On a chilly December morning…

Think about the playmakers coming back next year on defense and then add in Akeem Hebron who is on his way back to Athens.  Hebron was projected to be a starting linebacker last year before a semester suspension for alcohol-related violations.  Go ahead and picture it…Curran, Washington, Ellerbe, Hebron, Dewberry, Dent, and Charles White.

It looks as if the Dawgs won’t have to worry about juniors declaring for the NFL Draft this year.  Ellerbe, Southerland, and Jeff Owens have all submitted the paperwork to see what their draft status might be, but no one is seriously considering leaving.

Anthony Dasher of UGASports.com spoke with the three last week and confirmed that none of the three has plans to leave.  Owens in particular had an interesting quote:

“Herschel said he regretted coming out early and that he should have come back for his senior year,” Owens said. “I happen to agree. It’s a great experience to be here with my teammates. I love them all to death.”

Finally…there’s recruiting.  It’s just going to get better.

Ivan Maisel has a nice piece up (h/t Get the Picture) that is mostly about Michigan and Rich Rodriguez, but I’m also glad to see someone try to temper the celebration of parity that’s going on this season.

For all the talk of parity, the teams playing for the national title are 1) a team that played for the title last year and 2) one of the preseason picks. I also note that four of the six BCS conference champions were favored to win their conferences, and the other two – Ohio State and Oklahoma – aren’t exactly newcomers to the scene. The only real manifestation of parity in the BCS is Kansas.

It really has been a wild and incredible season, but something strikes me as wrong when people in the game are placing who lost above who’s winning. As entertaining as upsets are and as great of a story as Kansas is, I still prefer to see excellence shine through. The 2006 Rose Bowl was the ultimate as Bush’s Southern Cal slugged it out with Young’s Texas. Though there are exceptions, true excellence in college football is most likely going to come from a traditional power, and it’s better for the sport when programs like Michigan are doing well. As insensitive as it might be to say, it’s better for the game that Rodriguez is at Michigan than at West Virginia.

For six and a half years, we had to deal with the perception, even among our own fans, that Mark Richt was a dull, unimaginative coach that lacked fire.

Now, according to Honolulu Advertiser columnist Ferd Lewis, Richt is a "motivational master." I’ll take it.

I’m not the biggest Bobby Petrino (or even Atlanta Falcons) fan, but am I the only one who finds all of the hyperbolic hand-wringing over his latest career change a bit much? I must admit I find it amusing how all of the Falcons players who have mailed in this season are now instant authorities on "being a man." If only they played that way.

It seems as if this new concept of loyalty when it comes to coaches is decidedly one-way. Owners and schools have no problem cutting a contract short even in the middle of a season. The difference of course is that a team is usually still on the hook to play the coach when the coach is fired. Teams could certainly build such clauses into the contracts when a coach decides to bolt, but that’s up to them. With fans and teams increasingly impatient for results given the big dollars involved, I can understand (though not necessarily admire) when a coach tries to stay ahead of the game. It makes you appreciate guys like Mark Richt.

When you have someone like Sean Salisbury more or less imploring prospects not to consider Arkansas, it’s clear that the reaction has long since become overreaction. Last year the Hogs got burned by players and coaches bailing on them; now they benefit from a similar move. Just don’t be surprised when Petrino installs a revolving door in his office.

For once, I would be fascinated to see if Lou Holtz weighs in on this once the bowl season punditry gets cranked up. If anyone knows about leaving a 3-10 pro team to coach at Arkansas, no one else is more qualified.

But it is SEC-related. Hey, you can always apply for the job yourself.

As I had hoped, Bobby Johnson’s interest in the Duke job was fleeting.

Now the Blue Devils are talking to Tennessee OC and former Ole Miss HS David Cutcliffe. Tennessee has had moderate success (particularly against Georgia) with Cutcliffe since he returned from Oxford, and he’s credited with the development of Erik Ainge.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The program gets underway in January.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Otherwise, have a great weekend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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