Archive for the ‘Georgia State / CAA’ Category

Braves fans littered Turner Field with beer bottles after bad call. (Curtis Compton/AJC)

The Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines fan as: 1) an enthusiastic devotee (as of a sport or a performing art) usually as a spectator; 2): an ardent admirer or enthusiast (as of a celebrity or a pursuit).

As with anything, definitions can often be broadened. The boundaries of this definition just seemingly shouldn’t stretch to home fans cheering when their quarterback crumbles to the ground with a concussion. Or throwing bottles and garbage on a baseball field, endangering other fans and players, in protest of an umpire’s call. Or egging and toilet-papering a home known to be rented by five college players out of disgust, merely because the team lost a football game. Or effectively challenging one student-athlete to a fight on Twitter.

Yes. One “fan” actually did that last week to Georgia’s Christian Robinson.

“There were all these people saying stuff about me on Twitter, it …

Continue reading Fan revolts out of control, one wanted to fight UGA player »

Georgia State coach Bill Curry didn't have much to cheer about in opener. (Jason Getz/AJC)

If you haven’t kept up on the uniquely metamorphosing Georgia State football program, it goes something like this:

The Panthers started playing games in 2010. Their first schedule of Colonial Athletic Association games is this season (Year 3). But they’re not eligible for the CAA championship because they’ve already decided to jump to the Sun Belt. The NCAA’s mandated two-year transition to FBS means they can’t compete for championships or bowls until 2014 — not that it was realistic anyway — which effectively means they will have played four years of exhibition games (45) by the end of 2013.

And you thought the NFL preseason was long.

There’s an obvious advantage to this: New programs typically get beat up, and Georgia State has been no exception to this. So this extended stretch of unofficial-ness allows Georgia State athletic director Cheryl Levick to tell prospective …

Continue reading Georgia State pounded in opener as growing pains continue »

Paul Johnson: Darkhorse?

Mark Richt: BCS contender?

Bill Curry: A step up?

Elevating college football to the appropriate level of importance in his small but powerful world, Bear Bryant once noted, “It’s kind of hard to rally around a math class.” And as if we needed reminding, the man operated at a time before outlandish concepts like “academic reform” and truth-in-scholarship limits.

Emotionally, however, not much has changed in the past several decades. For many, particularly in the South, the opening of college football season this week is like finally being given clearance to rip the gift wrap off of a box that has been sitting in the corner, seemingly taunting you, for eight months.

It’s time.

“If you grew up around here, the excitement is one of those things that you often think back to, like significant holidays,” said Bill Curry, the 69-year-old Georgia State coach, who is entering the final season (we assume) of his career.

“You remember where you were …

Continue reading College football, Week 1: Somehow it keeps getting better »

Win nationally, and you're in this hammock.

In the first two years of the “Sack Schultz” contest, I deluded you, the reader, into believing that you could pick college football winners as expertly as me.

Hah! It was a trick. Finishing 1,177th out of 6,978 entries last season was all part of a master plan into making you think that my secret system for picking winners was something as pedestrian as, “Eenie, Meenie, Miny, Moe,” when in fact it’s, “Eenie, Meenie, Jelly, Beanie,” something far more spiritual (kids: Google “Bullwinkle”).

But this year, I’m serious. There’s too much at stake. It’s why I’m also going to

Win among local entries, you'll get tickets to this game. (Johnny Crawford)

enter my dog, Lilly, in the contest as a backup plan, just to see if she can pick winners any better than me. (Her method of selection will be forthcoming.)

Let me start with the whopper prize: If you can pick winners better than me (and everybody else) among national entries, you will win a …

Continue reading Sack Schultz 2012: Hawaii, tickets, gift cards–I want it all! »

Unfortunately, Petrino won't be wearing neck brace tonight. (AP)

(Updated with link to ESPN story and video below)

So of the least-enviable jobs tasks imaginable, where would “Bobby Petrino-image repair rank”? North of Barry Bonds (post-[alleged]-steroid use) but south of BP (post-oil spill)?

Petrino has agreed to/orchestrated his first television interview since a somewhat comical motorcycle crash and face plant exposed his affair with an Arkansas subordinate and submarined both his career and his personal life. (Not his reputation. That already was a wreck.)

Petrino recently sat down with ESPN’s Joe Schad. The interview will air sometime tonight during the 6 p.m. Sportscenter. Maybe the Falcons for a chuckle to loosen up before their exhibition game against Baltimore. It totally should be on the big screen at the Georgia Dome.

According to Schad, Petrino appears both “remorseful” and “apologetic.” Both emotions would, of course, qualify as precedent-setting.

The funniest …

Continue reading Lights, camera, action! Petrino wants you to know he’s sorry (UPDATED with video) »

Mark Emmert moved fast and hit Penn State for their actions (and inactions). (AP photo)

(See video blog with CineSports’ Noah Coslov below)

(Updated at 6:40 p.m. with comment from Penn State president that school accepted penalties to avoid death penalty)

Let’s start with this: NCAA president Mark Emmert acted swiftly and justly. That’s a rarity for the NCAA.

Emmert didn’t need a 17-month investigation by an overworked and underpaid staff to unearth something that we didn’t already learn from prosecutors and witnesses in the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse trial, or from the exhaustive, 267-page Freeh Report, conducted by a former director of the FBI. Anybody who believes Emmert moved too quickly on Penn State without the NCAA doing its own leg work must not having been paying attention for the past several decades, when policing college athletics became far too big of a job for that relative mom-and-pop organization.

The NCAA appropriately slammed Penn State Monday …

Continue reading NCAA hits Penn State hard, but ‘death penalty’ appropriate (UPDATED with video) »

Mike Slive sees Penn State as cautionary tale. (AP photo)

HOOVER, Ala. — Between quoting Churchill, Shakespeare, Muhammad Ali and I believe all but three of the Seven Dwarfs in his State of the Empire address Tuesday, SEC commissioner Mike Slive made a reference to Penn State.

He did it as only a smooth, well-practiced executive could. He didn’t mention the school by name. Or the deviate in prison. Or the legendary late head coach who so clearly either closed his eyes or looked away.

“Last week’s headlines remind us that we must be ever vigilant on all issues of integrity, and that our primary mission is to educate and protect young people,” Slive said at the opening of SEC Media Days. “There must be an effective system of checks and balances within the administrative structure to protect all who come in contact with it, especially those who cannot protect themselves. No one program, no one person, no matter how popular, no matter how successful, can be allowed to derail …

Continue reading Slive: SEC needs to be vigilant to avoid Penn State situation »

Joe Paterno and other Penn State officials enabled the actions of Jerry Sandusky. (AP photo)

(Updated: 12:45 p.m.)

If we make a big deal about a college football program playing dumb when a recruit takes free shoes or tattoos, or his family lives in a house rent free, how can we look the other way when evidence screams that one of the nation’s most powerful universities enabled a pedophile?

How can we sit through something so sick and vile as the testimony in the Jerry Sandusky trial and conclude that this was a one-source scandal worthy of only one individual or entity suffering consequences?

Penn State should not be allowed to play another football game. It put sport, image and fundraising above everything else. That is what every cheater in college athletics does, and because of that it deserves the NCAA’s “death penalty.”

Southern Methodist University, one of the nation’s top academic schools, saw its football program given the death penalty in 1987 because it …

Continue reading Penn State deserves death penalty for Sandusky cover-up »

The Jerry Sandusky case is one that no sports fan can afford to ignore. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

It’s not a typical sports story. It’s uncomfortable. It’s ugly.

Some of the testimony was so repulsive, so evil, that it was difficult for the brain to even process it. This partly explains why the masses often lean toward the candy of the sports world. A college football playoff debate. Cheering or mocking of LeBron James. A baseball pennant race. It’s simple. It’s easy to digest. Real-life drama such as the Jerry Sandusky child-molestation case gets pushed aside, even if it’s potentially one of the more impactful sports stories of our generation.

“I really wish ESPN and other national sports outlets would start covering this more,” Tammy Lerner, co-founder of the Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse (FACSA) said Thursday. “So many stories like Sandusky are coming out. Pedophiles are drawn to places with access to kids, like sports. We’re seeing stories about …

Continue reading Sandusky scandal is the sports story that really matters »

Will Jerry Sandusky, with attorney Joe Amendola, get help from jury? (Centre Daily Times)

It would have been difficult to go anywhere in the U.S. and find 12 jurors who knew nothing about former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky and the ugly child molestation allegations against him. But the potential problems of holding the trial in small-townish Centre County, Pa., were reaffirmed in the last two days.

The 16 jurors (including four alternates) have been selected from a pool of 220. Here’s the scary math: nine of the 16 have direct ties to Penn State and three have ties to key witnesses.

Prosecutors attempted to get a change of venue for the trial. They believed selecting jurors from a pool in a county with a population of just over 150,000 — by comparison, Fulton County is about 950,000 — could be problematic. As horrible a crime as child molestation is, anybody who had direct or indirect connections — or allegiances — with Penn State, Sandusky or defense …

Continue reading 9 reasons to be concerned about Jerry Sandusky’s jury »