdowns, they’re right back in the mix. This program has won national titles with Matt Mauck and Matt Flynn.

PS…there’s one more point here. Les Miles took some heat last year for sticking with Flynn over Perrilloux especially after the SEC Championship. Sometimes coaches have their reasons for not turning the keys over to the most talented guy.

Georgia fans will have a lot of new experiences when the Dawgs travel out to Arizona State this fall, and one of them will be an opponent without cheerleaders.

After racy photos of members of the university’s cheerleading squad were spotted on a campus blog called “The Dirty,” the school cut the squad completely, MyFOXPhoenix reported.

The cheerleaders told MyFOXPhoenix that the photographs were a result of college kids goofing off, and they believe the decision to disband the team has been in the works for a while. The photographs are two years old, and were taken at a “cheer party.”

Mark Schlabach reports that the BCS meetings have concluded with the process unchanged.

Saying the BCS was in an “unprecedented state of health,” ACC commissioner John Swofford announced Wednesday that college football will not change the way it determines its national champion as it prepares to begin negotiations for future television contracts that will probably run through the 2014 season.

“We will move forward in the next cycle with the current format,” said Swofford, who serves as BCS chairman. “I believe the BCS has never been healthier in its first decade.”

While most will focus on the fact that a plus-one or playoff were shot down, it’s also worth noting that the formula and process has been pretty stable since the 2004 season. The major change since has been to replace the AP poll with the Harris poll, but the mechanics have stayed constant.

I’m a bit weary also of the playoff topic, but Tony Barnhart’s concern over the fate of the regular season (h/t Get the Picture) touches on a point that for some reason rubs me the wrong way.

Barnhart repeats a line that most college football fans dogmatically accept: In college football EVERY regular season game matters.

That statement has never made sense to me. Without getting too semantic over what "matters" means, it seems to me that relatively few games matter in the context of a national championship. You can’t tell me that the regular season is its own glorious playoff winnowing the field of contenders weekly while at the same time insisting that the South Carolina – Clemson game matters in any way outside of the Palmetto State.

Even some of the compelling must-see games Barnhart cites (say, Alabama-Auburn) often have nothing to do with the national title picture. Is the argument being made that Auburn-Alabama is a great game to watch because of the postseason format? If so, someone has to explain that in a little more depth (and type slowly for my benefit).

The concerns over bracket creep, etc. are enough to give any rational playoff advocate pause, but the extent to which we romanticize the regular season must have its limits. It can be argued that the focus on the regular season as a culling process for title contenders actually costs us more interesting and more frequent high-profile inter-conference games. The quality of nonconference games is something that college basketball has over college football, and it’s not only because of the number of games on the schedule. There is a trade-off in our search for games that matter, sure, but are we losing better potential regular season matchups as a result?

Many of us, myself included, have made a point out of the fact that the NFL draft didn’t seem to hit Georgia all that hard. But in reality, only three SEC teams had more players taken than Georgia:

Alabama: 0 draft picks

Arkansas: 6 draft picks (1st round (2), 3rd round, 7th round (3))

Auburn: 5 draft picks (2nd round (2), 3rd round, 4th round, 7th round)

Florida: 2 draft picks (1st round, 3rd round)

Georgia: 4 draft picks (5th round, 6th round, 7th round (2))

Kentucky: 4 draft picks (4th round (2), 6th round, 7th round)

LSU: 6 draft picks (1st round, 3rd round (3), 4th round, 7th round)

Ole Miss: 0 draft picks

Mississippi State: 0 draft picks

South Carolina: 1 draft pick (7th round)

Tennessee: 3 draft picks (1st round, 3rd round, 5th round)

Vanderbilt: 3 draft picks (1st round, 3rd round, 5th round)

16 picks in the first 3 rounds isn’t bad for a conference, but it is down a bit (-24%) for the SEC from 21 selections a year ago. Georgia fans might be giddy about all of the returning talent, but they’re not alone.

I was glad to see Kyle sign on to the "embracing expectations" approach to the 2008 season that I put forth back in January. With a successful spring practice behind us and the major injury bug dodged so far (knocking wood), I see no reason to shy away from title talk.

There are some very key points in Kyle’s reasoning. This is the biggest one as far as I’m concerned:

…do we really want the luxury of languishing in the relative obscurity of lowered expectations if it means taking the chance of turning out like underappreciated Auburn in 2004?

Exactly. If college football were a law school class, the 2004 Auburn season would be one of the landmark cases studied every year. It provides insight into so much about the sport – everything from the technical (the perfect storm of Chizik and Borges) to the personal (the redemption of Jason Campbell) to its national implications. Even this far removed from the 2004 season, we’re still talking through those implications.

There is one line of thought, expressed by Kyle himself last week, that the lesson had to do with the consequences of a weak nonconference schedule. I’ve been more of the opinion that Auburn’s schedule mattered much less than the fact that Southern Cal and Oklahoma were put on a collision course from the moment the 2003 season ended. Yes, the Narrative.

2007 provides another example. Last summer LSU and Southern Cal were the teams of destiny at the top of the preseason polls. Les Miles cemented the Narrative by calling out Southern Cal’s schedule and conference. Though Stanford made sure that the Tiger-Trojan championship game would never take place, I have to think that LSU’s #2 preseason position in the polls made a difference when the pollsters chose them as the first two-loss team to play for the BCS championship. No one was talking about Kansas or Missouri last July. LSU’s presence in the preseason national title discussion certainly didn’t hurt their position even after a typically fatal late-season loss.

Poll position matters in racing and college football. If you want to have the best chance at a title run, start as high as you can. Counting on higher-ranked teams to lose and clear the path works sometimes, but it can get very crowded at the top. It’s a somewhat unusual situation this year in that there really isn’t a clear preseason #1, so getting an early nose ahead of the rest of the field might really matter this season. There’s definitely danger in having the bulls-eye on your back, and Doug’s very right that it can overwhelm a team. The teams that are able to use those expectations as motivation instead of as distraction have become some of our better college football champions. Why not Georgia?

This isn’t good news for Jim Delany. It’s an issue I’ve heard Cowherd talk about several times – shifting demographics spell big trouble for northern football. The problem isn’t only demographic. Not only are people moving south and west away from Rust Belt states; it stands to reason that few student-athletes from warm-weather states would choose a worse climate away from home.

Of course there’s plenty of talent outside the Sun Belt, but how many power programs can it sustain? Is the Big 10 headed towards looking like the ACC of the 1990s with everyone playing for second place?

Two programs missing from the second list – Penn State and Michigan – might really be at a crossroads in terms of their ability to keep the pipeline full. It doesn’t help that JoePa is having to dismiss talk that his contract status is another factor hurting Penn State recruiting.

Blame the lack of upsets or whatever else you like, but NCAA Tournament ratings were down from a year ago. It didn’t help that major conferences like the Big East, ACC, Big 10, and SEC all had their biggest programs sent home early (with the exception of UNC).

The national championship drew a 12.1 rating, down just 0.1 points from last year. Just for comparison’s sake, that was higher than any college football bowl game except the BCS championship game. I was surprised that nearly half of the football bowl games (16 of 33) drew a smaller audience than the 3.0 rating for the women’s basketball championship game.

The topic of the NBA age limit has come up again, and it continues to puzzle me why the league would want to restrain itself. I don’t know if age limits have really been tested in court. Maurice Clarett was supposed to be the test case for the NFL, and that challenge, um, kind of fizzled out. But let’s say they’re fine and that it’s the NBA’s right to set whatever age limit they want. Why would they?

Fortunately Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has put his thoughts down to give us the first-hand perspective of an NBA owner. He favors an age limit of 22, citing concerns over the maturity of younger players. His concens make sense, but they still come off as "please protect us from ourselves."

Why have NBA teams continued to draft high school players or, lately, one-and-dones? There are only two reasons that make any sense: 1) they are better prospects than older alternatives in the draft and 2) these are likely to be high-profile players who can instantly sell tickets and merchandise and raise the profile of the team. If the young players were a negative for the league, you’d think that fewer would be drafted over time. Watch this year’s draft and tell me if that’s the case.

I don’t buy Cuban’s line that a 22-year-old is more likely able to handle the fame and fortune of the NBA. We’re talking about a lifestyle and sums of money that are incomprehensible for almost all Americans. Being thrust into that situation whether 18 or 22 or 42 is a life change that can’t be understood until you live it.

Cuban replies to some comments by saying that "there are plenty of companies that will only hire college graduates. Others will only hire Phds." True. But those requirements have little if anything to do with maturity. For those companies, a degree or doctorate is a way to establish that the applicant has a minimal skill level or aptitude for the job. An NBA team’s scouting and player evaluation takes care of that.

For the NCAA, this is a great deal. Their product is worth more when high-quality players stick around whether it’s by the players’ own choice or through artifical restraints on the job market. A few years riding the gravy train with someone like LeBron James? Yes, please.

The NCAA gets to play the academic integrity card too, though it’s a small point. A one-and done can breeze through a trivial fall semester and then blow off his spring classes once the season is over. Someone who stays for two seasons must at least pretend to be a serious student for a full academic year and then some. College isn’t and shouldn’t be the NBA’s purgatory.

So we have a deal that’s great for the NCAA and seems to be a step in the right direction for at least one NBA owner. Win-win all around, right? Sure, unless you’re the talented 18-year-old who must go through the motions of pretending to be a college student while taking the NCAA’s vow of poverty for two years instead of working in your chosen profession.

I’d be OK with a system based on what baseball does. They’ve seemed to manage fine without requiring a cup of coffee in college. If someone wants to come out of high school, fine. Let them and the NBA teams take that risk. If a player would rather head to college, require a minimum stay of three years to show a commitment to education and allow the programs some shred of long-range planning.

Mississippi State guard Ben Hansbrough will transfer from Rick Stansbury’s program citing “the school’s lack of a practice facility” as his main reason for leaving.

Hansbrough’s story shows that the investment matters not only in recruiting and retention, but the absence of one can even hold back a player looking to develop and improve. We’ve shown before that Georgia’s new facility matches up with some of the best in the nation. It’s not often that Georgia basketball has had an advantage over its peers in much of anything when it comes to facilities, but that’s not the case anymore.

Entering the tournament the conventional wisdom said that Memphis would be done in by free throw shooting. Through five games, they just got better and better from the line. But with the pressure of the lead in the national title game bearing down on them, the charity stripe did indeed prove fatal. The free throws were just symptomatic though. Memphis looked like a team unfamiliar with playing in big, close games, and free throws were just one of the mistakes they made down the stretch.

Congratulations to Kansas for not packing it in down by nine and fighting back to force overtime. A classic game all around, and the outcome shouldn’t make us overlook great performances on both sides.

Anyone find it interesting that last week’s college three-point and slam dunk contest was sponsored by Vegas.com? I realize that the NCAA has nothing to do with the event and that these student-athletes are seniors who have exhausted their eligibility, but I wonder how an organization that has an active PR program against gambling on college sports feels about this sponsor.

UPDATE: Maybe Hooters would have better luck sponsoring this quasi-collegiate dunk competition than they did placing an ad in the Final Four program.

You can’t talk about a football team for two minutes without some element of scheme coming up. Do they run the option or a pro-style offense? If they run an option, is it the spread or a wishbone attack? Is the 4-3 or 3-4 defense in style this year? How about the 3-3-5? Though the relative importance of a particular scheme to a team’s success is one of those things that’s debated among fans, it’s hard to talk about or watch football without understanding some elements of scheme.

When it comes to basketball, so much of the discussion of scheme revolves around defense. Everyone can recognize at the most basic level a zone defense versus a man-to-man. Analysts are even willing to go deeper and talk about different flavors of zone like the matchup or the 1-3-1. There’s not that level of depth when it comes to discussion of offense. Sure, you’ve heard of some of the systems – the Princeton offense, the high post, the motion offense. If you’re a Georgia fan, you might have even heard of Dennis Felton’s 4-out, 1-in offense. Unless you’re really familiar with the game though, it can be hard to recognize a certain system at work within games, and broadcasts don’t do much to illustrate scheme.

Memphis has had an impressive season culminating in tonight’s national championship appearance. It’s an appropriate time to point to this SI article from earlier in the season about the "dribble-drive motion" offense which Memphis adopted this year. It’s a fascinating story not only about Memphis but also about innovation and the roots of this system from an unknown California JUCO coach. Now the offense is the rage not only of Memphis but also professional teams like the Boston Celtics.

In many ways, this dribble-drive motion offense is somewhat of an analogue to football’s current rage – the spread option. Both offenses spread the field/court to exploit weaknesses in individual matchups. Both offenses involve players in flexible roles whether it’s receivers involved in the running game or post players taking perimeter shots. And if Memphis wins the national title tonight, both offenses will have produced a national champion in relatively little time after their adoption at major programs.

Like Urban Meyer and Rich Rodriguez, John Calipari and Vance Walberg are poised to become the gurus for the evolution of offense within their sport. Whether or not Memphis wins, the success of the offense at the college and professional level will have many more coaches experimenting with it in coming seasons. Of course it will be mis-applied in some programs where the personnel doesn’t match the system, and detractors will say it’s been exposed as a fad like any other system. There’s a useful bit in the SI article about defensive adjustments to counter the DDM offense, and we should expect to see the defensive masterminds of college hoops continue to innovate on their side as well. On it goes.

If nothing else, I’m interested in seeing whether or not this innovation in offense will bring the discussion of offensive systems in college basketball out of the shadows.

Up until now I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but this brings it all together.

The arrogance about his offense, chip on the shoulder, 1-AA success, confrontational style with the media, even the references to Oklahoma’s offense under Switzer…

Paul Johnson is Georgia Tech’s Jim Donnan.

This Johnson quote is right out of a 1996 Georgia press conference:

"If something wasn’t wrong, if what they were doing was so great, we wouldn’t be here…It’s not like we’re coming in here and dismantling this high-powered machine that was lighting everybody up."

If nothing else, the rivalry is about to become a lot more entertaining. Tech fans will lap up the tell-it-like-it-is style (at first) as Georgia fans did, and Dawg fans should look forward to years of colorful quotes coming from the enemy.

Six people you probably haven’t heard of are the semifinalists for the LSU athletic director position which will open up when Skip Bertman retires later this year. There are two internal candidates, and Duke’s current AD Joe Alleva is a recent addition to the mix. Some cursory browsing shows that Florida Atlantic AD Craig Angelos might be the favorite.

The story is locally relevant because two names expected to be on the list aren’t there. Everyone’s favorite short-list candidate, Florida associate AD Greg McGarity, didn’t make the cut. More surprising is the fact that Georgia Tech AD Dan Radakovich didn’t even apply for the LSU job. Though he’s only been at Tech for two years, Radakovich had been mentioned as a likely successor for Bertman the moment Radakovich left Baton Rouge.