You saw them all over the news: a destitute people barely able to go on from one day to the next, ravaged by one of the worst disasters to hit the area in recorded history, and wondering just when they’d begin to see a glimmer of hope at the end of their long nightmares.

But enough about the Mike Shula era.

Surprisingly, tsunami aid has dried up in Tuscaloosa

Real estate investment money is flowing into Tuscaloosa, and it’s because of tax breaks intended to help recovery in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Though 200 miles from the coast, Tuscaloosa was included in the "GO Zone", an area designated along the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama coasts offering special incentives for redevelopment of these areas most affected by Katrina. Most importantly, the GO Zone "also allows real estate investors who buy condos or other properties in the GO Zone to take accelerated depreciation on their purchases when they file their taxes."

What’s the big deal about tax breaks on condos? If you’ve been in any major football town in the South lately, you’ve seen an explosion of condo development – mostly targeted at the wealthy alumni looking for a second home around the corner from the old alma mater. Athens itself has several, and the market is competitive enough to pull out big guns like Herschel Walker for endorsements. But the condos are also potential investments for real estate groups who can turn around and rent the units.

Since the tax break is not available to people who would buy the units for their own use, the condos are much more attractive to investors. For investors with large portfolios, the tax savings in Tuscaloosa could be used to offset higher taxes in other investments. As a result, the Tuscaloosa market is supporting ten such condo projects right now. Local experts estimate that the tax break is responsible for "10 percent of all recent condo sales in the city." With the breaks due to expire next year in Alabama, investors are getting into the markets while they still can.

Why was Tuscaloosa, several hundred miles inland, included in the recovery area?

Locals say Tuscaloosa was included in the GO Zone through the efforts of Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, who is from Tuscaloosa, graduated from Alabama and sits on the powerful Appropriations Committee. But Shelby aides said Tuscaloosa made the cut because it was classified as a disaster area by the government after Katrina, not because of the senator’s influence.

Riiiiiight. Meanwhile, as Tuscaloosa gameday condo developers and investors put the horror of Katrina behind them in Sen. Shelby’s hometown, the areas without football teams where redevelopment is most needed haven’t quite seen the same impact.

State reports reviewed by the AP and interviews show that the most ballyhooed part of the GO Zone bill — $15 billion in tax-exempt bonds — has had relatively little effect so far.

Via the wonderful Double-A Zone blog…

• The text-messaging ban sticks. The Division I membership will get to vote on the proposal in January, but it will take a 5/8 majority to override it now.
• Baseball financial aid will be revised. Because baseball student-athletes share 11.7 scholarships among them, the portions can vary widely. The original proposal was to limit an individual’s share to no less than 33% of a scholarship. That has been changed to 25% of a scholarship. The size of a baseball squad will ultimately be capped at 35.
• The Final Four will be played in aircraft hangars soon. Instead of the current half-arena configurations we see when basketball tournaments are played in football domes, the Final Four in 2009 will begin using entire-arena configurations that will allow for more than 70,000 seats. Though I think the change will have some problems as the intimate 94-foot sport of basketball gets swallowed by these giant arenas, I like that students will have easier access to tickets in the future. Ever been to a basketball game at a dome? Lifeless is an understatement.

The last meta-topic we’ll touch on before this season starts is the ultra-subjective group of "elite" or "national power" teams. Stewart Mandel waded into this territory last week and fumbled around, and he really whiffed with his "what does someone in Montana think?" attempt this week.

Many getting involved in this discussion are dwelling, like Mandel, on the related but different question of being nationally recognized. Yes, everyone knows Herschel Walker. Uga is an icon. "Between the Hedges" means something to most knowledgeable football fans. The "G" is sharp and distinctive. None of that makes Georgia a national power on the football field. A powerful brand? Sure..probably even in Montana.

The question of actual power has to be fluid and kept in the current context because it wanes and waxes. History is full of teams and individuals that were once powerful and relevant but aren’t any longer. How a team has done since 1976 doesn’t really have any relevance to me. Power, though not a one-season thing, is still pretty short-term. Personally, I think we use the "elite" label a little too loosely in an everybody-gets-a-trophy kind of way. There are only a handful of programs each season who belong in the national title picture, and it doesn’t make sense to continually be on the outside of that picture and still be considered a national power.

Some will use historical criteria. Others prefer averaging wins over a reasonable period. Championships matter more to some. A coast-to-coast schedule impresses others. I think it’s much simpler and can be boiled down to three guidelines:

• You must show some level of consistency. FSU set the bar in the 1990s. One phenomenal season doesn’t make you a power.
• You should be considered at least peripherally in some recent national title discussions. Winning it really helps.
• You cannot consider yourself a "power", especially in the national sense, when you’re under someone’s thumb.

Georgia fans will recognize right away that I played the Florida card. It’s plain silly to talk about national power status when you’re on the wrong side of such a one-sided series. That means you too, Alabama. It also held a team like Texas up before Vince Young came along. It held Ohio State up under John Cooper. This point alone settles Georgia’s "national power" question for me, but we’ll look at the other guidelines anyway.

Has Georgia’s success been consistent? Last season was the first year since 2001 in which the Dawgs didn’t win at least 10 games. Not bad. But that ten win threshold, particularly in the 12-game era, still means at least two losses per season. They’ve won three divisional and two major conference titles over the same span and haven’t gone more than a single season without a trip to the conference championship game. That’s outstanding in a conference like the SEC. By itself, Georgia’s consistency seems enough to merit national power recognition.

Georgia hasn’t been a part of the national title discussion since 2002. Yes, they started 2004 ranked #3. That faded after a scare at South Carolina and a loss to Tennessee. It was nearly impossible to get above the noise of Southern Cal and Texas in 2005, and Georgia’s chances ended when D.J. Shockley crumpled to the turf against Arkansas. Georgia has certainly been relevant over that time and probably competitive with any team, but it’s hard to make the case that they belonged among the teams mentioned as title contenders.

The Bulldogs aren’t far from national power status. 2007 is very important in terms of consistency- they cannot slide lower than the 9-win total of last season. The national title discussion is already crystallizing around a handful of teams – LSU, Southern Cal, and Michigan with teams like Texas, Florida, and your choice of Big East teams on the periphery. Most importantly, the Dawgs must find a way soon to turn the Florida series. I don’t mean that Georgia must begin dominating the series. Just get it competitive again.

If you forced me to stick to these criteria to say who the elite teams are in college football, here we go: Southern Cal. LSU. Texas. Ohio State. Florida depends upon the consistency they show this year. Maybe Oklahoma (waning?). That’s it. No Notre Dame. No Tennessee. No Georgia. No Cal. Michigan? You’re close, but work on the consistency thing and on beating Ohio State.

There’s no shame to be where Georgia is right now. Most programs would kill for it. Let’s just not call it what it isn’t. Deep down, we know that there is a next step that Georgia has yet to take.

Coach Richt addressed the inference that Georgia spied on Virginia Tech practices before the Chick-fil-A Bowl.  As you might expect, Richt denied the inference and was empathetic to a coach’s concerns about secrecy.

I can assure Coach Beamer that we did not know anything about what was going on, but I can understand why he would want to close a practice.

…I cannot tell you how many times we felt the same way. You wonder what happened. Sometimes you get the right call at the right time and if that happens enough times coaches begin to wonder if you somehow have their signals…It is natural and I do not blame him for wanting to close it or even feeling that way. To my knowledge we have no idea what was going on in their camp.

HacksawDawg from the DawgVent reveals Georgia’s spy

You’ll read several articles with some excerpts, but it’s really interesting to read the entire transcript with Richt’s comments on the subject.  UGASports.com has it for subscribers.

Richt, like most coaches, restricts access to practice.  The general public is almost never allowed in.  Media are asked to leave after positional drills.  It’s a common policy.  But would he like to go further?

I wish I could close it down completely, but it is kind of hard to do with our set up. I can see why any coach would want to close everything that they do, especially with the Internet.

Before you get on Richt for being paranoid, consider the value of information to these coaches.  It’s everything.  From plays to injury reports, every bit of information released is a possible advantage for an opponent.  Even if there’s no malice, that information can be costly.

Even if we let our fans come in who love us, they would just talk about everything that happened and then people would read it and be able to find decipher some things that would help them win.

Of course Richt can’t completely cut off access.  The team must play the game with the media – access in exchange for for coverage and publicity.  But Richt admits that he is more conscious of this issue than he was when he first took the job and more cautious as a result.

I have seen enough things and people cannot help themselves. Like if you (TV) guys had a camera rolling on stuff all day long, you would be thinking that you are getting b-roll (footage) for the eleven o’clock news, but when you show the b-roll, you show something a good defensive coordinator could say, “oh I like that. I did not know they were doing that. They did not do that last year.” I do not think anyone is purposefully trying to sabotage Georgia.

Just a couple of months after leading Georgia to the collegiate national title, it didn’t John Isner long to find success at the professional level.

In just his second professional event, Isner reached the finals of the Legg Mason Tennis Classic before falling to superstar Andy Roddick. He beat three top-ten seeds along the way with his dominant serve and clutch performances in tiebreakers. His finish earned him a $43,700 paycheck, and he will move up into the top 200 in the ATP rankings.

The finals had a decidedly Georgia flavor. Roddick’s brother John was a former Bulldog standout himself.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that Frank Beamer was accusing Georgia of spying on Virginia Tech’s Chick-fil-A Bowl practices:

“We practiced out at Georgia Tech and we let all kinds of people through there … people we didn’t really know,” Beamer said. “And I thought it hurt us in the bowl game. I’m not blaming anybody … but I thought Georgia knew exactly what we were doing in several situations.”

The plan was masterful:  allow Virginia Tech to get up 21-3 in order to maintain the illusion of a close game.  It didn’t matter that Virginia Tech constantly let the tight end slip past them.  It didn’t matter that they tried to block NFL-bound Charles Johnson with a freshman tight end.  Never mind film study and preparation.  “I’m not blaming anybody…”  Sure, Frank.

Virginia Tech has now closed “team” part of practices to the public.  It’s a policy that most schools use, including Georgia.  Now when his quarterback implodes in the second half, Beamer will have to look elsewhere for an excuse.

The preseason USA Today Coaches’ Poll is out this morning, and the Dawgs check in at a respectable #13.  That’s third-highest for any SEC team (LSU and Florida are #2 and #3).  Too high?  Too low?  Who knows?  We do know that poll position matters when it comes to the national title race, and the Dawgs aren’t far away from cracking the top 10.

The preseason top 10:

• Southern Cal
• LSU
• Florida
• Texas
• Michigan
• West Virginia
• Wisconsin
• Oklahoma
• Virginia Tech
• Ohio State

Six SEC teams are ranked:  LSU (#2), Florida (#3), Georgia (#13), Auburn (#14), Tennessee (#15), and Arkansas (#20).  South Carolina, Kentucky, and Alabama also received votes.  Out-of-conference opponents Georgia Tech and Oklahoma State were also among the “others receiving votes” category.

As a reminder, here’s Georgia’s consensus preseason position over the last decade or so:

The Senator has some thoughtful posts up in the past couple of days about preseason polls and their effect on the postseason.

I looked at the story of Auburn 2004 myself last month (more from a scheduling perspective) and came to a similar conclusion but with one key difference: Auburn’s problems started long before the preseason polls. I believe that the mess left after the 2003 BCS established default 2004 contenders from the second that the final whistle blew. The 2004 preseason polls were just the culmination of the controversy and eight months of debate.

We see a similar thing already happening this season. Even before any official preseason polls have been released, those who help to guide the discussion are already setting the table for a Southern Cal – LSU national title game. It’s theirs to lose.

I don’t disagree with the merit and logic of delaying official polls. It’s clear that "name" programs get the benefit of the doubt. I do think though that delaying polls runs contrary to the nature of a football fan. We are constantly measuring ourselves against our rivals and opponents in everything from recruiting to scheduling. Many of the preseason polls included in Stassen’s analysis do nothing but drive magazine sales. If an Auburn fan can hold something over the head of an Alabama fan, it doesn’t matter how premature, inaccurate, or trivial the poll is. Mascots? Been there. Stadiums? Done that. Coaches? Finebaum stirs that pot every summer.

Will that change if official polls are delayed? I don’t think so. Fans will still support the preseason magazine industry, and the rankings are the core of that business. I even suspect that the official polls themselves wouldn’t change much. Why? Because, as the Senator reminds us, people who vote in polls are lazy. How true that is. What that means in terms of releasing polls later in the season is that the pollsters will "cheat". The groupthink would be established over the summer by the pundits and the magazines, and no observer of the game can remain untainted. Why take the time to pour over a month of football when Phil Steele has done all of the work for you? Take the preseason consensus, adjust for the losses over the first month of the season, and you’re done. For that reason, I don’t expect that any poll released for the first time in October would be much different than the polls we already see in the fifth and sixth week of the season.

While the flaw the Senator points out is very real, I’m not so sure that delaying polls would provide any real changes.

The Georgia-Florida game as-is still has at least three years left. All it took was a mention from Coach Richt to get opinions flying again on the subject. Nearly every Georgia fan has a pretty strong opinion on the issue, and variations on alternatives are about as numerous as playoff proposals. As we get closer to the decision, just think how much more heated this discussion will become.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that any change to the Georgia-Florida game, especially if initiated by the Georgia side, will have as divisive an effect as the Dooley-Adams flap of 2003.

Last night’s Atlanta Bulldog Club meeting was the typical preseason pep rally, but the nagging topic of Florida naturally came up.

Coach Richt didn’t back down to the challenge and matter-of-factly stated that the Gators stood in the way of Georgia’s goals. "If we are going to win an SEC East title, and that is our plan – to win it, we are going to have to beat them," he explained. "If they are in the way, then so be it." That sounded great until the topic of the venue came up.

"Do I truly think it is a neutral site?" Richt said. "No, I don’t. That doesn’t feel very neutral to me. If you want to have a neutral game, let’s have a neutral game in Atlanta. I would not be against rotating the thing around."

Forget about defending the tradition of the Cocktail Party for a second. We’ve got a bigger problem.

Florida is a tough enough opponent without things like the location becoming a mental block for the head coach. In a game of this magnitude with not only a rivalry but often an SEC East title on the line, that’s not good news. When the Top Dawg gets off the plane thinking, "neutral my left toe," you’re at a disadvantage before the game is ever played. The game has been decided by a touchdown or less in the past five meetings, so you can appreciate the significance of the mental advantage when two pretty evenly-matched quality teams play.

I don’t think it’s a reach to suggest that this mental block has manifested itself in Georgia’s offensive performances in Jacksonville. For all of the attention paid to Spurrier and Meyer and their offenses, Georgia’s biggest impediment in Jacksonville has more often than not been on the other side of the ball. In Richt’s six games against Florida, the Dawgs have scored 10, 13, 13, 31, 10, and 14 points against the Gators. It hasn’t exactly taken Norm Chow on the other sideline to beat those meager point totals, and it’s not an accident that Georgia won in the only year in which they broke 20 points. Mike Bobo was under center for a big loss and a big win in Jacksonville, and we’ll see if his promotion to coordinator can do anything to snap Georgia out of this funk on offense.

Maybe I’m wrong for dwelling on this point on a night where Richt confidently praised his quarterback and said "I don’t think we are too far away" from bringing a national title to Athens. It’s just that any national title run in the near future is going to go through Jacksonville. The Dawgs need a dose of that same mental toughness that they bring to Columbia, Knoxville, and Auburn, and dwelling on the neutrality of the site isn’t a positive first step towards building that attitude.

Richt is resigned to play the game in Jacksonville for the time being, "Whatever Damon says goes. The bottom line is we have got to win the game." That conclusion, while true, doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence when we’re reluctant to be there in the first place.

One of the themes coming out of the Georgia camp from SEC Media Days was the relative absence of Bulldogs in preseason media honors. As Ching wrote,

The Bulldogs were shut out of the first-team balloting for the first time since the Media Days event started in 1992. Only two Georgia players – place-kicker Brandon Coutu and linebacker Brandon Miller – earned second-team honors, tying Georgia with Mississippi State and Ole Miss for the fewest all-conference players in the league.

Georgia was the only SEC team without a first-team player. Sounds pretty ominous, right? Yet the same media also picked the Dawgs to finish third in the tough SEC East, and they were a lot closer in the voting to second place Tennessee than they were to fourth place South Carolina. That apparent incongruity could mean any or all of these:

• The press is going out on a limb that a proven coach like Mark Richt will put a good team together despite the lack of stars.
• The press believes that the Dawgs have a lot of above-average-but-not-quite-great players.
• The press acknowledges that Georgia doesn’t have many all-SEC players based on previous production, but they expect a few to emerge this year.
• Georgia will be hurt by their lack of star power, but the press isn’t ready yet to move teams like South Carolina or Kentucky into the top half of the division.

Take your pick – you could make a case for any of them. If you ask Coach Richt, the answer might be the third option. "Whether we rise or not is the big question,” he admitted at Media Days. “But I believe in this team. I think we’ve got a chance to do as well as any team that we’ve had since we’ve been here.”

The Dawgs are facing a double-whammy: not many teams have fewer returning starters, and those returning starters are either young or have had average production to this point. Florida, on the other hand, has only eight returning starters, but six of their key contributors are on the preseason all-SEC team. To illustrate the point, think back to 2003. Georgia’s offensive line was decimated after 2002 and gave up over 40 sacks in 2003. At least the Dawgs had a stout defense with proven playmakers on which to lean. In 2007, Georgia has no such glaring strength to carry the team. Instead of Pollack, Davis, Thurman, and Jones, the 2007 Dawgs will lean on guys like Stafford, Massaquoi, Lumpkin, Sturdivant, Owens, Miller, and Johnson.

Those guys are hardly stiffs, but almost all have inexperience to overcome or have spent careers out of the spotlight to this point. Richt’s "whether we rise" question hits the story of the 2007 season dead on. Some talented guys will be thrust into key roles by necessity, and Georgia’s fortunes will turn on their ability to turn preseason anonymity into postseason glory.

Though most of the NFL spotlight was focused on Michael Vick today, the NFL announced that Odell Thurman’s request for reinstatement to the league was declined. Thurman missed the entire 2006 season after missing a drug test and an arrest for DUI.

After two seasons on the shelf, one wonders if Odell Thurman will ever see an NFL field again.

Rivals.com is reporting that Wake Forest men’s basketball coach Skip Prosser has died after collapsing during a jog. Prosser rebuilt Wake into a top 10 program and was in the middle of assembling one of the nation’s best recruiting classes. Our thoughts are with the Wake Forest fans this evening.

Georgia coach Dennis Felton joined Prosser this spring as part of Operation Hardwood in Kuwait, so we’re almost certain to have a comment soon from Coach Felton.

It’s that time of year when you begin going through the garage and taking inventory of your tailgate supplies. The chairs probably have to be dusted off. Menus must be planned. The generator might need some oil. You might even need a new tent. Yesterday the Georgia Sports Blog highlighted the latest in tailgating toys – a giant, inflatable canopy dwarfing anything you have at your tailgate now. Nice, huh? I can’t get past the fact that 1) it looks like a spider and 2) anything inflatable reminds me of that insect they have filling empty seats in Atlanta. I have no idea how that bee kept deflating during games in the early 1990s.

They take a slightly different approach to tailgate preparation in Iraq (h/t Deadspin):

Iraqi fans have been stocking up on gasoline and ammunition in preparation for their national soccer team’s Asian Cup semi-final against South Korea.

Outstanding. Those Iraqi fans must’ve done their postgraduate work at N.C. State.

It began earlier this month when Stewart Mandel wrote,

USC and LSU have to play for the national championship this season. It is no longer possible to envision any other satisfying conclusion.

Now the ESPN pundits have picked it up and are fully on board. (h/t Get the Picture)

On the inaugural edition of “College Football Live” on ESPN last night (featuring the same 3 gentlemen), we were told to expect a “national title” match up between USC and LSU.

Of course picking Southern Cal and LSU to play for the national title isn’t left-field analysis. They’re both good teams and reasonable picks. Just understand that you’ll be sick of Les Miles by August 22nd…if you’re not already.

Two storylines will collide on September 8th. This inevitable SoCal – LSU national title express meets the Virginia Tech sackcloth and ashes show. Heathers indeed. Surely the Tigers won’t be so insensitive as to actually try to win that game?