I think this is a pretty easy prediction to make. It might not play out when Fisher follows Bowden at FSU or when Phillips follows Brooks at Kentucky, but one of these arranged succession plans is eventually going to explode in a program’s face. Some team is going to end up in one of these situations:

• The program fires the current staff before the old coach has a chance to step down, leaving the successor without a job he assumed was his.
• The fan base grows weary of the outgoing coach and everything about the old program. The successor is seen as a slipcover on worn-out furniture.
• The successor loses luster as an assistant before the transition can take place, leaving a program stuck with a guy they didn’t even want as an assistant.

I think the third scenario is most likely.

Georgia was “lucky” to beat Hawaii according to a former Warrior player,

As a former player, I’m tired of hearing fans and the media say that we were overmatched by bigger, faster, stronger players.
Georgia players are no different than us; the problem was they came to play and we didn’t.

There’s no question that Georgia was more prepared to play in a BCS bowl game than the deer-in-the-headlights Warriors, but the difference between Georgia and Hawaii players showed up on nearly every play. This former player attributes Georgia’s success in this game of evenly-matched teams to…scheme.

Georgia was dominant, not only because they were good athletes, but because their scheme put them in the best position to win.

Interesting – all we heard coming up to the game was fawning over June Jones’ run-and-shoot scheme which gave Hawaii the ability to succeed at a level the program had never seen. There was nothing innovative or unique about Georgia’s scheme on either side of the ball, especially on defense unless the unheard-of strategy of getting pressure with the front four will now be the new hot thing in college football.

Georgia got lucky, and I say that from a player’s point of view. We gave up big plays, which at the end killed us.

Okey-dokey. I appreciate the fight and spirit and the pride in the program, but to borrow a line from Gladiator, a people should know when they are conquered. Good luck against Florida though.

The AJC reported several days ago that Herschel Walker is coming out with a book in which he details a secret struggle with multiple personality disorder.

Meanwhile, everyone from Frank Ros to Vince Dooley to Herschel’s own father has said that Walker’s revelation is news to them.

Like Dooley, I’m curious to see what the book has to say. While mental illness is very real and often goes untreated and under the radar of even our loved ones, there is no shortage of fraud and quackery in the business, especially when it comes to “repressed memories.” If Herschel really has dealt with this condition privately his whole life, coming forward in this very public way is truly a significant act. I just hope for his sake that someone isn’t out to make a name off of Herschel Walker.

Two quarterbacks with high expectations entering 2007 are seeing the story end a bit differently than they had hoped:

• Oklahoma State’s Bobby Reid, who drew faint comparisons to Vince Young before the season, will transfer to Texas Southern rather than enter the NFL draft. Reid earned the OSU starting job in 2006, but a poor performance at Georgia and an early-season injury saw him give way to Zac Robinson.
• Georgia Tech’s Taylor Bennett will apparently graduate and head elsewhere now that Paul Johnson’s option offense is coming to town. Bennett still has a year of eligibility remaining, but he has burned his redshirt year. The NCAA post-graduate transfer rule has been rescinded. If Bennett wants to play, he’ll have to do it at the 1-AA level or lower.

Mark Richt didn’t have to turn very far to find his new tight ends coach. UGASports.com is reporting this afternoon that Richt’s friend and former Florida State colleague John Lilly will accept the position left vacant by David Johnson’s departure to West Virginia.

While some of Richt’s past hires have required a bit of connect-the-dots to make sense, Lilly was an obvious target from the beginning. He was offered a position at Georgia in 2001 when Richt originally assembled his staff, but he chose to remain at FSU. Seven seasons later, Lilly has decided to make the move and will join Richt and Dave Van Halanger in Athens.

News of this move breaking before Signing Day is a little surprising; Lilly has a reputation as an outstanding recruiter, and his departure will surely have an impact on the Seminoles’ recruiting efforts. He has been FSU’s recruiting coordinator since 1998. With Georgia’s 2007 recruiting class more or less finished, Lilly won’t have much of an impact this year except perhaps to shore up the commitment of TE Dwayne Allen.

For future classes the addition of Lilly will give the Georgia program an impressive roster of recruiters. Rodney Garner is still Georgia’s recruiting coordinator of course, but Lilly gives Georgia some flexibility down the road. Garner is happy at Georgia, but we can’t blame the guy for eyeing his dream of a head coaching opportunity. In the meantime, Garner, Lilly, and Bobo are as good as it gets as recruiters, and they all complement Mark Richt well.

Lilly’s challenge on the field will be to continue the recent legacy of successful Bulldog tight ends that goes back over a decade now. Brandon Warren was a freshman All-American tight end at FSU in 2006, but he left the Seminole program before the 2007 season.

I was impressed as anyone with Georgia’s win over Arkansas on Saturday. There were so many things to note: Humphrey’s continued development inside the perimeter. Woodbury finally started to find his shot. Price and Bliss are becoming an effective tandem when Bliss plays well.

It was interesting to hear analyst Eddie Fogler note that Arkansas didn’t strike him as a very bright team. You could see that play out as Arkansas willingly got into Georgia’s preferred up-and-down style. The Dawgs were able to hit layups and jumpers, often in transition, and passing was generally sharp.

As pwd observes, we’ve seen flashes like this from the Dawgs before. Putting it together against Arkansas is one thing. Keeping it going in consecutive road games at Tennessee and South Carolina is another. We know that this team is an off-night from Humphrey and/or Gaines away from an ugly loss, but Humphrey especially has become more and more consistent of a scorer, and that’s just what this team needs to be successful. Now with Woodbury seemingly coming around and a nice supporting cast developing, are we foolish for starting to get our hopes up again?

One thing is becoming clear after a few weeks of SEC play: Georgia might be a sure tournament team if they played in the SEC West. There is some awful basketball being played over there.

You’d think that a game at Tennessee wouldn’t be the place to expect much consistency, but hopefully the guys will hold themselves to a better standard. A lot has happened since last March, but Georgia pushed the Vols to the buzzer in the 2006-2007 regular season finale. They are more than capable of playing with the Vols.

SEC Men’s Power Ranking:

1. Tennessee: Handling the role of favorite well for once.
2. Florida: Still a very quality club.
3. Vanderbilt: Need to beat better teams to be taken seriously.
4. Mississippi St.: Good start, solid defense.
5. Kentucky: Best of the rest?
6. Ole Miss: Shaky SEC start after undefeated non-conference slate.
7. Georgia: Can we play them all at home?
8. Arkansas: Disappointing start for preseason West favorite.
9. Auburn: Good upset win at home over Ole Miss.
10. South Carolina: Stole one at Arkansas; Odom’s farewell tour begins.
11. Alabama: More than missing Steele behind their 0-4 start.
12. LSU: Is John Brady still coaching this team?

Lady Dogs

Andy Landers had been stuck on 698 career wins at Georgia for over a week, but a return home to Stegeman served to put the Lady Dogs back into the win column. Ugly road losses at Auburn and Vandy gave Georgia a 1-2 conference record and three losses in their last four games. Behind 25 points from Tasha Humphrey, Georgia beat Alabama 71-53 on Sunday. Angel Robinson added 12 points and 14 rebounds.

I’ll say what the team couldn’t say in the press. Alabama isn’t good. They’ve improved slightly from last season when they were embarrassingly bad. A win over Bama isn’t much cause for celebration these days, and the fact that the margin in this game hovered around ten points for much of the afternoon isn’t a good thing. Georgia out-talented Alabama, and that’s about it. Turnovers in particular were devastating. Guard play, especially on offense, is becoming a big concern.

This is an important week for the Lady Dogs. They’ve lost three of their four true road games this season, and those three losses haven’t been pretty. They go on the road to face Florida this week. The Gators have been surprisingly good in conference play with a first-year coach, and they surely have to see a shaky Georgia team as a great opportunity to make some noise in the SEC. This Sunday the Lady Dogs head out to face Oklahoma in a nationally-televised battle of ranked teams. It’s billed as a Tasha Humphrey vs. Courtney Paris showdown, but the supporting casts will likely mean the difference.

A win in both these road games would be significant to right the ship, and beating Oklahoma would be noteworthy on the national scene. Landers’ next win will be his 700th at Georgia.

SEC Women’s Power Ranking:

1. Tennessee: A class of their own.
2. LSU: Defensively dominant with Fowles. Offense can sputter at times.
3. Vanderbilt: 2-2 with losses to UT and LSU.
4. Kentucky: Solid win over Auburn has them at 3-1 after some bad nonconference losses.
5: Georgia: Got a needed win over Bama, but still vulnerable. Key week for them.
6. Auburn: Win over Georgia the sole bright spot lately. Depth and suspensions taking their toll.
7. Florida: Playing well, first back-to-back SEC wins since 2006.
8. Ole Miss: Nice upset of Arkansas.
9. Arkansas: Unimpressive in conference play after soft nonconference schedule.
10. Mississippi St.: Embarrassed at LSU.
11. Alabama: 22 losses in last 23 SEC games.
12. South Carolina: Unacceptable loss to Alabama.

In what I guess is a conciliatory gesture, President Adams has written writing our vanquished bowl victims and patted them on the head for a job well done.

The University of Hawai’i has much about which it can be proud — its academic program, its successful alumni and, yes, its football team. But what will remain for many of us from this year’s Sugar Bowl is the warmth and graciousness with which UH fans conducted themselves.

You’d think he’s campaigning for something. Did we send a similar note to the Roanoke Times last year?

Known for ending the careers of successful football coaches, the coaching graveyard that is Columbia, South Carolina has now claimed a victim on the basketball court. Dave Odom plans to retire at the end of this season.

Odom shocked the basketball world in April 2001 when he left a successful ACC program at Wake Forest to take over after Eddie Fogler resigned. Odom was actually South Carolina’s third choice after Tubby Smith and Jim Calhoun turned them down, but Odom’s arrival still caused a pretty big splash.

Fogler had led the Gamecocks to consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances in 1997 and 1998, compiling a 47-16 record in those seasons, and he was named national coach of the year after winning South Carolina’s first SEC regular season title in 1997 with a 15-1 conference record. Those two NCAA Tournament appearances (which included a #2 and #3 seed) became notorious though as the Gamecocks were upset in the first round each year. Fogler never had a winning season after 1998, and he resigned after a 15-15 finish and first-round NIT loss in 2001.

Odom arrived with an impressive resume. Besides coaching All-Americans Tim Duncan, Randolph Childress, and Rodney Rogers, he led Wake Forest to two ACC championships, several top 10 finishes, and seven straight NCAA Tournaments from 1991-1997. South Carolina, in the middle of the Lou Holtz euphoria, expected Odom to right the ship and return the program to consistent results like the program enjoyed in the late 90s.

It never happened. Odom’s Gamecocks have never finished better than 8-8 in the SEC, and they have made a single trip to the NCAA Tournament (2004). South Carolina won consecutive NITs in 2005 and 2006, and they were the Cinderella of the 2006 SEC Tournament reaching the finals and nearly knocking off eventual national champion Florida.

Odom was never quite able to get the South Carolina program to the level that was expected in 2001. Though he’ll likely leave with a better winning percentage than Fogler, his teams never approached Fogler’s best.

Though the playoff proposal got tabled, another issue raised by UGA President Michael Adams will get a closer look from the NCAA.

The Division I Board of Directors at its January 14 meeting approved the formation of a presidential task force to examine issues of commercialism and student-athlete well-being associated with athletics, including postseason football.

The Board issued a statement which said in part that, “the NCAA Board agreed the issues of presidential leadership and commercialism, identified in President Adams’ communication, especially deserve further discussion.”

One wonders what the outcome of this task force will be. When most of us complain about the crass commercialism surrounding bowl games, we’re talking about television broadcasts that last until the rooster crows three times the following morning. But “commercialism” can mean many things from corporate sponsorships to the gifts given to participating players.

On the other hand, TV deals fuel the bowls which fuel the BCS conferences, and, as we’ve seen every time this subject comes up, the conferences aren’t in a hurry to get off the gravy train. A conclusion that “less commercialism” means “give us just as much money but be less visible” will probably get the same response from the networks and sponsors as the playoff proposal got from the conferences.

Officials at West Virginia suspect former coach Rich Rodriguez of taking the scorched earth strategy to the extreme on his way out of town:

Soon after returning to work after the Fiesta Bowl a little more than a week ago, the staff at the Puskar Center found that most of the files — including all of the player files — that had been stored in Rodriguez’s private office were missing. In addition, all of the players’ strength and conditioning files in the weight room were gone.

According to multiple sources, several people in the Puskar Center reported seeing Rodriguez and at least one member of his inner circle, video coordinator Dusty Rutledge, in Rodriguez’s private office shredding paperwork on Dec. 18.

This is on top of a $4 million dispute between Rodriguez and West Virginia over breaking his contract. The ill will was already bad enough, but now one has to wonder what he was hiding, especially in the area of player development.

While the files in Rodriguez’s office held a wide range of information, those that were discovered missing from the weight room office were more specific. Those included every aspect of strength and conditioning progress made by players under former strength and conditioning coordinator Mike Barwis, who along with most of his immediate staff followed Rodriguez to Michigan after the Fiesta Bowl. Those files included the progression made by each player in every specific area, from bench-press totals to 40-yard dash times. The files even included pictures of the players at different points in their careers.

Now the world may never find out how Owen Schmitt was transformed from a walk-on into a mohawk-wearing cyborg that still had the capacity for human emotion.

The NCAA held an educational session called "Crisis Communication Planning Strategies and Tools" at its annual convention in Nashville over the weekend. Two of the discussion leaders were from Virginia Tech and Bluffton. "Crisis" doesn’t begin to describe what those schools went through last year; Virginia Tech had a massacre on its campus, and Bluffton lost members of its baseball team in a bus accident in Atlanta.

There was a third member of this panel: a representative from Rutgers. What crisis did the Scarlet Knights deal with last year that’s in the same ballpark as a mass murder and a fatal bus accident? Oh, that’s right. Their women’s basketball team was insulted on a national radio show.

I give full credit to the Bluffton and Virginia Tech representatives for not asking Rutgers’ senior director of media relations Greg Trevor, "are you lost?"

The Knoxville News-Sentinel reports that two Tennessee football players were arrested over the weekend for marijuana possession. That might seem like just another offseason arrest (and early Fulmer Cup entry) until you read that they were showing a visiting lad a night on the town.

Also in the car were Jameel Owens of Oklahoma, a recruit in Knoxville for his official visit, and UT player William Brimfield. Neither of those two were charged.

The appeals process began last summer, and the NCAA Board of Directors decided to uphold the proposed ban. The process gave the membership the opportunity to vote on it at this week’s annual meeting, and, with only 21.3% of the Division I membership voting in favor of overturning the ban, the appeals process is over. E-mail and fax will be the only approved methods for initiating electronic communication with prospects. (Of course a prospective student-athlete may initiate contact using any means he or she chooses.)

The voice of the student-athlete carried a lot of weight in this decision. Speaking as the voice of the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, Kerry Kenny told the membership, “We believe that text messaging and instant messaging are both highly unprofessional in the recruiting process,” Kenny said. “You wouldn’t use text messaging to contact an employer when searching for a job, and it’s unlikely that an employer would contact you with a text message to offer you the job.”

The Division I membership also upheld a proposed restructuring of baseball financial aid. Squad size will be capped at 35 players, and the minimum share for a partial scholarship is 25%. Georgia president Michael Adams voiced support for the plan.

After surviving the appeals process, both proposals go into effect in August.

Georgia has its share of meddling boosters who like to pull a power play every now and then, but even we have our limits.

Says Josh Moon in the Montgomery Advertiser,

In case you missed it, numerous reports, including one from the Montgomery Advertiser’s own Jay G. Tate, have stated that Muschamp left the Tigers after a mixup with his contract and learning that Tuberville wasn’t exactly on very solid footing at Auburn.

A group of powerful AU boosters made a power play and orchestrated plans to remove Tuberville after the Alabama game this year. I have no idea what they planned to say to Tubs when firing him, other than, “Sorry, Tommy, but six straight wins over ‘Bama and the best four-year record in school history just isn’t good enough. This is Auburn, after all. We’re used to far less.”

Anyway, Muschamp saw all of this and decided it was a headache he didn’t need. So, he caught the first plane out of town.

At least a plane trip to Louisville wasn’t involved this time. Then again, Tuberville followed up the first attempted “coup” with an undefeated season. Maybe these self-important boosters are batshit crazy…like a fox.

Pittsburgh all-pro receiver Hines Ward had knee surgery on Wednesday and will be out of commission for about six weeks. The Steelers’ season ended with a playoff loss to Jacksonville last weekend. Of course Ward still recorded 10 catches for 135 yards with the bum knee – that’s just Hines.

By the way, does seeing the phrase “ten-year veteran” in a story about Hines Ward make anyone else feel old?