The ACC is hoping that a change of scenery will make a difference in slumping championship game attendance. After consecutive disappointing crowds in Jacksonville, the game will be moved to Tampa in 2008 and 2009 and then to Charlotte in 2010 and 2011.

The ACC just needs to accept that if two out of FSU, Clemson, Virginia Tech, and maybe NC State aren’t playing in the game, they’re better off playing it at Paladin Stadium.

ACC commish John Swofford said, "For the first three years we had one superb year attendance wise in the inaugural game and then the next two were not what we would have hoped," Swofford said. "And what we’re after is simply to find the best mix, and I think it does take a mix of local sales with the sales from the participating schools."

Local sales? Tampa, home of the Big East’s USF, is an odd choice. The additional distance south of Jacksonville should be great for traveling fans too. Charlotte is a much more central location, but it’s still going to come down to which two teams are playing.

A lot of popular Web sites are driven by what’s called "user-generated content". YouTube, Digg, even sports message boards – they all derive their value from the content generated by their users. Think about the folks at the BullDawg Blawg who put a ton of work into creating great highlight videos. While highlights aren’t original content, the editing and packaging does add value, and they drive traffic to YouTube.

A site like YouTube has thousands or millions of users happily adding content. It costs nothing to use, and if you’re good/lucky/quirky enough, you might even get a little fame or notoriety out of it. But when it comes time to cash in, the community of people through which these sites have become so valuable often see little or none of the payout.

Put another way, "user-generated content" is another way of saying "free labor." You do the work, the site’s owners make the money. That’s a simplification of course. The site’s owners still have an investment in technology and bandwidth and have provided the platform for all of this content. For most of the people providing the content, a little notoriety is more than enough reward. Free storage and bandwidth at our disposal isn’t a bad deal either.

ESPNU is hopping on the user-generated content train by launching their Campus Connection program which enlists students, professors, and athletic departments to provide content for distribution. Initially ESPNU will help coordinate assignments and provide guidance as students produce coverage for games including play-by-play, production, photography, and so on. Eventually, the operations should become pretty self-winding, and ESPN will have over 20 "bureaus" feeding them content. The University of Georgia is among the schools participating in the program, and that makes sense given the reputation of the Grady School of Journalism.

If you look at it in terms of a traditional unpaid internship, it looks like a great experience and exposure to the industry for these students. But of course ESPN isn’t doing this completely out of altruism. An ESPN VP notes that "There’s no question that some big advertising opportunities will come out of this."

The program gets underway in January.

PS: I’m glad to see that YouTube is now offering to share advertising revenue with users who pass an application process. (The content must be original, so those of us in the highlights biz needn’t apply.)

Bobby Petrino has resigned as Atlanta Falcons head coach and will accept the vacant position at Arkansas, according to ESPN.

Petrino leaves the trainwreck of the Falcons and a 3-10 “career” NFL record for the greener pastures of Fayetteville. No offense to Will Muschamp, but the picture looks a lot sunnier for the Hogs than it did this morning.

The move will add yet another great storyline to the SEC as Petrino put in time at Auburn and very nearly became Auburn’s coach after the 2003 season. Now Auburn fans will either see what could have been or what they were lucky to avoid as Petrino takes over Arkansas.

I do have a suggestion for the Falcons – someone with NFL experience and the support of a lot of Bulldog fans across the state.

South Carolina defensive coordinator Tyrone Nix is heading back to Mississippi to join Houston Nutt’s staff in Oxford. Nix had a long stint at Southern Miss and was briefly considered for their vacancy.

Spurrier’s choice for a replacement will be worth watching, but this news could also have an impact on the future of Jasper Brinkley. The standout Gamecock linebacker has said that he will likely return next season, but a change in defensive system might cause him to reconsider.

Auburn is looking for a new offensive coordinator after Al Borges resigned. Borges had success with an offense that mixed play-action and bootlegs in with a heavy dose of the running game, but the formula had become less effective.

If you believe the rumors, Auburn is looking at Troy assistant Tony Franklin in order to bring a little spread flavor to the Plains.

I’m glad to see CFR jump back in to the playoff fray with this comment yesterday:

Maybe — just maybe — it’s possible there’s a link between a postseason tournament in a sport and its regular season being treated as nothing more than seeding? Maybe that’s why college football’s the only sport with a truly compelling regular season, hmmmm ???

Nothing more than seeding? Maybe I’ve misunderstood what’s so compelling about the college football regular season. When people talk about how great the regular season is, I take it they’re not celebrating South Carolina’s quest to become bowl-eligible. The compelling part is how games across the nation each week affect the polls and the teams in the national title chase.

You know – like seeding. If the positioning and jockeying for a spot in the BCS and national title game isn’t what drives the regular season, what does? How would that be diminished by a playoff?

The playoff vs. bowl debates are just getting going again, and we’ll endure another off-season of passionate status-quo defenses and pie-in-the-sky what-if playoff schemes. In the end, I think what makes the college football regular season so compelling is that the drama and meaning of 162 baseball games, 82 NBA games, or even 30+ college basketball games is reduced down to 12 football games over just three months. One loss to a baseball team isn’t even noise. One loss – especially a conference loss – to a college football team is a serious blow. I really don’t believe that the format of the postseason would change that.

There are few 1-A football head coaching jobs that could be considered a step down from Vanderbilt, but Duke is certainly one of them. So it’s a little strange to read that Vandy’s Steve Martin Bobby Johnson is interviewing at Duke.

I’m holding out hope that Johnson is taking this opportunity to get a better deal at Vanderbilt. But most people use the Arkansas vacancy for that strategy.

St. Mary’s, a possible second-round opponent for Georgia in the Rainbow Classic later this month, has just entered the Top 25. With their season to date which included a convincing win over Oregon, the Gaels seem the early favorite to win the Rainbow Classic. If this matchup does materialize, the Patty Mills vs. Sundiata Gaines battle should be worth watching.

It’s our first football-free weekend in over three months. It’s supposed to be in the 70s here in Georgia, so get out there and get reacquainted with things like your yard (and spouse).

The main event in Athens this weekend is a basketball game against Wake Forest (2:00 Saturday, Fox Sports South). The Dawgs will try to get their first significant win of the season against a Wake team that took Vandy to the wire earlier in the week in Nashville.

In other news, it looks as if Paul Johnson is Tech’s man. Though we won’t see as much of the triple option as personnel forces him to use at Navy, Josh Nesbitt is still probably a very happy quarterback. As with most college coaching jobs, his success will ultimately come down to recruiting. Tech still has the question of Jon Tenuta in front of them. Does Johnson convince Tenuta to remain on the Tech staff, or does the defensive mastermind head for LSU or other pastures?

Johnson’s deal is reportedly worth $2.3 million per year. Mark Richt, by comparison, earns about $2 million per year and isn’t actively seeking a raise. Will Tech get the same return on investment?

Otherwise, have a great weekend.

Paul Johnson continues to be the consensus favorite, but he’s being pursued by several schools.

If not Johnson, will it be Tenuta or Terry Bowden? Bowden himself is mentioned with a few other job openings.

After a season like the one we just completed, why shouldn’t the offseason be any less quirky?

Jim Grobe has apparently changed his mind and turned down Arkansas for Wake Forest.

That’s right up there with Georgia Tech getting in a bidding war with Duke and SMU.

Congratulations to Knowshon Moreno, the 2007 SEC Freshman of the Year. He was the only unanimous selection on the SEC’s list of individual accolades. The previous two SEC Freshmen of the Year? McFadden and Harvin. Not a bad legacy to follow. Winning this award unanimously over other worthy freshman such as Eric Berry is quite an accomplishment.

Now to ruffle some feathers about a couple of the other selections:

Is Glenn Dorsey’s selection as the SEC Defensive Player of the Year a case of reputation over reality? Dorsey at his best is definitely a dominant player. But the thing is that he hasn’t been healthy for much of the season and was ineffective enough at the end of the year that the LSU defense, as noted by Danielson, actually played better with him out of the game in the SEC Championship. Do you consider the injury and guess at what a healthy Dorsey would have meant down the stretch? I really don’t have an alternative player to suggest as more worthy than Dorsey, and even injured he’s a hell of a player, but I do wonder if this award was won before the season.

As the Senator notes, the selection of McFadden over Tebow is interesting. Good for DMac. I doubt this is a Heisman harbinger – more of a sendoff by the SEC. "Excellent" is too weak to describe Tebow’s season, but the potential for what might happen every time McFadden touched the ball made him the most outstanding player.

On to Sylvester Croom. The Mississippi State story this year is one of surprising upsets, a storybook comeback in the Egg Bowl, and an important bowl bid. I guess I just have a problem with this award going to a coach because his team was just mediocre instead of plain crap. It’s a little patronizing to be honest.

Beginning with Gameday at 10 and ending as Hawaii held on at 3:30 in the morning, it was a great day to watch the end of the college football regular season. We sat through 482 showings of the same Dr. Pepper commercial, watched the drama of the Michigan coaching position unfold, and saw outcomes worthy of this unpredictable season. We also saw…

• Dr. Pepper in a single weekend has made me hate Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Bastards.
• How’d you like to be the sophomore defensive end that always gets skipped when the ABC/ESPN lineup introduction spends all its time highlighting the middle linebacker?
• Football tip of the day courtesy ABC and Boston College coach Jeff Jagodzinski…yes, it is easier to throw and catch the ball on a calm, sunny day.
• Either Ryan Perrilloux is the most emotionally fragile redshirt freshman ever, or CBS was overdoing it a bit with their appreciation for how LSU was managing their barely-adequate offense.
• Good job by the ABC cameramen keeping the ACC Championship crowd shots nice and tight. Just go ahead and move the game to Lane Stadium.
• Some thought Tennessee’s all-orange uniforms looked like prison jumpsuits. I just thought of Bill Bates.
• I really want Army-Navy to mean something, but it’s becoming harder and harder to watch each year. The highlight of the day remains the entrance of the cadets, and it goes downhill quickly.
• Other than skin color, I’m not sure what’s supposed to make Jacob Hester a "throwback" player. He’s a good running back, runs hard, makes plays. Otherwise, does he play with a single-bar facemask or something?
• Fox’s BCS selection show reminded us of the "love" part of the love-hate relationship we have with ESPN. For all of the nitpicking we do with the WWL’s punditry, it is miles above the clownish show we got from Fox. Right out of the NFL pregame show model, we got Barry Switzer on laughing gas plus 17 other useless talking heads dragging out 45 seconds of information into a 30-minute show. Bring on the exploding robots.
• It had been a while since I had seen Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year Curtis Lofton, but the Oklahoma junior linebacker was the best player I saw in any game on Saturday.
• Good Lord, what’s happened to Cal?

For all the talk of parity this year, the two teams playing for the national title are a participant in last year’s title game versus a team picked #2 at the beginning of this year. Four of the six BCS conference champs were preseason favorites, and Oklahoma and Ohio State were hardly out of left field. The traditional power is still alive and well.

I understand the sentiment that this was an incredible season with upsets and turbulent polls and a cliffhanger of a final weekend. It was. Still, I admit that I prefer to see the triumph of excellence. I don’t know if we’re going to see a championship game of the quality of the 2006 Rose Bowl any time soon, but that’s what does it for me.

It’s a lot easier when excellence makes the decision obvious, but that wasn’t the case this year. There are several teams with impressive accomplishments and a few blemishes. I don’t envy the job of those who had to sort them out. Were the best teams the ones who were strongest at the end? Do you subscribe to Les Miles’ "body of work" criteria? If the regular season is our playoff, what does it mean to lose?

You hear it repeated often that Georgia is playing the best football of any team in the nation right now. It might well be. At the very least they’re among a group of strong teams that includes Virginia Tech, LSU, Southern Cal, Oklahoma, and Ohio State.

I will say this: I think that a healthy LSU and Oklahoma were the two best teams I saw at any one point in this season. That’s not an argument that those two should play for the title, but if we’re talking about which teams blew my socks off, I think it’s those two. Southern Cal and Georgia aren’t far behind.

Of course trying to rely on anything but results can lead us astray. Last season the case was made for an Ohio State – Michigan rematch because the "best two teams" should meet for the national title. Florida backed into the title game only after Southern Cal fell to UCLA. After Florida humiliated the Buckeyes and Southern Cal dispatched Michigan, it’s possible that everyone was talking about the wrong two teams. Fans of most BCS teams probably feel that their team could beat Ohio State if given the opportunity. Don’t bet the house on that.

Could even an 8-team playoff solve this problem? A playoff of the BCS conference champs plus, say, Georgia and Hawaii, leaves out an arguably worthy team like Kansas. A favorite solution, the "plus-one", would leave out Georgia if based on the final BCS rankings. You’re always going to have someone pissed off and jilted, and engineering a solution to fit the outcome of a specific season won’t mean that all other potential problems are solved.

Forget moving it to Charlotte…try Greensboro’s Page High School.

So Georgia will play in the Sugar Bowl against Hawaii.

After a 20-year absence, this will be the third sUGAr Bowl and BCS appearance in Mark Richt’s seven seasons at Georgia.

There definitely was the case for Georgia to play in the BCS championship game, but there was the case for several other teams as well. I’m disappointed but not devastated. Naturally we are most disappointed for the seniors who will not get another shot at playing for the title. If we dwelled on the inconsistencies and double-speak that played a part in the final rankings, we’d run out of bits and bytes. It could be worse – we could be Missouri dropping out of the BCS completely after entering the weekend ranked #1.

Georgia and their fans have two choices now:

One – we can mope about the process and the perceived quality of the matchup. That worked out real well for us in the 2006 Sugar.

Two – we enthusiastically give our best effort and support and take care of business as if we were playing LSU, Southern Cal, or Ohio State.

I don’t buy that this game is a no-win situation for Georgia. At the most basic level, it’s an opportunity for our 11th win and another Sugar Bowl title. Even in this relatively high-water era for Georgia football, a BCS bowl victory is nothing to sneeze at. Beyond that, we must consider positioning for next year. A win in New Orleans puts Georgia in all likelihood among the top three at the end of this season and among the top five starting next season. Oklahoma dropped their BCS game with Boise State and began this year ranked around #10. LSU won the Sugar Bowl and started 2007 ranked #2 even after losing the top draft pick. Starting position matters if Georgia plans on being in the national title picture again next year.

Hawaii is a great story this year and will draw a lot of viewers to see if their pass-happy scheme and players can match up to an SEC power. A lot of people seem to think that Georgia is one of the best, or at least the hottest, teams in the nation right now, and they can add to that momentum and carry it on to next season by winning the Sugar Bowl.

A big part of the challenge against Hawaii will be matching their intensity. If you saw the bowl selection show last night, you saw a Hawaii team and fan base genuinely excited by the opportunity. That will carry over to their bowl preparations. Like West Virginia, Hawaii’s not a team you want to get very far behind out of the gate.