Archive for the ‘Tech / ACC’ Category

Hey look, the Braves have new uniforms. So how about a new finish? (AP photo)

Welcome to this year’s edition of “How They Really Stand,” my ranking of all area sports teams, taking into account wins, losses, direction, potential, coaches, general managers, owners, recruiting coordinators and whether anybody provides us with more civic pride than, say, The Big Chicken (the bar is low).

I’m unveiling this a month earlier than usual because it seemed like a natural break in the sports schedule with the Braves getting ready to start spring training and the Hawks taking an off day between personalities. Two tweaks this year: I’m adding Georgia State football and basketball and replacing the Thrashers with a new entry. (Last year’s ranking in parenthesis.)

1. Braves (1): The best team in town lost 20 of its last 30 games. How about a nice embalming smoothie to go with those chicken fingers? But the Braves looked like a potential World Series team on paper last season until the paper …

Continue reading How they really stand, from Braves (1) to Weasels (12) »

Georgia's Mark Fox reached NCAA tournament in year two but his third team is young and thin.

Brian Gregory inherited a down and vagabond program at Georgia Tech. (Johnny Crawford)

As a general rule, February is when the sports world morphs from rock to elevator music.

College football is over. The NFL is over. Baseball’s spring gates haven’t swung open. It’s too early to get excited about NBA playoff races (and, if you’re a Hawks fan, February isn’t providing a wonderful tease for March and April, anyway). The local NHL team – blown up by careless owners and an invertebrate of a league commissioner.

So in February, we turn to college basketball.

Help.

Here in the state of Georgia, which produces some of the finer high school talent in the country for seemingly every university in the other 49 states, college basketball is relatively off the landscape.

There is a chance that no team from the state will reach the NCAA tournament field, and that’s not even the most …

Continue reading Georgia could be dead zone for NCAA’s March Madness »

The Georgia-Auburn rivalry includes this battle: Uga vs. Robert Baker. (Montgomery Advertiser)

There is a chance that SEC conference expansion will claim one significant victim: The Georgia-Auburn series.

Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity said Wednesday that SEC athletic directors will meet near the end of the month to discuss future football scheduling. With the conference’s addition of Texas A&M and Missouri, the two biggest questions: 1) Will the SEC go to a nine-game conference schedule? 2) Will expansion force for the end of the SEC’s annual East-West rivalry games of Georgia-Auburn and Alabama-Tennessee?

Answer to No. 1: Probably not.

Answer to No. 2: Possibly.

Georgia-Auburn is known as the “Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry,” dating back to 1892. They have played every year since 1898, with three exceptions: 1917, 1918 and 1943. The reasons: World War I and World War II. It appears “Conference Armageddon” may have an equal impact.

The ACC recently announced that teams …

Continue reading Georgia-Auburn game could be sacrificed in SEC scheduling »

Paul Johnson would like a few months of peace, but no such luck. (Johnny Crawford/AJC)

(UPDATED: 7:45 p.m.)

On a day generally reserved for recruits having their hat-switching, Pepsodent-smiling, ESPN moment, when college football fans amusingly obsess over questions like, “Ooh-ooh, how many stars?” Georgia Tech added a hard-news element to the circus.

Seven months after getting hit by NCAA probation and being stripped of its 2009 ACC title (pending appeal), the Jackets finally officially confirmed that offensive line coach Todd Spencer had “resigned” (read: fired) over matters of excessive texting to recruits (read: stupid) and threw itself on the mercy of NCAA investigators (read: tea leaves?).

This shouldn’t take away from the 17 high school seniors who signed their letters of intent with Tech on Wednesday. It shouldn’t detract from the decisions of talented recruits such as Justin Thomas (quarterback), Marcus Allen (running back/linebacker) and Francis Kallon …

Continue reading Tech’s signing party doused by another brain lapse (updated) »

If this was Pledge of Allegiance, Janet would have right hand over her heart, not left hand over … you know.

Like most people in the regular and underworlds, The Count likes the Super Bowl, not for the game but for the food and the commercials, and that rare occasion when the the NFL halftime show morphs into a night at the “Club Hubba Hubba,” less for the split-second look at part of one of Janet Jackson’s breastacles (I saw it! I saw it!) but because it looked like somebody had just connected jumper cables to the toes of then-commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who said, “We were extremely disappointed by the MTV-produced halftime show. The show was offensive, inappropriate and embarrassing to us and our fans.” After which the league showed more commercials to help you get drunk and correct erectile dysfunction. (”Daddy, why did mommy laugh at the Viagra commercial?”) Any way, this is Super Bowl week, and that means more new commercials and hopefully nothing to surprising at …

Continue reading Countdown: Super ads, PETA’s wings, Saban’s job offer? »

An early signing period would've prevented Justin Taylor's disappearing scholarship. (AP photo)

One week after leading Alabama to its second BCS title in three seasons, Nick Saban reaffirmed that his commitment to winning isn’t necessarily rooted in a commitment to doing things the right way.

Saban informed Justin Taylor,  a North Atlanta High School running back, that he was yanking his scholarship offer from 11 months ago. Eleven months ago. Never mind that Taylor was the seventh oral commitment for Alabama’s 2012 class. Nor that he was a good kid, a terrific player and hadn’t once screamed, “War Eagle!” This is the ugly side of college football that coaches hide between the disingenuous, “Don’t worry, momma, I’ll take care of your boy,” speeches.

The substance of a coach’s word morphs from oak to oatmeal when he finds a faster, stronger player.

This is a form of “oversigning” (or in this case overcommitting) in recruiting, a reprehensible practice we’ve banged on several …

Continue reading Scholarship guarantees, early signing would curb oversigning »

The first objective: Get to the college football postseason without the acronym, BCS. (AP photo)

While there is no actual data to back this statement, I’m almost certain my three greatest sources of email relate to unclaimed winnings in the Irish lottery (“This is your final notice!”), male enhancement pills (“See the desire in her eyes!”) and the perfect college football playoff format (“I have no life, no friends, I live on Pop-Tarts and ramen noodles and have been working on this for 17 months!”).

So it comes as great relief that college football finally appears to be moving close to some form of a playoff, with even NCAA president Mark Emmert saying Thursday that he might support a four-team format. We will get a champion. I will get less email.

But I’m kind of old school in many ways. I believe college football is better with debate. It partially fuels the passions and traditions of the sport. What we don’t need is an eight- or 16-team playoff format, which …

Continue reading Finally, here’s the perfect college football playoff plan »

Nick Saban hugs quarterback A.J McCarron after Alabama's second BCS championship in the last three seasons. (AP photo)

(UPDATED: 1 a.m.)

NEW ORLEANS – Far removed from probation, far removed from the cartoon that Alabama football had mutated into during the Mike DuBose-Dennis Franchione-Mike Price (“Roll Tide!” quoth he to the stripper)-Mike Shula eras, far removed from the humbling of Nick Saban’s first season in Tuscaloosa, the Crimson Tide rule college football once again.

It was painful for LSU Monday night. For the rest of us, it was just convincing.

Alabama smacked LSU 21-0 in the BCS championship game at the Superdome, the first shutout in 14 BCS title matches. This makes two national titles in three seasons for the Tide. It’s three BCS titles for Saban (the first coming at LSU in 2003).

That puts him halfway to Bear Bryant. If he doesn’t retire or decide to give the NFL another try, he may get there.

When somebody suggested to Saban the other day that this …

Continue reading Alabama, Saban win BCS title and rule college football again »

Nick Saban: Practicing his secret play?

Les Miles: Something's up his sleeve.

NEW ORLEANS — The Falcons need to fire everybody. (Not really. But I’ve felt left out in the last 24 hours of venting since I’m covering the BCS title game. I promise to weigh in on the Falcons later this week, which still will be long before the flames on Arthur Blank’s head are extinguished.)

Now,  back to the BCS. It’s LSU vs. Alabama. Please, no more whining. It SHOULD be LSU vs. Alabama. These aren’t just the two best teams in the SEC, they’re the two best teams in the country.

I’ve heard and read complaints from fans and media in every time zone. Some say  this match-up completely devalues the regular season and makes LSU’s win in Tuscaloosa back in November meaningless. OK. That’s a a legitimate argument.

Some say that two teams from the same conference shouldn’t be allowed into the title game. I get that viewpoint.

Some say only conference champions should be eligible for the BCS title …

Continue reading LIVE BLOG: LSU, Alabama meet for legit (yes, legit) BCS title »

One of these coaches will hold the BCS trophy. But the SEC already has won it. (AP photo)

NEW ORLEANS – If it is true, as Socrates once said, that, “Envy is the ulcer of the soul,” every other college football conference in America has been speed-eating Tums for the past six years.

LSU and Alabama play in the BCS championship game on Monday night in the Superdome. But this is sort of like two gladiators battling for the right to be viewed as the favorite son of the emperor. The emperor already has won.

This will make six consecutive BCS titles won by SEC schools. It will make eight championships in the 13 years the game has been played, far exceeding the closest member of the lower class (the Big 12 with two).

One would have to go back to the early 1900s of Ivy League domination to find a conference with such a run. But to wax on about the greatness of Princeton, Yale and Harvard football is sort of like referencing the Tyrannosaurus rex ruling over the animal kingdom. …

Continue reading LSU-Alabama BCS title game is another win for SEC »