From the unfortunate-quotes department:

The language around the recruiting water cooler has always been a bit eyebrow-raising what with grown men talking about "studs" and "specimens". Now the prospects themselves are contributing to the double-entendre.

Jerrell Harris is probably the top prep linebacker from the state of Alabama this year and one of the best in the southeast. His offer sheet reads like a top 25 poll. The AJC caught up with Harris at a recent event hosted coincidently by our favorite rival.

Harris was in Atlanta as part of the Scout.com elite combine at Georgia Tech on Saturday.

“I wanted to see where I stand,” he said of the combine. “I am always checking out other guys.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Former head football coach and athletic director Vince Dooley had a procedure last week to remove a mass – originally thought to be benign – from his vocal cords. Things became much more serious this week when the tumor was found to be malignant, but they seem optimistic. Dooley himself has fought years of coronary issues, and his wife has battled breast cancer. We hope that Vince comes through this most recent health issue as well as he has the others.

From UGA:

Athens, Ga. — Former University of Georgia Director of Athletics and head football coach Vince Dooley underwent outpatient surgery to remove a tumor from his vocal chords on Tuesday, May 22.
Lab reports this week indicated the tumor was malignant, and he will begin radiation treatments some time in June. Dooley’s prognosis for a full recovery is excellent according to his tending physician.

First we had Bulldog fan Shane Lassiter shut down the Atlanta airport en route to the 2001 game at Ole Miss.

Now we learn that the mystery tuberculosis patient currently occupying every spare minute of the news cycle is a University of Georgia graduate. Of course he is.

…he attended the U.S. Naval Academy, graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in finance, and then attended University of Georgia’s law school.

Can the TSA give a required freshman seminar at Georgia on how to stay the hell out of trouble when flying?

Much of the remaining non-reserved Georgia football parking is on East Campus where there are several surface lots and two large parking decks. Getting these cars back onto the Athens bypass after games often isn’t a pleasant experience. Cars have to be routed somehow through campus streets and eventually onto College Station Road.

The volume of traffic trying to get onto the bypass was so heavy that police directed many cars onto the ramp ordinarily used by traffic exiting the bypass where they would have to make a hairpin 180-degree turn at the top of the ramp to head west towards highway 316.

A better solution is on the way – a new ramp is being constructed that will provide a direct route from East Campus onto the bypass. The ramp will begin near the north side of the East Village Parking Deck and enter the westbound lanes of the bypass before the College Station Road exit.

The new ramp will only be used for emergencies and during special events like football games. The project should be completed within the next week or two.

This sounds like a great solution. Nothing will ever eliminate the headache of tens of thousands of cars trying to leave campus at once, but this idea should provide a nice release valve for some of the East Campus traffic.

The whole “will Caleb King redshirt” question reminded me of this proposal I read recently at CFR.

Players are currently given five years in which to play four. With ever-shrinking scholarship numbers in football as well as the temptation to turn pro after three years, it makes sense to allow the player to participate in all five years of his eligibility. Simplify.

The current rule creates a complex but silly decision for coaches each fall as they must weigh the value of playing a true freshman versus the cost of burning that year of eligibility. Eliminate that decision and let the player contribute during the entire course of his eligibility. For those who would redshirt for traditional reasons (either to get a good start on academics or develop physically), the coach still has the option to play them sparingly or not at all. I like this proposal too.

True stars will leave after three years, but you’ll have received a full three years from them (instead of potentially wasting one year on the bench). Others will have a decision to make after their fourth season. They might be ready to go pro at that point, or they might be ready to graduate and move on. Still others will create a new class of player – the true 5th year seniors who will become the elder statesmen of the college game.

Georgia’s primary competition for Caleb King was Auburn, and at this point last summer it was still very much up in the air. Had King picked Auburn, yesterday’s news that he had qualified academically might not have mattered as much. A couple of Auburn signees have questionable transcripts, and grades might have been changed.

Nick Saban is already pushing the recruiting envelope at Alabama and might have committed minor secondary violations on a recent trip to Miami. For an Alabama program just emerging from the impact of significant scholarship losses due to probation, even a minor violation isn’t a good start for the new coach.

What a double shot of good news yesterday for Bulldog fans.

Caleb King makes the grade

Caleb King Photo: Rivals.com

Rumors began circulating and by mid-afternoon it was confirmed that highly-touted tailback Caleb King has qualified to play for the Dawgs next year, putting an end to one of the most-frequently asked questions of the spring. King told Chad Simmons of UGASports.com ($) that his brother told him the news at 5 a.m. (Personally, someone better be dying or dead if I’m being woken up at 5 a.m.) The family wisely met with GAC counselors during the day to double-check that King’s academic credentials added up. By mid-afternoon, his coach was confirming the news to the AJC, and Simmons spoke directly with King to get his reaction. Caleb topped off the day with his high school graduation. Not a bad Thursday.

King’s story is interesting all around. He earned his superstar-in-waiting reputation mostly as a junior and at last summer’s camps. After his junior season, he transferred from football powerhouse Parkview to Greater Atlanta Christian school for “academic and spiritual reasons“. An injury sidelined him for most of his senior season, but he has since recovered and even ran some track. He works with a trainer several days each week. He used the opportunity at GAC to focus on academics and end years of speculation about his grades. “I’ve been studying all the time, and it’s been totally business,” he told Simmons.

Then there’s the dynamic of his family. King’s brother (and guardian) Andre is out in front as more or less a spokesman for Caleb and the family. When King transfered to GAC last year, Andre handled the press. It was he who woke Caleb up with the good news yesterday. With meddling parents in the news, there are some who cast a suspicious eye on Andre’s involvement and presence in Caleb’s decision to transfer and during the recruiting process. But as a self-described “father-figure” to Caleb, Andre isn’t just some hanger-on. It will be interesting to see to what extent we hear from Andre down the road as Caleb’s college career gets underway.

Finally, there’s the “how do we use him?” question. It’s reported that King doesn’t plan on redshirting, and that decision heading into the season might be the next chapter in the Caleb saga. If King does play, he’s coming into a tailback situation with two established seniors plus the redshirt freshman Knowshon Moreno. In premature comparisons to Reggie Bush, it’s been speculated that King can be moved around and even used as a receiver at times. If King is that kind of versatile back, hopefully the staff can come up with more ways to use his ability than the Tyson Browning screen pass. If he really is good enough not to redshirt even with a deep backfield, make his role and freshman season meaningful.

Hoop Dawgs pick up a tremendous commitment

Howard Thompkins Photo: Rivals.com

You could almost hear Dennis Felton yell, “OH HELL YES!!!” from nearly halfway around the world. Felton, currently serving as part of Operation Hardwood in Kuwait, had to be thrilled to learn that his program had just picked up one of its most significant commitments in years. National top 20 forward Howard Thompkins chose Georgia over Florida and dozens of other programs. The 6’8″ Thompkins has the potential to have a Tyrus Thomas kind of impact on the Bulldog program.

Thompkins’ choice boiled down to this: he could have been the latest high-profile cog in the established Florida program, or he could be the cornerstone in the next step of establishing the Georgia program. A year away at Oak Hill Academy helped to tip the scales in favor of the hometown Dawgs; he had spent enough time away from home. He will return to Wesleyan this fall for his senior year, and then he’ll head a short distance up the road to Athens.

Though Louis Williams might technically be the highest-profile recruit signed by Felton, few expected Williams to ever set foot in Athens. If Thompkins arrives on campus without a hitch, he will be the biggest freshman addition to the program since Jumaine Jones. But as the Dawgs proved during the Jumaine era, one standout player doesn’t make a championship team. Felton continues to assemble the pieces of a complete team, and Thompkins is a dynamic addition to the future frontcourt. Now we’ll see if Thompkins’ commitment can have a “pied piper” effect and convince other top prospects to trust in Felton and the future of Georgia basketball. There are other big prospects in the 2008 class who are considering Georgia such as center Tony Woods. How good would a Thompkins and Woods frontcourt look when added to this year’s class of Price, Jacob, and Barnes? Along with Woods, I’m still holding out hope for an impact perimeter scorer. That final piece would give us a Georgia team that could compete with anyone in the nation.

Another angle to the Thompkins commitment comes from AAU land. Thompkins is a member of the Atlanta Celtics, an AAU powerhouse with a few alumni you might have heard of. But Georgia hasn’t been able to get more than the occasional sip from this deep well of talent in its backyard. If Thompkins is the first fruits of an improved relationship between Georgia basketball and the AAU programs in the state, Thompkins’ impact will be felt for years.

Georgia men’s tennis team won its fifth national title and first since 2001 on Tuesday in Athens. The Dawgs took a tightly-contested doubles point and then cruised in singles play to a 4-0 win over Illinois.

Senior Matic Omerzel clinched the win, and that was fitting as his match in last year’s national championship was also the deciding point. With the title, the Dawgs put the crowning accomplishment on a dominant undefeated season. I don’t know enough about college tennis to join the "best ever" discussion, but I do know that only an injury during last year’s NCAA Tournament kept Georgia from consecutive undefeated national championship seasons. Best ever or not, that’s a pretty incredible run in any sport at any time.

Though Dan Magill’s name is rightfully all over the tennis complex, Coach Manny Diaz has taken another step to cement his own legacy among the top names in the college game. This national title was his third – no other active coach has more than one title.

Now it’s on to the individual competitions where several Bulldogs stand a chance of earning even more hardware in singles and doubles play. John Isner will attempt to become the first player since 1998 to record a team, singles, and doubles national championship in the same season.

One has to think that Dan Magill has mixed emotions today. The man is synonymous with Georgia tennis – his name is on the nation’s best collegiate tennis complex.

Yesterday, he watched his beloved Bulldogs win the program’s fifth national title on its home court. What a triumph.

Then only hours later on those very same courts, Georgia Tech’s womens tennis team won the school’s first-ever outright team national championship in any sport. Magill, as anyone familiar with Bulldog history knows, places proper emphasis on the rivalry with Tech. It had to hurt to see the Yellow Jackets win a title in anything, especially in Athens, and especially in the tennis complex that bears his name.

On the plus side, this lead paragraph on ncaasports.com this morning had to really annoy Tech fans during their first taste of a national title:

With chatter about an early football signing period starting to increase, I wanted to think it through a little more. I can’t bring myself to entirely condemn the idea because other sports manage to get by with an early signing period, but something about it makes me doubt that it’s the best thing for football.

The chief argument for an early signing period usually reads similar to this: "by signing early, prospects could eliminate the pressure of the recruiting process and enjoy their senior years while focusing on academics and/or football." Sound about right? Packaged that way, it reads as if the intent is entirely altruistic, and who wouldn’t want to relieve these poor high school students from some of the pressure from the increasingly insane recruiting process?

In reality, you can tell who really benefits from an early signing period by those making noise for it: coaches and fans. Coaches and fans want the early signing period for similar reasons: make those commitments binding as soon as possible.

Forgive me if I don’t cry for the programs who are left in the lurch when a commitment changes his mind. If a prospect changes his mind at any time after the letter of intent is signed, the penalties are severe. An entire year of playing time is forfeited. There are no such consequences when a coach changes jobs or a program takes a different direction. The time before a letter of intent is signed is the only opportunity the student-athlete has for the next four or five years to reconsider his decision without a major cost. Why constrain that time period for the further benefit of the school?

There are some other minor questions that should be answered. Some of these are trivial, but I wonder if early signing period proponents consider them.

• Pressure on a prospect could actually increase with an early signing period. The elite prospects can sign whenever they please; there will always be scholarships waiting for them. But for the marginal prospects, an offer might hinge on their willingness to rush their decision and sign early. You don’t think members of Grant Teaff’s AFCA would stoop to that level? Welcome to recruiting.
• An early football signing period would have to be earlier than that of any other sport – possibly even before the prospect’s senior year. We would attempt to remove some pressure on seniors by placing more concentrated pressure on kids just out of their junior years, few of whom are 18.
• The summer months aren’t dead times in the college and prep football worlds. Summer camps are critical evaluation opportunities for both the schools and the prospects. Would a signing period not long after the camps encourage more hasty and emotion-based decisions?
• Is an early signing period really in the best interests of the school? By pushing the decision process before the senior season, is the chance of missing on a prospect greater?
• Football is a senior’s game more than most other sports. It’s usually when the best stats are recorded, and the physical maturation of a high school football player is considerable from year to year. By signing before the senior season, a prospect could miss out on better offers that come from a solid senior season.

This is one area where I think college football has it right. Signing in early February allows the prospect to enjoy the 4+ remaining months in his senior year, focus on academics, and still take the time to make an informed decision. Schools are able to make decisions based on a complete body of work. Prospects are able to watch the most recent college season, know if their coach(es) will still be there the next year, and take official visits at their pace either during or after their own seasons. I don’t deny that there can be pressure throughout the process on those who commit early, but prospects who make it clear that their decision is firm seem to be more or less left alone. Those dealing with constant pressure to change their minds are often those who can’t say no or who leave the door open to the possibility that their commitment isn’t firm.

The world won’t end if we get a summer signing period in college football. I don’t necessarily mind attaching a stronger obligation to the verbal commitment, and an early signing period would do that. I just don’t see the idea solving any big, pressing problems, and I can see it creating a few minor ones. Someone would have to show me a real set of benefits to the student-athlete because the deck is already stacked enough against them.

One of the pitfalls of beginning the college football recruiting season earlier and earlier is that some of your early commitments will take the 9-12 months until Signing Day to reflect on their decisions, and some might end up changing their minds. The process doesn’t stop, and the competition won’t stop trying to sway a commitment until the Letter of Intent is signed.

There are those who will use that fact to point out how badly we need an early signing period in football. As the good Senator points out, that’s almost entirely in the school’s interest and not the prospect’s. Get him signed before he changes his mind or sees how our next season goes.

College recruiting has provided us with plenty of head-scratching terms over the years including the oxymoronic "silent verbal" or the favorite "soft verbal" which has done as much as celebrity marriage to set the bar for "commitment" as low as possible.

Recent events have inspired a new term. Call it the soft decommitment. A prospect goes so far as to back out of a verbal commitment to look at other schools but also hasn’t eliminated that original school. Georgia has had two such "soft decommitments" in recent weeks: offensive lineman B.J. Brand and running back Martin Ward. Both committed to the Dawgs earlier in the process, but as Brand put it, "I made a real quick decision and I like Georgia a lot, but I just want to make sure of things. I still like Georgia a lot and they are still up there on my list, but I am going to look around a little bit before making my final decision." OK…I can buy that. At least they were honest about it.

On a commitment scale of 1-to-10 where 1 is "John Capel undecided" and 10 is "came out of the womb wearing his future school’s colors", this new area is somewhere around a 5. It’s different from a soft verbal commitment since Mr. Soft Verbal doesn’t want to go so far as to decommit and risk losing his offer. Just for fun, here’s the rest of the scale.

Football Recruiting Scale o’ Commitment:

10: Odd birthmark in the shape of his school’s logo. Coincidence?

9: Becomes a recruiting intern and starts calling other prospects

8: Solid commitment. Makes his decision and isn’t heard from until he signs at 8:30 on Signing Day and shows up on time in August.

7: Committed, but hasn’t cleaned out his cell phone’s contact list just yet.

6: The soft verbal: claims he is still committed but has other visits lined up "just to be sure of my decision."

5: The soft decommitment: officially backs out of a hasty early commitment but keeps his original school at or near the top of his list.

4: Genuinely undecided but doing his homework

3: Major life decision is heavily influenced by paddleboats.

2: Anyone have a coin?

1: "I committed to Ole Miss because I really felt at home there. Just as I did at LSU the week before, Arkansas the week before that, and Tennessee last month. Where am I visiting this weekend?"

Worst choice of a name for a mini-feature on UGA athletics?

Congratulations, AJC, on the new "UGA FOOTBALL BUZZ". Was the "UGA FOOTBALL GATOR CHOMP" considered? The "WAR EAGLE UGA FOOTBALL REPORT" would have been a better choice.

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.

Draft day to me is much more about the greatness of college football than it is about the NFL. Only a fraction of those who follow the draft pay attention to the various free agent moves and trades that were made prior to the draft. The fates of those who don’t make the final rosters will barely be noticed. Draft day is graduation day for college football, and that’s why people pay attention. (Well, that and watching insane Jets fans.) For fans of individual schools, draft day is yet another way to keep score and claim bragging rights. It’s about pride as your star takes the stage as a top pick. Football is our national game now, and this is the one day when the college and pro fan bases converge.

I’m not a Brady Quinn fan, but ESPN did him no favors with that ridiculous game of "when will he be drafted?" on Saturday. The result was one of the most embarrassing and awkward green room displays since Jumaine Jones. As team after team passed on Quinn, the ESPN obsession with the Notre Dame quarterback became more and more apologetic until the commissioner, acting out of mercy, moved Quinn to a private area. Even worse was the disservice done to Jamarcus Russell and the other 20 or so guys picked ahead of Quinn. On a day where the focus should have been on Russell or Calvin Johnson, the story became Quinn, and each pick couldn’t pass without a shot back to Quinn, his vest, his untucked collar, and his mom and girlfriend.

It’s become an annual draft ritual for Georgia fans to complain that the Falcons don’t draft enough Dawgs. The Falcons’ job is to put an interesting and competitive team on the field, and they will fill seats if they do. Even if the Birds dressed the entire 2002 Bulldog team, a 4-12 season would still empty out the Dome and get the coach sent on his way.

The complaining got even more pathetic this year. Somehow the decision to take a first-team All-SEC defensive end not named Charles Johnson was the wrong move. Then because the Falcons drafted Martrez Milner, they didn’t draft the right Dawg. Then after the draft, the Falcons signed linebacker Tony Taylor and punter Gordon Ely-Kelso to free-agent deals. Add them to D.J. Shockley and the signing in recent years of Josh Mallard, Terrence Edwards, and Steve Herndon, and it sure does start to look like a big ol’ anti-Georgia conspiracy, doesn’t it? The Dawgs have some great fans, but they’re the most paranoid in the SEC outside of the state of Alabama.

Come to think of it, I’m getting a bit fed up with the Dawgs ignoring guys from my high school.

It has to be asked now whether Danny Ware and Charles Johnson made wise decisions to come out early. I’ve already said that I think Ware’s decision was correct, even if he was undrafted. I just didn’t see his situation or playing time improving this season. Johnson’s case is a bit different. Someone who believes himself to be a possible first-round selection and slides into the third round either 1) got snowed by an awful lot of NFL teams or 2) chose to listen to the wrong people in his camp. Many observers seem to think that the Panthers got a great deal with Johnson in the third round, and he’ll probably make the roster. It’s still an uphill climb though to get himself into the position, both in terms of a contract and the job security, of a first-round pick.

On the flip side, there’s Quentin Moses. Moses was probably drafted lower than he would have been as a junior. He didn’t slide as far as some thought, but I think the consensus is that he would have fared better in last year’s draft. Part of the deal when you come back for your senior season to improve your draft position is to actually show improvement. It’s a risk, and we can’t blame Johnson for taking it. He’s certainly not going to be hurting as a third-round pick, and Moses still did fine for himself as well.

It’s interesting to see the draft results from some of the nation’s most talked-about college offenses. Florida in particular was worth noting. Urban Meyer’s offense was a favorite punching bag among cynics because Florida failed to break 30 points in an SEC game until the SEC championship game. I guess you could say they still had a pretty decent season. Now fans of other schools are trying to convince themselves that the Gators will be vulnerable because of losses on defense. It’s true – the Gators had seven defensive players drafted. But another way to look at it is that Florida had only two late-round draft picks from their offense. Key members of that offense like Caldwell and even Leak went undrafted. It kind of makes you wonder what Meyer can do on offense with better talent, and recruiting rankings tell us that better talent is supposedly in place among the underclassmen.

Another team worth noting is Notre Dame. Charlie Weis got some good results out of his offense over the past two seasons, and the draft tells us that his talent wasn’t the best either. Clearly Quinn was a fine quarterback, and Weis got plenty out of him. But Notre Dame’s only other draft picks from offense were a pair of tackles. Key skill position players Darius Walker and Jeff Samardzija were undrafted. Notre Dame has added some high-profile newcomers like Jimmy Claussen, and we’ll watch what Weis can do with that talent.

With Ohio State’s loss of three receivers, Antonio Pittman, and Troy Smith to the draft, the best concentration of talent on offense in the Big 10 next year seems to be in Ann Arbor. Schools like Michigan, Louisville, Southern Cal, and West Virginia didn’t lose many of their key offensive playmakers to the draft, so it’s no accident that a lot of the preseason attention is on those programs.