A list of Georgia football offers for the class of 2010 might challenge the team limit of 85 scholarships much less the limit of 25 for a single class. Many of those offered will simply choose to go elsewhere. But as a class with limited room fills up, some find their spots taken and their offers no longer valid.

Take the case of Texas cornerback Kacy Rodgers. A week or so ago he was down to Florida and Georgia. Suddenly this week he commits to Miami without even visiting. Sudden change of heart? More likely Georgia and Florida both sent signals that Rodgers no longer had a spot waiting for him. It’s part of life in college sports, happens with every program every year, and we usually don’t hear about it because the communication is smooth.

Things can go very wrong when the communication breaks down. That seems to have been the case with QB/WR Devin Burns from Carver High School in Columbus. Burns received an offer from Georgia during the spring, but of course the recruiting outlook has changed much since then. Burns came to Athens along with several other top prospects over the weekend, and he intended to commit. The Georgia coaching staff flubbed communicating the fact that Burns’ spot had been taken, and the Georgia coaches were left in the embarrassing position of scrambling to rescind the offer before Burns had a chance to commit.

The fallout has been severe: the Bulldogs are “banned” from recruiting Carver according to Carver coach and Auburn alum Dell McGee. McGee has been in contact with the Georgia coaches who admitted their screw-up, but his ban remains in place for the time being. The ban won’t hurt Georgia much this year, but Carver usually has several D-1 quality prospects, and that will be the case again next year.

Complicating things is the NCAA rule that June 1st – July 31st is a quiet period for recruiting. That means that only on-campus contact is permitted with prospects. That’s why on-campus camps are so important – it gives the coaching staff a chance to evaluate and have contact with prospects that would otherwise be against the rules. For that reason, contact with prospects during this time either has to happen on-campus or indirectly through high school coaches. On the other hand, the prospect may call almost any time he likes. Burns confirmed his offer in late spring, but McGee admits that Georgia “didn’t know about (Burns’) intent to commit.” Communication during this quiet period hasn’t been clear in either direction.

Mark Richt is doing what he has to in this case and admitting complete fault in the face of an emotional reaction by the Carver coach. We’ve talked about “bans” before when it was Spurrier getting the boot, and ultimately it’s the relationship with the school that matters. The outcome here will likely be that Georgia gets a bit of egg on their face, Richt and staff cowtow, and the ban is lifted after a while. Just as it makes little sense for Georgia to alienate an in-state high school, it also doesn’t make much sense for the high school to shut out a top 10 program for very long.

McGee for his part did a bit of overreaching in his assessment of Georgia’s recruiting. He assumes that “Georgia still has scholarships left. It isn’t like they ran out of scholarships. That wasn’t the case.” While we’ve all done the math and figured out that Georgia still has a few slots left without public commitments in the 2010 class, it’s also reasonable at this stage that Georgia knows exactly whom they’d like to take those remaining scholarships, and those few know who they are. Georgia wouldn’t rescind a scholarship if it didn’t have a firm grasp on the numbers and how the last few commitments will go. “They ran out of scholarships” is exactly what’s going on, and at least Georgia is dealing with the cleanup now instead of oversigning and cutting the kid down the road.

SEC Media Days get underway this week, and the coaches will take time from counting TV money long enough to meet the press before we get into the serious business of preseason camp. The headlines across the conference are familiar enough to anyone who’s been around during the offseason, but hopefully there will be a few new good ones to come out of the week.

To get ready (and maybe save you some time later in the week), here are the obvious story lines for each program in convenient Twitter-sized bites:

Alabama: Avoiding a drop-off. Schedule sets up. Defense is stout – 1992 stout? Julio is a star – can McElroy deliver, and is losing Andre Smith that big?

Arkansas: Holy schedule. Is Mallett really the next big deal? Michael Smith healthy = a must. Offense seems primed; can they stop anyone?

Auburn: Bigger impact: Chizik or Malzahn? What can be made out of Kodi Burns and the offense? Seven defensive starters back, but only one Auburn a preseason all-SEC?

Georgia: Replace Stafford and Moreno? Is Cox up to the job? Leadership, injuries, offensive line, defensive ends. AJ Green and who else?

Florida: ZOMG TEBOW – unanimous? Forget the spread option – the entire defense is back. If they can stay hungry and protect TT, what can stop them?

Kentucky: Hartline meh. Trevard Lindley, Micah Johnson yay. Veteran OL. How to make the most of Randall Cobb? Success = another minor bowl.

LSU: Hey, remember us? QB play could make or break the season. Can Chavis bring back the defense? Reloading on the DL. B-R showdown with Florida.

Mississippi: Huge expectations. Snead is the real deal, but can anyone protect him like Oher? DL looks decent, but after that…

Mississippi State: How quickly can Mullen change culture? Not much expected right away, but maybe they can score occasionally now. Uh, oh: Anthony Dixon FAIL?

South Carolina: Putting all hope in Garcia. Spurrier in twilight, or does he still have it? Norwood’s 34th season. Replacing McKinley and the Cooks.

Tennessee: Kiffin & Co. How far can they ride Berry? If only Berry could QB and throw to himself. Welcome absence of subpoenas.

Vanderbilt: How do they follow up a bowl win? QB position unsettled – shocker. 9 starters back on a good defense, but D.J. Moore tough to replace.

The coaches’ preseason all-conference teams are out, and Hale has the complete list. The nine Georgia representatives are pretty much who you’d expect, though some fans probably might be surprised to see Prince Miller and Rashad Jones get mention. (You shouldn’t be.) Florida’s 16 representatives were far and away the most, and LSU, Alabama, and Georgia were all pretty close at the top of the list. Though Georgia had nine players receive preseason honors, only two (Green and Curran) were first-teamers. But that’s not a surprise, is it?

On the whole, the lists more or less validate what we’ve known about the team. On defense, the representatives are the defensive tackles, Curran, and the returning defensive backs. Georgia’s questions at defensive end, two new starters in the secondary, and hit-or-miss play at the other linebacker spots are familiar offseason story lines. Green’s first-team selection was expected, and the three other representatives on offense are all offensive line starters. It’s that offensive line that drew my attention.

Georgia has two second-teamers and a third-teamer on the preseason lists. Not bad – only Florida is better represented (with two first-teamers and a second-teamer, not to mention a TE). Before you note that Sturdivant might be underrated because of his injury, he didn’t make the preseason lists at all last year *before* his injury. He had a great freshman season, and his ability to perform with any competency at all made the 2007 season possible. But he was still a freshman.

For the first time in several years, we’re able to talk with confidence about both depth and quality experience on the line. That’s an improvement and worth something. It should be a very solid unit (health permitting of course), and we know they will be well-coached. If Georgia had decent lines given the circumstances of the past two seasons, how good can they be with a bit more experience, health, and depth?

That said, does the absence of first-team candidates (and this is all-SEC, let alone all-American) lead anyone to think that we might be building this line up a little too much as the strength of the offense? I don’t mean that they’ll fall apart – we’ve seen too much from the projected starters to know better. I mean that a lot of us are depending on this line not only to protect and maximize the production of Cox but also to clear the way for a muddled group of tailbacks. Are they to that point yet, and is it possible for the line to do everything we need of it without at least one dominant all-SEC first-teamer? It doesn’t take a Ciron Black to have a good line, but do you need those kinds of stars to make the line the “brick wall” that will allow the rest of the offense to come along?

Of the projected starters, I think Boling is the most likely to make a postseason first-team list. As a junior he’s one of the most experienced of the group, he’s remained healthy, and (again depending on the rest of the line holding up) he’s starting off at a position where he’s done very well. Others like Glenn and Jones are definitely coming along, but as sophomores it’s probably too soon for them to vault to the top of the conference. As for Sturdivant and Vance, we’re all holding our breath waiting to see how they come back from major injuries.

It’s not as if his status were up in the air, but Andy Landers received a three-year extension taking his contract through 2014.

It’s going to take a cumulative Hartman Fund score of at least 4,205 to become a new Georgia season ticket holder this year.

This year’s cutoff of 4,205 is less than half of last year’s 10,651, but it’s still the second-highest cutoff ever. Even as recently as 2007, it only took a cumulative point total of 1,991 to get new season tickets. Even with a decline in Hartman Fund contributions of roughly 11%, season ticket turnover wasn’t expected to be much more than the normal 2 or 3%, and demand is still relatively high.

Much more and preliminary info on single game tickets at the Georgia Sports Blog.

Congratulations to Trey Thompkins and Ashley Houts who both earned gold medals as members of world championship teams over the weekend.

Thompkins and Team USA beat Greece to win the FIBA under-19 world basketball championship. If a basketball gold medal seems like a non-story, these current U-19 players were barely drawing breath when the US won its last U-19 gold 18 years ago. The USA finished the competition at 9-0; all other nations lost at least two games.

Thompkins played in all nine games and averaged 10.6 PPG and 5 rebounds per game while shooting over 54% from the floor. His most productive game was an earlier outing against Greece where he put up 22 points on 10-14 shooting. He followed that up with a near double-double against Puerto Rico.

Houts helped Team USA win the World University Games, and the team clinched the gold with a convincing win over Russia. Like the men, the women ran through the tournament field undefeated.

Houts started three of the seven games and averaged just over 19 MPG – a far cry from the 39+ minutes she averages in college. Houts put up 8.3 PPG on very solid shooting: 52.6% overall and 47.1% from behind the arc. She can’t be happy with her assists-to-turnovers (11 to 14), but she did add 12 steals on the defensive end.

Nice article in the ABH today about progress on the Redcoat rehearsal area at the back of the intramural fields. The field is more or less done, and the band will begin using it for preseason work next month. Sharing the Butts-Mehre practice fields with the football program has always made things a little tight, and this new facility should solve that problem. As with all of our recent athletics facilities, it should end up being first-rate and every bit as good as the group that uses it. The hedges are a great touch.

Fundraising for the facility continues. If you’re interesting in contributing, just hit this link. The Redcoats thank you.

That’s the good news. The bad news? That means that over a third of the 37 signees aren’t on campus. Included in those yet to report are highly-regarded signees Bobby Massie and Jamar Hornsby. In the case of Massie and others, academics are at issue. Hornsby has some additional problems you might have heard about.

On the Georgia front, the only 2009 signee not working out on campus is Kwame Geathers, and he’s expected to join the team Real Soon Nowâ„¢ which has been SOP for the arrival of pretty much every member of the Geathers family over the past few years.

When he’s not bankrolling the Oklahoma State football program, T. Boone Pickens is of course at the forefront of the energy industry. In business just as in sports you win some and lose some, and a change in plans has Pickens with a bit of an inventory problem on his hands.

Plans for the world’s largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle have been scrapped, energy baron T. Boone Pickens said Tuesday, and he’s looking for a home for 687 giant wind turbines.

Pickens has already ordered the turbines, which can stand 400 feet tall — taller than most 30-story buildings.

“When I start receiving those turbines, I’ve got to … like I said, my garage won’t hold them,” the legendary Texas oilman said. “They’ve got to go someplace.”

That’s correct…Pickens’ garage will only hold 356 of the 30-story turbines. He could always put up a few around campus to clear the smoke.

Everyone is all over the announcments of the ESPN/ABC crews for the 2009 season, and the names range from the celebrities (Musburger and Herbstreit) to the familiar (Dave Neal) to the cringeworthy (Matt Millen) to the unknown (Carter Blackburn?).

Georgia fans will recognize two of the names brought on as part of the deal to enhance ESPN’s SEC coverage. Former Bulldog starts Matt Stinchcomb and David Pollack will join the team: Stinchcomb as studio host for the syndicated SEC games, and both Pollack and Stinchcomb as studio hosts for ESPNU games. Both will also be a part of the SEC Weekly show on ESPNU alongside host Cara Capuano.

When Stinchcomb was part of the G-Day broadcast you got the impression that it was kind of an audition, and he came across well. The powers-that-be in Bristol must have agreed. Pollack similarly has built experience on local Atlanta sports radio and seems at ease behind the microphone.

Of all the moves (oy, Andre Ware), I’m glad to see Nessler join the top ESPN crew. It’s not that Mike “Britney Spears” Patrick was BCS on Fax bad, but ESPN has spread him so thin across so many sports that he never really seemed (to me) as someone who could be the face (or voice) of primetime college football. Now of course Nessler isn’t a football-only guy and is as well-known for his basketball work as anything else, but he does have a strong football background and local ties – longtime Falcon fans will remember him as the play-by-play guy in the 1980s.

And of course, you can’t have an early afternoon SEC game without a Dave. Amen to that and Osmose commercials.

ESPN Regional Affiliates

It was announced last month that Peachtree TV would carry the noon ESPN Regional game of the week (can we just keep calling it the JP game to keep things straight?). But that was only for Atlanta. As with JP/Raycom/Lincoln Financial, the ESPN Regional games will be shown on a network of local stations throughout the southeast. Since the Peachtree TV announcement, other affiliates have been announced. This is still a work-in-progress (I don’t see a Macon affiliate, for example), but here’s a partial list:

Georgia

• Atlanta, GA – WPCH (Ptree TV)
• Augusta, GA – WRDW (CBS 12)
• Columbus, GA – WXTX (Fox)
• Savannah, GA – WTGS (Fox)
• Albany, GA – WALB (NBC 10)

Florida

• Jacksonville, FL – WJXT (News4)

Carolinas

• Charlotte, NC – WAXN (TV64)
• Columbia, SC – WIS (NBC 10)
• Greenville/Spartanburg, SC – WSPA/WYCW

Other updates and affiliates can be found here.

The Palmetto State is home to some of the nation’s more rabid football fans. Clemson is the ACC’s closest analogue to an SEC school, and South Carolina fans are known for being loyal even through lean years. But with an unemployment rate over 12%, South Carolina has been impacted by the recession more than all but a couple of states. Naturally the economy has taken its toll on demand for the luxury of watching and supporting college football.

Clemson’s season ticket sales are down 12%, and the school expects lower revenue not just from ticket sales but also corporate sponsorships and individual contributions. “As a result, Clemson projects it could fall between $1 million and $2 million short of projected revenue for next year’s budget.” It’s somewhat of a cruel twist of fate that Clemson’s success in growing its fan base is causing it pain now. “Clemson figures to be among the hardest hit in the ACC because it is believed to possess among the largest pools of season-ticket holders.”

At South Carolina, the bad economy comes hand-in-hand with the poorly-timed introduction of a seat licensing plan (similar to Georgia’s Hartman Fund). Though the program has raised over $6 million for the program, the fallout over the plan is speculated to be behind the resignation of Bryan Risner, a “central figure” in the licensing plan. The plan has caused attrition in the Gamecock Club and has had an impact on ticket sales.

Demand seems to be holding up not only for Georgia but also Georgia Tech, but it’s certainly not a time for any program to rest on its laurels.

“Impermissible snacks” have been in the news this week thanks to the University of South Carolina’s report of secondary NCAA violations. Snack food is serious business, and even the NCAA realizes that there are some things you wouldn’t serve a starving dog, let alone a prime student-athlete.

We’re all about NCAA compliance here, so we realize that just what is and isn’t a permissible snack might be unclear. The NCAA rulebooks actually spend a good six pages on the subject, and the Pac-10’s controversial proposal to remove sushi from the list caused no small amount of debate at last year’s rules committee meeting. So that we’re in the clear, here is just a sampling of the impermissible snacks to avoid at your tailgates this fall:

Fritos. I know they’re popular, easy to find, and can even team up with chili. But there’s still this fact: no one smells good after eating Fritos. They smell like pets’ feet.

Shrimp cocktail. Shrimp is great in a low country boil or a gumbo, but few things are less appetizing than shrimp cocktail that’s sat out on the tailgating table in the hot sun for more than a minute or two.

Salami. See Fritos. Cold cuts are great and convinient to have at a tailgate – just not the ones that you’ll smell like for the rest of the day.

Cauliflower. Many fruits and veggies are fine – celery and carrots can be easily dipped and go well with wings and other finger food. But there’s just no place for cauliflower. It’s not visually appealing, it’s awkward to hold, and most of us have deep and unpleasant memories from being forcefed cauliflower as a child. Why risk bringing up your guests’ repressed traumatic childhoods over a vegetable?

Beef jerky. Jerky is fine if you’re finding your inner Bear Grylls in the woods for a week, but at a tailgate you really should have fresher and tastier sources of meat. That’s what the grill is for, after all. Besides – with the current Slim Jim shortage gripping the country, it would be irresponsible to waste our nation’s scarce jerky reserves in a setting where there are better ways to eat animals.

Smartfood popcorn. A tough call here – I love the stuff. But there’s no way of avoiding the finger-licking-good residue that builds up after you realize you’ve been eating the stuff constantly for the past half hour and have gone through a good 3/4 of a bag. Ordinarily this is no problem, but most tailgates don’t lend themselves to easily removing the powdery cheesy slurry that forms on the fingers after a good handful or 47 of the stuff. If you tailgate at an RV or right near a public washroom, consider yourself lucky.

Bad salsa. Salsa is too easy to make yourself to serve the bad stuff. You might as well break out the Fritos rather than serve chips with the bottled sludge that’s basically warm chunks of tomato + hot sauce.

Rice cakes. Even if you’re going to pile 3 pounds of pulled pork on top of them, this is no time to be serving rice cakes.

Most flavored chips. Salt-vinegar-jalepeno-mango chips might be the greatest thing you’ve ever tasted, but tailgating is as much about community as anything else. Have stuff that most everyone might like.

Add yours in the comments. We’ll get Damon Evans to sponsor legislation to put ’em on the list next year.

The news has been mostly positive during the offseason concerning the Georgia offensive line. Both Trinton Sturdivant and Vince Vance seem to be in great shape and on track to step back in to the first team line in plenty of time for the season opener. The presumptive starting line has, knock wood, been able to work together more or less intact over the summer.

The promise of a relatively experienced and talented line has been one of the steadying factors in an offseason full of concerns and uncertainty surrounding other positions on the offense. The strength of the line though depends on them remaining healthy. We’re well tuned in to the well-being of the starters, but there have been some developments that will affect the depth behind that first team.

Reserve redshirt sophomore guard Tanner Strickland injured his shoulder during offseason workouts and will require surgery which will sideline him for the entire 2009 season. Strickland played in all 13 games as a redshirt freshman in 2008 on special teams and as a backup lineman. Before Vance’s return, Strickland was listed as the starting left guard on the official depth chart.

The availability of another guard, Chris Davis, is still up in the air. Davis is one of the more experienced linemen with starts in 2007 and 2008, and he played through much of last season with incredible hip pain. Davis had surgery on the hip in January and missed spring practice, and he’s still not quite back yet. Vance, Glenn, and Anderson give Georgia a solid trio of guards, but the loss of Strickland and the uncertain status of Davis leaves a bit of a gulf in experience between the rest of the interior linemen. The Dawgs would still have some options in the event of injury, but those options would be much younger and much less experienced than Strickland and Davis would be as reserves. The opportunity is there for someone like A.J Harmon or even a true freshman like Chris Burnette to step forward and earn a lot of playing time in a reserve role.

Even tackle has been affected. The position wasn’t terribly deep to begin with, and Kiante Tripp is back on defense this year. Austin Long, from Memphis, was Georgia’s top tackle signee in 2009. Though we’d hope that the days of a true freshman at tackle were behind us, spring back surgery means that Long will be forced to redshirt regardless of need at the position. Sturdivant and Boling are as good as it gets as bookends, but beyond that you’re looking again at Josh Davis or a repeat of the 2008 shuffle that moved Vance and Anderson outside from guard to tackle as needed.

It’s Georgia week over at SEC blog Team Speed Kills, and they’re following their pattern of light previews leading up to predictions later in the week. Today there’s an interesting look at the “Richt does his best under low expectations” meme. I have to agree with the conclusion – it’s not as if Georgia came from the “Others Receiving Votes” field before Richt’s SEC championship seasons. At that level, we’re often talking about the difference of a single game, and while Georgia might have “disappointed” in 2004 and 2008, a combined 5 losses in those two years wasn’t exactly the faceplant of, say, the 2000 Alabama team. There’s been very little difference between Richt’s “underachieving” teams and those that we celebrate, and at TSK points out, how the other teams in the division fare has a lot to do with it. Would we remember 2005 and even D.J. Shockley the same if Urban Meyer’s first team doesn’t lose to South Carolina?

Keep reading over there through the week. The predictions should be fun with several toss-up games. Even for rabid partisan Georgia fans it’s hard to get a read on this year’s team, so it’s always interesting to see what those less familiar with the team think.

When offseason talk invariably turns to strong and weak schedules, we’re almost always talking about the nonconference part of it. The conference schedule gets treated like a monolithic block that’s more or less the same for each team in the conference. The presumed strength of the conference serves as a proxy for the strength of the rest of a team’s schedule.

But with the exception of the Pac-10 and their round-robin nine-game conference schedules, the road through a single conference can look very different depending on the division and the luck of the rotation.

Take Arkansas for instance. After a gimme against Missouri State, the Razorbacks will run this gauntlet:

Sept. 19: Georgia
Sept. 26: at Alabama
Oct. 3: at Texas A&M
Oct. 10: Auburn
Oct. 17: at Florida
Oct. 24: at Ole Miss

The “easiest” game of the bunch looks to be a nonconference road game in College Station. Regardless, they’ll start the SEC slate by hosting a top 15 Georgia team and then must travel to play three preseason top 10 teams. They’ll start the season 1-0, but delivering on the hype surrounding Ryan Mallet and finishing 7-5 or better might require them to come out of that stretch at no worse than 3-4. A season-ending road trip to LSU is still out there, and the Tigers will remember last year’s meltdown.

LSU is the only other SEC West team that will face both Florida and Georgia this year. If the Tigers manage to regain the top position in the West, they’ll have more than earned it.

Ole Miss is a preseason top 10, and their SEC schedule lends itself to a promising year. Though they’ll have to face strong Alabama and LSU teams from the SEC West, they’ll host both of those games. The Rebels’ schedule doesn’t include Georgia or Florida from the East; they’ll play South Carolina, Vandy, and Tennessee instead.

Kentucky, though not a contender, might still find some success thanks to the schedule. They’ll face Alabama and Florida within the first four games of the season but will face only one more preseason top 25 team the entire rest of the season (Georgia). Though Alabama will have a tough opener against Virginia Tech, their only ranked SEC opponents will be fellow SEC West contenders Ole Miss and LSU. The Tide’s tougher SEC East games (Tennessee and South Carolina) will be in Tuscaloosa.

No one is calling Georgia’s overall schedule easy (especially the September part of it), but the Dawgs also get a bit of a break by avoiding SEC West favorites Alabama and Ole Miss. They’ll still have to play LSU, but they’ll get the Tigers in Athens. The Dawgs also get a bye week before playing Florida; last year they went into the WLOCP right off a trip to Baton Rouge. It’s still no picnic, but the SEC schedule looks slightly less difficult for Georgia than it did a year ago.

Lopsided conference scheduling isn’t just an SEC thing. Nebraska is the presumed favorite in the Big 12 North, and they’ll only face one of the top three teams from the Big 12 South (Oklahoma). Their top competition in the North, Kansas (Oklahoma and Texas) and Colorado (Texas and Oklahoma State), each have to play two of the three Big 12 South favorites.

Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, FSU, and Clemson are the preseason top four in the ACC, and only one of those four teams (Georgia Tech) will play the other three. Virginia Tech won’t face Clemson or FSU, but they’ll make up for it with a nonconference schedule that includes Alabama, Nebraska, and East Carolina.