Want to see a bunch of tough-talking advocates of personal responsibility turn into the biggest bleeding-heart mass of equivocating relativist excuse-makers? Watch a typical football fan learn that one of his team’s players can’t get out of a punishment.

In the past day, the suspension of Akeem Hebron for the fall semester has blown up on the message boards. I’m having trouble understanding why people are surprised by the news. We knew as soon as the second arrest came that he would be facing this suspension. I guess much of the shock comes from the news that a football player couldn’t somehow get around the University policy.

Most are focusing on the harshness of the punishment. Does it fit the crime, etc.

That’s completely irrelevant. Whether the policy is too strong or is fitting (I think it’s a bit reactionary myself), it’s spelled out right up front (HT: Ching) and applies to every UGA student. Not many made a noise about this policy until it took down a football player. If the policy sucks, work to change it, but you have to live by it in the meantime.

We learn today that Hebron will take the path I mentioned yesterday and enroll at Georgia Military College for the fall semester. He’ll be eligible to return for the spring semester, and the AJC reports that "Hebron said Georgia coach Mark Richt would welcome him back in January 2008 if he followed the necessary steps."

Oh, the drama I’ve read in the past day. The excuses and enabling would make an addict proud. "He’s being crucified for such a small mistake." "He just was unlucky and got caught doing what we all did in college." "His career is ruined because of a knee-jerk zero-tolerance policy." "The police are out to get football players." Some, apparently unable in their hysteria to comprehend that getting arrested often presents certain other problems, have even asked why Stafford doesn’t face the same kind of suspension. Won’t someone think of the children?!?!

Of course none of that exaggeration is true. While most are no stranger to underage drinking, few use the bad judgment to become belligerent with a downtown bouncer months after a MIP citation. Even fewer would be likely to do it once Richt lays down the law after the first offense. You can be certain that Hebron knew what was at stake if he were arrested again. His career is far from over or ruined. The escape route to GMC is the best possible outcome in this situation. If (if, if, if) things go well at GMC, he will pick back up at UGA for the spring 2008 semester, get back on track in terms of academic progress, and lose only his freshman season. It could have been a lot worse.

I don’t want to sound overly hard on the guy. It’s a tough situation, and the start of his football career has been delayed, but it’s the result of his decisions. He knows that. "I’m disappointed in myself. The whole thing has been difficult, " he told the AJC. He’s getting what so many don’t: a legitimate third chance. The support structure at Georgia to help him will be there. I can’t imagine a better guide in that spot than Richt and Van Halenger. It’s also a positive sign of commitment by Hebron to take this route. He’s not playing D-1 ball next year regardless, so he could have used the year to transfer and get a clean start somewhere else. He’s chosen to accept the fact that he’ll have to face the probation and academic pressure when he gets back to Athens as well as face the work he’ll have to do to get back in the good graces of the football program.

David Ching along with several others report today about the latest preseason depth chart changes. Of course a depth chart at this stage always needs these three disclaimers:

1. True freshmen aren’t on the chart. It’s likely that a few will work their way into the lineup by September. Players "coming off injuries" are listed separately from their positions.
2. Depth charts will change before the season. We’ve seen the chart used as motivation before, and there are positions like the Battle/Dobbs/Tripp "tie" that have to be sorted out. "It’s certainly how we feel at the moment, but there’s an awful lot that can change, as we all know," explained Coach Richt.
3. Someone has to start, but several positions frequently rotate players. Players far down the receiver and defensive line charts will see plenty of time.

With that out of the way, let’s overanalyze a few places that stand out:

• Is it me, or does the WR depth chart look a little unbalanced? I realize that the flanker and split end positions are not identical and interchangable. I also grant that we’ll be using multiple receiver sets and rotate guys in and out all of the time. Still, at one position you have the veterans Bailey and Massaquoi and then the sure-handed Durham. Massaquoi is the leading returning receiver and won’t be starting. Then we move over to flanker and see Henderson starting at 5’10", 150 lb. with Bryant backing him up.
• Not much has changed on the offensive line. Only one of the top four on the key left side (protecting Stafford’s back) has been at Georgia longer than a spring practice. It’s going to be dicey.
• As I mentioned above, there are three guys tied for one of the starting DE jobs. Touted JUCO transfer Jarius Wynn is not among them. A tie for a starting position is not a positive thing for me. No one was neck-and-neck with David Pollack.
• The defensive tackles are also a jumble. Tripp Taylor, a converted walkon fullback, is listed on the second team. No offense to the guy who did a fine job last year as the wham fullback, but Corvey Irvin was recruited from junior college to be that depth. This will be a position to watch in August.
• If there’s a chance for a newcomer to make an impact, it seems to be linebacker. Akeem Hebron is the most recent bit of attrition there. Brandon Miller is still a question mark in the middle, and Marcus Washington is more or less the second-string MLB by default. The loss of Hebron for the year puts a lot of pressure on Gamble and Dent to be ready to play. Ellerbe has reclaimed the starting WLB spot, and I bet he holds on to it this time.
• The secondary is looking really solid. When you have a former starter like Ramarcus Brown fighting for a second-string position at corner and prototypes like Reshad Jones and Antavious Coates as your depth at safety, you should be in fine shape. Having Asher Allen, Prince Miller, and Brown behind the starting corners makes me sleep well at night.
• Brian Mimbs, he of the spectacular onside kick in the Chick-fil-A Bowl, is the punter, but we expect Drew Butler to get a look in August.
• I wonder if there will be competition for the punt return job. Henderson seems like the obvious choice, but it’s a lot closer than we think. Mikey got nearly half his punt return yardage last year on three returns, two against Western Kentucky and one against Tennessee. After the Tennessee game, Henderson didn’t have a return over 20 yards. Thomas Flowers isn’t to be ignored in this conversation, but the Dawgs do have two good proven options at this key special teams position.

The ABH is reporting that promising linebacker Akeem Hebron will indeed be suspended for the fall semester due to his second alcohol-related arrest. The suspension means that he is ineligible for the 2007 football season.

He would be eligible to return for the spring 2008 semester and would remain on probation through December 2009.

The trick about him returning is academic eligibility. His progress will be affected by the suspension, so he might have a lot to do in order to be eligible for a 2008 return to the football field.

Steve Patterson of UGASports.com mentioned today that the Georgia program has been in contact with Georgia Military College about the possibility of Hebron spending the 2007 season there. That scenario would be best-case I think: Hebron would be able to continue academic work while playing JUCO-level football. There are several potential sticking points to this plan, though. Hebron also has an automatic football suspension to go along with his University suspension. By missing the fall semester, he would serve that football suspension. If he transfers for a year and plays at GMC, there’s a question whether that football suspension would still be waiting for him upon his return in 2008.

Wyatt gets it done in the 2004 Super Regional Photo: AP

With two losses to #1 Vandy last weekend and series left against postseason-bound Mississippi State and South Carolina, Georgia’s hopes for a late-season surge into the SEC Tournament are about shot. They are assured of a sub-.500 conference record.

So for me, the season comes down to tomorrow night’s game in Athens against Tech. The two teams have split the season series so far. If the Dawgs aren’t heading for the postseason, let’s salvage what we can and claim another season series from the enemy.

I mean it…treat the game like a super-regional. Throw Dodson and/or Moreau and whatever it takes to win the game. If that means weakening the team for the Mississippi State series, so be it. Would I trade a slim chance at an early exit in Hoover for the season series with Tech? Damn right.

If you could script it, famous Tech-slayer Jonathan Wyatt will make a big play in this game.

Then again, all this is predicated on Tech actually making the trip this time.

Chip Towers had some nice off-season red meat a few days ago. Several of the players ran for some NFL scouts recently, and Coach Van Halanger shared some of the impressive results.

I should add that neither Towers nor Coach Van made any claims or predictions based on these speed trials. Still, it’s easy to get excited about guys running sub-4.4s. Can’t coach speed, right? Accuracy of the times aside though, that speed still has to translate somehow into results on the football field. Speed is only one attribute of a good football player. The most successful players usually aren’t the fastest. The pure speed track-star types often don’t do well. But speed is a good place to start.

Let me pick on two guys from Towers’ report, Mikey Henderson and A.J. Bryant. Bryant arrived several years ago rated #1 in the nation at the "athlete" position by Rivals.com. Henderson, a converted defensive back, finally got a chance to make an impact last year returning punts when Thomas Flowers was lost for the season. He came through with 367 punt return yards on 25 returns (219 of those yards coming on three returns). Bryant and Henderson were juniors in 2006, so they’ve paid their dues. Yet as receivers they had just 21 receptions between them in 2006. But they’re "athletes", so maybe we got them involved in the offense in other ways. Nope. Two carries total for a net of one yard.

Richt continues to talk up Henderson in particular this spring, and Mikey won "best all-around offensive player" honors for spring. Bryant himself isn’t a slouch. Still, I can’t help but be skeptical about their senior seasons. Will they be used more? Used differently? Are there deficiencies in their skills that keep them from more productivity? Is there a creativity problem in the playbook? Injuries have been a factor, but they haven’t been long-term obstacles. Will they as seniors get more than a reception each per game and the very rare carry?

Just a second, you say. We have other, more productive, receivers and a fleet – a many-headed monster, even – of tailbacks. We can’t get all of these guys 50 receptions and 1,000 yards a season. That’s true, but no one is getting 50 receptions a year lately or coming anywhere close to 1,000 yards. Having so many supposedly talented skill players jumbled up doesn’t mean that you’re blessed with an abundance of options. It more likely means that few have done much to separate themselves. A tight end has led Georgia in receiving yardage and receptions for two seasons now. Forgive me if I question how much we’re getting out of this speed.

On the other side of the ball, Towers said that cornerbacks Ramarcus Brown and Bryan Evans were neck-and-neck as the fastest guys in the time trials. Yet as last year went on, Evans won that other cornerback spot from Brown and looked to claim it as his own in the bowl game. That’s a player doing something positive to sort out a close positional battle. I doubt that Ramarcus will give up, and we’ll see him fighting to get on the field. I wonder if we’ll see more of that with Moreno at tailback this year (here I go buying into hype). Great players stand out even from other talented guys. Felix Jones is a tremendous tailback, but McFadden still shines through for Arkansas. Richt had no problem handing the ball to Musa Smith to the tune of 1,300+ yards.

Rashad Jones and Brandon Wood were two others that Chip mentioned. These two young guys have speed to burn. Jones showed his abilities at G-Day, and Coach Van raved over Wood’s combination of speed and strength. Does that automatically make them destined for success? Of course not. As freshmen, there’s still a lot to learn and work on fundamentally. They’ll be two to watch over the next couple of seasons to see how much the defense can get from them. It’s possible in 2008 to have Brown, Evans, and Jones as part of one fast-as-hell defensive backfield.

Georgia quarterbacks Matt Stafford and Joe Cox demonstrate the proper way to take in the big spring race at Talladega. Damn, I miss college.

The good news from the latest APR numbers is that none of Georgia’s programs are facing penalties right now. In fact, the key sports of football and men’s and women’s basketball made "appreciable increases." The football team has the second-best rating in the SEC behind Auburn. Given Auburn’s suspect academic practices, their presence at the top of the conference rankings does nothing but mock the APR.

At any rate, kudos to Evans, Richt, and Felton for taking care of the school’s highest-profile programs. We’ve focused on and debated Felton’s progress on the court, but he’s also made big strides in restoring a culture of academic success for Georgia basketball. Bulldog basketball increased its APR score by 106 points in one year.

Two Georgia programs, baseball and men’s track, face possible penalties next year if their APR does not improve, but they were close enough to the threshold of 925 points to avoid jeopardy this year.

It makes sense to me that baseball is one of the marginal sports, and that has little to do with Georgia’s management of the program and more to do with how college baseball works. As the ABH says, "Baseball coach David Perno said he was shocked his team’s APR score wasn’t lower because the NCAA limits the sport to 11.7 scholarships and has a culture of transfers." Me too.

That’s not a misprint: basketball teams get more scholarships than baseball teams. Baseball teams must divide up those 11.7 scholarships among 30+ players, and the portions aren’t equal. Where a full scholarship in another sport over four or five years lends itself to academic progress and a degree, these partial scholarships in baseball can lead student-athletes to seek out better deals and hop from school to school. Because of the scholarship issue, starting off at a junior college is a popular option for baseball players even for those who qualify academically and have Division 1 offers.

Unlike student-athletes in other sports, baseball players currently don’t have to sit out a year as they play this transfer game. But big changes are coming to college baseball. According to the ABH,

• Baseball transfers must sit out a year starting in 2008-2009.
• A maximum of 27 people can share in the 11.7 available scholarships, and the minimum share is 33% of a scholarship.
• A baseball team can carry no more than 35 players.
• "Baseball teams with four-year APRs of less than 900 will be required to cut their season by 10 percent."
• Academic eligibility will be determined at the start of the fall semester rather than at the start of the season. A tactic used now is to take a heavy load during fall semester in order to become eligible for the season. No more.

My uneducated guess is that an effect of these rules will be to make junior college ball an even more popular option. D-1 scholarships will become more scarce. Teams will only be able to carry a small amount of walk-ons. Transfer rules won’t apply to JUCO baseball players just as they don’t apply to football or basketball players. The changes will possibly make college teams a bit more stable and lead to better academic progress, and coaches won’t have the "sign as many as you can and see who sticks" method available to them in recruiting.

Remember Tony Cole? Sure you do. You thought we were rid of him. But in a case going back five years, former UGA student Tiffany Williams has only just now settled a $25 million lawsuit against the University related to a 2002 assault claim against Cole, basketball player Steve Thomas, and football player Brandon Williams. According to the Red and Black, “Williams argued school officials endangered her by recruiting Cole, despite knowledge of his history of sexual misconduct.”

The settlement is reported to be six-figures.

Unless I’m mistaken, this settlement is the last bit of unfinished business involving the stain of Cole upon the University. Good riddance. Thanks Jim & Jim.

Good luck to the Gym Dogs in their quest for three consecutive national titles. The championships begin this afternoon at 3:00 ET in Salt Lake City.

You can follow scores and NCAA championship news here.

Georgia assistant Brenda Hill has been named the new head coach of the Winder-Barrow girl’s basketball program, the ABH reports today. Hill, as most know, is the mother (and high school coach) of Georgia All-American Tasha Humphrey. Hill also has another daughter of high school age, and her new position will allow her to coach Mimi and spend more time in the area with both of her daughters.

The opening presents Coach Landers with an opportunity to go in several different directions. Does he go after a young female assistant with recent experience in the game and the WNBA? La’Keisha Frett was such a person when Landers brought her on a couple of years ago. Does he go back to someone like Hill with strong roots in the Georgia high schools? Or does he go for more experience? Former Lady Dog Susie Gardner resigned as Arkansas’ head coach after this past season and was just hired as an assistant at Florida. While Gardner might not be available anymore, there are similar experienced assistants and even former head coaches who might consider a job alongside the Hall of Fame-bound Landers.

The opening is also a chance to take stock. An evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the program, something that all coaches do after a season, could point him towards the kind of assistant who might fill the biggest need of the program. Katie Gilbert is an outstanding tactician and handles much of the team’s game preparation. She needs to focus on that role. Frett is still getting her feet wet both as a coach and a recruiter. As tempting as adding another former player might be, having two on the staff who are learning on the job might be a bit much.

These opportunities can also be bobbled. After longtime assistant Michael Shafer left for Richmond in 2005, the Lady Dogs had a brief but failed experiment with a former Clemson assistant. They were fortunate enough to find Frett willing to come on board on a temporary basis, and she earned a permanent position from it.

I believe the program most needs help in recruiting. If there’s another Michael Shafer out there, find him (or her)…easier said than done. Whether that means hiring a proven recruiter or hiring an experienced coach who can help with the details of the program as Landers turns his attention to improving recruiting, there is an imperative to increase the talent level. Brittany Carter was a great pickup from the in-state talent this year, but several others left the state, and it’s not a one-year thing. Landers himself admits, "We have got to do a better job. In the last couple of years, we have stumbled, and we have just got to do a better job."

While there’s plenty to be proud of about the state of the Georgia program, few are satisfied with being "just" a Sweet 16 program, and that is more or less the state of the program right now. They are certainly one of the top 15 programs in the nation and arguably one of the top 10. Landers is chief among those who demand better. He aims to make Georgia again one of the three or four programs at the top. This opening created by Hill’s departure is his chance to give the program the shot in the arm it needs to bring in more of the type of talent it takes to reclaim the program’s membership among the nation’s elite.

There has been no comment from Hill or the program yet.

"Matt Olson just absolutely killed us," Georgia Tech’s Danny Hall said.

When a Tech coach can say that about a Georgia player, that Dawg earns a special place of esteem here. Olson led the Dawgs with 6 RBI last night in a 10-7 win over Georgia Tech at Turner Field in front of over 21,000 fans. He got the scoring going with a bases-clearing 3-run double in the first inning and then added key insurance runs later in the game as Tech made pushes to cut into the lead. His 5th-inning home run extended Georgia’s lead to 7-3, and Tech wouldn’t come within three runs again. Olson finished with a single, two doubles, a home run to dead center, and a stolen base.

Georgia hasn’t had a great season. Without an incredible turnaround, they seem unlikely to qualify for the SEC Tournament as one of the league’s top eight teams. They seem even less likely to earn an NCAA Tournament bid. With those goals slipping away, kudos to Coach Perno and the guys for coming through in one thing they can still win: the season series with Georgia Tech. Tech took the first game of the season series 8-2 in Atlanta last week, and it wasn’t pretty. Georgia’s response at Turner Field was very encouraging. It wasn’t the cleanest of wins; Tech made plenty of mistakes – including walking the first three Georgia batters – and the Dawgs had some shaky pitching of their own at times. Josh Fields closed the game and induced a game-ending double play with the tying run on deck.

We’ll take the win. When the biggest problem this year has been offensive production, a nice outburst against your top rival in front of one of the biggest crowds to see college baseball this year is tremendous. Georgia is now 5-1 against Tech in the annual benefit game at Turner Field for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and they are 14-9 overall against the Yellow Jackets since 2001.

Olson reminds us that a win over Tech last year started a 12-game winning streak. A repeat of that streak is almost Georgia’s only shot for a postseason at this moment.

The Dawgs won’t have much time to enjoy the win, and the one-game winning streak will be tested immediately. Georgia travels to play Western Carolina tonight to make up a game canceled by weather earlier in the season. They lost 3-1 to the Catamounts back in March. Then it’s off to Kentucky for a weekend series with the Wildcats. UK isn’t as strong as they were last year and are just a game and a half in front of Georgia. With series coming up against strong Vanderbilt and Mississippi State teams, Georgia has to get some results in Lexington to have any chance.

Tech and Georgia are scheduled to meet again on May 9th in Athens to decide the season series. Watch that day for rain, a cloud in the sky, or even an especially good episode of Battlestar Galactica. If you’re at all familiar with this series, you know that the scheduled game in Athens has been conveniently canceled a couple of times in recent years.

Georgia claimed three SEC titles this weekend. Men’s and women’s tennis followed up their regular season titles with tournament titles. The women beat Florida for the title and ended Florida’s run of five straight SEC titles. Women’s golf also brought home team and individual championships. Unfortunately, the men’s top-ranked golf team finished just sixth at the SEC championship.

With a little more than a month remaining in the regular season, things continue to look grim for the Diamond Dawgs. They dropped another SEC series, losing the final two to Arkansas in Athens after winning on Friday. Stephen Dodson continues to be the lone bright spot; he’s pitched consecutive complete games for Friday night wins. The bad news is that the home stretch features series against several of the SEC’s better teams such as Vanderbilt and South Carolina. At this point, I’m just hoping we can salvage something from the two remaining games with Tech, including tomorrow night’s Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta benefit game at Turner Field.

Coming up this week:

• Baseball: vs. Georgia Tech, Tuesday 7:00 (@ Turner Field)
• Baseball: @ Western Carolina, Wednesday
• Baseball: @ Kentucky, Friday-Sunday
• Gymnastics: NCAA championships, Salt Lake City, Utah. The GymDogs will try for their third consecutive national title against hometown favorite Utah and a Florida squad that has been unbeatable so far this year. Thursday-Saturday.
• Football: NFL Draft, beginning Saturday

It’s been about a year and a half since University of Georgia students approved a fee to construct "Tate 2 ", an expansion of the Tate Student Center at the heart of campus. (Students of my era can relate to a fee for a building – the SPACENTER, now the Ramsey Center – which wouldn’t be finished until we were long gone.) After a delay, groundbreaking finally took place on the project on Thursday.

Though the plans have been scaled back a bit, the concept is still the same. The first phase will be to build a 500-space parking deck in the lot (N11) below the bookstore and adjacent to the Tate Center. Once that parking deck is completed, it will become operational as the Tate Expansion is constructed on top of it. If you think about the landscape in that area, it makes sense…there’s a big slope from the new Student Learning Center down to Tanyard Creek (the location of the Dawg Walk), so the top of this "underground" parking deck will be at ground level for the bookstore and Student Learning Center.

The project will transform the area that has become, thanks to the Dawg Walk, the "front door" to Sanford Stadium. Once the parking deck is completed, the remainder of the parking spaces in Dawg Walk Land will be converted into green space as part of a rehabilitation of the Tanyard Creek area. Original plans even included a "Dawg Walk Overlook" on top of the new parking deck next to the Tate Expansion. You have to see the conceptual drawings to really understand the project.

For those of us used to a sea of asphalt from the bookstore down to Gate 10, it will be a big chance to the central part of campus. The hulking Student Learning Center has already changed the look of the area, and this new development will take the next step. The original plans also call for a future "Alumni Development Center" along Lumpkin Street which will join with the Tate Expansion to mirror the SLC and create a plaza from the Baxter/Lumpkin intersection through to Sanford Drive.

If you’re reading this site, you’re probably more concerned with the impact on football than you are with the aesthetics of the campus master plan. The first obvious impact is parking. Once the project is completed, there will be a shiny new 500-space parking deck to replace the spaces lost to the new Tate Expansion and the green space along Tanyard Creek. In the meantime, those spaces at the site of the former UGA police headquarters and Stegeman Hall (lot N11) will be unavailable. While most of us don’t dream of parking that close to Sanford Stadium, the temporary loss of those spaces will probably push some of those with prime reserved spots further out into campus. The lot leading up to the stadium where the Dawg Walk takes place will remain until the deck is ready.

The broader impact to football fans will be to the gameday experience. If this is done right, I think the changes will eventually be very positive. The green space planned for the area could become a popular gathering area, assuming of course that UGA doesn’t claim it first as a "family-free-friendly" zone or allow the corporate tailgates to take over that prime space in close proximity to the stadium. Currently that entrance to the stadium is a massive parking lot in a bowl bordered by a creek that more closely resembles a drainage ditch. The Dawg Walk should be enhanced as fans can enjoy the plaza and not have to navigate parked cars in order to join in the experience.

I generally don’t do companies’ promotions work for them, but seven outgoing Georgia football players will be selling autographs at the Mall of Georgia on Saturday April 21st from 1-3 p.m.

Tra Battle, Ray Gant, Dan Inman, Quentin Moses, Mario Raley, Danny Ware, and Des Williams will be signing at the mall’s lower level in the Nordstrom Wing. Autographs will be $15 per player, four for $50, or all seven for $80.

Georgia is king (and queen) of the SEC in tennis. The men clinched the conference title over a week ago and finished out the regular season with an unblemished record by beating Tennessee. The women followed suit this weekend with their own conference title.

Gym Dogs

As expected, Georgia had little trouble breezing through the Denver regional to earn another trip to the national championships to defend their back-to-back titles.

The news wasn’t all good: senior Ashley Kupets’ career was ended with an achilles injury.

Baseball

If the Diamond Dawgs were going to have some kind of miraculous turnaround to the season, winning a series against another struggling team like Alabama would be a good start. Scratch that plan. Georgia dropped two of three to the Crimson Tide over the weekend. They fell 5-3 on Sunday after loading the bases in the eighth and ninth innings. Perno sounds helpless. "I don’t know about this team. Nothing is happening when we need it," he said.

Saturday’s 7-6 loss was especially painful; they led 6-5 before heading to the bottom of the ninth with closer Josh Fields on the mound. Dodson’s stellar Friday night was the lone bright spot of the series. The Dawgs are now 5-10 halfway through the SEC slate.

If there’s anything to salvage from this season, it’s the season series with Tech. The two teams meet on Wednesday in Atlanta.