Chip Towers reports that…

The executive committee of the Georgia Athletics Association Board of Directors will announce Monday that it will name the athletic facilities on the south campus after Dooley, the former football coach and athletic director.

I’ll be interested to hear the details. Are we re-naming the buildings, putting Dooley’s name on an imaginary “sports complex”, or what? If we’re talking about writing over names like Woodruff, Butts, Mehre, Towns, and Stegeman, I can’t imagine this going over well. (No, that’s not what’s happening – see below.)

UPDATE: Chip has revised his article to note that “the area of South Campus that houses most of the Bulldogs’ athletic facilities will be called the “Vince Dooley Athletic Complex.” OK, that makes more sense. The real tangible change will be a statue to honor Dooley.

The plan includes the construction of a garden plaza at the corner of South Lumpkin Street and Pinecrest Drive, adjacent to Butts-Mehre-Heritage Hall and Spec Towns Track on South Campus. The centerpiece of that plaza will be 14-foot-high, bronze statue of Dooley being lifted on the shoulders of two his players during the 1980 national championship season.

Cool. Still, as someone on the DawgVent pointed out, the “Vince Dooley Complex” almost sounds like a syndrome characterized by a coach who runs the ball a lot.

Larry Munson will miss this year’s Atlanta Sports Awards banquet where he is due to receive the Furman Bisher Award for sports media excellence. Hopefully this quote about his condition is as little cause for concern as him fretting about a 1-AA opponent’s long snapper:

“I’m hanging in there,” Munson said. “That’s the best I can tell you.”

Damn, Larry. Keep hanging in there.

The other day I touched on the perception problem with Georgia basketball.  Of course it’s ridiculous to paint the picture of a program in turmoil over a jaywalking incident, but the casual fan sees the names in the papers, sees the attrition, and wonders how far away we are from Tony Cole. (A long way, if you were wondering.)

Still, University President Michael Adams acknowledges this growing perception.  “I think in that (men’s basketball) program, we’ve had too many issues of misconduct lately,” he said on Thursday.  While this is a relatively lightweight statement next to some of the memos sent to Jim Harrick and Vince Dooley back in their day, it is still an indication that these problems in the basketball program are on Adams’ radar. 

With the discussion about Felton’s future now moving into some very public arenas, the perception of the program is one thing that Felton must have on his side, especially as things on the court continue to look grim.

Paul Johnson supposedly had this quote at last night’s signing day festivities:

“We’re sure going to try and beat (Georgia). Heck, I’ve hated them since I was at Georgia Southern.”

It’s obvious why Johnson would develop such feelings for the Bulldogs and not for Tech – it would be hard for a Georgia Southern coach to work up a hate for a program that won’t even play the Eagles.

Following last night’s loss to Vanderbilt, Georgia junior guard Billy Humphrey was arrested for underage possession of alcohol.

Humphrey is obviously in a world of hurt right now. You could sense the frustration and disappointment about his injury in his comments following the South Carolina loss. His struggles have continued in the two games since, and unfortunately it looks as if he chose the wrong escape route from his troubles last night.

Humphrey is suspended indefinitely, and he will face at least a mandatory three-game suspension due to an alcohol-related arrest. Georgia’s offense sputtered without a healthy Humphrey, and one has to expect that the scoring difficulties, especially from the perimeter, will continue during his suspension. The trio of Swansey, Butler, and Brewer will try to hold down the position.

It’s silly to fault Dennis Felton for Humphrey’s transgression; remember that suspensions for alcohol-related incidents are athletic department policy and are out of the coach’s hands. Still, it’s a disturbing trend that we’re starting to see off-court drama begin to take over the Georgia basketball program once again.

Dennis Felton was brought in to win, graduate players, and, above all in the wake of Jim Harrick, clean up the image of Georgia basketball. He managed to do well in that direction for a few seasons; it isn’t the case now. If you saw any recent game, you know that the team hasn’t quit on Felton or the season. Still, Felton will be fighting a perception soon – if he isn’t already – that he is losing control of the program. Even an incident completely outside of his control like Humphrey’s arrest adds to that perception when it’s stacked on top of everything else that has happened to the program in the past year.

The history books will list the New York Giants’ Kawika Mitchell as a South Florida Bull, but the Super Bowl XLII defensive standout originally signed to be a Georgia Bulldog in February of 1998. With Signing Day Eve upon us, here’s a refresher on the linebacker class that Georgia inked ten years ago. Even considering transfers and attrition, it stands as one of the Bulldogs’ best positional hauls in a single recruiting class.

• Boss Bailey: Bailey played as a true freshman, making an impact in the 1998 Peach Bowl win. A knee injury on the opening kickoff of the 2000 season seriously affected the rest of his Bulldog career (not to mention Georgia’s 2000 season). Bailey broke through in 2002 with a senior season that was key to Georgia’s SEC title run. He has been a starting linebacker with the Detroit Lions since he was drafted in the early second round in 2003.
• Tony Gilbert: Gilbert wasn’t the highest-rated of the bunch by any stretch, but he got every bit of production he could out of the talent he had. As a senior in 2002, he tied for the team lead in tackles and was named second-team All-SEC. He was a 6th round pick of the Arizona Cardinals in the 2003 NFL draft. Since being released by the Cardinals, he has had a successful career with Jacksonville.
• Charles Grant*: Yes, a linebacker. Grant was athletic enough to play everything from tailback to defensive end, but the current New Orleans Saints star was considered a linebacker on the recruiting board. He left Georgia for the NFL after his junior season in 2001 and was a first-round pick of the Saints in the 2002 NFL draft. By the way, here’s to a speedy and complete recovery for Grant.
• Jessie Miller*: Miller and Grant were the biggest academic risks in the group, and though each did not qualify out of high school, Miller was the real academic casualty of this class. After earning some playing time as a freshman in 1999, Miller was no longer with the program in 2000.
• Kawika Mitchell: As we mentioned above, Mitchell signed with Georgia out of Winter Park, Fla. but transferred after to USF his freshman season. Various rumors cite homesickness or a girlfriend back home, but he went on to have a solid career at USF and is now the only Bull with a Super Bowl ring.
• Will Witherspoon: ‘Spoon was a fan favorite from the moment he shocked the world by signing with Georgia out of Florida. His signature play was batting away a two-point conversion against LSU in 1999, but Will had a consistently strong college career and quickly caught on in the NFL. After joining the Carolina Panthers as a third-round pick in the 2002 NFL draft, he signed with the St. Louis Rams in 2006 and was named the team’s MVP following the 2007 season.

* – Grant and Miller did not qualify in 1998 and were re-signed in 1999.

Congratulations to Danny Ware, Kawika Mitchell, and the rest of the New York Giants.

The college football blogosphere will no doubt be inundated over the next few days with opinions about what this improbable outcome means for a college football playoff.  Did the 10-6 Giants even belong in a championship game with an undefeated Patriots team?  Is it inevitable that a college football playoff would put a 7-5 conference champ in the position to win a few games and end up playing for all the marbles?  Is the winner of a playoff really the best team?

Other than the fact that I’m a Giants fan, I don’t have a problem with the outcome, and here’ why:

• The Patriots, Cowboys, and Packers had every chance to win the title.  None of the top teams in the league were denied access to the process, and for that reason any debate about the league’s champion ended when Eli Manning took a knee.
• If we accept a playoff, we have to accept the “any given Sunday” risks that come when you actually play the games and let the process play out on the field.  Sports doesn’t follow the scripts, the oddsmakers, or the computers.  An outcome that seems less-than-optimal isn’t an indictment of the process.
• Beating four increasingly-difficult opponents over a month’s time isn’t to be dismissed as merely “getting hot at the right time”. You have to sustain a pretty high level of play over a significant length of time.  In the case of the Giants, that had to be done completely on the road.

On its own, this was an incredible game, and a thrilling finish.  The Manning-to-Tyree pass will take its place among the pantheon of legendary NFL plays, and Eli Manning finally has a legacy of his own. 

In an act sure to go down in history alongside “freedom fries” as bold legislative stands, the Georgia legislature took the time to weigh in on the BCS.

The state House voted 151-9 Friday to urge the NCAA to create a playoff system for college football, adopting a resolution that calls the current system “dysfunctional.”

…The resolution, which now goes to the Senate, calls the BCS system “the greatest disappointment of the 2007 college football season.”

Awesome. Can’t wait to see the outcome of their American Idol vote later this month.

But if the legislature is going to stick its nose into college football, there are much more pressing matters they could deal with such as this abomination they allowed to slip through:

The Lady Dogs found a way last night to make the men’s 56-point performance at South Carolina on Wednesday look like the output of a Tarkanian UNLV team.

Georgia gave up only 47 points to Kentucky…and lost 47-44.

They scored 17 points in the second half, and that includes a garbage layup at the buzzer.

After going up 36-27 with 13 minutes remaining, the team made just one more shot until Ashley Houts’ layup as the clock expired.

Tasha Humphrey scored 20 points for Georgia, but even she was held to just six points in the second half. Kentucky doubled down on the Bulldog star, and Georgia’s perimeter players were not quick enough to make the Wildcats pay for the extra attention paid to Humphrey.

It is impossible to describe just how wretched the Georgia offense was. If it wasn’t missed shots, it was turnovers. Really bad turnovers. Everything from Ashley Houts’ unforced double-dribbling along the sideline to Megan Darrah throwing the ball away on Georgia’s final opportunity to tie the game.

When you’re a successful coach like Andy Landers, watching (and pointing out) the same mistakes over and over is maddening. He reached a breaking point after the game and pulled the team into the postgame media conference to let them hear some very candid and pointed public criticism.

"We don’t fight," Landers said. "I have a hard time correcting mistakes. And quite honestly, our accountability is not really great. All that’s my fault. I’ve got to figure out how to get all that straightened out. We don’t like to be accountable. We’ll call momma. We’ll call daddy. We’ll call you if we think we can get you to agree with me on a bad idea. …I’m an ineffective coach. I’m not doing a very good job."

From what I’ve seen over the past couple of seasons, he’s right to be frustrated with the players. But the scary thing is looking beyond this year. What is this team without Humphrey and Darrah? The program signed a single guard in the fall signing period without much fanfare. There are a couple of post players sitting out this season – one due to injury and one due to transfer rules – but neither seems to be the impact player that Humphrey is. The long-term outlook for the program is another post for another day, but it’s not a pleasant subject, and Landers has plenty to answer for himself.

Getting back to the present, the Lady Dogs have only a couple of days to rebound and get ready for a rematch with Vanderbilt on Sunday. Vandy jumped out to a 16-0 lead and led by as many as 20 before Georgia made a game of it in the second half, getting as close as 6 points before Vanderbilt sealed the 67-59 win. 24 turnovers – including 9 by Houts – did in the Lady Dogs.

Halfway through the SEC regular season, the Lady Dogs must beat Vanderbilt to avoid sinking below .500 in conference play.

Most remember Scelfo as Georgia’s offensive line coach and Jim Donnan’s right hand man up through 1998 when he left for Tulane. I don’t think Donnan was quite the same after Scelfo left. If you believe the chatter, Scelfo was also considered for Georgia’s recent vacancy at tight ends coach, but of course the job went to John Lilly.

Scelfo is coming back to Georgia, but it will be as tight ends coach for the Atlanta Falcons.

The Senator points us to a Seattle Times series about the 2000 University of Washington football team. The focus today is on a player who had to overcome many things in his quest for a degree, not the least of which were institutional factors that compromised academics.

An offensive lineman exemplified the mind-set of many players on the team. “I was a football major,” he says. “Class was not important to me.”

J.K. Scott, who was a backup quarterback, says: “Most of the talk with the guys, and this isn’t everyone, was, ‘What are the easiest classes we can find?’ For everyone there, it’s football first, and education second, as an afterthought.”

The article (and series) is interesting and pretty damning at times, but it’s naive to think that the portrait we develop from this series is unique to Washington. There isn’t a football program in Division 1 that doesn’t lower its academic standards for football players, and Husky players surely aren’t the only ones even on that campus looking for the easiest path to a degree.

But while we’re talking about institutional approaches to the education of student-athletes, it’s worth noting that the University of Georgia’s “University Council Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics met Tuesday afternoon to plan a meeting with students, coaches and academic support staff to interview them about their academic experiences.”

“The committee proposed questions to ask the coaches and students, such as how many hours were dedicated to the teams per week and how they deal with academic violations,” the Red and Black reported. This event is scheduled for March 27th, and it aims to be a pretty comprehensive survey of athletic programs.

This study comes on the heels of an NCAA study that, not surprisingly, found that most student-athletes consider themselves athletes first and students second. The survey also found that student-athletes spend, on average, over 40 hours a week on their sport – far in excess of NCAA guidelines for supervised practice time.

If you’re a minor league hockey team in Wheeling, WVa., you probably need all the attention you can get. So the Wheeling Nailers are reaching out to the disillusioned people of West Virginia and will host "Shred Rich Rodriguez" night this Saturday. Bring a picture of Rodriguez to feed into a huge shredder and get a discounted ticket. (A shredder! Get it?)

The promotion doesn’t stop there:

Additionally any fan who wears WVU apparel to the game will receive $2 off their ticket price. Ohio State fans will also receive the discount by wearing their gear to the game to demonstrate their mutual distaste for Michigan.

Any fan caught wearing University of Michigan apparel will be charged double in order to help Rodriguez pay his $4 million buyout to WVU.

If your first name is Rich or your last name is Rodriguez your ticket will be $8.25. If your name happens to be Rich Rodriguez you will get in free. Except, of course, if you actually are Coach Rich Rodriguez then you will be barred from the building and escorted outside state lines.

In the land of the burning couch, I’m sure a few people will show up and be disappointed to find that Rich Rodriguez will not actually be fed through a wood chipper.

Andy Landers became just the third women’s basketball coach to win 700 games at a single school on Thursday evening.  With an 82-55 win at Florida, his career mark in Athens is 700-218 (a .763 winning percentage).  By beating Florida, Landers raises his career mark against the Gators to 41-7. He needs just 17 wins for his 800th win as a collegiate head coach.  With 918 Division 1 games under his belt, only three others were faster to 700 wins, and only two others (Pat Summit and Jody Conradt) have done it at the same school.

While the game was significant as an achievement for Landers, it also stood out as Georgia’s most complete effort of the season.  The Lady Dogs were 1-3 on the road this year and had look pretty dreadful in their two SEC road contests to date.  They badly needed a road win and a solid performance to shake off some of the self-doubt that surely creeps in after a few sub-par games away from home.  Against Florida the Lady Dogs took control from the beginning and put together a 22-2 run after the game was tied 6-6.  Ashley Houts scored 21 of her career-high 25 points in the first half, and Tasha Humphrey took over in the second half to finish with 23.

“We were solid from beginning to end,” said Landers postgame.  “We dropped the big hammer on them early…we clicked on both ends.”

Houts had struggled with poor shooting and turnovers in the past couple of games, but she came to play in Gainesville.  “Tonight there was an opportunity for Houts to assert herself, and she did,” said Landers.  Her turnovers were down, and she added six rebounds, six assists, and five steals while shooting 50% from the floor and a perfect 3-of-3 from outside.

“He’s the main reason so many of us chose to come to Georgia, not only now but throughout his career,” Houts said. “To play for him when he won his 700th –  and to play for him every game – is an honor.”

Humphrey had her second-straight impressive performance.  After setting a season high against Alabama, she recorded her second-best output of the season against Florida.  Though sidelined with foul trouble at the end of the first half after scoring a quick 8 points, she poured in 15 in the second half.  Freshman Jasmine Lee was impressive in 11 minutes of relief for Humphrey.

Landers took a moment to reflect on the 700th win.  “The thing that pleases me most is that we’ve been able to do it all at Georgia. We haven’t jumped around. I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of great people and a lot of great people surrounding me in Athens. That’s what I and my family are most thankful for.”

The Lady Dogs don’t get long to celebrate.  After a day back home in Athens, they’ll head west to play at #11 Oklahoma on Sunday evening at 5:00 p.m. in front of a national television audience on ESPN2.  Oklahoma is the highest-ranked opponent for Georgia to date this season.  The game will surely be billed as a Tasha Humphrey vs. Courtney Paris showdown; the two have been a couple of the best post players in the nation over the past four seasons.  But in games like this, it’s often the supporting cast that determines the outcome.  Will Houts, Robinson, Darrah, and the others be the difference in a game with big national significance?

The Brian VanGorder story continues to get better and better as the move causes ripples through the SEC.

The latest development? Brand-spanking-new Arkansas defensive coordinator Ellis Johnson has resigned to fill the vacancy at South Carolina. Johnson makes VanGorder look like Joe Paterno in terms of longevity: VanGorder was announced as the Gamecock defensive coordinator on Steve Spurrier’s Web site on December 19th. Johnson was introduced the coordinator at Arkansas on January 4th. 20 days on the job – not bad.

Petrino noted that "(Johnson) and his wife are both from South Carolina and many of their relatives still reside in the state," and that explains the reason for the move. Of course this news comes just hours after the Arkansas Democrat Gazette runs a lovely story profiling Johnson and noting that "his wife Caroline was eager to live in Northwest Arkansas after hearing about the area for years." Not that eager, I guess.

This story can only end with VanGorder following Petrino’s footsteps and leaving the Falcons to become the Arkansas defensive coordinator.

Please, oh please, let this happen:

Sources have confirmed to CSTV that newly hired South Carolina defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder is likely to leave Steve Spurrier’s Gamecocks and return to the NFL as the defensive coordinator of the Atlanta Falcons.

Brian Curtis of CSTV has the scoop. The Falcons hired Jacksonville defensive coordinator Mike Smith, and the two worked together when VanGorder left Georgia to become Jacksonville’s linebacker coach after 2004 which was about seven jobs ago for VanGorder. VanGorder left Jacksonville after one year to take the head coaching position at Georgia Southern. From there – you know, I kind of lose track. I think he had a stint with the World League, briefly took over for the Atlanta Thrashers, and had begun taping a reality show on Food Network before Spurrier came calling.

VanGorder’s four-week stay in Columbia would be kind of short even for him.

UPDATE: South Carolina’s Rivals site confirms the news. “Sources close to the USC football program have confirmed to Gamecock Central that VanGorder will be named the new defensive coordinator for the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons.”