Fresh on the heels of a basketball SEC tournament title and a gymnastics national title, the Georgia baseball team wrapped up the 2008 SEC championship on Sunday in dramatic fashion at Vanderbilt. Georgia jumped out to a 12-4 lead on Sunday but had to hold on before Joshua Fields closed the door for his 15th save of the year and a 12-10 win.

If there was a single play of the weekend, it came on Saturday. Georgia’s lifeless offense roared to life in the final two frames after going scoreless all day. They scored two in the ninth to force extra innings and then added two more in the top of the tenth. Fields was brought on to close the door, but he didn’t start out in his typical dominant fashion. Fields walked the first batter on four straight pitches and then threw three more balls to the second batter of the inning. Matt Olson then made a sliding catch on a David Macias bloop into shallow right field for the first out of the inning. If that ball had dropped, Vandy would have had two runners on with no outs and a shaky Fields on the mound. Instead Fields recovered to strike out two of the next three batters to even the series and make Sunday’s championship-clinching win possible.

When you look at a list of Georgia’s conference titles in baseball, there’s no question that these are the golden years for the program:

1933
1953
1954
2001
2004 (shared with Arkansas)
2008

The regular season isn’t finished yet. We have the annual battle at Turner Field against Georgia Tech on Tuesday. Though Tech has clinched the season series, a win against the Jackets would be very important if Georgia wants a leg to stand on when it comes time for postseason seeding. The SEC title is a big trump card to hold, but a season sweep at the hands of Tech wouldn’t look very good.

The Diamond Dawgs wrap up the regular season with a home series against Alabama this weekend. Postseason seeding is also an issue in this series (a few more SEC wins could never hurt), and Bama will have a lot to play for with a logjam atop the SEC West. Bama is just 1 1/2 games behind LSU in the West, but they’re only half a game out of fourth place.

David Pollack talks about his decision to retire. His plans for the future?

He wants to finish out the two semesters required to complete degrees in history and education at Georgia. He wants to explore the possibilities of a career in broadcasting and could surface on the sideline or in the booth with either CBS or FOX. He wants to coach. He wants to be a good father to the son he and his wife expect to arrive in August.

It’s a strange question given the win-or-lose nature of sports: is the team with the best record the best team? In the context of a conference or league where teams play all or most of the others, that conclusion is more than reasonable. But in a division of hundreds of teams with at most 14 games for any one team the record becomes a less reliable indicator.

I ask this question in response to a question raised by Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops (hat tip as always to Get the Picture) about undefeated teams in a plus-one scenario.

"(The ‘plus-one’ is) a good scenario when there’s an odd number of teams with no losses or one loss," Stoops said last fall. "It doesn’t make sense in years like 2000 when we won a national championship and were the only team with no losses. Why should we have to beat all the one-loss teams?"

Stoops’ meaning is obvious: the record defines the quality of the team. Your first instinct is to agree with him. Oklahoma won all of their games, so why should some one-loss team get a pass for losing? And then you remember Utah or Hawaii. Both were undefeated (in the regular season anyway), but it’s hard to imagine June Jones or Urban Meyer making the case that they were above playing any of those inferior one-loss teams.

So record, even for teams playing at the same classification, can’t be an absolute indicator of superiority. Fine. It’s still accepted in our system that in most cases record trumps any other metric. Without an improbable Pittsburgh win over West Virginia, last year’s national champion would have never had the opportunity to play for the title. Why? LSU had two losses while Ohio State and West Virginia would have had just one. It didn’t matter that both LSU losses came in overtime to bowl-bound conference opponents. 1 is less than 2 or, in this case, greater than 2.

I don’t necessarily consider this reality a flaw in college football; after all, the point is to win games. Record is as close as we have to an objective measure for so many teams with relatively few points of comparison between them, but it isn’t a perfect indicator. We’ve tried to take that reality into account in the BCS whether it was the overt strength of schedule adjustment early on or the current built-in adjustments of the computer polls. Even human pollsters (consciously or otherwise) sometimes consider schedule in some rough form.

That brings us to Dennis Dodd who unfortunately captures a meme we’re going to hear a lot this preseason. One, Ohio State is good enough and has a favorable enough schedule to skate through a weak Big 10 and remain in the national title picture even with a loss to Southern Cal. Two, Georgia might be a great team, but their schedule is just too tough to expect them to come through unscathed. Agree or disagree with his analysis, but his conclusion makes sense when you look at things in the context of the pursuit of the unblemished record.

Ohio State could lose three games and be irrelevant in the title discussion, but that hasn’t been the way to bet lately. And if they do beat Southern Cal and run the table, I’ll be the first to welcome them to the BCS championship. The thing of it is that Dodd seems to be setting up his apology in advance for having to rank Ohio State near the top if they sweep the Big 10 schedule but lose to the Trojans. Given the way we decide things in college football, it’s an entirely reasonable approach.

If this all sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Les Miles stuck his neck out last summer and made some pretty bold comments about LSU’s schedule relative to Southern Cal’s. But you know what? It worked. LSU was just one of a number of two-loss teams, but there they were at the end. Mark Richt hasn’t had to say a word about Georgia’s schedule; pundits like Dodd are doing the work for him. If Georgia survives its gauntlet, how can anyone using Dodd’s logic deny them a shot at the national title?

In a regular season of 162, 82, or even 30 games, the difference of one loss between two teams is insignificant. In a 12-game season, it’s a chasm. Not to turn everything into the scheduling debate (here we go again…), I’m left with this question: is it rational for a contender from a major conference to schedule challenging non-conference games? Why is Ohio State playing Southern Cal when a diet of mid-major schools from the state of Ohio would get the job done with less risk?

First, let’s get the good news out of the way. Georgia came out just fine in the APR numbers released on Tuesday. In fact, it was better than good: Georgia was among the SEC’s top three in football and men’s and women’s basketball. The football team led the SEC. Bottom line is that none of Georgia’s programs face sanctions, and it looks as if all programs have student-athletes making satisfactory progress towards graduation. Cool.

Now on to the SEC. All SEC football programs met the minimum APR requirements. Tennessee and South Carolina however did not meet requirements in men’s basketball, and it cost each a single scholarship for one season.

Nationwide, 17 Division I-A football programs will be penalized. Only two of those schools – Kansas and Washington State – were from BCS conferences. It makes sense when you think about it. Schools in conferences outside the BCS:

• Are often lower-quality colleges to begin with. Directional State is typically not going to be your state’s flagship of higher learning.
• Have to take risks in order to compete. A weaker program can get better in a hurry by taking a chance on an academic or character risk that the big boys can afford to pass over. If you’re taking more risks on marginal students, chances are it will come back to bite your APR score. I wonder if this point affected Kansas’ place among the penalized. Historically a weak program, Coach Mangino might have had to take some academic risks in order to raise the competitiveness of his team.
• Have less money to throw at academic resources. The $2.2 million Georgia spent at the Sugar Bowl could just about fund some smaller football programs. The large, typically public, schools that make up the BCS conferences invest quite a bit in keeping student-athletes eligible, and they would have the flexibility to do what it takes to raise dangerously low APRs. Huge well-organized tutoring programs, computers, dedicated facilities…these are all luxuries when most athletic departments struggle to break even.

Given those built-in disadvantages, it’s no shock that though the BCS conferences have over half of the Football Bowl Subdivision membership, they get a disproportionately low share of the APR penalties. The news isn’t much better on the basketball side of things. There are an awful lot of HBCUs on the list of penalized schools.

If further study determines that the APR does in fact make things much tougher for the little guy than for State U., don’t expect those schools to stay quiet about it for very long. And, just damn, hasn’t Temple suffered enough already?

UPDATE: That didn’t take long. San Jose State coach Dick Tomey was one of the first to beat the drum:

“There’s such a difference between the B.C.S. schools and those who are not,” Tomey said. “I don’t think it’s an intended difference, but it highlights financial things like not being able to throw money at the problem and solve it very quickly.”

WAC commissioner Karl Benson also spoke up for the non-BCS conferences.

“When the A.P.R. first was introduced, I think all of our schools took it to heart and put in plans to face it and to fight it,” said Karl Benson, the commissioner of the Western Athletic Conference. “But I know that we may not have had the same resources that others have had.”

The AJC for some reason has quite a breakdown of the athletic department’s expenses during the Sugar Bowl. The total bill was $2.2 million which included all expenses for team, staff, supporting organizations, and guests of the University. The sum also includes bonuses paid to football and athletic department staff.

It’s good to be in the BCS. The article sometimes takes a glib tone regarding some of the expenses (“handing out bonuses like breath mints”), but I really don’t see that much out of line. Maybe they didn’t have to spend $200,000 on tickets since fans couldn’t give away tickets to the game, but an average of $1,632.39 for guests on a 4-day junket to the Sugar Bowl isn’t that extravagant.

The Dawgs will get that money back, and then some, when the SEC membership assembles in Scrooge McDuck’s vault and distributes the year’s shared revenue. The share is again expected to be over $10 million per school.

First, an update on top basketball prospect Derrick Favors after an event in Kansas. His team dominated, and he used the occasion to work on his game.

“I don’t want to be just a post player, I want to be all-around, so I worked on a little jump shot, a little three-pointer, ball handling and passing,” the 6-foot-9, 220-pound power forward from Atlanta said. “I wanted to just work on my guard skills, try something new, but I didn’t think they’d open up the lane like that.”

Though the Kansas account was laying it on thick, Georgia is still expected to be one of Favors’ favorites.

Rodney Garner, move over.

Second, the Tampa Tribune has an account of recent quarterback commitment Aaron Murray’s immediate impact on Georgia’s recruiting. Top offensive line prospect Austin Long was one of Murray’s first targets.

“I really thought about where I would commit and talked to my parents about it and prayed about it,” Long told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. “Then I was talking to Aaron Murray and he really helped. I asked him all kinds of questions and if he was still happy now that he has committed.

“He told me he was happy and he was going to recruit me until I committed. He told me he wanted to be a part of the No. 1 recruiting class.”

Murray has even bigger targets in mind including standout receiver prospect Marlon Brown. Murray considers his recruiting “my little job,” but that little job could have a huge impact on Georgia recruiting.

With the class of 2008 a week away from placing another year between myself and my final days as a University of Georgia student, I find that nothing reminds me of that last spring in Athens like an afternoon at Foley Field. This Diamond Dawgs team has been a treat to watch since SEC play started, and it was a perfect afternoon to take in a game on Sunday.

After dropping their first conference series of the season in Florida last weekend, Georgia bounced back well against Ole Miss by taking two of three. Sunday’s 11-4 win had it all:

• Timely pitching: Bulldog hurlers twice battled out of bases-loaded jams including a pivotal one out situation in the first inning. Though Ole Miss still drew first blood in the second inning, starter Nathan Moreau shook off a pair of walks to prevent things from getting out of hand early. It was the Sunday starter’s best outing in a while.
• Production from the bottom of the lineup: the 6-through-9 spots in the lineup accounted for 6 runs, 7 hits, and 4 RBI. Allen, Cerione, Demperio all homered early in the game to give Georgia its lead.
• Outstanding plays in the field: Gordon Beckham put the game away with his bat, but he handled two high throws from Rich Poythress to get key outs and, in one case, turn a double-play.

The Dawgs await the outcome of an MRI on the knee of second baseman Michael Demperio. He was involved in a bang-bang play at first base on a bunt attempt during which he got tangled up with the Ole Miss first baseman. He had to leave the game, and the knee was scheduled to be examined on Monday.

Georgia still has two SEC series remaining, but this next series at Vanderbilt could determine the conference championship. But before that, there’s the matter of the season series with Georgia Tech. The Jackets took the first meeting in Atlanta, and Georgia will get a chance to hold serve in Athens. The final game between the rivals will be at Turner Field next Tuesday in the annual Children’s Healthcare benefit. Don’t miss either.

Back I December I mentioned ESPNU’s Campus Connections program where students at various schools would help to produce coverage of sporting events at those schools. It’s Georgia turn, and Saturday’s 3:00 baseball game against Ole Miss will be on ESPNU with the involvement of 13 University of Georgia students.

A crew of 13 Georgia journalism students will serve in a variety of production roles for this game. Three of the school’s students will appear on air – one as an announcer (joining ESPNU’s Dave Ryan, Kyle Peterson and Melissa Knowles) and two as reporters. The others will serve in a number of other technical job functions, including game producer, stage manager and camera operator.

Sure, there’s other news coming from the Athletic Association board meeting like smokers being SOL at Sanford Stadium, but this one item caught my eye:

Two improvement projects were approved: a $650,000 facility assessment and preventive maintenance that includes Sanford Stadium and Stegeman Coliseum and an additional $250,000 will go to making the softball field sand based to improve drainage.

Adams said there is a “significant” need for improved concession and bathroom facilities on the North side of Sanford and also at Stegeman.

No kidding? Maybe Stegeman will finally pass local high schools in the quality of concessions. Just one request: don’t change the community sinks in the Stegeman bathrooms. Watching first-timers mistake them for urinals is too much fun.

Other noteworthy news from the Board meeting:

• Georgia’s all clear as far as the APR is concerned. Baseball and men’s track were under some heat last year, but it looks as if they came through.
• The basketball program continues to climb out from under the Jim Harrick rubble. March’s tournament run was huge, and now the program as of April 16 is no longer on probation. It’s morning in Athens.
• This was interesting to this aviation enthusiast: “The football team will fly directly to Athens on three planes after its Oct. 25 game at LSU instead of going to Atlanta and then taking buses. The runway in Athens can’t accommodate larger airplanes. Georgia will use the LSU game as a test to consider flying there in multiple planes after next season. The shorter travel time returning from Baton Rouge could benefit Georgia the following week when it plays against Florida in Jacksonville.”

  That will shave several hours from the trip. Not only is the bus ride another hour and a half, but you also have equipment to transfer. I’ve been on a DC-9 that needed every bit of the Athens runway, so that’s probably the upper limit of the class of airplane we’re talking about.

Speaking of the regular season, Georgia’s 2009 season is now set with the addition of 1-AA Tennessee Tech on November 7, 2009. That date preserves a bye week before the trip to Jacksonville.

Tennessee Tech rounds out a non-conference schedule for 2009 that includes a home game against Arizona State and road games at Oklahoma State and Georgia Tech.

If you’re not already tired of hearing about how tough Georgia’s 2008 schedule is, 2009 doesn’t look much easier. There’s no long road trip, but the first month of the season features two considerable trips in the first three weeks with Arizona State and LSU coming to town after the trip to Arkansas. Here’s the complete 2009 schedule:

Sept. 5: @ Oklahoma State
Sept. 12: South Carolina
Sept. 19: @ Arkansas
Sept. 26: Arizona State
Oct. 3: LSU
Oct. 10: @ Tennessee
Oct. 17: @ Vanderbilt
Oct. 24: –Bye–
Oct. 31: Florida
Nov. 7: Tennessee Tech
Nov. 14: Auburn
Nov. 21: Kentucky
Nov. 28: @ Georgia Tech
Dec. 5: SEC Championship

You can go down the star-studded list of Georgia 2009 commitments and debate which might be the best player, if such a thing can be determined nine months before Signing Day.  But Monday’s commitment by Austin Long might prove to be one of the most significant.  Why?

Take a look at Georgia’s depth chart – specifically at the offensive tackle spot.  That’s three scholarship offensive tackles.  Though Georgia finally has good numbers on its line, pure tackles are relatively hard to come by.  Just look at the first pick of the NFL draft to see how valuable a top-quality OT can be.

Beyond the fact that Georgia got a great player at a position of dire need, consider this icing on the cake:  Georgia went into Memphis and got a commitment from one of the nation’s best tackles over Alabama and Tennessee.  Better yet, “Austin was a big Florida fan,” according to his father.  With Alabama considered the favorite and Long a Florida fan growing up, a commitment to Georgia has to be seen as a tremendous coup for Mark Richt and his staff. 

Fans might be a little nervous with Long over in Memphis and some very persistent and effective recruiters working for the competition, but Long told UGASports.com that those fans needn’t worry.

“Georgia is definitely the place for me, and I am not going back on my word,” Long said with confidence. “I am a Georgia Bulldog now, I gave them my commitment, and I am standing by that. I am definitely going to Georgia.”

If you want a reason why so many are high on Georgia for next season, you got it over the weekend.  No player from the team which finished #2 in the nation was selected before the 5th round of the NFL draft.  That news tells us that there’s a ton of proven talent coming back, and Georgia shouldn’t be absent from the draft’s first day for very long.  It might be sooner than we like if Stafford or Moreno have the kind of season we hope they do.

It’s a quirk of the draft that it’s often better to go undrafted than to be taken in the later rounds.  Both scenarios mean that your spot on the team is far from guaranteed, but a free agent has the chance to select a situation which might be a little better fit.  Take the example of Brandon Coutu.  It’s great that he was drafted, but he’s brought into a situation where he will be the decided underdog competing for a roster spot against NFL veteran Olindo Mare. 

If there was a Bulldog-related surprise, it was Fernando Velasco’s absence from the draft board.  We expect he’ll sign as a free agent very soon, but he was projected to be drafted before Adams.

Drafted Dawgs:

• DE Marcus Howard:  Indianapolis Colts (5th round)
  Quotable:   “I think I’ll be able to help the Colts rush the passer,” Howard said. “They have a couple of guys just like me, probably just a tad bit bigger. I think I’m going to come in, help them rush the passer and help them on special teams.  Just watching those guys play the past three or four years, I’ve seen the defensive ends that they use. It’s pretty much the same Tampa 2 (defense) we got here at UGA. I think I’m going to come in and help the team out.”
• RB Thomas Brown:  Atlanta Falcons (6th round)
  Quotable:  “I really worked hard to appeal to them that I’m not injury prone. If you go back and look at the two injuries I had, the one was a knee injury on a kickoff return where I feel like anybody could’ve torn their ACL on that play. The second one was a crack in my collar bone when I dove into the end zone. But I had full recovery from all of those and I’m just excited about being a Falcon.”
• OL Chester Adams:  Chicago Bears (7th round)
  Though he played tackle out of necessity for Georgia as a senior, Adams “projects as a guard with the Bears.”
• K Brandon Coutu:  Seattle Seahawks (7th round)
  Quotable:  “The respect that Seattle had to go ahead and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to draft him in the seventh round,’ means a lot to me and I’m just going to work a little harder to hopefully take advantage of the opportunity I have.”

Free agent signings:

• Safety Kelin Johnson:  Seattle Seahawks
• LB Brandon Miller:  Atlanta Falcons
• OL Fernando Velasco: Tennessee Titans
• RB Kregg Lumpkin: Green Bay Packers
• WR Sean Bailey: Kansas City Chiefs

This should help you sleep well tonight – the Georgia quarterback position is in good hands for the next six years or so.

Tampa QB Aaron Murray has committed to Georgia this morning. He’s rated a four-star prospect and among the top 50 players in the nation by Rivals.com and was the first player invited to this year’s Elite 11 quarterback camp. A lot is going to be made about this commitment because Georgia went into Florida and got a quarterback at the top of Urban Meyer’s list. The decision makes sense though – 6’1", 198 lbs. sounds a lot more like D.J. Shockley than it does Tim Tebow. Florida signed five-star Cam Newton out of Georgia in 2007, but his interest in Georgia was minimal. "Georgia is stacked at the quarterback position and I not going to play anything but quarterback in college," he said in 2006.

Enjoy a few more years (we hope) of Stafford and Cox. Logan Gray looked plenty capable at G-Day. Now Murray and Zach Mettenberger stand ready to battle it out a couple of years down the road. With the quarterback position more or less set, receivers and other offensive recruits won’t need to worry about the quality of leader they’ll have under center.

At this morning’s announcement, Murray thanked the other schools that showed interest in him and said, "I am humbled and honored, honored to know that you thought enough of me to offer me a scholarship to join your team." Not the kind of talk you typically hear from a recruiting press conference, is it? Murray had this to say about Georgia:

"It is a school that every time I left, I just wanted to go back," he said. "I love the coaches, the intensity, and the competitive practices. The academics are top notch and it is a great college town."

The Dawgs are in the mix for Murray’s teammate, standout tight end Orson Charles. Charles of course received notoriety by knocking over Florida’s national championship trophy a few weeks ago. He’d receive a hero’s welcome at Georgia for that reason alone.

Murray is Georgia’s ninth commitment for the class of 2009. With the class expected to be somewhat smallish due to scholarship limits, we might be nearly halfway home.

Chip Towers has a good recap of the men’s basketball banquet. Be sure you see the highlight video of the SEC Tournament produced by the Tip-Off Club.

I have to tip my cap again to Dave Bliss. We all know that he wasn’t the highest-rated prospect ever signed by Georgia. He had to play raw right out of the gate. Crippling back problems limited his progress and playing time. To use one of Dennis Felton’s favorite terms, it was gratifying to see Bliss recognized as a leader and important part of this team and program. To earn co-MVP honors alongside a star like Gaines is a tremendous accomplishment for anyone.

The list of awards (thanks to Towers):

Individual Workout Award (weightroom, conditioning, etc): G Terrance Woodbury

Most Improved: C Albert Jackson

Take Charge Award: G Corey Butler

Academic Award: C David Bliss

Best Rebounder: G Sundiata Gaines

Best Playmaker: Gaines

Best Defender: Bliss

Junkyard Dawg Award: Bliss

Kevin Brophy Heart and Hustle Award: Bliss

Team MVP: Bliss and Gaines

It had to be an incredibly tough decision for such a competitor, but David Pollack’s comeback attempt has ended.

(Head Coach Marvin) Lewis said Pollack told him last week that he wasn’t comfortable with the neck medically despite being cleared to play.

Given the severity of his injury back in 2006, that’s probably a very smart decision. Pollack still has a world of possibilities open to him, and you have to like his chances at success in whatever the next step is.

In other Bulldog/Bengal news, Odell Thurman has been reinstated by the NFL. He has missed two complete seasons since leading the team in tackles in 2005.

With Pollack’s NFL dreams ended, you wonder if Thurman will make anything out of this chance he has to keep playing or if he’ll piss the opportunity away again.

PS…I know some will instantly call for Pollack to join the UGA program in some position, but I’m not sure that’s the best move for both parties. We have no idea what kind of a coach he would make, and it might serve him well to prove his coaching chops on another stage first. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in broadcasting, though he’s always had his eye on becoming a preacher.