We’ve suspected that Title IX would have something to say about even a small stipend for student-athletes. Kristi Dosh over at The Business of College Sports fills in those details and explains why, as she puts it, “Title IX provides an enormous road block to paying college athletes.”

Her explanation of how Title IX applies to this discussion is interesting enough, but she brings up another point that doesn’t get mentioned often enough.

The simplest fault line currently in college sports is the divide between the AQ BCS schools and everyone else. It’s where the money is, where the TV contracts are, where access to football’s biggest payoffs is. But as Dosh explains, that divide isn’t as sharp as being on one side or the other of the AQ velvet rope. “There are plenty of programs in AQ conferences who rely on assistance,” she writes. Often that support comes from student fees or directly from the school. In either case, students or taxpayers are often subsidizing the athletic department.

That’s the case even at Georgia. In 2009-2010, student fees contributed over $3 million of the athletic department’s $86.7 million in revenue. What makes Georgia and a handful of schools unique is that they don’t need that money to break even. While student activity fees might be icing on the cake at Georgia and a few other AQ schools, that’s not the case for schools like Iowa State. The Cyclones budget in FY11 calls for a meager surplus of just over $8,000. That’s on the back of student fees and “university support” totaling more than $2.7 million.

In an earlier post, Dosh looked at the AQ schools who rely most on student activity fees. Six programs from major conferences including the ACC,Big East, and – yes, even the SEC rely on student activity fees for at least 10% of their athletics revenue. The list is dominated by the ACC and Big East, demonstrating that even the monolith that is the AQ conference has its own internal fault lines. As schools like Texas are able to negotiate their own TV and marketing rights, the gulf even within conferences and divisions will grow between a few certain schools and the rest, even if the rest are fellow AQ schools sharing their own bowl and TV money.

The hard number is 14. Only “14 of the 120 Football Bowl Subdivision schools made money from campus athletics in the 2009 fiscal year,” according to an NCAA report. That’s after you exclude student and institutional support. Proposals for stipends and even COA scholarships will work at Ohio State, Texas, Georgia, and a handful of other schools. That’s where the money is in college sports. They can afford it, even if you consider the Title IX requirements. Those proposals won’t just price out the bottom half of Divison I though. The fracture won’t be at the AQ/non-AQ line.

Of course it’s not a requirement that an athletic department make money. Many schools are glad to subsidize the bottom line in order to remain competitive and market the school through its athletics. That institutional support has to come from somewhere. For public schools, would taxpayers mind extra public money going to the state school’s athletes? For public and private schools, would students approve higher activities fees so that the football team can have a little more walking around money? Those answers aren’t necessarily “no,” but they are questions that will have to be asked if schools are asked to increase the money they give student-athletes.

Are there alternatives? The so-called “Olympic model” that would allow student-athletes to trade on their names for endorsements while remaining eligible removes the school from the picture. That model isn’t without its own problems, but it would at least address some of the legal hurdles that arise from Title IX while enabling student-athletes to realize some of the value they create.

In the 33rd round of this year’s Major League Baseball draft, the Texas Rangers select…

…outfielder Jonathan Taylor of the University of Georgia.

The Rangers had selected Taylor’s Georgia teammate and friend, Zach Cone, during the “Compensation A” portion of the first round. Cone frequently wore Taylor’s #2 following their collision earlier this year which left Taylor paralyzed. It’s a great gesture by Texas to recognize the duo and honor Taylor with a draft pick.

(h/t Marc Weiszer)

There’s always a twinge of disappointment when a team gets knocked out of an NCAA Tournament, but the Diamond Dawgs should leave Corvallis knowing that they salvaged the 2011 season. Less than two weeks ago this team was in very serious danger of finishing with a losing record. In Hoover they demonstrated that they deserved consideration for postseason play. Once they reached the postseason they went on to validate their invitation. Georgia ended up as one of the 32 teams reaching a regional final.

Georgia just couldn’t get out in front of a rested and talented Oregon State team. Late-inning heroics that saw them through in the first game couldn’t be repeated in the nightcap. You couldn’t ask for more than Farmer and Cone at bat with a chance to win the game, but OSU’s closer shook off an injury and a delay to clinch the regional for his team.

It’s somewhat fitting that a player wearing the #2 jersey was the subject of the final entry in this season’s scorebook. The story of this season will always be about Taylor, his resilience, and his impact on his teammates. Those teammates made sure over the past two weeks that the story isn’t told as one of coming up just short but one of accomplishment.

There’s a sentiment today that Mark Richt is backtracking on his stance against oversigning. (h/t Blutarsky)

Richt became a champion of the anti-oversigning crowd a few weeks ago when he used the occasion of a meeting of fans in South Carolina to speak out against the “winning at all costs” approach “some coaches” use in managing their rosters. Let’s look at what he said though.

Not that we haven’t grayshirted, or talked to guys about grayshirting…If you tell them on the front end and they know that, everyone understands that, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. And that’s how we go about it if we’re going to talk to a guy about grayshirting.

These other coaches have been over-signing, trying to grayshirt, trying to make sure they never come up short of that 85 (scholarship limit) number. But in doing so have they done it in an ethical way, which is what you’re asking. And I’d say not. That’s why the NCAA is trying to change its rules.

Here’s what he said yesterday:

Well, if five of those guys know that there’s no room at the end that they are willing to grayshirt, they’re willing to come in January. The kid knows, the high school coach knows, everybody involved in recruiting if they know that there’s a chance that there’s no space for you. If everybody knows that on the front end, then I don’t see anything wrong with it ethically.

Richt’s stance has never been much about a specific rule or number. As you might expect, he’s more concerned about the treatment of the student-athlete. In both quotes, he mentioned the ethics involved. He’s consistent that he can live with and operate under the existing rules if they’re followed ethically. Creating a set of rules which would handcuff only the SEC has nothing to do with how Richt would prefer coaches deal with prospects and current players. Unethical coaches can still be so whether the limit is 25 or 28.

That’s hardly “talking out of both sides of his mouth”, but it might just be a case of people putting words into his mouth in order to move their cause forward.

The SEC’s football coaches this week seem pretty content with the status quo. Hoops coaches on the other hand have put their support behind a big change: the SEC Tournament will be seeded based on conference record rather than the divisional standings. It’s the first step on the way to dismantling the divisional format for basketball.

Teams will still maintain the current division-based schedule for now. That will likely result in inflated records for those in the weaker division, but it’s a temporary situation. A committee of athletic directors and coaches will work on revamping future schedules.

There’s already a working model for SEC basketball without divisions: SEC women’s basketball. The women have never used divisions, and the conference tournament is seeded according to overall conference record. It’s a good thing, too: the top five seeds in this year’s SEC women’s tournament were all “East” schools. Had they used the men’s seeding format, #6 seed Auburn and #7 seed LSU – two teams that didn’t make the NCAA Tournament – would have received two of the top four seeds and first-round byes. The women’s tournament instead gave its top four seeds the bye and saw to it that they couldn’t meet until the semifinals.

The women also provide a model for scheduling without divisions. With 16 games against 11 opponents, you’ll play five twice and six once (just as we do now in divisional play). One of those teams you’ll play twice is your “permanent opponent”, and those fall along traditional rivalries. Georgia plays Florida, Auburn plays Alabama, and so on. Instead of the other four home-and-home opponents being predetermined divisional matchups, they’ll rotate among the other ten teams on a two-year basis. That means that in every other year, you’ll rotate to new home-and-home opponents. As an example, for the past two seasons the Georgia women played Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, and South Carolina twice. With the exception of Florida, Georgia will have different home-and-home opponents next season.

The downside of course is the unbalanced schedule. Someone is still going to be playing Kentucky and Florida twice while others get Auburn and South Carolina. But it won’t be their permanent condition, and teams won’t often have schedules as disparate as last season’s East versus West split.

The idea of expanding the conference schedule to 18 games is somewhat related. Two more home-and-home opponents would do a little to smooth out disparities between the toughest and weakest league schedules, and going to a true round-robin of 22 SEC games as some coaches suggested would eliminate them entirely. But I’m against the idea for the same reason that the conference probably wouldn’t like a football schedule with nine conference games. Two additional SEC basketball games don’t seem like a big deal, but by definition they would spread 12 more losses around the conference. The league already struggles to place more than a handful of teams in the NCAA Tournament, and saddling its inevitable bubble teams with another loss or two could make or break their chances.

It’s tough to gauge the impact of a longer conference season on nonconference schedules. Would a longer and ostensibly tougher SEC slate give teams the cover to reduce the quality of the rest of their schedule? After all, if there are going to be 12 more losses distributed among SEC teams, wouldn’t teams hedge against the possibility of more conference losses by picking up another sure win or two in December? The games we’d lose out on might not be the weakest on the schedule; instead they’d be some of the interesting opponents like Colorado or UAB – nonconference opponents that are rough substitutes in quality for other SEC teams.

Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski had some thoughts on this very issue. According to the Charlotte Observer, “he would prefer that the ACC schedule remains at 16 games to allow teams to continue playing high-profile opponents from outside the conference without making the schedule too strong.” The ACC has also considered increasing its 16-game conference schedule after it had a tough time getting more than four teams into this year’s NCAA Tournament. But Krzyzewski argues that the solution lies with the rest of the conference stepping up its nonconference schedule. Adding more conference games would take away the opportunity and motivation for those schools to do their part in improving the stature of the league.

Part of our problem is that as a conference, we have not scheduled nonconference-wise hard enough to promote a good enough RPI which would benefit everyone,” Krzyzewski said. “If we could still keep 16 games and each team takes it upon itself to schedule stronger, I think we need that.

The increase in Georgia-Florida ticket prices got most of the attention yesterday, but one item in the budget is going to have a lot bigger impact on the lives of Georgia’s student-athletes:

Georgia is spending $737,000 on what it calls “student-athlete welfare” – adding two new nutritionists, a sports psychologist, a training table meal and a mentor program for football.

The nutrition of Georgia’s football players has been in the news this offseason as the program revamps its conditioning program. But a rough initiative to eliminate junk food isn’t the same as a proper sports nutrition program, and that’s what this expense will help launch.

It’s so surprise that Greg McGarity is putting resources into wellness programs. He only had to look to his experience at Florida to get an idea of what was missing in Athens. Have a look at Florida’s “sports nutrition services” program. The program includes “two full time Sports Dietitians,” and it’s no coincidence that Georgia’s budget also specifies two nutritionists. Of course it’s not an approach unique to Florida or Georgia – bringing in a nutritionist was one of Jimbo Fisher’s actions in his first season as FSU head coach last year.

With this item, McGarity is doing just what fans hoped he would. He saw a shortcoming, drew on his years of experience at Florida to understand what other top programs did, and now he’s spending the money to bring Georgia into line with best practices. He might even be putting his own touch on the concept of student-athlete wellness with the sports psychologist and football mentoring program.

It’s pretty unusual as postseason scenarios go: Georgia is the 4th best baseball team in the SEC. They boast a winning SEC record, a top-25 RPI, and have knocked off some of the best teams in the nation. Yet they go into this evening needing another upset of South Carolina just to raise their overall record over .500 and keep their NCAA Tournament hopes alives.

Georgia is in this situation thanks to a 12-14 nonconference mark. We’re quick to acknowledge that Georgia faced the nation’s toughest schedule. That’s something sure to be looked at over the offseason. It’s one thing to play an ambitious and competitive slate; it’s unavoidable in the SEC and against local rivals like Tech and Clemson. There’s nothing wrong with a little more balance though.

It’s not only the difficulty of the schedule that will be scrutinized. The Diamond Dawgs split their nonconference games evenly between home games (13) and road/neutral games (13). Just as one example, South Carolina played 35 of its 56 games in Columbia. Georgia only had 28 home games. There’s another reason to increase the number of home games: if there’s going to be any kind of investment in the program and its facilities, you want the revenue that will come from those additional home games.

Would more home games have helped this team? Tough to say – they were just 6-7 in nonconference home games. Foley Field was more of an advantage in league play where the Dawgs posted a 9-6 record.

The nonconference schedule was pretty much .500 any way you look at it. The Dawgs were 7-7 in the key midweek games between weekend series. They were 3-4 against opponents from the state of Georgia. With such a tight margin for error at this time of year, you can’t help but look back at missed opportunities. Hopefully Georgia won’t have to.

We had mentioned last year that Florida’s athletic department was proposing raising Georgia-Florida ticket prices by $10. The price stayed level for 2011, but this morning the Georgia athletic board called Florida’s increase and raised them an additional $10 raise for the 2012 season. The cheapest ticket for the game in Jacksonville will rise from $40 to $60, and club level seats will jump from $70 to $100. The price increases project to another $1.779 million in revenue from the game.

Schools are realizing that they can charge a premium price for marquee neutral site games – something we’re seeing with the season opener at the Georgia Dome. Athletic director Greg McGarity notes, “If you look at the other schools that play these traditional games—games of this magnitude—we are well, well behind the curve and have been for years.”

The most direct comparison is the Oklahoma-Texas game in Dallas. Tickets for that game have been at least $95 for several seasons. Club level tickets for the Arkansas-Texas A&M game at the new Dallas stadium were priced at $300 in 2009. Tickets for the novelty Northwestern-Illinois game at Wrigley Field last season started at $50 and went up to three times that amount.

So McGarity’s correct in that the WLOCP was a bit of a bargain, but today’s vote was only one step in adjusting ticket prices upward. The board passed on additional increases for 2014 and 2017 that would raise base prices to $75. That decision was less out of concern for a $75 ticket but, as Marc Weiszer put it, “some board members expressed concern about setting those prices so many years ahead of time.” In other words, the market in 2017 might support quite a bit more than a $75 ticket.

The increase in Jacksonville ticket prices just about mutes any talk about the series returning to campus any time soon. The debate about the neutrality of Jacksonville comes up any time Georgia loses, but it’s soon going to become a cash cow with which neither program is willing to part. Each school already makes $3.4 million over a two-year period from the game, approximiately $1 million more than they’d make from a home game once every two seasons. This price increase brings the two-year haul to over $5 million, and if the 2017 increase is eventually approved, that payoff breaks $7 million.

That’s not to say home game tickets won’t increase for Georgia as well or that Georgia couldn’t put a premium price on certain home games. Programs do it all the time. It’s just that prices for neutral site games are on a trajectory all their own, and Georgia or Florida would be foolish 1) not to capitialize on the trend and 2) to give up the neutral site game that opens this premium ticket market for them.

Much has been expected of Georgia’s softball senior class since they stormed into the WCWS in 2009 and followed it up with a repeat visit a year ago. It was no surprise to see them as one of the top-rated teams entering this season, and they even rose to the #1 spot in the polls midseason.

The regular season didn’t end quite the way they wanted. Georgia fell from that #1 perch and actually entered the conference tournament as the fifth seed. They lost five of their last ten regular season games including three consecutive SEC losses in early May. They bounced back with solid wins over LSU and Alabama in the SEC Tournament, but they couldn’t hold a four-run lead in the SEC Tournament title game. Even though they struggled a bit at the end and slid in the SEC standings, their overall body of work was more than enough to earn them the #6 national seed heading into the postseason.

The team reminded us over the weekend that they remembered how to play in the postseason. Georgia came within a late UAB run of winning each of their three games in the regional by the eight-run mercy rule. They did it with good offensive balance on Friday, use the home run on Saturday, and jumped on FSU mistakes on Sunday to score at least 8 runs in each game. That’s the same FSU team that won the ACC Tournament a week ago, and they couldn’t last but six innings with this experienced Georgia team.

Georgia’s dominance of the regional isn’t a new development. They’ve now won 12 straight regional games in Athens. The ownership of their home field has continued into the super regionals; they’ve advanced to Oklahoma City in each of the past two seasons with a pair of super regional sweeps. They’re hoping that trend continues when #11 Baylor comes to Athens for this year’s best-of-three super regional series.

Are there things to work on as they advance? Sure. Chief among them is fielding. Some costly errors in the field might have denied Georgia an SEC Tournament championship. Sloppy fielding also contributed to UAB’s meager scoring that extended Saturday’s game. It might seem a nitpicky point from such a dominant and successful weekend, but paying attention to even the smallest of details starts to matter as the competition becomes more difficult from here on and scoring margins narrow.

One area to watch as the games tighten up is pitching. Georgia’s top hurler is a freshman – Morgan Montemayor. She’s been outstanding with a 26-3 record and 1.89 ERA. She admitted that the postseason is “kind of nerve-wracking”, but you wouldn’t know it from the results – Montemayor allowed only four runs in 16 innings over the weekend. A year through the SEC has given her plenty of experience against top teams, and that’s all she’ll face the rest of the way.

Michael Pallazone’s complete game on Thursday gave Georgia a fighting chance to take the Vanderbilt series and position themselves for a postseason bid. Though the result cost Vandy an outright SEC East title, they responded like a title contender and fought back to take the final two games of the series and earn a share of the division crown. Georgia was six outs away from salvaging Saturday’s rubber game, but the visitors exploded for eleven runs in the final two innings to shut the door on Georgia’s regular season.

The Bulldogs finished 16-14 in the SEC, good enough for fourth place in the division behind the trio of heavyweights at the top. It’s a marked improvement over last year’s finish in the cellar, and it comes despite significant adversity and against the nation’s toughest schedule. The Dawgs finished with the fourth-best conference record and earned the #5 seed for this weekend’s conference tournament. (The SEC West champion receives the #2 seed even though their conference mark was worse than Georgia’s.)

But as any observer of the team knows, it’s the overall record that’s hurting Georgia’s chances to play beyond Hoover. The 2-2 record last week left Georgia at a level .500 (28-28). It’s a scenario we covered last week: due to the double-elimination format, Georgia will have to win at least three games to come out of the SEC Tournament with the winning overall record that would merit NCAA Tournament consideration.

The problem is the bracket. Georgia’s side of the SEC Tournament bracket features South Carolina and Vanderbilt – two of the top five teams in the nation. Needing at least three wins, some of them are going to have to come against those national powers.

The best case is for Georgia to upset Vandy in their opening game and for Auburn to knock off South Carolina. That would put the Dawgs in a favorable position for a second win and a day of rest, and it would eliminate one of the top seeds via the loser’s bracket before Georgia would face them again. A loss to Vandy in the opener means that Georgia would have to come back with three wins on consecutive days with at least two of them coming against SC or Vandy.

Impossible? No. Tough? Very. Georgia will have to play at a level with which they’ve only flirted this year. Those subsequent games, especially if Georgia heads to the loser’s bracket, will severely test the depth of a pitching staff that has struggled lately beyond Pallazone. The tournament gets underway for the Diamond Dawgs on Wednesday evening, probably around 9:00 or so depending on the finish of the SC-Auburn game. CSS will televise the opening round.

Now that his football career at Georgia is over, A.J. Harmon will probably best be remembered for the day he signed with Georgia. Harmon, at least to me, will always be linked with Clemson TE Dwayne Allen. The two pulled off what amounted to a Signing Day “trade” in 2008 when Harmon defected from Clemson to Georgia and Allen went from a Georgia commitment to a Clemson signee. At the time, it was a pretty big switcharoo for a pair of touted 4-star prospects.

Clemson got the better end of that deal. Allen is still playing and has become a nice college tight end. That’s not necessarily a blow to Georgia; the Bulldogs aren’t really lacking at the tight end position. Georgia is hurt more by the fact that the player they got in the deal is known more for the recruiting proces than anything he did on the field. Harmon’s departure is a loss of another upperclassman, and – along with Sturdivant and Strickland – makes three upperclass offensive linemen removed from the depth chart.

If the NCAA came around next week and announced that Georgia would be limited to 80 scholarships for the next two years, we’d consider that a pretty major penalty. Yet that’s where we are. The loss of Harmon, Ealey, Strickland, et al. drops Georgia down to no more than 80 scholarship players for the second straight year. That’s certainly going to be good news for some deserving walk-ons, and it makes late 2011 offers like this one ($) possible. It’s still not a good place to be.

We’ve talked before about the risks you run playing the numbers a little too close. It’s one thing to approach the oversigning issue with integrity, but coming into the season several players under the limit due to unanticipated attrition isn’t necessarily virtuous.

Attrition is nothing new and certainly not a unique problem for Georgia. It’s part of the calculus in the scholarship numbers game. In Richt’s defense, attrition is one of the toughest parts of the formula to anticipate. You knew that Harmon was on academic thin ice and that Ealey was becoming a problem, but you can’t really offer their scholarship slots until they’re gone. Or can you? When discussing grayshirting over the weekend, Richt seemed comfortable with the practice as long as everyone involved knows up front.

“If you tell five of those guys ‘Hey we’ve got 20 spaces. I can sign 25. There’s a good chance that by school starts there’ll be room for you, because of the attrition that happens every year everywhere you go. If there’s space for you, you come in with your class. If there’s not space for you, are you willing to come in in January?”

Mark Richt has taken his peers to task over recruiting tactics a couple of times this year. It’s a principled stand, and it’s how Georgia has operated since Richt has been here. That makes it a little harder to dismiss his statements as sour grapes or excuse-making after some disappointing seasons. But even in hoping that “the tide turns in the other direction,” Richt is realistic enough to know that it will take an NCAA rules change rather than a reformation among his peers before things change.

So what to do until those rules change? As Richt has acknowledged, there’s plenty of wiggle room even within the rules. There are some fairly obvious trips across the line that even the most crass “win at all costs” fans would have a hard time defending. In less obvious instances, one man’s medical disqualification or transfer is another’s path to oversigning. There’s no call for Richt to abandon the principles that have carried him through his career. There is a need though for Richt and the program to examine why Georgia is again coming up so short against the scholarship limit.

First, the good news: Georgia’s 7-6 win at Kentucky on Sunday clinched the Bulldogs a place in this year’s SEC Tournament. That’s a step forward from last year when Georgia finished dead last in the league. In fact, with a good weekend, Georgia could finish as high as 4th in the standings and earn the #5 seed in the SEC Tournament. Now the bad news: Georgia dropped two out of three in Lexington and put their chances of playing beyond the SEC Tournament in jeopardy.

With an overall record right at .500 (26-26), the Diamond Dawgs might seem like a longshot for the postseason anyway. But with an RPI of 25 and the nation’s toughest schedule, the Diamond Dawgs actually still stand a good chance of earning an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. The only catch? At-large teams must have a winning record, and Georgia’s current .500 mark might be the biggest obstacle they’ll face in earning that postseason bid.

Unless the team can win the conference tournament and earn the SEC’s automatic bid, here’s what they’re facing:

• Unless they win the SEC Tournament, Georgia would be assured of picking up two additional losses in the tournament’s double-elimination format. Disaster would be the “0-2 and barbecue” scenario that would give Georgia those two losses without anything in the win column. Wins in Hoover are required, and how many are required depends on how things go this week.
• The final nonconference game of the regular season is Tuesday night against Kennesaw. Needless to say, this is a must-win. That’s because…
• The final conference series of the year will bring Vanderbilt to Athens. Vandy is a top five club that’s ranked as high as #1 depending on the poll. A sweep of the Commodores would remove any doubt about Georgia’s overall record, but that’s not likely. A sweep at the hands of the Commodores would all but make an SEC Tournament championship Georgia’s only ticket into the postseason. Any kind of split with the Commodores muddies the waters.

A win over Kennesaw and 2 out of 3 against Vandy – a 3-1 mark for the week – would move Georgia to 29-27. Georgia would just need one win in Hoover to remain over .500. A 2-2 record this week though means that the Diamond Dawgs would have to win at least three games in Hoover to guarantee a winning overall record. You see there the importance of the Kennesaw game. Georgia has theoretical life if they beat the Owls and can take at least one game from the visiting Commodores. Even that will be tough as Vandy has plenty to play for themselves.

Crowell not the biggest key to Georgia’s turnaround

Matt Hinton has a nice reminder that it’s defense, and not necessarily the impact of Crowell, that could mean the most for Georgia this fall. It’s hard to argue with, and we all remember the 2003 East champs that did well despite a tailback rotation that included Ronnie Powell and Tony Milton (not to mention David Greene getting destroyed behind a rebuilt offensive line). It’s also a point we made concerning the 4-loss Florida team of 2007 and their national champs a year later.

That’s not to say that Crowell’s impact is unimportant. Georgia’s receiving corps is looking thin to begin with, and the lack of a credible running game won’t help them or Murray much. The offense has to at least be able to do something to help the improved defense.

Is it a bad sign that there are Boise State tickets remaining?

Kyle’s concern is one that I’m sure a lot of fans share. Georgia’s ability to sell out the Dome could be seen as a vote of confidence in Mark Richt and the 2011 season. Is this really a case of lagging demand, or is it simply a factor of the sheer size of Georgia’s allotment of tickets?

Georgia sells approximately 53,000 season tickets. You can read the approximate breakdown here…the allocation might have shifted slightly since, but we’ll use that total. Only those people have, to date, been offered the right to buy tickets for this game. The Georgia Dome seats over 71,000. Boise State’s allotment is 7,500. Even allowing for tickets set aside for sponsors and suite holders, Georgia could likely have over 55-60,000 tickets to distribute. Even if every single season-ticket holder requested a Boise State ticket, Georgia’s likely to have a few tickets left over from that initial offering. That the school is releasing these limited upper-level surplus tickets only to Hartman Fund donors and not the general public leads me to believe that the gap isn’t all that wide.

If we get into August and are running ads to the general public to unload thousands of tickets, I’ll share Kyle’s dismay. Until then I expect that we’ll hear soon that these limited tickets and Georgia’s allotment are gone.

UGA announced this morning that everyone who requested tickets for the 2011 season opener against Boise State on their season ticket application will get tickets. Boise’s allotment is only around 7,500 tickets, so Georgia should have somewhere around 50-60,000 tickets to distribute once sponsors and comps are taken care of.

Some of that allotment remains: Georgia also announced that limited additional upper-level tickets for that Chick-fil-A Kick Off Game are now available for Hartman Fund donors contributing over $100. Those tickets can be requested at this link.

The departure of Washaun Ealey is probably the least shocking bit of offseason attrition you’ll see. We’ve known for a while that he was on thin ice, and he couldn’t have had a pleasant spring with the new conditioning staff.

It’s remarkable that Georgia can lose its two-time leading rusher with not much more than a knowing and exasperated head-shake from fans and pundits. The reason for that relatively easy-going reaction is of course the anticipation of Isaiah Crowell, but that’s asking a lot not only of Crowell’s talent and mental toughness but also of his body and durability. Odds are the Bulldogs will at some point have to turn to a back other than Crowell, and the list of candidates is dwindling.

I still think the team would have been better off with Ealey returning, but that presumed the attitude adjustment that was so central to this story. There’s a big downside to keeping even a productive attitude problem around especially in a year when the staff is trying to get everyone on board with a turnaround project. We have no idea of knowing whether this transfer would have come about had Crowell gone elsewhere, but that’s moot. This decision wasn’t entirely Richt’s, and Ealey could have decided to transfer regardless if he didn’t want to commit to what Richt expected of the players. Richt couldn’t afford to keep a destructive attitude around in a season with so much at stake, and if you want to say that Crowell provides Richt the cover to do something about it, I’m not going to argue.

There is one bright spot on the periphery of this story, and that’s Caleb King. At the time of Ealey’s suspension in February, King was also at a bit of a crossroads himself. It’s almost forgotten now that King sat out the bowl game with his own problems. With all of the public statements lately about Ealey’s status, King’s future has received much less scrutiny. That hints at the kind of spring King had. He stayed healthy, practiced with enthusiasm and a good attitude, looked capable at G-Day, and is poised for a nice senior season. We don’t know whether he can hold off Crowell, but at least there’s an experienced upperclassman there now to offer some legitimate competition.

For some reason, Ealey’s story reminds me of Michael Cooper. It’s not a perfect comparison, especially off the field – Coop’s transfer had a lot more to do with playing time than any real disciplinary problems. I’m talking more about the impact each had at a time when Georgia was desperate for any kind of answer at tailback. Neither was the obvious choice at the start of his breakthrough season, yet each emerged during his debut campaign to ultimately lead Georgia in rushing.

Maybe it had to do with dispair over the lack of production from the running game, but it only took one game for fans to start buzzing about both Cooper and Ealey. For Cooper it was the 2003 South Carolina game and specifically a 46-yard run early in the game. For Ealey it was the 2009 LSU game. Neither finished with over 100 yards in those breakout games, but it was the glimpse of something that was missing from the running game that got fans excited. It didn’t take either long to become fan favorites. Yelling for “Cooooop” was a natural progression for fans used to cheering for Musa Smith, and Ealey’s role in the 2009 win at Tech instantly added “We Run This State” to Bulldog lore.

The follow-up season was a little more difficult for both players. Cooper especially struggled to maitain his role as the Brown and Lumpkin tandem began to take over in 2004. He ended up playing in only a handful of games and transfered after the season. The story was a little different for Ealey. He still managed to lead the Bulldog in rushing for a second straight year, but it was maddening inconsistency that did him in. He ran for over 75 yards in five games and then managed less than 45 yards in six games. Nearly half his yards and 8 of his 11 TDs came in three games (Vandy, Kentucky, and Tech). There were also the devastating fumbles which overshadowed a double-digit touchdown tally.

Cooper’s promising 2003 season is a distant memory in large part because Brown and Lumpkin did enough over the next couple of seasons to carry the position. Crowell, King, and Malcome now have the challenge of trying to make us not miss Ealey.