Wednesday Night Dawg Bites: Dan Magill, Herschel Walker, and Aircraft Carriers

In an effort to move forward from last night’s devastating double-overtime basketball loss, I have prepared my haphazard ill-informed roundball preview of the Georgia Bulldogs’ upcoming trip to face the Kentucky Wildcats in Rupp Arena, which will appear here at a quarter after midnight tonight. In the meantime, here are a few other data you need to know in order to be a fully informed citizen of Bulldog Nation:

• As Holly Anderson reported, Michigan State and North Carolina will play a basketball game on an aircraft carrier next Veterans Day. This may, in fact, be the coolest idea in the history of human thought, and it might even provide a solution to our ongoing Florida problem. Think about it: Richard B. Russell and Carl Vinson made the Peach State a haven for military bases, and Herman Talmadge and Sam Nunn did everything in their power to keep it that way. We can make this work for us.
  
  Next season, we convince Billy Donovan to move his Gators’ date with Mark Fox’s Bulldogs in Gainesville to the Gateway City so that the SEC East rivals can meet on an aircraft carrier parked at Naval Air Station Jacksonville. Hey, what Florida coach could object to playing Georgia at Jacksonville, right? As soon as the game gets underway, though, the aircraft carrier does, too; surely we can find a Georgia man to put at the helm, and, as soon as the ball tips off, the vessel casts off, putting in to port at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay by game’s end. (Jacksonville and Kings Bay are about 40 miles apart along I-95, and the cruising speed of an aircraft carrier is around 20 knots, or 23 miles per hour, so it should be possible to make the trip in the time it takes to play a basketball game.)
  
  Georgia wins. Jinx is broken. Greg McGarity comes aboard when the aircraft carrier docks in the Peach State and holds a press conference beneath a banner reading, "Mission accomplished." Seriously, what is the argument against this?
• I know better than to put too much any stock in comments about offseason conditioning, because it’s always "the best year ever," but Joe Tereshinski certainly knows how to talk the talk when he speaks of "attacking where we’ve been weak." He also makes what I hope proves to be a good point about the temporary (and now former) downgrade in facilities that accompanied the construction of the improvements to Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall, but, for the moment, it sounds more like an excuse than an explanation.
• Saturday afternoon’s roundball showdown in the Bluegrass State is not the weekend’s only sporting event of note in Bulldog Nation. On Friday night, the Gym Dogs will compete in Lexington, as well, putting their No. 3 national ranking on the line against a Wildcat squad that is 0-2 in SEC meets this year. Georgia is 66-0 all-time against Kentucky in women’s gymnastics, and the Red and Black at last appear to be hitting on all cylinders after posting two of the country’s top four team scores and becoming the only team in the NCAA to average 49.0 or higher in all four events. Meanwhile, on Saturday night, Herschel Walker will be competing in his second MMA fight. Is the Goal Line Stalker ready? Oh, yeah; he’s ready.
• Since the Super Bowl is only a week and a half away, the NFL Draft will be upon us before we know it. In case you’re curious, the verdict from those scouting the incoming crop of professional football players is that A.J. Green is pretty good. Yeah, tell us something we don’t know!
• In other news, David Perno has implemented the sensible policy of keeping his players off of Twitter, a Georgia softball team that returns every starter from last year’s Women’s College World Series squad will begin the 2011 season ranked in the top four in both polls and led by three seniors who were named to the preseason all-conference team, Red and Black tennis star Wil Spencer is the SEC player of the week, and Dan Magill turned 90 yesterday. All of us at Dawg Sports send our best birthday wishes to the greatest Bulldog of them all.

Don’t forget that the preview of Saturday afternoon’s basketball game is scheduled to be posted shortly after midnight. In the meantime, you now should be up to speed on events in Bulldog Nation enough to tide you over until then.

Go ‘Dawgs!