Damn.

I’ve written about this before, but UGA has officially announced its relationship with XM satellite radio.

XM Satellite Radio is now the official satellite radio home of the University of Georgia Athletic Association under a five-year sports broadcasting and marketing agreement starting in 2007.

XM will have all regular season Georgia football games, most men’s and women’s basketball games, and select games from other sports. They’ll also broadcast the football and basketball SEC championships. Though all football games will be available, a satellite provider only has so many channels to use, and they can’t do both home-and-away broadcasts of all games. They commit that "a minimum of eight games will feature the Georgia broadcast crew of Larry Munson, Scott Howard, and Loran Smith." In 2007, XM will also carry games for Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Tennessee, so it’s possible that you’ll only hear the Tennessee broadcast crew when we play in Knoxville. XM also has the ACC, so the Tech game might be another instance where XM won’t have the Georgia broadcast (with or without Munson).

Part of my reason for choosing Sirius last year was that most of the SEC schools were there, and it seemed reasonable that the remaining few (Georgia, Arkansas) would follow suit. Now not only will Georgia go with XM; the SEC itself will go with XM, and the remaining schools will come on board when their current agreements expire.

Georgia fans can go to http://www.xmradio.com/dawgs for a special offer on XM radios. With the investment I’ve already sunk into Sirius, I’m going to hold out hope that the proposed Sirius/XM merger goes through.

Former Auburn (and Clemson) basketball coach Cliff Ellis will be coaching again for the first time in three years. Ellis was recently named the new coach at Coastal Carolina – just down the road from Bobby Cremins at the College of Charleston. If we ever see Nolan Richardson surface at the Citadel, we can then say with some certainty that the Southern Conference has become the recycling center of college basketball.

For SEC fans, that means a new announcing crew coming to Lincoln Financial regional broadcasts. Ellis will now be luring high school prospects with promises of "sharing the candy" and plenty of trips to the "bonus-sphere".

We all like to pick on Reggie Ball, and he’s an easy target. But as poorly as he played against Georgia over his career, he was still a four-year starter with wins over teams like Auburn, Miami, and Virginia Tech.

So for all of the amusement we get reading lines saying that Tech has to be better in 2007 now that Reggie Ball is gone, is it really a given that Taylor Bennett will be markedly better?

Bennett is getting a lot of mileage from the first half of last season’s Gator Bowl. As Bennett threw jump ball after jump ball to Calvin Johnson en route to a big halftime lead, it was natural to wonder why he wasn’t tried before Ball became ineligible.

But I am not yet a believer that Bennett will be an improvement at quarterback over the long term. You’d expect a QB to improve over the course of a game, but Bennett did not in his moment in the spotlight. Tech went from 340 yards of offense in the first half of the Gator Bowl to 133 in the second half. They had four drives of 60+ yards in the first half and none in the second half.

It could be argued that West Virginia wasn’t expecting a backup to find Johnson with such ease, but he did. Once they adjusted and realized that Bennett could throw the ball, he wasn’t as effective. After the world gets a few games of film on Taylor Bennett this fall, we’ll find out if he really is an improvement over a four-year starter.

That’s six and counting, guys.

Usually it’s left to Tommy Tuberville to stick his foot in his mouth about a tough schedule or an unfair system before they actually play the games. Now it’s Les Miles’ turn. Miles, who doesn’t have an SEC title to his name yet, is already knocking down other preseason contenders and flashing his SEC membership card (H/T: Get the Picture).

"I can tell you this, that they have a much easier road to travel," Miles said of the Trojans. "They’re going to play real knockdown drag-outs with UCLA and Washington, Cal-Berkley, Stanford – some real juggernauts – and they’re going to end up, it would be my guess, in some position so if they win a game or two, that they’ll end up in the title (game). I would like that path for us."

"I think the SEC provides much stiffer competition."

Has anyone checked the LSU schedule? There are two, maybe three games which should give a preseason Top 10 team any problems. Virginia Tech, yes. Florida, yes. Auburn, maybe. Arkansas, maybe. They don’t play Tennessee or Georgia. There will be a ridiculous amount of hype with the Alabama game, but there is no reason why a rebuilding Bama team, even under Saban, should be on the level of this LSU squad. That Bama game is LSU’s only challenge on the road this year while the Trojans visit Nebraska, Notre Dame, Oregon, and Cal. Southern Cal is not the team to be picking on.

So LSU’s position can be said to be much the same. Win a game or two – at home – plus the SEC championship, and they’re in the title game.

Look, Les. The SEC is cool. Great football and fans. Don’t lean on the conference too much though. Just find a quarterback, win your games, win the mighty SEC first, and then we’ll see where things stand.

If the Tuberville Rule holds, bet the house on Virginia Tech.

PS…Can you blame him though? If he can convince a pollster or two that the 2007 LSU schedule is a death march, good for him. It might even help to swing things his way should there be another batch of one-loss teams at the end. That’s how the process works.

Ron Franklin is still the voice of college football on television to me. He and Gottfried together on ESPN Saturday nights were pure gold, even better than the Blackledge-Lundquist team on CBS. Though Gottfried has declined (to the point of ESPNU), Franklin still seems to be a quality man in the booth.

Now Franklin, already moved down the pecking order to ESPN2 games, has been reassigned to ABC regional coverage. That makes his chances of calling a Georgia game in the near future virtually nil.

In all of the Munson talk last week, someone (I will try to find a link) mentioned Franklin as a possible addition to the Georgia broadcast booth after Larry finally hangs it up. I thought that a bit of a stretch given his national TV gig, but as he gets pushed further and further down the list at ABC/ESPN, I have to admit that the idea sounds pretty interesting.

Read on about other changes to the ESPN/ABC lineup.

Erin Andrews…really…Saturday afternoon on ESPN? And Sean McDonough, still complaining about a Bryan McClendon touchdown at Vandy in 2005…hope you enjoy Friday nights.

The Greater Atlanta Bulldog Club will have its traditional late-July gathering again this year on Monday, July 30, but the location is changing this year.

The meeting is not at Colony Square. This year’s location is the Cobb Galleria Centre.

The program begins at 7:00 p.m. with social time beforehand.

I always feel a bit dirty after buying a Tech three-game package (hit the Georgia Sports Blog for details). But it’s not a bad slate this year, and they let you create a three-game pack from any of their home games. So I’ve got my Georgia tickets, my Tar Heel father can catch the UNC game, and I also picked up a pair for a Thursday night to see Virginia Tech who should be in the mood for a little payback.

I too was able to get into section 228 which is near the perch from which I saw Bryan McClendon write his name into my personal Bulldog Hall of Fame in 2005. Even as Tech struggles to fill their best seats, these seats (particularly those in friendly sections) will probably go quickly. You can follow GSB’s instructions to make sure that there is again plenty of Red and Black in the stands.

First, a bit of unsolicited travel advice:

Visit Nova Scotia. What an incredible place. You can just drive around the corner and come out at a spot like this:

Now, on to some of the Dawg news that caught my eye after a quick scan:

Munson cutting back

Count me among those who feel that Larry has earned the right to call as few or as many games, quarters, or plays as he wishes.

At the same time, we have to consider the role of the broadcast in the first place: telling the story of the game. John Kaltefleiter of the ABH took a little heat last week when he suggested that Munson was slipping badly in this area, but is that really news to anyone? "We’ve got a guy in the corner" has become the default call for any play now. But Munson isn’t there for that anymore…his presence is almost ceremonial like British royalty, and the fact that the broadcast team can so easily adapt to Munson’s reduced schedule this year is evidence of that. No one expects Roger Clemens to go 9 innings anymore, but it’s still a special thing to see him on the mound. The rest of the broadcast team is capable of picking up the slack.

To me, the question isn’t who replaces Larry. It’s who replaces Scott Howard when Howard moves into the lead role.

Mark Richt’s Summer Vacation

College football coaches don’t have much down time, but this time of year is about as close as it comes to R&R before the staff begins intense preseason preparations in a few weeks. Coach Richt and his family spent some of their summer recently checking up on a mission they support in Honduras. He kept a journal for UGASports.com, and they’ve put it up as free content. Read here:

• Richt heads to Honduras
• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3
• Day 4
• Richts leave Honduras

Besides the virtue of the mission work itself, I find it admirable even in a "safe" situation like this that Coach Richt would engage the online community in such depth. He also took questions directly from the DawgVent. It goes with the understanding that these same people will be cursing him again after the next loss, so it’s very gracious of him to take the time to put these entries together and share this very important work.

Andy Landers’ June

First, thoughts and prayers are with the Landers family as Drew recovers from an automobile accident earlier this week. Unfortunately, the accident cost the life of a North Oconee coach, and we can’t begin to imagine the toll that has taken on that community and his family. The relatively good news from this tragedy is that the others in the car survived, and Drew seems poised to recover. It’s still touch-and-go for a while though, and Andy Landers can’t help but feel helpless as he watches and waits down at Grady.

It’s been a tumultuous month for Landers. The highlight clearly was his induction into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in Knoxville. It was fitting that a large number of former players and friends were on hand to help him celebrate, because as he is so quick to point out they played a large role in building the program to this point. But make no mistake that it takes a special person to build and sustain an environment where such great players want to come and can excel. If you’ve ever heard him speak, he certainly doesn’t come across as shy, but he is modest when it comes to his own accomplishments. Had he blown his own horn or pulled some strings, he surely would have made the Hall of Fame much sooner.

He’s also completed a pretty significant shakeup of the staff. Cameron Newbauer filled the final assistant coaching vacancy. On the surface, the hire raises some eyebrows. He has very limited coaching experience, and all of his work to date is on the men’s side. He’s expected to help in recruiting. Cameron will no doubt draw comparisons to the chance that Landers took on Michael Shafer. With the changes to the staff complete, the three assistants are now much younger but not necessarily less experienced. Kim Hairston seems like a nice addition. La’Keshia Frett, recently 32, is now the senior assistant. Hairston and Newbauer both graduated college in or after 2000. Will the young staff be the injection of new blood that gives both team performance and recruiting a boost, or will they be an ankle weight to the program as they come up to speed?

…via the NCAA’s Double-A Zone blog:

Remember the restrictions announced back in April on text messaging and other electronic communications with prospects? Don’t relax your thumbs just yet.

The NCAA has received enough (30+) objections from member schools to force the Division I Board of Directors to reconsider three proposals at its meeting in August, and that text message ban is among them.

The issue might not be settled until January at the earliest.

The Board will have several options at its August 9 meeting: reaffirm the April decision, aquiesce to the override requests or adopt alternative legislation. If the Board reaffirms its decision, the matter will be settled by a vote of all Division I delegates present and voting at the January 2008 Convention in Nashville. The proposal is not effective until August 1, 2008. If the Board decides to adopt new legislation, it would be subject to another override period.

Another proposal among the three being reconsidered is the overhaul of the financial aid distribution rules for baseball. I touched briefly on the details of those changes here.

I’d have to agree with the folks at the Double-A Zone and argue that both proposals should be reaffirmed.

If you read David Ching’s blog (and if you don’t you should), you noticed last week that he live-blogged Columbus State’s appearance in the Division II baseball championship. You probably skipped over it if you’re just there for the Georgia stuff, but the posts were a great service to a local (Columbus) readership in a situation where TV and radio coverage was spotty or nonexistent.

It turns out that Ching was an outlaw.

Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Brian Bennett was tossed from the press box during Cardinal’s historic Super Regional performance over the weekend because he was blogging during the game. The NCAA decided to enforce a new policy in order to protect the broadcast rights of "the NCAA’s official rights holders".

Josh Centor has a really tough job. Being a public face of the NCAA must be right up there with IRS public relations and Georgia Tech football marketing in terms of its thanklessness. In the times I’ve seen his responses to some pretty controversial issues (including the football clock rules debacle), he’s always been professional, level-headed, and informative even when the critics of the NCAA aren’t. He has some quality thoughts on the subject while disagreeing with the policy, noting in particular that no one is going to prefer sporadic blog updates to a high-def ESPN television broadcast if they have that option.

For now, I agree with Deadspin’s observation that "the NCAA has now, by definition, given the proverbial guy in the basement better access to his/her readers than someone in their own press box." Just over on the DawgVent we see this very practice almost daily now as people provide running updates on everything from NASCAR races to Georgia’s national championship tennis match. The NCAA holds that blogs are a "live representation of the game", a concept I find pretty absurd unless you can type really, really fast. The Courier-Journal’s attorney is right on here: "Once a player hits a home run, that’s a fact. It’s on TV, everybody sees it. They (the NCAA) can’t copyright that fact. The blog wasn’t a simulcast or a recreation of the game. It was an analysis."

If you follow the NCAA’s memo and policy to its logical conclusions, every SMS message, phone call, or e-mail you’ve sent from a game describing the action is a violation of the rights of the official broadcast rights holders.

It was around 1998 that I remember seeing live fan reporting in action. A guy with a cell phone at Will Witherspoon’s press conference reported Witherspoon’s commitment to someone on the other end of the call who was in a Dawg chat room. Those people reading knew the news before anyone at the press conference had left the room. The immediacy (not to mention unlimited column-inches) of the Internet is a big problem for print journalists. They’ve responded with blogs and updates to their own Web sites between publications, and someone like Ching live-blogging a local event of interest is yet another innovative way for a print journalist to serve a readership looking for near-real-time information.

A properly credentialed journalist providing these brief updates to their readers should be encouraged instead of punished. They are doing nothing to diminish the value of the broadcasts. If anything, they are creating more exposure for and interest in the event, and it’s likely that a few of those readers will tune in to the broadcasts when they can.

UPDATE: As I hoped, Ching has his own comments up now. Read the whole thing. Two great points: 1) the rule was applied capriciously – no one cared if he live-blogged an event that ESPN wasn’t covering. 2) this is an issue fans should be interested in because it affects the quality and quantity of options for following their teams.

Doug over at Hey Jenny Slater has done the work of combining the preseason rankings to date. Southern Cal seems to be the favorite, and the Dawgs come in around the low teens. As the senator reminds us, a lot of these early preseason rankings don’t take into account the Paul Oliver news or any injuries and suspensions that might come up between now and the season.

Chris Stassen has been tracking this kind of thing for over a decade now, and it’s interesting to look back at Georgia teams over that time and see how they did relative to expectations.

The overrated/disappointing season that most remember is 2000, and sure enough the eleven position slide from the preseason ranking is the largest drop on the chart. 2004 might also be considered a disappointment because the Dawgs were overshadowed by Auburn and even Tennessee, but a final ranking of #7 isn’t a bad year. Losses to Vanderbilt and Kentucky meant that the 2006 team also turned out to be "overrated", and it took that great finish to the season to only drop seven spots from the preseason.

It makes sense that the 1997 and 1998 teams were two of the most underrated Dawg teams. The 1997 team followed a 5-6 1996 team that itself followed the unspectacular end of the Ray Goff era. A 10-2 record and #10 ranking after all that shocked many of us. The Dawgs lost a lot of key players after 1997, and it was easy and reasonable to write them off in 1998. Richt’s first three teams were slightly underrated. Doug’s work seems to tell us that pundits aren’t particularly worried by last year’s slide, but it will be worth watching if the later preseason polls include a correction for Oliver and anything else that comes along.

Since the polls play a part in determining the national champion, it’s also worth looking at where the past eleven national champs started out.

(LSU started at #14 in 2003 for those in the one-peat crowd.)

So as you might expect, you don’t have to start in the top 5 to win the national championship – just five of the last eleven did. Four champions started outside of the top 10. The teams that came the longest way to win the title (Michigan, Oklahoma, SoCal, tOSU, and even LSU) are all traditional powers who came off sub-par seasons. Of those teams, only SoCal did not have a four-loss or worse season before their national title.

I look at preseason polls a lot like qualifying for a race. You don’t have to start on or near the pole to win a race, but it does help. The further back you start, the more help you need in front of you and the more traffic you have to work through on your way to the front.

It’ll be just like old times at Minnesota:

New Minnesota coach Tubby Smith has finalized his staff.

Ron Jirsa is the associate head coach, Saul Smith and Vince Taylor are the assistant coaches, and Joe Esposito is the director of basketball operations.

We just want to let Golden Gopher fans know to enjoy the next two seasons and then buckle up. Trust us.

6’8″ with a heart to match

While it’s usually the negative that makes headlines (see Odell Thurman’s latest), several Georgia and NFL players are getting together for a very worthy project organized by Leonard Pope.

On March 1st, a tornado broadsided Americus and Sumter Regional Hospital . The hospital is damaged nearly to the point of requiring complete replacement. Pope, an Americus native, has pulled several Georgia and NFL friends together for the Leonard Pope’s All-Star Weekend to Benefit Sumter Regional Hospital and the Community on the weekend of June 15-16. Among those scheduled to participate are Anquan Boldin, Charles Grant, D.J. Shockley, Randy McMichael, and Danny Ware. Others, including Thomas Davis and Ronnie Brown, have recently joined the list, and there might still be others.

The weekend’s schedule:

On Friday (tentatively 8 a.m-4 p.m.), there will be a charity golf tournament at Southwestern Golf Links where golfers will get a chance to golf with the aforementioned celebrities in a four-man scramble. The cost will be $100 per person ($400 per team) and there will be prizes, lunch and more.

There will be a Black Tie Charity Dinner at the Pope Center on the campus of South Georgia Technical College on Friday ay 7 p.m. Tickets for this event will be $50 per person ($500 per table). The aforementioned players will be in attendance, along with a surprise Georgia celebrity as one of the main speakers for the event. There will be food, entertainment and a silent auction with many signed memorabilia from the players and other sports teams and celebrities.

On Saturday at 2 p.m., there will be a charity basketball game that will pit the NFL players and their friends against local Americus-Sumter and Southland legends. Local children will also have a chance to sign up for Leonard Pope’s 2008 Football Camp. Tickets will be $5 for adults and $2 for children. Children under the age of 5 get in free.

Related Links:

• Sumter Regional Web site
• Make a donation directly to recovery efforts
• Americus tornado photos

Just as I noted last week that the Georgia recruiting train was picking up speed again, the Dawgs added two more football commitments over the weekend.

Cornerback Makiri Pugh started things off on Friday afternoon. Georgia again went head-to-head with Clemson for a prospect and won, and they also beat out Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech. Pugh is from Charlotte’s Independence High School – a familiar name to Bulldog fans. After Robert Brannon, Mohamed Massaquoi, and Joe Cox, Pugh will be the fourth Dawg in recent years from this proud North Carolina program. Pugh is projected to be one of the top 250 players in the nation at any position according to Rivals.com, and you can get an idea of his talent by looking at his offer sheet.

I have to take a second here and single out Joe Cox. Here’s a guy who led the Dawgs to a comeback win over Colorado last year, but he ended the season positioned to be a career backup. Even though recent events have proven that Cox gets along with his teammates, Stafford’s promotion had to be a tough bit of news to take, and it might even be understandable for Cox to become a little disillusioned with the situation. But Pugh credited Cox (and Massaquoi too) with honest feedback that helped him choose Georgia. "Their feedback really matched up to the visit," Pugh said ($), and it obviously meant a lot that these two Independence alums could back up with their own experience what Pugh was hearing from the coaches.

The other commitment was a bit of a surprise. Griffin defensive lineman Toby Jackson, considered to be leaning to Alabama, announced his commitment to the Dawgs on Sunday evening. Jackson draws comparisons with former Bulldog Jonathan Sullivan for his ability to play defensive end and defensive tackle. Though Jackson committed to Georgia, don’t expect Alabama or even other schools like FSU to back off of one of the best defensive linemen in the state. With standout lineman DeAngelo Tyson already committed, Jackson would be another key piece in a potentially tremendous defensive line class.

Why is recruiting going so well? Everyone is pointing this morning to Loran Smith’s piece in the ABH about the "new Mark Richt" who is much more hands-on in recruiting this year. By cutting back on personal commitments and changing responsibilities within the program (Mike Bobo’s increased role stands out), Richt has been able to give things like recruiting much more personal attention. It’s not just recruiting, either. If you’ve been at a Road Tour event this spring, Richt seems much more comfortable talking about the bigger picture. He’s able to speak in depth about defenders. He wasn’t ever completely aloof when talking about the rest of his team, but it was clear and natural that his focus was on offense. That’s changing a bit.

And let’s face it: this time last year, Coach Richt was dealing with a very serious health crisis with his wife. The life-changing nature of cancer strikes even the most driven of us, and it is entirely reasonable and understandable that Coach Richt would have been distracted last summer.

The result is that a very solid recruiting class is coming together. There are several pieces to the puzzle. It’s a good year in-state at some key positions. Richt will also be the first to credit a very capable staff of assistants who do much of the heavy lifting. But there is no question that more and not less exposure to Mark Richt on the recruiting trail is a big plus to many of this year’s top prospects.