Happy birthday, Mr. Green

From The AJC: Happy birthday to A.J. Green, who turns 22 today.

Grantham: Everybody on your team isn't the same

I don't know that there's any new news in this ESPN Q&A with Coach Grantham. But like all of his interviews, it gets you fired up.

Of note: He will coach from the sideline. Freshman T.J. Stripling will get his first shot at outside linebacker "behind Justin Houston."

And when it comes to Houston: "Everybody on your team isn’t the same, and he’s got to be one of those guys who rises above for us."

ESPN: How much will you experiment this preseason, especially given the move to the 3-4?

TG: I come from pro football, and you’re going into the game with 21 or 22 guys on defense, and that’s it. What you learn is that you have to be flexible, and we will be. If somebody goes down, I’d rather play the next best guy instead of the next guy at that position, and there’s a difference in that. We’re going to find out which guys can play different roles.

"A powerful never-coming-of-age story"

Poor Ralph Macchio.

Wax On, F*ck Off with Ralph Macchio from Ralph Macchio

Portraits in Bulldog Awesome: The Music Business

This is follow up information on the post below. But I didn't see any way it wasn't it's own post.

Below is Nick Thompson, rising University of Georgia Senior and one of guys behind H.E.R. Hip Hop.


I think he's majoring in "being Cool Hand Luke." (2:48 mark.)

Says Athens Bureau Chief Brian Huff, who is in Mr. Thompson's business fraternity:

In addition to producing videos for country stars in Nashville this summer and helping launch/run a small business, H.E.R. Hip Hop, Nick plays bass guitar with The Wales, a hip hop/rock/reggae band in Athens, GA. I wish I would've had my shit together like that at 21 years old.

Huff also notes that "Fresh" from this new "Bulldog Nation" song is the lead singer for The Wales.

Note: With rare exceptions, we don't publish pictures of girls in their bikinis here, and particularly not without the girls permission. But the swimwear attire these ladies selected is both understated and classical.

New Bulldog anthem out from J. Skeezy, Fresh

H.E.R. Hip-Hop, which has its roots in the University of Georgia's music business program may be bringing a new song to Sanford Stadium in 2010.



From the company's site:

We debuted the track yesterday and now we get the news that J. Skeezy and Fresh’s Bulldog Nation is the OFFICIAL anthem of the UGA Bulldogs for the 2010 season (and beyond?). Remember, you can download the song from iTunes on August 10th. This is amazing news for Fresh, Skeezy and Team E.C.S.T.A.C.Y.! Congrats guys, you’ve been on your grind! You deserve it!

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UPDATE: Uh-oh. The word official, and the statement above, are gone on the company's site, replaced with this:

As both current and former students of the University of Georgia, H.E.R Hip-Hop is proud to present you with the Dawgs unoffical 2010 anthem. Skeezy and Fresh go in on this one, making us proud to be Bulldogs. Listen to the track below and make sure to show your support by purchasing the song on iTunes when it’s released on August 10th.

Said UGA Athletic Dept. Spokesman and Associate Director Claude Felton: "While the song may be used during the 2010 season on occasion, it is not the official song of the Georgia Bulldogs.”

No worries, guys. The song's still playing on markricht.com. And it's significantly cooler than this.
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You can also listen to the song here:



We'll see where this goes. It's catchy, but I don't know that we should be rapping "who cares about the Crimson Tide." And I can't quite catch what it says about Florida, but if I'm right in hearing "slaughter you gators ..." well, no one tell Urban Meyer we said that, OK?

Note: L.I. Athens Bureau Chief Brian Huff, a music business student himself, called our attention to this.

Note: This post edited to conform with new information.

Update: GSB has gotten word that the highlight video associated with the song will be played after the third quarter at Sanford.

AJC: Dawg helmets were almost white

The AJC's Junkyard Blawg has an interesting column up on the history of Georgia's uniforms. Particularly noteworthy: We almost ended up with white helmets, instead of red, under Dooley, and we auctioned off last year's black helmets for charity.

Athens Bureau Chief Brian Huff in the comments:

The auction must not have gone extremely well. The UGA Bookstore is currently selling "Game Worn Black Georgia Football Helmets" for $300 a pop.

Now, for the low price of $300, you too can remember the anger you felt when you saw the Dawgs take an ass beating of epic proportions while wearing stupid black pants and helmets.

The Orlando Sentinel sports department has near zero credibility

This is kind of part two of this train of thought. It was Mike Bianchi's column, arguing that Georgia is the most overrated program in college football history, that set me off. But that's not even close to the Orlando Sentinel's biggest blow against its own credibility.

The Orlando Sentinel is just trolling for hits. You know it. I know it. Stop clicking on their sports stories.

When Mike Bianchi writes "Without this fluke Lindsay Scott play, Georgia would be South Carolina," of course that's not true. The very exercise of asking "what if" about the past speaks to an outfit's intentions.

And where does Bianchi's argument that "Georgia fans have way too high an opinion of their program" take us? Is complacency a newly praised American virtue? Is know your place his actual advice?

"Oh, we're the 12th winningest program in college football history. Let's definitely not try to be No. 1."

That's loser logic, and I doubt Bianchi even buys it himself. Saying things you know people will hate has been a newspaper columnist trick for ages. The Internet just offers new proof that it works.

But it's the sign of a man that you should not trust. Take Andrew Breitbart, the unrepentant rumor monger who told purposeful lies of omission in the now well-known case of Shirley Sherrod.

"I realized I liked being hated more than I liked being liked," Breitbart has said.

What a dangerous attitude, particularly in writers not particularly concerned with the truth.

I see the same idea at work in the Orlando Sentinel sports department. Surely they don't believe their own college football poll. The one that ranks Army, Northwestern, Connecticut, Middle Tennessee and Idaho all at least 20 spots higher than Georgia?

Add that poll to Bianchi's click-hunting columns. Then look to the Sentinel's main sports page. As of this moment it features at least six promos for photo galleries of cheerleaders or dance teams. It's got two promos for lingerie football tryout photos, and those tryouts were held May 1.

The Sentinel's online sports strategy is apparent: Pander to the baser instincts and generate controversy, whether the facts support it or not. Angry readers and girls in their underwear mean hits.

This is a formula for short term success, no doubt about it. But, long term, it wipes out your credibility.

I think that day has come for the Orlando Sentinel. When it comes to college football, the paper no longer has any credibility for me. But, if I need a place to find famous mug shots or guess which celebrity these abs belong to, I'll know where to turn.

Note: Before publishing this I emailed Bianchi and the Sentinel's sports editor for comment. I haven't heard back. I'm emailing them a link to this post, and will publish a response if I receive one.

Reversable tiger moon zebra striped bedspread

Driving through Siler City North Carolina last week I passed what I thought were a bunch of rugs hanging against a van, displayed for sale at $35 apiece.

It turns out they were bedspreads. Crazy velvet bedspreads.




"They're beautiful, aren't they?" the sales woman asked as I started snapping pictures. "Some of them are double sided."

"What's on the back of this one?" I asked, pointing to a blanket picturing two tigers ... hanging out on an asteroid near the moon?


"Zebra stripes," she replied.

In hindsight, it was a stupid question.

Coach Richt and the hot seat: It's lazy journalism

I've been a professional newspaper reporter for 12 years. And I've just had enough of this "hot seat" crap.

Mark Bradley made the obvious point yesterday: Coach Richt is on the hot seat in this and any year, if he tanks.

That's like saying a chef's probably going to be fired if he poisons all the customers. Reminding a major-program football coach that he needs to win is akin to suggesting that he breath.

Even the columnists have started to turn on this ridiculous meme. Some don't even call it the hot seat anymore. It's the "imaginary hot seat," a phrase now popping up in Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi's work. It was also used at Coach Richt's press conference at SEC Media Days.

When you're typing that, shouldn't there be a moment when you think "Maybe I should write about things I don't think are imaginary?"

And who's doing this imagining? I don't hear fans or boosters or UGA officials talking about the hot seat. I hear columnists and talk show hosts talking about it.

I'll issue a challenge now, to any sports writer or talk show host or blogger who's written about Coach Richt and the hot seat: Produce for me one Georgia official or significant booster who questions whether Mark Richt is the right man to lead this program.

Produce for me the numerous Georgia fans you've interviewed before writing about the mood of the Georgia fan base. I think it'd be better for you if they weren't a bunch of mouth breathing fools, but, for starters, just give me the name of one actual human being you've talked to.

Otherwise, you're writing in the echo chamber, equating repetition with the truth.

Update: Dean Legge did an excellent job yesterday of drawing distinctions between what Georgia beat reporters think about Coach Richt's job security and what those further removed say:

Perception: Mark Richt is on the hot seat according to some outside observers
Reality: Mark Richt is not on the hot seat according to anyone who covers the Dawgs on a day-to-day basis

Perception: Damon Evans’ departure hurts Mark Richt
Reality: The opposite

Coach Richt: Operating since 1986

From Coach Richt's press conference in Hoover:

Q: Does it bother you, having a 90-27 record and being on the "imaginary hot seat?"

Coach Richt: "I can control my attitude. I can control my effort. I can control, you know, certain things, and that's what I focus on. And then the things I can't control I just trust the Lord with that. And that's kind of how I've been operating since 1986."

Old fashioned hate

There's lots to love in this post at About Them Dawgs! But a sentence like this:

Let me first add that in the 1893 game, the contest's umpire made several questionable calls against Georgia.

gets to the essence of rivalry.

Inshallah

It means "God willing."

From Three Cups of Tea, the story of an American whose near death in the Himalayas led him to build schools in remote parts of Pakistan:

In October 1996, Bergman had been traveling in Pakistan with a group of friends who chartered a huge Russian MI-17 helicopter out of Skardu in hopes of getting a glimpse of K2. On the way back the pilot asked if they wanted to visit a typical village. They happened to land just below Korphe, and when local boys learned Bergman was American they took her hand and led her to see a curious new tourist attraction — a sturdy yellow school built by another American, which stood where none had ever been before, in a small village called Korphe.

"I looked at a sign in front of the school and saw that it had been donated by Jean Hoerni, my cousin Jennifer's husband," Bergman says. "Jennifer told me Jean had been trying to build a school somewhere in the Himalaya, but to land in that exact spot in a range that stretches thousands of miles felt like more than a coincidence. I'm not a religious person," Bergman says, "but I felt I'd been brought here for a reason and I couldn't stop crying."

A few months later, at Hoerni's memorial service, Bergman introduced herself to Mortenson. "I was there!" she said, wrapping the startled man she'd just met in a bruising hug. "I saw the school!"

"You're the blonde in the helicopter," Mortenson said, shaking his head in amazement. "I heard a foreign woman had been in the village but I didn't believe it!"

"There's a message here. This is meant to be," Julia Bergman said. "I want to help. Is there anything I can do?"

"Well, I want to collect books and create a library for the Korphe school," Mortenson said.

Bergman felt the same sense of predestination she'd encountered that day in Korphe. "I'm a librarian," she said.

Nintendo favorites available online

I don't know how useful this will be to people, or whether it's common knowledge, but you can play old Nintendo and Sega games online here.

They've got the old Zelda games, Contra, Super Mario Brothers, the original Metroid, Excitebike, Double Dribble, R.C. Pro-Am, Rad Racer, Metal Gear and my all-time favorite: Ikari Warriors.

I feel like my last two months of unemployment could have been much more productive if I'd known this sooner.

Seriously, Asheville, you need to take a shower

Look, I've been to more than 30 Widespread Panic shows. I lived in Athens for four years. I once spent two weeks camping in Colorado. But, holy shit, I went to Asheville, N.C., last weekend and I've never seen such an unreasonable number of hippies in my life.

I saw a guy with dreadlocks so ... dreadlocked they formed a shelf coming off the back of his head. I saw what appeared to be a 13-year-old girl clogging — badly — on the sidewalk for money.

There was a young woman covered head-to-toe in silver paint and clothing playing a drum for money. A guy nearby was working the same gimmick, except he was in all white, had a guitar and was pretending to be a statue until someone gave him some money.

I saw people in party hats with full drum set. They were just hanging out on the sidewalk, waiting for people to walk by. Then they'd shout "Surprise!"

I saw the biggest drum circle I've ever seen. They were just playing drums in the park downtown for like three hours.

I saw a kid, maybe 10 years old, with silver disks in his fucking earlobes. I saw more gay men sporting full-on mohawks than I thought existed, which, to be fair, means I saw one gay man sporting a full-on mohawk.

All in all, I just want to know, Asheville: Do I need to get the hose?

Stallone, Willis, Axl, 85 girls and fire

Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis together in a movie with 'Paradise City' in the trailer? I don't care that they're sure to be awful, make 10.
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Chad Ochocinco has a new dating show on VH1 that started with him bringing 85 women into the Rose Bowl dressed in short shorts and tight football jerseys.

Then he had them do stretches. Then he picked 16 of them, ranked them and seeded them in a bracket-style elimination tournament for his affections.

I'm not saying you should watch, I'm saying that's how you do it. Also, I'm saying you should watch.
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Lead blog analyst Joe Petersen points you toward this story:

... deputies found the man naked on the side of U.S. Route 70 with his prosthetic leg in flames. Deputies learned that the man and his friends were drinking Monday and bet that whoever drank the least would be set on fire.

The man told investigators that at six beers, he drank the least, and agreed to let his friends set him on fire.

Joe: We'll get you drunk and set you on fire. And then we will drive you halfway to the hospital and drop you off with your prosthetic leg. Those are my kind of people right there.

Nothing good happens after 2 a.m., North Carolina

North Carolina's General Assembly met until 5:30 a.m. this morning. Is it any wonder that things got weird?

L.I. endorsed: The Flying Melon

If you find yourself on Ocracoke Island in North Carolina's Outer Banks, I recommend the Flying Melon Cafe.

Jordan Love and the UGA cops: What the what?

This Jordan Love arrest is just chock full of unnecessary stupid.

The report says Love couldn't or wouldn't spell his middle name. And yet, there it is, on the same report (download from The Red & Black). It's Lawrence. Yet the chief of police acts like it's some family secret.

The report says Love wouldn't give his date of birth, and it's not on the report at all. Does this young man not have a drivers license? At some point in the training process for UGA cops, do they not say "Ask people for their drivers licenses?"

Officer Kevin Thompson confiscated a lighter and at least one firework from Love and took them into evidence, but Love wasn't charged with shooting fireworks, just this obstruction thing. Now Love's family has hired not just one, but two attorneys (8th paragraph)?

And who the hell calls the cops because someone's lighting off fireworks at 9:40 p.m. on July 5?

Apparently, a guy named Stephen C. Rogers who, interestingly, spells his middle name "Christophe."

Update: The AJC reports that this case is moving forward. If I'm Love's attorneys I think exhibit A for me is one of the numerous newspaper articles where the chief of police basically said there was no case.

Hire Foley's apprentice, bring balance to the conference

Me: The Georgia graduate who's been training at the foot of the master? Assuming Mark Richt's OK with him, I think we should get that guy.

Joe: Let's call him Annakin.

This Damon Evans situation needs to end with an upgrade. I look forward to watching Greg McGarity choke people with his mind.

President Adams has a press conference today at 2 p.m. I'm assuming Fox 5 Atlanta, which streamed Evans' press conference last week, will do the same for Adams.

Update: I watched most of President Adams' presser. Some key points:

• Damon resigned, but it was "after he and I had a meeting on Friday."
• There is no timetable to hire a new AD, but Adams quipped that he'd "like to have it concluded today." He noted that "anyone that you want already has a good job and so you have to work with someone else's schedule as well as your own."
• "The first look (for a new AD) is outside," but that doesn't mean Adams won't promote from within. Still, he said, "I want an outside opinion to take a hard look at what we're doing."
• Adams is meeting with coaches and senior staffers today at 4 p.m. He hasn't talked to Coach Richt yet.
• Said he had "not had any reason to question (Damon's) judgement" prior to this incident.
• Said he didn't "know of any material facts other than the ones that have been reported" in this case.
  

Quiet into that good night

I certainly hope this is true. By the time most of the world pays attention again Tuesday morning we can be well into what I hope will be a quick, and quiet, replacement search.

Monday update: Done and done. Looks like it's a $237,000 settlement, per Tim Tucker.

Sorry Damon, but we're done here

Best of luck rebuilding, my friend.

Bill King:

"No institution wants a drunken punchline as its public face."

Damon Evans: Massive self whammy

It's not just that Damon Evans has been charged with DUI. It's not just that he was charged with DUI because he was driving erratically and failed a field sobriety test.

It's not just that he was charged with DUI because he was driving erratically and failed a field sobriety test and refused a breathalyzer.

It's not just that he was charged with DUI because he was driving erratically and failed a field sobriety test and refused to take a breathalyzer and had some mysterious passenger with him who was also arrested for unknown reasons.

It's that the mugshot looks like this.

Joe: That's a doozy.

Me: I think Gen. McChrystal's available.

Update: The fact that Director's Cup standings came out this morning doesn't help, either:

Before finishing 18th last year, Georgia had been in the top 15 of the Directors’ Cup standings for 11 consecutive years, including top-10 finishes in eight of the 11 years. This year’s showing is Georgia’s poorest since finishing 28th in 1997.

Update: At the very least, we're going to need a new public service announcement for home games.

Update: This just gets more painful. From Mark Schlabach:

Evans, who played wide receiver at Georgia from 1988-92, received a five-year contract extension in February that raised his annual salary to $550,000. His new salary was set to take effect on Thursday.

Update: Channel 2 identifies the other person arrested as a 28-year-old woman who was charged with disorderly conduct. That's a relief. All day I've been dreading the moment when the phrase "male prostitute" would enter this story.

Of course, this woman is also not Damon's wife (see official bio), so this isn't exactly positive news.

This is the final update on this post. As the world knows, Damon is going to make a statement at 6:30 this evening. If I have anything "worth" adding to that, I'll do it in another post.