LSU head women’s basketball coach Pokey Chatman abruptly resigned on Wednesday. She is leaving “in order to allow (her) to pursue other career opportunities” but will remain on at LSU through the NCAA Tournament.

The timing is very questionable. There are several high-profile (or high-paying) jobs coming open. Florida is one. Texas might be another. But even if she were taking one of those jobs, why announce the resignation now if she’s going to remain on through the tournament? Does she even have something else lined up, or is she doing this now to throw her hat into the ring for one of those positions ahead of other coaches?

She’s been at LSU as a player or coach for 18 years now, so resigning essentially during the season can’t help but draw suspicion.

I got a chuckle out of this quote: “To eliminate any further distraction from our preparation for and participation in the NCAA tournament, I will have no further comment and answer no questions on this subject. I hope you will honor that position.”

Um, Pokey…you could have avoided ALL distraction from your team’s preparation if you just waited two or three weeks to make this announcement. Because of the timing, the women’s college basketball world is on fire today with speculation about her future and trying to figure out the “real” reason behind her departure. Not a distraction at all.

Something has always rubbed me the wrong way about her. She followed a true legend at LSU, Sue Gunter, and honored her. I don’t particularly have any character qualms. She took her team as far as Augustus and Fowles would let her, but I don’t think she did a particularly good job building the team around them. They were good enough to briefly rise to the top one or two teams in the SEC for a couple of years and played in three consecutive Final Fours, but they slid back this year. If she did want to move on from Baton Rouge, I don’t think her stock will ever be much higher.

Update: Now ESPN reports that Pokey won’t coach in the NCAA Tournament. It didn’t take her long to see that “(her) presence would be a great distraction during the NCAA Tournament.” Assistant Bob Starkey will be the interim coach during the NCAA Tournament.

Again, she has a bit of a head-scratcher in her latest statement: “My resignation yesterday has prompted speculation and rumors that far exceeded my expectations.” She was LSU to the core – as a player, assistant coach, and head coach. She was quite successful; her job wasn’t in jeopardy. She didn’t expect rampant speculation and rumors upon an announcement made before the end of the season that she would be stepping down?

No wonder Maryland suddenly has a good women’s basketball team: most other teams only play with five players. Good D here by Coach Brenda Frese.

This is pretty surprising news. Most of the SEC members (except Georgia and Arkansas) had individually arranged deals on their own with Sirius. It now looks as if Georgia and Arkansas will be among the first SEC schools to join XM, and the others will come online as their Sirius deals expire. SEC conference events such as championship games and tournaments will also be on XM.

XM will provide complete coverage of SEC championships, starting with the SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament live from the Georgia Dome in Atlanta on Thursday through Sunday on XM channel 201.

XM will have the most SEC games on the radio with coast-to-coast live broadcasts of the University of Arkansas, University of Georgia, University of Kentucky, Mississippi State University, University of Mississippi and University of Tennessee football, basketball, and other sports starting in fall 2007.

As a Sirius subscriber who chose that service in part due to the trend set by the other SEC schools, I have to say that this sucks. Hopefully the Sirius-XM merger goes through and the choice of service becomes irrelevant.

The 2007 SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament begins Thursday afternoon right here in our backyard in Duluth at the Arena at Gwinnett Center. Tennessee once again is the heavy favorite after a perfect 14-0 regular season conference record, but the competition has been fierce this season among the next several seeds.

Click here for the bracket

From the Georgia perspective, the seeding worked out well. Tennessee and LSU, the only SEC teams to beat Georgia over the past two seasons, are on the opposite side of the bracket, and Georgia wouldn’t face either until the championship game. Georgia earned a #2 seed and a first-round bye, and they’ll face the winner of Kentucky-Arkansas on Friday. Should they advance to Satruday’s semifinals, they’ll likely face either Vanderbilt or Mississippi State. Georgia defeated all of their potential quarterfinal and semifinal opponents during the regular season.

Of course in a conference as competitive as the SEC, talking about ideal seedings and preferred opponents can be a matter of picking your poison. Seeds 1-11 are capable of advancing. Once you get beyond the Ole Miss vs. Alabama game on Thursday, any game for the rest of the weekend has the potential to be at least interesting and possibly much more. Here’s an overview of the teams heading into the postseason…

In a league of their own

• #1 Tennessee (14-0). The Lady Vols swept through the conference undefeated. Their only losses this season have been to ACC powerhouses Duke and North Carolina. That’s not to say that Tennessee hasn’t been pushed in the SEC; Georgia, LSU, Vanderbilt, and Arkansas proved to be tough tests for the Lady Vols away from home. They emerged with a win each time and with additional close-game experience that is very valuable in the postseason. When they are on, Tennessee can play with anyone. You have the dominant inside game of Candace Parker, the outside shooting of Sidney Spencer, the do-everything glue from Alexis Hornbuckle, and a stifling defense that creates offense. If there is a weakness, it’s outside shooting. Spencer can be streaky, and they aren’t quite as strong from the perimeter as they have been in recent years. Still, it’s not much of a weakness if they can work the ball inside to Parker.

The contenders

• #2 Georgia (11-3). Despite total of four games against LSU and Tennessee, Georgia was able to roll through the rest of the league and take a win in Athens over LSU. They are led again by forward Tasha Humphrey who is joined on the frontcourt by emerging freshman Angel Robinson. Two other freshmen, point guard Ashley Houts and dangerous wing Christy Marshall, form a solid young core for the future. It will be interesting to see how the freshmen hold up in the glare of the tournament spotlight. Guard play and perimeter shooting might be what determines the length of Georgia’s stay. Senior Cori Chambers was mired in a slump for much of the SEC season, but she shot very well in the last game against Arkansas. With a functional outside game and Humphrey operating inside, few teams can handle Georgia.
• #3 Vanderbilt (10-4). Vandy enjoyed a nice season and played themselves into this position by beating LSU a couple of weeks back. They were one of the hottest teams in the conference before a big defeat at Tennessee ended their regular season. Like most of the other top seeds, Vanderbilt didn’t lose to any "bad" teams, but losses to teams like Georgia and Ole Miss made it clear where they fall in the order of things. They’ve been ranked in the low-teens most of the season. They have all the pieces – a dynamic forward in Carla Thomas, a penetrating guard in Dee Davis, bulk in the middle in Liz Sherwood, and a potent outside shooting attack. This is probably Vandy’s best team since the 2004 SEC Tournament champions, but they still might be just short of Georgia or Tennessee on a neutral court.
• #4 LSU (10-4). LSU’s schedule caused them some problems late in the season, and they were knocked from the second place perch. They are just 4-4 in February and have lost two of three coming into the tournament. Though they still have the strong presence of Sylvia Fowles inside, they lack an explosive offense. They rely on strong defense, and it has worked more often than not for them. It’s not like they’re getting blown out; they’ve lost very close games to teams like Georgia, Connecticut, and Tennessee. The lack of a consistent playmaker other than Fowles has hurt them. Quianna Chaney and Erica White have tried to shoulder some of the burden on offense, but it’s a tall job when replacing someone like Simeone Augustus. Should Ole Miss advance, and that’s almost a certainty, LSU would get a rematch against the team which handed them their first SEC loss. It should be one of the most anticipated quarterfinal matchups.
• #5 Ole Miss (9-5). Ole Miss has been on the cusp of a really good season since beating LSU early in conference play. They feature Armintie Price, a scoring machine who is contending for Player of the Year honors. Since that win over LSU and a subsequent rise in the polls, Ole Miss hasn’t been able to sustain momentum. A loss to Auburn last weekend cost Ole Miss dearly. Instead of the #3 seed and a Thursday bye, they slid all the way to #5, must play on Thursday, and end up on the LSU/Tennessee side of the bracket. That’s a painful lesson in taking care of business, and I doubt they will make the same mistake on Thursday against a dreadful Alabama team.

Looking to make noise

• #6 Mississippi State (7-7). Mississippi State is a classic bubble team. They are a respectable 7-7 in the nation’s best conference. They have several "nice" wins over teams like FSU, Georgia Tech, and Ole Miss. But in true bubble team style, they hurt themselves with some missed opportunities such as a loss to South Carolina last weekend. As the #6 seed and finishing ahead of teams like Kentucky and Auburn, they can be considered the surprise of the conference. Their first round game isn’t as easy as it seems though. #11 seed Florida might be 2-12 in the SEC, but the Gators played MSU to within five points during the regular season.
• #7 Kentucky (6-8). Kentucky looked to be set up to finish .500 in the conference, but they blew it by losing at Florida. Kentucky is really under the gun now. They had one of their best seasons in decades last year and made the NCAA Tournament. They were ranked entering this season. But the signature wins that led them to the postseason last year didn’t come this year, and now the Wildcats find themselves in a desperate situation. The need to beat Arkansas on Thursday and possibly upset Georgia on Friday to have much confidence in a repeat NCAA invitation.

Just hanging on

• #8 South Carolina (6-8). South Carolina is reasonably hot for a lower seed. They’ve won three of their final five games with the two losses coming to Georgia and Vanderbilt. They’ve been a thorn in the side to SEC peers like Kentucky, Auburn, and Mississippi State. They might not be done yet – another win over Auburn on Thursday could sink the Tigers’ postseason hopes. South Carolina has too poor of an overall record and no wins of significance to have any NCAA aspirations, but their solid finish could land them a WNIT bid.
• #9 Auburn (6-8). Despite a sub-.500 conference record, Auburn actually holds on to slim NCAA chances. They have a freakishly high RPI (#35) considering their record and lack of really stellar wins. If they survive a rematch with South Carolina, Tennessee might be standing between the Tigers and a tournament bid on Friday.
• #10 Arkansas (3-11). Arkansas is an example of a talented young team that hasn’t come together yet. They have speed, decent shooting, and a presence inside. They won 14 of their first 15 games this season and earned a ranking, but that was before SEC play. They showed what they’re capable of in the past week by taking Tennessee to overtime and playing Georgia even for a half. They are in a position to play spoiler in Duluth; a win over Kentucky to avenge a 20-point loss just a week ago would all but end Kentucky’s NCAA hopes.

Upset Special?

• #11 Florida (2-12). With a lame duck coach and a 2-12 SEC mark, Florida might seem like an odd team to keep an eye on. But they haven’t quit on their coach and have won two games down the stretch. A win over Kentucky last weekend was huge both in terms of what it meant to Kentucky’s NCAA hopes and the confidence it could give Florida entering the tournament. Florida played their first-round opponent, Mississippi State, close during the regular season, and they are capable of shocking MSU if the Bulldogs come out tight. We’re only a year removed from a Florida team that upset LSU and Tennessee in the same season.

Didn’t pack an overnight bag

• #12 Alabama (0-14). They are abysmal. It’s year two of Stephanie Smith’s rebuilding program after a thorough housecleaning, and the program is in bad shape.

According to the NCAA, college football at all levels is packing them in:

NCAA football attendance set a new standard during the 2006 season as 615 schools combined for a total gate of 47,909,313, shattering the 2003 record by 1,764,774 fans.

Though the 12th game in Division 1 helped boost the totals, the NCAA points out that per-game records were also set. Hooray college football!

The 32 bowl games in Division 1 drew an average of 53,114 per game. That’s up over 2005, but we also had an extra BCS-class bowl introduced last year.

It’s no surprise that the SEC and Big 10(+1) with their massive shrines to the pigskin are kings of attendance. Three of the top four are Big 10 schools. Half of the SEC is among the top eleven. Overall, the SEC lives up to its reputation as the home of passionate college football fans with a conference-record average of 75,706 fans per game. Big 10 schools averaged just under 70,000 fans per game. The Big 10, along with the Pac 10, Big East, and Mountain West, saw its average attendance drop in 2006. The Big 12 came in third with its own conference-best mark of just under 59,000 fans per game.

No other conference has the disparity between its top draw and the rest of the league like the Pac 10. Southern Cal had the eighth-highest average nationally with over 91,000 per game. You then have to go down to the 24th and 25th spots to find UCLA and Cal with under 65,000 per game.

Tennessee leads the SEC as always. Georgia is second in the SEC and fifth nationally, but Georgia, LSU, and Alabama are so tightly clustered that one school setting out a few folding chairs might change things next season. Another way to look at the numbers is by the percentage of seats sold. How did the SEC do?

It’s impressive that every conference member had at least three-quarters of its seats filled. Is it a sign that the South is football-crazy, or is it that there’s just nothing better to do in Mississippi on a Saturday than to watch bad football? I do wonder how some schools count their capacity and how others count attendance. South Carolina has had announced crowds as big as 85,000, yet their official capacity is 80,250. Georgia sold out all of their home games for an average crowd of 92,746 per game, but we all know how empty areas of the stadium were for certain games.

South Carolina at 94% of capacity, even with an understated capacity, is noteworthy. They have a reputation for being a wildly loyal and supportive fan base despite the program’s history of underachievement, and the Spurrier "revolution" was still fresh in just its second year. They were coming off a relatively successful season that included a win over Florida and weren’t far from winning the SEC East. Yet they drew an average of 75,630 in a stadium that has held as many as 85,000.

The rich get richer. You can see which programs are selling all of their seats, and many of those same programs keep building but still can’t keep up with demand. Even Arkansas completed a really nice expansion and upgrade not too long ago. You have to wonder where the upper limit is on capacity and demand for some of these programs even as ticket prices climb.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see some building projects at Auburn and Florida soon. Facilities, especially stadiums, have an arms race quality to them. So while it might seem satisfactory that Florida and Auburn are ninth and eleventh in average attendance, SEC programs continue to build their temples higher and higher. Though Florida added some club seats a few years ago, they haven’t had a really major expansion project since the early 1990s. With the surge in demand sure to come from Meyer’s turnaround job, we’ll see if they feel pressure to expand the Swamp. In the meantime, Florida is focusing on a $12 million "front door" to their stadium which will house football offices and various other support facilities for the program, but it won’t affect capacity.

Auburn might be a bit more under the gun to keep up. Expansion of Jordan-Hare Stadium has been discussed as long ago as 2001, but nothing has been done. There are grand plans floating around, but university officials maintained as recently as October that expansion is "not something that we are actively considering." Auburn has turned its priorities to other facilities improvements such as a badly-needed arena.

As with most things in Alabama, the rivalry between Auburn and Alabama might be what drives expansion on the Plains. For years, Jordan-Hare was the crown jewel of football stadiums in the state. Alabama’s on-campus stadium was just a part-time home. But recent rapid expansion to Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa has pushed its capacity to 92,138 – the fourth-largest stadium in the SEC and a close second to LSU among SEC West programs. The most recent expansion in the north end zone also included an impressive stadium facade and plaza leading in from the central area of campus. Alabama currently might not have the best football program in the state, but its stadium now at least looks the part. Fans of both programs have noticed.

Georgia registered on the all-name team with Rambo’s commitment, but I don’t think we’ll hear a better one this year than Yourhighness Morgan, a linebacker from Florida. Morgan has a brother named Handsome and a cousin named Gorgeous.

Yourhighness might go on the all-time college team along with such past greats as I-Perfection Harris and the Mapp brothers, Scientific and Majestic.

Along with the decision to scrap Rule 3-2-5-e a few days ago, the AJC also reported some other related changes proposed by the Rules Committee. Again, all of these still must be approved by an oversight body in March before they become official. The theme still centers around reducing the total length of games, though the impact on the game clock itself is much less under these changes (until 2008…see below).

Kickoffs will be from the 30-yard line instead of the 35. The clock won’t start until the receiver touches the ball; last season it started as soon as the ball was kicked.

This rule is getting the most attention and comment, but I like it. Kickoff returns add excitement to the game, and both a good return unit and a good coverage unit can affect field position one way or the other. Touchbacks can be the reward for exceptional kickers.

Coming out of a television timeout, the play clock for the first play of a possession will be 15 seconds instead of the normal 25.

That’s another rule I like. You’ve had three minutes on the sideline – get out there and play ball. 15 seconds is enough time to audible depending on what the defense shows. So long as you have a clear sign from the officials that the TV timeout is coming to an end, this rule shouldn’t be a problem.

Charged team timeouts — not TV timeouts — will be cut by 30 seconds.

If I have problems with one of the proposed changes, it’s with this one. Team timeouts are often used just to stop the clock, true, but they’re also used to deliberate strategic decisions. Is 30 seconds enough? Probably. But if we’re going to allow two minutes for replays and allow for many long TV timeouts, taking this time away from team timeouts seems a bit miserly.

On kickoffs, the play clock will start once the kicker is handed the ball by the official. In the past, the kicker could take as much time as he wanted before kicking the ball.

Note that this rule just starts the play clock and not the game clock. It’s not a bad idea – tee it up and let’s go. I wonder if allowances will be made for wind blowing the ball off the tee.

The time allowed for instant replay reviews will be capped at two minutes.

Ehhhh. As the AJC said, replays last year took an average of 1:49. No big deal. While some replay decisions could drag on, the real problem often seemed to be the frequency of replays. In most conferences, they tell us that "every play is reviewed by the booth" and that the officials can choose to examine a call without a request or challenge from a coach. I think that happens too often sometimes. Of course you want to get the calls right, but anyone who remembers the first quarter of the 2005 Georgia-Georgia Tech game knows how bogged down things can get when play after play after play gets reviewed. This area needs further discussion; it’s not just a clock issue.

The article also lists a rule which will be put into place for 2008:

"The rules committee also announced that starting in 2008, college football will go to a 40-second play clock like that now used in the NFL. The 40-second clock will start at the end of every play. College football currently uses a 25-second clock that doesn’t start until the ball is put in position and declared ready for play."

I’m pretty skeptical about this one. Part of the outcry over 3-2-5-e was the number of plays it cost us. This rule seems headed in that same direction. Unless it takes longer than 15 seconds to set the ball currently, this rule will likely result in fewer plays. Teams can also start taking a knee with two minutes remaining in the game if the opponent is out of timeouts.

J Huggins has some good thoughts on the proposals in the comments here. Anyone else?

Rule 3-2-5e is nearing death.

Bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; college football is alive again.

Thomas Stinson of the AJC has the news and details of some additional rules tweaks that will try to clean up the mess from last year’s misguided attempt to shorten the length of college football games. The decision and recommendations of the NCAA Rules Committee still must gain approval from the Playing Rules Oversight Panel on March 12, so we can’t quite bury this rule yet. But the priest is giving last rites.

In the understatement of the year, rules committee chairman Michael Clark admitted, "The changes we made last year, overall, did not have a positive effect on college football at all levels."

The committee "recommended new measures to restore the missing 12 plays without effecting game times" (or affecting commercial time we presume). We’ll take a closer look at those later.

(HT: EDSBS)

Bracketology wears me out.

I’ll come right out and admit that. I just don’t get the point of calling the #7 seed in the Midwest Regional in February. Many of us, myself included, were sure that Georgia was heading for a postseason of some kind after beating Alabama in early February 2006. Then the rest of the season happened.

More than that, I just get tired of the politicking that goes on around the bubble and projecting which teams will be in and out. What I really dislike about it is the mindset it forces on many of us. We get the idea in our heads that 9-7 or even 8-8 is the goal, and we do the RPI calculus to show how that record distinguishes us from the truckload of other ordinary teams who also flirted with .500 in their conferences. We work backwards from that 9-7 mark to identify those nine wins and hope that we don’t drop one and have to win at Ole Miss to make up the difference. To me, it’s like focusing on becoming bowl-eligible. Why not just play the games and win?

This mindset is all over the SEC this year. With an undefeated Florida well out ahead of a slew of teams all with at least four conference losses, the label “Florida and the Seven Dwarves” is unfortunately pretty apt. That label comes from a very interesting piece today in the Chattanooga Times Free Press by Darren Epps that talks about the strength of the SEC with Jerry Palm of CollegeRPI.com. Palm attempts to deliver a dose of reality to the SEC: there aren’t very many impressive teams in the SEC once you get past Florida. He projects just five SEC teams in the NCAA Tournament.

Palm correctly points out that the strength of the SEC isn’t so much a lot of good teams as it is the lack of really bad teams. Other than South Carolina, most SEC teams can hold their own. That’s just good enough to get you in the discussion though. From there, you’re hoping that your good features outshine your warts. You’re left with weak and pathetic arguments like Randolph Morris’s "the way we played should say something about our team." Close is good enough in horseshoes, hand grenades, and Kentucky games against Top 25 teams.

Palm is brutally honest to the SEC West. "I see six NIT-quality teams in the West," he said. The winner of the SEC West might have an 8-8 conference record. Preseason favorite and last year’s great story LSU is bringing up the rear. That’s not parity to be celebrated; it’s just not good basketball. They’re not bad – any of them – but a game or two separating first and last place isn’t a sign of exceptional quality.

The East is a bit better, but they have their own problems. Tennessee might be the second-best team in the league, but they stumbled enough early in the season to be just around .500 in conference at this point, and they haven’t done much yet on the road. Kentucky looks to be just strong enough to merit a postseason bid, but they don’t seem likely to hang around long. Vanderbilt had a tremendous run against ranked teams but has been inconsistent and found it hard to gain traction. Georgia is dangerous but is vulnerable to poor shooting and has lost a key starter.

I’m by no means saying that these SEC teams, especially Georgia, should be left out. Teams don’t have to be flawless to get postseason bids, and they’re competing with other teams with their own pluses and minuses. All conferences will be campaigning to get as many bids as possible, and most have teams in the same position as the SEC’s "dwarves" . The fifth-place team in the ACC is just 5-5 right now. There are so many teams in this boat that selection committee chairman Gary Walters said, "conference tournaments could take on increasing significance this year in helping us to separate teams."

We’re all happy with the progress that the Georgia team has shown this year, and it would be gratifying for the all of the sacrifice and work put in over the past three years to be rewarded. The best way they can get there is to forget about aiming for 8 or 9 wins and have the kind of finish to the season that separates themselves from the rest of the SEC pack that’s drifting towards room temperature. If they do end up around that 8-8 or 9-7 mark, they’re putting an awful lot of pressure on themselves for the conference tournament, doing a lot of scoreboard-watching, and leaving their fate in the hands of the selection committee. Do better and the only bracketology they’ll have to worry about is their seeding.

Georgia fans are very familiar with the academic excuse from Tech fans when it comes to competing in athletics. You know how it goes – Georgia has an unfair advantage because their academic standards are so much lower. Student-athletes like Reggie Ball make it a tough point to counter.

Big 10 (you know, the conference with 11 members) commissioner Jim Delany plays this card in a defensive and almost apologetic letter to conference fans. His comments make some puzzling connections between athleticism and academic standards:

I love speed and the SEC has great speed, especially on the defensive line, but there are appropriate balances when mixing academics and athletics. Each school, as well as each conference, simply must do what fits their mission regardless of what a recruiting service recommends. I wish we had six teams among the top 10 recruiting classes every year, but winning our way requires some discipline and restraint with the recruitment process. Not every athlete fits athletically, academically or socially at every university. Fortunately, we have been able to balance our athletic and academic mission so that we can compete successfully and keep faith with our academic standards.

Apparently there is an inverse relationship between speed and intelligence. Delaney should have just gone all the way and called SEC student-athletes "clean and articulate."

Can you imagine even writing this letter? Has the public perception of the Big 10(11) taken such a hit since the BCS Championship game that one of the most influential figures in college sports has to play "who is the best conference" blog parlor games? Notre Dame athletic director Kevin White called Delany "clearly the most powerful figure in college athletics." Many suggest that he is the single biggest obstacle to a college football playoff. And here he is defending his conference against the big bad SEC as if the Big 10 were the Mountain West. Is that not just a little pathetic?

With the High Holy Day of college football’s national signing day past us now, the competition to get the best prospects and be named the best class is as much of a sport to some fans as the football games themselves. At the center of this "sport" are the recruiting services. Since the early 1980s, these services have gone from newsletters and 900-numbers to full-fledged media companies with TV and radio shows, exclusive combines, and people as pseudo-celebrities and brands.

Behind the growth of this industry are the recruitniks who live and breathe recruiting news. Recruitniks have a love-hate relationship with the recruiting services. They devour every morsel of information and multimedia, and they rejoice when the prospects heading to their school are rated highly. After all, the recruiting rankings are the scoreboard in this sport. That fact also brings out the hate mail if the news is bad. The passion and irrationality can create a bizarre cast of characters on both sides of the information exchange including the overzealous, walking-NCAA-violation fan and the arrogant kingmaker recruiting guru. Most of us fall short of those extremes – I hope.

I don’t claim to be any kind of recruiting expert, and I certainly don’t follow recruiting as much as many people do. I know generally who Georgia will sign and some basics about those guys, and I am familiar with the higher-profile targets who considered Georgia this year. That’s about it. I’ve found that following recruiting and absorbing all of this information as a casual recruitnik has been a lot easier and less stressful keeping these things in mind:

• Recruiting rankings and ratings are just opinions. They might be based on hours of film study or trips and interviews all over the state, or they might be shots in the dark. Some of the "gurus" might have never played or been involved with college football; some have. That doesn’t mean that their opinions are without merit; some have worked hard to become informed and even earn the off-the-record confidences of coaches. There are no absolutes in this business, so just relax – discuss, disagree if you like, and remember that the rankings and ratings you see are just someone’s opinion.
  
• Recruiting rankings and ratings are not perfect and are often wrong. This might seem like the most mind-numbingly obvious thing you’ve ever read, but forgetting this simple point leads to so much of the bad blood from those who take these things too seriously. The recruiting services sell credibility and authority, so the more insecure among them are hesitant to admit that they might get it wrong. It’s OK to admit that, and to me it actually adds to the credibility of those who aren’t stuck on being right all the time. On the other side, you have fans too caught up in the minutia of specific rankings. "Why is our running back only rated four stars? Why is he the #3 guy in the state when he is clearly better than the #2 guy?"
  
• Recruiting rankings, even with their imperfections, can still provide some useful information in the big picture. If you look at the top prospects on a service like Rivals.com, you’ll see that most are committed to or have been offered by some of the best programs in the nation. If the best schools are offering the guys at the top of your list, chances are that you’ve identified some pretty good prospects. If you think in terms of generalities and don’t worry about specific rankings (the #6 vs. the #8 class), they have a good bit of value and show which teams should have better talent. Then it’s up to coaching, player development, scheme, academics, and everything else that turns the potential of top prospects into productive college players.
  
• Coaches are also not perfect in their evaluations. The ranks of Division 1 and 1-AA are full of stars that the big programs missed on. In fact, those kinds of programs depend on finding such guys that slip under the radar. Further, the top programs often have a good bit of dead weight from scholarship players who didn’t pan out. If the coaches who are supposed to be the real experts and have resources to meet and evaluate these prospects can’t get it right much of the time, I don’t hold the recruiting services to a higher standard of accuracy. Some coaches get it right more often than others; you can tell who they are because they keep their jobs.
  
  There’s an interesting post from HeismanPundit recently where he looks at the recruiting pedigree of various Heisman winners. Naturally the paper trail is much better for players from the Internet era, but his list is pretty thorough. What strikes me is that of the Heisman winners he considered to be top prospects, nearly all of them won the Heisman at a traditional power (surely the dynamics of the Heismandments come into play there). On the other hand, almost all of the Heisman winners he lists who weren’t top prospects won their awards at schools on the periphery of college football. Wuerffel seems to be the exception, but even Florida wasn’t much of a traditional power until the Spurrier years. It’s likely that a lot of "good" programs passed on or lightly recruited guys like Sanders and Ware, and they dramatically elevated their programs in such a way that they had the outrageously successful seasons it takes to win a Heisman at a school like BYU. If you want a name who fits that mold for next season, it’s Colt Brennan. He started his career as a walk-on at Colorado before going to Hawaii via a junior college and is poised to have the obscene stats that you need for Heisman consideration from such schools.
  
• As a rule, you want higher-rated prospects. One of the things you’ll hear this time of year, and I admit it annoys me to no end, is someone who’ll say, "Recruiting rankings don’t matter – <player name> was just a two-star prospect and he turned out to be an All-American." Good for him. Again, if the coaches can’t even get it right, I’m going to accept that there will be cases where blue-chippers are never heard from and walk-ons become All-Americans. This is usually the mantra of the fan whose school just lost out on a highly-rated kid. There is a reason why teams like Florida and SoCal are loading up on five-star prospects. As a rule, they’re better prospects. More of them, as a percentage, turn into elite college players. While some top prospects don’t pan out, having more on your roster means you have a much better chance of having a few who do. An elite prospect who lives up to that tremendously high billing can be truly special.
  
• Player-to-player comparisons get more hazy the closer you get to the national level. How can you say with any certainty that one offensive guard from Virginia is better than some other one from Ohio? In the same county or region, you might be able to get a pretty good comparison between two kids who play against each other. Even in the same state, you’ll have comparable opponents and are usually getting the opinion of someone who has a good feel for the quality of football in different parts of the state. But when you get to the multi-state region or the national level, it’s a tough job. You have editors trying to pull together the opinions of different local guys each with their own biases, and highlight films don’t always tell the whole story. Combines and national all-star games can help, but even they provide relatively few points of comparison. So someone is the #6 quarterback in the nation instead of #3. What does that mean?
  
• Highlight videos are nice, but they are highlights. Most of the recruiting services offer deep libraries of highlight videos now, and some of them are truly sick. Fans can make the mistake of getting too caught up on the highlights though. They are supposed to make the prospect look good, and you can piece together a pretty decent reel on most anyone who has seen much playing time. They’ll show the lineman making a pancake block, but they won’t show him giving up the sack. They’ll show the circus catch but not the pass that went right through a receiver’s hands.
  
• Who’s offering? If you want a very general sense about the potential of a prospect, look at who is after him. If is down to Michigan, Oklahoma, and Texas, he’s probably pretty good. Scholarships are scarce, and programs don’t intend to waste them on prospects they don’t consider to be worth it. You have to be a bit careful with this one though, because the inverse doesn’t always apply: the absence of a lot of big-name offers doesn’t necessarily mean that the prospect is a stiff. Maybe the staff has found a true diamond in the rough. Maybe the prospect fits a specific need that other teams don’t have. Maybe there are academic or character concerns. Maybe he’s such a mortal lock to one school that others don’t even bother. All of those cases happen every year. There are dozens of reasons why programs do and don’t offer certain prospects.
  
• Recruiting services are great for gathering data points. This is where they add most of their value in my eyes. Where is a prospect looking? Who has offered? Who leads? Will he qualify? The steady stream of updates about and direct quotes from the prospects and those involved in the recruiting process is very valuable information to those who follow recruiting. Though these decisions can often be fickle or irrational, the services do a great job of identifying the important factors and participants in the decision. Some of the best even form solid relationships with the prospects and are the first to know, often from the prospect himself, when there is something to report. College coaches subscribe to these services just to keep up with this kind of information. I get a bit less interested when the "guru" puts on his evaluator cap and starts telling me about a lineman’s technique with his feet or a defensive back’s hips.

From today’s AJC:

Faced with what he calls an “eroding” financial situation in his department, Georgia Tech athletics director Dan Radakovich today will announce a plan to bring in more money from football and basketball season-ticket sales.

The plan, to be outlined in a letter to season-ticket holders, will require a minimum annual donation to a new “Tech Fund” for the right to buy prime season tickets. The required donation, which is in addition to the face price of tickets, will be as high as $450 per seat per year for football and up to $500 per seat per year for men’s basketball.

Talk about bad timing. Now that Calvin Johnson’s departure has closed the most interesting era of Georgia Tech football in the past decade and now that the basketball program has slid back into the lower half of the ACC from a Final Four trip, they want to turn the screws to get a bit more cash from their fan base to make up for an operating deficit.

The reason for such measures: Radakovich said Tech’s athletics department was $2.7 million in the red for fiscal 2006, not including debt service and the revenue earmarked for paying it. He said the projected operating deficit for fiscal 2007 would be $2.89 million without changes.

Georgia’s incredible legacy of operating in the black is certainly an exception in the world of college sports. Tech’s situation isn’t unusual, but it is a reminder how good we’ve got it and how good the financial stewardship of the program has been under Dooley and Evans. Radakovich is known as a sharp financial guy with a good head for business, but we’ll see how the Tech fan base reacts to this decision given the quality of the product they are now asked to pay even more to support.

Rivals.com is reporting that Jon Richt, son of Georgia coach Mark Richt, has committed to Clemson. Jon is currently a junior at Prince Avenue Christian School in Athens, and he will be part of the 2008 signing class. He’ll be coming in behind highly-regarded quarterback Willy Korn, so it might be a while before he is heard from.

I think this is a wise move all around. For Jon, it’s reasonably close to home, and as much as we don’t like Clemson around here, there are plenty of schools with a worse football tradition. I also think that this decision lets both Jon and Mark avoid the ugliness that can creep up when family is involved. We heard grumblings, unfounded of course, of nepotism and favoritism this year with JT3, and his father isn’t even the head coach. Jon can make a name for himself now without the “coach’s kid” label over his head. Though many sons do end up playing for their fathers, it can be a very awkward situation and even a distraction.

Though Vince Dooley had family members involved in coaching the program while he was a head coach, Derek Dooley still went off to college at Virginia. I think it’s very appropriate that the Richts are following suit. Best of luck to Jon…unless we play Clemson any time soon.

We need to start watching the rate of disastrous failures for those "<insert color>-out" promotions that everyone is doing now. You know, the "white-out" or "red-out" or whatever color your school is where everyone in the crowd is asked to wear the same color or are given shirts to make the effect happen.

OK, this was pretty cool. But they lost.

Though it involved that horrible orange, I have to admit that one of the better ones was the checkerboard effect that Tennessee did last year. And guess what? Tennessee lost.

It might be just me, but it seems that these games often end up as spectacular losses. It makes sense – crowd gimmicks are usually used to get sell-outs for big games in which the home team is often the underdog, so it’s not really a surprise that the visiting team wins.

The best example I can think of is the hapless "blackout" games of South Carolina football. In 2001, South Carolina organized a blackout for the Florida game. It looked great, and the overflow crowd was out of its mind. Florida proceeded to lay a 54-17 score on the Gamecocks. Steve Spurrier, then coaching Florida of course, made one of his infamous quips after the game saying that the black background made it easier for his receivers to see the ball.

That stood as a pretty good benchmark for the futility of crowd color gimmicks until last night. Nebraska organized a "red-out" for their basketball game with Kansas. Huge game, big-name ranked opponent, national TV. The crowd obediently packed the arena with red, and the stage was set for the upset. Right? That lasted about a minute. Kansas soon had a 39-6 lead which included a 27-0 run. A "yellow-out" might have been more appropriate given how Nebraska wet the bed on the national stage.

So we’ll try to look out for and highlight the future successes or, better, outright beatings that come from these games. A few groundrules:

1. Has to be more or less a one-time or once-a-season thing. If it’s something that the students or a large part of the crowd does every game, it doesn’t really count.
2. Has to be organized or at least endorsed or promoted by the school. Thus the "wear black for Dooley" grassroots campaign a few years ago doesn’t count, but the "wear red for Brophy" one last weekend does.
3. Has to involve more than just students. Free t-shirts of the same color in the student section from the local chicken finger place isn’t what we’re talking about.

Congratulations, Nebraska. You’ve got us off and running.

Georgia will open the 2007 baseball season in two weeks against the defending national champions Oregon State. The Beavers started the defense of their title in grand fashion last night by no-hitting Hawaii-Hilo. Yep…win the national title, head to Hawaii for a few days, toss a no-hitter. Not bad.

That’s right – it might be 35 degrees outside, but we’re just a few weeks from hearing this again in Athens, and spring won’t be far behind.