How's it Hangin Vol. IX

It's been eleven days since the last time I posted an update, so here's the extended week that was...........

UGA Football
When the clock reached 0:00 at the Sugar Bowl, it was an agonizing 241 days till opening day 2008. That’s been whittled down to 95 as of today and in that perspective, it doesn’t sound as bad. There has been some recruiting news lately, you can pick that up here. True freshmen start hitting campus this week to start their strength & conditioning program.

UGA Basketball
2008 SEC TOURNAMENT CHAMPS !! Practice cranks back up in October. The 2008 recruiting class is full. Recruiting news here.

UGA Baseball
2008 SEC CHAMPS !! By now, everyone knows that our regular season success didn’t carry over to the SEC Tournament. 2 games played, 2 losses, & we’re out. UGA did however land the #8 seed in the NCAA tourney and will host a regional featuring UGA 35-21-1, Georgia Tech 39-19 (not a good draw for the Dawgs), Louisville 41-19, and Lipscomb 32-28. The regional is double elimination and the Dawgs open play vs Lipscomb on Friday. As the eighth seed, UGA would also be in line to host a super regional should they advance.

Atlanta Braves
The Braves have played 10 games since I last checked in going 7-3 in the process, including a 4 game sweep of the METS. They split 4 games with NL West Leading Arizona over the holiday weekend. The Braves hit the road for 3 games in Milwaukee and 3 in Cincy. Currently the Braves are 28-23, 2 games behind NL East leading Florida.

Atlanta Hawks
Eliminated in 1st Round of the NBA Playoffs. 15th overall pick in the ’08 draft.

Atlanta Falcons
Matt Ryan gets 6 years, $72 million…..that’s a joke. Enuf said.

Atlanta Thrashers
Have the 3rd overall pick in the draft coming in June.

How's It Hangin? Vol. VIII

Whew, it’s been a busy week. Once again, I’m barely getting enough time to read about everything that’s goin’ on, much less write about it.

The week that was...................

UGA Football
106 days till kickoff. True freshmen start hitting campus in 2 weeks to start their strength & conditioning program.

UGA Basketball
Practice cranks back up in October. The 2008 recruiting class is full. Recruiting news here. 2008 SEC CHAMPS !!

UGA Baseball
UGA has clinched the #1 seed for the SEC Tourney beginning May 21st. The Dawgs lost last Friday to Vandy, but rallied to take the next 2. Throw in a win at Turner Field over Georgia Tech, and we finished the week 3-1. Yesterday’s game vs. Bama was rained out, so we’ll play 2 today beginning @ 3:00 pm. We wrap up the regular season tomorrow @ 2. As of this minute, UGA is 34-17-1 overall with a 19-7-1 conference mark. We have a 4.5 game lead in the SEC East over 2nd place Vandy with 3 games remaining. UGA’s first game in the SEC Tourney will be on Wednesday @ 3 pm at Regions Park in Hoover, Alabama.

Atlanta Braves
Two weeks ago…..6-0. Last week 2-5. Hot & cold. It’s hard to be consistent with all of the injuries and young guys that the Braves are plugging into the lineup on a daily basis. Chipper keeps bangin’ out hits to the tune of a .418 average and Smoltz is almost ready to return from the DL. The Braves are currently at .500 with a record of 20-20, 3 games behind NL East leader Florida.Atlanta HawksEliminated in 1st Round of the NBA Playoffs. 15th overall pick in the ’08 draft.

Atlanta Falcons
The Falcons had their first practices for the new coach last weekend. Among those getting back into the action was DJ Shockley. The news is that he’s understandably rusty, but at least the knee held up ok.

Atlanta Thrashers
Have the 3rd overall pick in the draft coming in June.

How's it Hangin? Vol. VII

The week that was........

UGA FOOTBALL
If no news is good news, it's been a great week. 2008 true freshmen start filtering in about 3 weeks from now for summer workouts. Fall practice begins in August, exact date TBA. 114 days until opening day.

UGA BASKETBALL
Practice cranks back up in October. The 2008 recruiting class is full. Recruiting news here.

UGA BASEBALL
UGA won another SEC series taking 2 of 3 from Ole Miss over the weekend. Georgia lost to Tech on Tuesday finishing the week with a 2-2 mark. We're heading to Vandy to take on the 21st ranked Commodores this weekend for 3 games and finishing the Tech series on Tuesday @ Turner Field. Right now, UGA appears to have a lock on the #1 seed heading into the SEC tourney that begins on May 21. UGA currently has a 3 game lead in the SEC East over 2nd place Vandy with a conference record of 17-16-1. LSU leads the West with a 12-11-1 record.

ATLANTA BRAVES
Kickin' ass & taking names. 6 games in 7 days.......all W's. I dunno how with 8 players on the DL, but whatever you're doin, keep it up. A 4 game set with Pittsburgh starts tonite followed by 3 in Philly. The Braves are currently 1 1/2 games behind NL East leader Florida with a record of 18-15.

ATLANTA FALCONS
Mandatory mini-camp opens tomorrow and finishes on Monday. Practice times are 10:30 am and 4:15 pm on Saturday and Sunday. The public is invited and it's free if you want to get on up to Flowery Branch & catch it.

ATLANTA HAWKS
The fairy tale didn't have a happy ending, with the Hawks absolutely not showing up to any of the 4 games played in Boston. On the brite side, we did take the team with the best record in the NBA to 7 games. Currently looking for another GM since Billy Knight resigned earlier in the week. Since Atlanta made the playoffs, they're not included in the draft lottery and will have the 15th overall pick in the draft.

ATLANTA THRASHERS
Have the 3rd overall pick in the draft coming in June.

Bein' 34th ain't all bad

The NCAA released the Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores for football programs covering the prior 4 year period and UGA ranks 8th among BCS schools. Not too shabby.

If a program's APR score is under 925 can lead to scholarship reductions. UGA checks in at 965.

Here are how some notables finished overall

1. PENN 993
5. STANFORD 986
18. DUKE 977
29. MIAMI 969
29. NOTRE DAME 969
34. UGA 965
41. FLORIDA 962
47. VANDY 959
50. SOUTHERN MISS 958
54. FSU 954
60. AUBURN 953
64. GA TECH 951
64. MICHIGAN 951
74. USC 948
80. LSU 946
89. ALABAMA 944
98. OKLAHOMA 942
98. TEXAS 942
98. OHIO ST 942
139. VIRGINIA TECH 929
163. OREGON 921

You can get the full list here. (h/t to EDSBS)

Best of the Best Part III

I started this series of posts a little over a week ago, with an attempt to gain a little better knowledge of the history of the most successful programs in college football history. I’ve taken some statistical categories that I think are extremely important and currently using them to rank the top 17 programs overall. All of the stats used are for the modern-era (1970 – current). The original series of ranking the teams on all-time records is here.

It never ceases to amaze me as to the amount of sheer b.s. that gets printed on message boards and even in articles attributed to many of our mainstream journalists. Too many times we’re fed information and statistics regarding the history of a program that paint rosy pictures, often glossing over the bad. Wow, I can get off-topic in a hurry when traveling down that line of thought. I'll save this for a later post.

Back to the subject at hand. Today, I’m going to rate these teams by conference championships and conference winning percentages. Once again, this is very hard to get a historical perspective on due to the fact that Notre Dame is an independent and Penn St, FSU, and Miami joined conferences in the early 90’s. It brings up an interesting dilemma, especially with Notre Dame when placing them on the list of conference champions. They have 0. Should they be put at the bottom? I don’t think so. In fantasyland, if they were a member of a conference, they would probably have several on their resume. But, which conference? If it’s the Big 10, they would more than likely have thrown their hat into the 2 horse race and brought down Michigan and Ohio State’s large totals in this category. On the other hand, if it’s the Big East, the likely would have silly high totals too. There’s absolutely no fair way to handle the situation, but hey, life isn’t fair. I’ve decided to give them 10th place points.

Here’s a list of the rules.

• 12 points for a 12 team conference championship (SEC 1992 - ), (Big Twelve 1996 - )
• 11 points for 11 teams (Big Ten 1993 - )
• 10 points for 10 teams (Pac Ten 1978 - ), (Big Ten thru 1992), (SEC thru 1991)
• 9 points for 9 teams (ACC 1992-2003)
• 8 points for 8 teams ( Big 8 thru 1995), (SWC thru 1995), (Pac 8 thru 1977), (ACC thru 1991), (Big East)
• 6 points for a 6 team division (Big Twelve 1996 - ), (SEC 1992 - ), (ACC 2005 - )
• Split titles mean split points ( # of teams sharing title divided by teams eligible)

And the results are in

1. OKLAHOMA 170
2. ALABAMA 152.33
3. NEBRASKA 152
4. MICHIGAN 142.33
5. USC 140.33
6. FLORIDA 129
7. OHIO STATE 122.67
8. TEXAS 112
9. FSU 108
10. LSU 86
11. TENNESSEE 76.33
12. GEORGIA 74
13. UCLA 57.33
14. MIAMI 48
15. AUBURN 43
16. PENN STATE 16.5
17. NOTRE DAME 87 (10TH PLACE)

Again, my personal belief is that an SEC title should count for far more than a Big Ten, Big 8, SWC, or ACC due to the level of competition. However, the numbers are what they are, and there’s your list. When ranking from 1 – 17 in this category, I’ve given double points for conference championships because of the importance.

Some will argue that the following list will show just how powerful a team is. I’ll argue that it shows the level of competition. Here’s the conference winning percentages of these teams.

1. MICHIGAN 82
2. NEBRASKA 80
3. OHIO ST 77
4. OKLAHOMA 76
5. FSU 75
6. USC 72
7. ALABAMA 70
8. FLORIDA 68
9. TENNESSEE 66
10. GEORGIA 66
11. TEXAS 65
12. UCLA 63
13. AUBURN 62
14. PENN ST 61
15. MIAMI 61
16. LSU 58
17. NOTRE DAME 66 (10TH PLACE)

I’d like to mention again that due to a recent job change, I’m not able to post as often as I’d like. I leave the house around 5:30 am and usually have to stop at the ball field for the kid’s practices or games, making it 9 pm or so when I finally get home. Since it’s the off season, and most of the junk that I write about isn’t time sensitive, or hot-off-the-wire, it’s not that big of a deal. It just may take 2 or 3 days to put together what I used to do in one.

2 Balls - 7 Strikes

The balls in question belong to Les Miles. All of the talk in the press and many of the questionable calls during games would lead one to believe that they were made of stainless steel and were the size of cantaloupes. Up to this point however, when it's come to Perriloux, Les' nuggets have been the size of BB's. I'd be willing to bet that Stafford received a bigger lecture over the kegger in Talledega then Perriloux got for any of his transgressions. Congrats go out to Les for finding the stones to finally say "enough is enough".

I knew you had it in ya

7 Strikes?.....Counterfeiting, fake id's, underage drankin, barfights, skippin class, missing team meetings, smoking tha sticky stuff (how many times?), and those are the ones that we know about. Some people just don't get it. The kid has never actually been convicted of any crime, so I'm not going to classify him as a thug. Most of his offenses reek of being an immature party hound. Most party hounds aren't pissin away millions though.

Nad transfer........FAILED......Please try again

Perriloux will end up playin 1-AA ( where there's a little less scrutiny). He more than likely will not change his actions. History is a great teacher.

Will an NFL team take a flyer on him in the late rounds in the 2010 draft?.....Probably (my crystal ball says Dallas). Possible roomie......Pacman Jones

Will he succeed at the next level?.......NFL coaches and players won't tolerate his actions, so I'm going with "NO".

LSU may suffer a little on offense as a result of Perrioux getting the boot. The threat of the QB breaking contain always causes defenses problems and that threat is gone. It's not a death sentence to LSU as some people are predicting. There's several very good teams out there that don't have mobile QB's.

I didn't think that LSU had the pieces in place to repeat last year's success, with or without Perriloux. In the long run.....no, forget that....right NOW, LSU is better off getting rid of that cancer and moving on.

How's It Hangin? Vol. VI

I started a new job this week and writing has been all but impossible. I’m barely getting enough time to read. Out the door at 5:00 am and always stopping at the kids’ practices or games puts me back home around 9 pm. Maybe I can get caught up on the weekend. Thaz enough about me, here’s the list.

The week that was...................

UGA Football
There’s plenty of recruiting news to keep the withdrawal symptoms to a minimum. Fall practice starts in August, exact date TBA. 121 days until kickoff.

UGA Basketball
Practice cranks back up in October. The 2008 recruiting class is full. Recruiting news here.

UGA Baseball
Dammit. Florida won last weekend’s series by taking the last two on Saturday and Sunday. Prior to last Saturday, you’d have to go back to March 28th, a span of 12 conference games to find the last loss to an SEC opponent. UGA has 11 more regular season (9 SEC) games until the SEC tourney begins on May 21. UGA begins a 3 game set with OLE MISS tonite at 6:30 in Athens. This has been a very light week with the only games being the ones @ Florida over the weekend. For the Week 1-2. Overall record 28-14-1, 15-5-1 SEC, currently in 1st in the SEC East, 3.5 games ahead of Florida.

Atlanta Braves
A win last Friday followed by the current 4 game losing streak makes us 1-4 for the week. The list of the walking wounded gets larger with Smoltz making a trip to the DL and informing the Braves that he will go to the bullpen when he returns. When he gets healthy, it looks like the closer situation is taken care of. Chipper Jones continues to swing a hot bat, but this week, it didn’t seem to matter. The Braves are a whopping 0-9 in one-run games. Current record 12-15, 4th in the NL East, 3 games behind Philadelphia.

Atlanta Hawks
When the series with Boston started, I thought we’d be lucky to win a game. I’ll be damned if we haven’t won 2. This has turned out to be a home team dominated series and Atlanta has a chance to even it up at 3 games apiece tonight at Phillips Arena.

Atlanta Falcons
I’ve seen mixed reviews on last weekend’s draft. My take on it is here. I just don’t see any all-pro type players on the list.

Atlanta Thrashers
Have the 3rd overall pick in the draft coming in June.