While considerable attention is paid annually to National Signing Day for college football, far less attention is paid to basketball's signing rituals. I think several reasons exist for this. One is that basketball signing is an ongoing process, with an early signing period and a spring signing period. Good players routinely stay on the board well past their first opportunity to sign a letter of intent. There's just not the frenzy that surrounds football's signing day.

But arguably, any given signing period in college basketball is far more significant than any given football signing day. The reason is that football players must stay for three seasons before turning pro, and there are a lot more of them. One good football signing day isn't going to revolutionize your football program. Ask Jim Donnan. Ask any South Carolina Gamecock fan. But one great basketball signing period can totally change your basketball program. Two or three good ones can have the same effect.

And that''s what Dennis Felton is banking on. Obviously there was a lot of buzz last year regarding the 2007 class consisting of Jeremy Price, Jeremy Jacob, Troy Brewer, Chris Barnes and Zac Swansey. This year's group consisting of Georgians Trey Thompkins, Ebuka Anyaora, Travis Leslie, and Dustin Ware (and Serbian Drazen Zlovaric) is equally touted.

One aspect of the recruiting news that hasn't drawn nearly enough attention however is where Felton is recruiting. The F-Bomb has made explicit his effort to put a fence up around the state, and especially basketball rich metro Atlanta. The AJC talked to him about it recently, and his comments are worth taking note of. Coach Felton opines that "we can literally dominate the nation and win championships with just Georgia players. That capability exists because of the level of coaching and talent in this state. It's just a fantastic area for basketball. This is a basketball hotbed."

At this point in this program's trajectory, we're not going to outrecruit Wake Forest and Duke for guys in New Jersey and California. But we can do very, very well just by getting the best players in metro Atlanta. Coach Felton deserves praise for recognizing this and responding with a recruiting strategy that can work.

Anybody who follows college basketball recruiting in the state of Georgia can attest to the fact that the University of Georgia has missed out on enough top flight, in-state, Division I basketball talent in the past two years to put together a veritable All-Star Team. It's been frustrating. But I think any keen observor realized that Dennis Felton didn't really have a lot to sell here recently. But now he does, and he's found the appropriate target audience. While it might be hyperbolic to say Georgia can "dominate the nation" with just Georgia players, for now I would settle for being a perennial tournament team with Georgia players. That can be done. Until later . . .

Go Dawgs!!!

Because I know that what follows is bound to be unpopular, I begin with the shameless fulfillment of a three-week old promise and offer the following photograph of my children in an effort to invoke your sympathy for my position:

Now that the excitement is over, certain animadversions must be answered. While we all are proud of the Georgia men's basketball team for making the S.E.C. tournament run that won it an automatic bid to the N.C.A.A. tourney, my longstanding criticisms of playoffs in general (and of the big dance in particular) received a snide broadside after Dennis's Dogs went on their title run.

Likewise, a prominent and well-respected member of the intercollegiate athletics blogosphere sent me a congratulatory e-mail in which he opined, "I assume we'll be getting a 'We Didn't Deserve It' post and an apology to Kentucky or whichever winning team UGA knocked out."

While this is not that posting exactly, the point bears making that Georgia's late-season hot streak, while generating considerable excitement, did not produce much in the way of a legitimate conference title. Through and including the S.E.C. tournament championship game, these are the conference records of the league's twelve teams over the course of the 2007-2008 basketball season:

So, yeah, even including the four tournament victories alongside the Bulldogs' four regular-season wins, the Red and Black finished eighth overall in conference play among the twelve S.E.C. teams.

Over the course of the regular season and the postseason, Georgia went 1-0 against Alabama, 2-0 against Arkansas, 1-0 against Auburn, 0-2 against Florida, 1-2 against Kentucky, 0-1 against Louisiana State, 1-1 against Mississippi, 1-1 against Mississippi State, 1-1 against South Carolina, 0-2 against Tennessee, and 0-2 against Vanderbilt. Of the seven Southeastern Conference squads that got to the end of the tournament with better overall league ledgers than Dennis's Dogs, Georgia had a winning record against one of them and, even counting S.E.C. tournament contests, the Red and Black were winless against three of them.

For those of us who have criticized the sorts of systems that produce such dubious champions as the 1997 Florida Marlins, the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, and the 2007 New York Giants merely because they happened to win the games that really counted despite having been comparatively undeserving over the course of the entire campaign, this year's Georgia men's basketball team, while exciting to watch for four days in March, is a pretty undeserving conference champion at 8-12 in league play.

Yes, it was fun to watch. Yes, I am looking forward to next basketball season. At the end of the day, though, even counting the Bulldogs' S.E.C. tournament wins, Georgia's conference record earned the Red and Black a fifth-place finish in the East. There's a reason why we were wishing for a swift resolution to Coach Felton's uncertain job situation barely over two hours before the start of the title run.

Snarky sarcasm about how "disappointing" it was "to see the entire regular season rendered moot by a 4 day run in the SEC tournament" aside, the fact is that any system that can produce a conference champion with an 8-12 league ledger and an 0-2 record against the best team in the conference is a system in which the term "champion" has become sufficiently disconnected from reality as to be essentially meaningless.

Am I wrong about that? You can let me know in the comments below and give me your take on Georgia's S.E.C. tournament title by voting here, but I feel like I'm in pretty good company with the wise man who wrote these words:

So wrote Orson Swindle, the People's Champ.

Go 'Dawgs!

In the end, there just wasn't enough improbability left in the tank.  Nor enough fresh bodies. The University of Georgia mens basketball team fell 73-61 to #3 seed Xavier yesterday in first round NCAA tournament action. We could dwell on the negatives, but in the grand scheme of things, there's really nothing wrong with simply running out of gas against one of the top 12 teams in the country after leading by 9 at the half and 11 in the second half. A few thoughts:

Xavier played the kind of defense in the second half that Coach Felton would like our team to play. But with 9 players you have to play a lot more zone to save your fouls and save the wear and tear that comes with following the backcourt guys all over the floor. I'm willing to bet that at some point the F-Bomb pulls this tape out for reference though.

The foul situation? I'm not as mad as some. Sure some of the fouls were ticky-tack. And Bliss's foul with 5:31 left (when he clearly pinned the ball without laying a paw on the Xavier player) was so much bovine excrement. But there were really four phenomena on display.

One is that the SEC is a very physical league. A typical Atlantic 10 game is a lot less rough and tumble and a lot more elegant for basketball purists (he said generalizing wildly based on his own observations). Every year SEC teams get into foul trouble in the tournament because of this. It's not just us.

Second, the tournament is usually very tightly officiated. I'm not sure why this is, but it is. It's almost a truism, and you have to adjust to it.

Third, we were obviously pretty deadlegged by the 8:00 minute mark of the second half. When you're tired and frustrated you foul more. In fairness, the majority of the fouls called on us were actually committed. The exceptions were obvious, but generally not obscene.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, Xavier did what every team has to do to win in the tournament: they hit the free throws they got, including the one-and-ones. They shot nearly 82% from the charity stripe, which includes an out-of-their-collective-minds stretch from the 12:00 mark to the end of the game, during which the Muskies went 20 of 22 from the line. That's just absurd.

During those final 12 minutes, Xavier also played like a 3 seed is supposed to. They didn't panic. They didn't give up. They didn't try to get it all back in one shot. I for one filled out two brackets this season, one in which I sentimentally picked us to beat Xavier and make it to the Sweet 16, and another in which I logically concluded that we would bow out to Xavier, who would then bow out to Purdue in the next round. I'm beginning to think that I underestimated Sean Miller's team significantly.

Speaking of Coach Miller, I thought his adjustments on defense were great and that he used his bench and timeouts to perfection. It really was a clinic watching he and Coach Felton try to accomplish the same goal using two very different sets of players to get there.

Finally, I think this gives us a lot to build on. We here at Dawgsports.com can't think of enough good things to say about Sundiata Gaines and Dave Bliss. If either one spots me at his neighborhood watering hole, his first drink of the night is on me. I should be easy to spot in this situation because I'll be the pudgy older guy wearing a Georgia Bulldog golf shirt/tee shirt/ baseball cap/bedroom slippers. You can't miss me.

But looking to the future, several players stepped up throughout the SEC tournament and began to show what they can do. Albert Jackson in particular scares me a lot less in the middle than he did just one month ago. There was a point there when I thought that if AJax handled a knife and fork the way he handled a basketball he'd starve to death. But he's gotten a lot more effective using his body to gain position and taking the shots he can make. He still has a ways to go, but he's getting there.

Jeremy Price also looked much better down the stretch, probably because he was getting a lot more floor time. Terrance Woodbury needs only to find consistency. If he does that, he could be the type of big guard that's too fast to be guarded by a big man and too big for your average guard to handle one on one. Only time will tell. Swansey looked a little lost at times on defense and has to become more physical. I don't know if he'll ever be that slashing, scoring point guard that we've become accustomed to this season with Yata. But he's definitely got promise scoring from the outside and distributing the basketball, which is a perfectly respectable thing for a point guard to do, after all.

And that's leaving aside Jeremy Jacob and Chris Barnes pending their return from injury. And Trey Thompkins getting minutes as a freshman. I'm not taking a Polly Anna approach to next season. There will be some tough teams in the SEC, and Coach Felton still has to prove his guys can consistently generate offense. But the past week has been a quantum leap forward in terms of the energy surrounding the program, and that counts for a lot. Congratulations guys. For the first time in recent memory, we're all looking forward to basketball season. How's that for a change?

Go 'Dawgs!!!

I agree with ImaRealist: "It was fun while it lasted." For the 40 per cent of you who predicted Dennis's Dogs would be ousted after one game, you were right.

In Xavier's 73-61 first-round win over Georgia, the Musketeers went on a second-half run, just like MaconDawg said they would, but, even so, the Bulldogs will get to update a couple of banners, which represents no small achievement for a basketball program as tradition-starved as ours.

"It was a trick, General. . . . There were five of 'em!"

While the doubters have been many---Truzenzuzex was a true believer, but Jebus, Peter, and AW were not---enthusiasm has been high, which gives Coach Felton and his team something upon which to build next season. Where do we go from here? You tell me.

Our congratulations go out to Coach Felton and the team for what was not, on the whole, a stellar season---no team in the league had a worse regular-season record than Georgia's, either overall or in conference play---but was one of the more inspiring and encouraging culminations to a Bulldog basketball season in many a moon.

Go 'Dawgs!

As I indicated earlier, I haven't precisely figured out this new-fangled basketball blogging business. But we here at Dawgsports believe in learning by doing, so basketball blogging it is. On the eve of the most significant University of Georgia mens' basketball game in quite some time, I had to think long and hard about the 5 things that I think we'll see later today when the Bulldogs take on the Xavier Musketeers. But finally, I think I've got a handle on it:

1) Please Hammer don't hurt 'em. Xavier guard Stanley "Hammer" Burrell (no, not that one) is a solid perimeter defender, and he'll be counted on to keep Sundiata Gaines on the perimeter and away from the basket. If Gaines is able to slash to the lane, he'll be able to get easy points, and he'll put Xavier's big men in potential fouling situations. This would be absolutely ideal for us.

2) Playing experienced basketball. Xavier has a roster full of seniors who have been to the Big Dance before. They played a schedule this season that saw them beat Indiana, Kansas State and Auburn on their home court by 20+, enroute to a #9 RPI ranking. Georgia, not so much. We cannot come down with the "Hawaii Syndrome" now. It will be up to Coach Felton and the seniors to keep this team focused in the face of heavy media attention. It will also be up to the seniors to keep this team in it when Xavier makes their second half run. Which they will, because . . .

3) They're deep and wide. Just like the River Jordan. Xavier has six guys averaging in or around 10 points a game. When you have that many players who can, in hoops parlance "score the basketball", somebody is bound to be hot every game. It's just a matter of figuring out who it is and getting the ball in his hands.

4) Backcourt bingo. Xavier is experienced and athletic on the perimeter. We are as well, although probably not as experienced. One of the key matchups of the game is going to be Billy Humphrey versus whoever Xavier sticks on him. Humphrey is among the world's streakist shooters. If he finds his stroke early, he'll keep us in the game one 3-ball at a time.

5) UGA 67, Xavier 65. I know, I know. The odds are long. We have no depth, no tournament experience, and we're coming off the basketball equivalent of the Ironman Triathlon. Heck, they even have Charles Bronson on their side. But if there's one thing I've learned since last Thursday, it's not to bet against this team. If they win I'll be absolutely ecstatic. If not, it's been a great run, especially given where this team sat at the end of February.

Don't forget the open comment thread immediately below this post. Until later . . .

Go 'Dawgs!

This is a first here at Dawg Sports . . . an N.C.A.A. basketball tournament game day open comment thread!

If you're like me, you've been counting down to this afternoon's matchup with Xavier. Contrary to AW's lighthearted animadversion, Dennis's Dogs are playing today, not Friday, and the earlier the start, the better for Georgia, given the momentum the Red and Black have carried through the weekend. I wouldn't want a team this hot to cool due to a lengthy layoff.

With the top mascot in the tournament, a re-energized fan base, and reason to dislike the Musketeers thanks to guys like this who completely missed my point, how can we lose?

Please, guys, don't lose.

Your comments go below.

Go 'Dawgs!

Like Kyle, I have to admit to being a little confounded about how to act these days. I mean, none of us have had to figure out how to react to a moderately successful UGA mens basketball team since the Gin Blossoms were popular and Bill Clinton was in the White House. Our friends over at A Sea of Blue assure us that we'll eventually learn to thrive in this brave new world. But until then, I'm going to have to fall back on my football blogging experience to figure out exactly how to cover a big basketball game. So here's the drill: Tomorrow I'll be here early with 5 Things: The March Madness Edition. But first, over or under?

1) Dave Bliss will have 4.9 fouls at the end of regulation.

2) Billy Humphrey will hit 3.9 3-pointers.

3) Sundiata Gaines will snag 5.9 rebounds.

4) Albert Jackson will score 9.9 points.

5) Terrence Woodbury will score 9.9 points.

6) Jeremy Price will score 9.9 points.

7)The University of Georgia will score 64.9 points.

8) Xavier University will score 64.9 points.

As always, your guesses, and the reasons for them, are welcome in the comments.

While we here at Dawgsports have been known to take the occasional jab at the alleged Worldwide Leader in Sports, there comes a time when you have to render unto Caesar that which is his. And, as those of us nurturing young Bulldogs frequently preach, it's always important to keep your promises. Therefore, I'm keeping one of the promises I made this weekend during the 'Dawgs improbable run through the SEC basketball tournament. Ladies and gentlemen, with no further ado, the five things I most like about ESPN talking head Mike Greenberg:

1) He thinks he could do just as well as Bud Selig if called into service as the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. Can anyone who watched the Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire congressional hearing fiascos really doubt this proposition? Didn't think so.

2) He graduated from Northwestern University, which boasts one of the most successful debate teams in the collegiate ranks (along with the University of Georgia, which had the top overall individual team during last year's regular tournament schedule). As a moderately dorky attorney who in his free time helps with a high school debate team, that's a program that I can get behind.

3) He milked a cow last year after losing his March Madness bracket wager with cohost Mike Golic. As a dorky attorney who grew up working on his grandfather's cattle farm, I can appreciate both the comedic certainty and the potential for bloody, gawk-inducing injury wrought by a Prada wearing New Yorker with a Northwestern journalism degree tugging at the wrong bovine appendages in a crowded television studio. This is why they invented pay-per-view.

4) Mike Golic has not, as of yet, devoured him. This alone shows that "Greenie" is possessed of a degree of wily agility previously only witnessed in Cuban defectors travelling to Florida on athletic junkets and Reggie Bush when confronted with a deposition notice. Seriously, if you were Raul Castro, why would you even bother at this point? Raul: if you keep sending your athletes to compete in the U.S. they are going to keep disappearing in the middle of the night. And who do you have guarding their hotel rooms? The Nebraska Cornhuskers' secondary? Rick Neuhiesel? Cuban hotel room guarding is, historically speaking, right up there with French border security.

5) Yiddish. Greenberg throws in a good bit of Yiddish with his sports talk. Just this morning he referred to Skip Bayless as a mentsh. Now I don't know if Skip really is a mentsh, but the prospect of hearing Greenberg tell Nore Dame grad Golic that Charlie Weis has to beat Navy and Air Force in the same year or he'll be out on his tukkus makes me smile.

So there you go, five worthwhile things about the only outed metrosexual in sports broadcasting. Other than Kirk Herbstreit. Tune in later this week when I come up with some good things to say about Steve Spurrier, the alleged evil genius (which, by the way, I'll start capitalizing again when he's once more in the running for an SEC title on Thanksgiving Day). Until later . . .

Go 'Dawgs!

Our good friend and SB Nation colleague, Truzenzuzex from A Sea of Blue, says he looks forward to "the day we see your roundball team covered a bit more in the Georgia blogosphere." Just as Tru had some difficulty shifting gears from Kentucky basketball to "that 'other' team sport" (namely, football), so too do I have trouble adjusting my emphasis in the opposite direction.

It's not that I have anything against basketball; I don't. Basketball is a fine sport, the N.C.A.A. tournament is an exceedingly entertaining spectacle (although I have been baited upon the subject, I will, in this era of good feelings, decline to go there, particularly since conscientious playoff proponents already have acknowledged those problems), and "Hoosiers" is a heck of a good movie. A fellow only has room for so many passions in his life, though, and, between my family and football, I have little space left for roundball, particularly since hoops start to heat up precisely at the moment when I need some down time between the end of the bowl season and the start of baseball.

Nothing personal, Coach.

That said, Bulldog Nation's excitement is palpable---watching the final five minutes against Arkansas in the S.E.C. tournament title tilt with my son on Sunday felt almost like watching Sid Bream rounding third a decade and a half ago---and I hope Paul Westerdawg is right about the direction of the program. When it comes to basketball, though, I share some of Tru's concerns about growing a program from the ground up in the S.E.C.

As I mentioned previously, the Bulldogs' last S.E.C. tournament title came in the same year I saw the Police perform at the Omni. Georgia basketball has been an afterthought even for the most die-hard denizens of Bulldog Nation for much of the ensuing quarter-century, and with good reason.

Following the J*m H*rr*ck fiasco, my ill-formed thoughts on Georgia basketball began to coalesce, ultimately crystallizing into a statement I was to utter often whenever the subject of Bulldog hoops was raised:

While my view has not changed significantly---neither the moral importance of competing within the established rules nor the fiscal reality that men's basketball is and must remain the second-most profitable sport at the University of Georgia has been altered by recent events---I no longer take as dim a view as once I did on the significance of victories on the hardwood. Until recently, I thought, well, hey, wins in men's basketball were nice when you could get them, but, if those wins don't come, que sera sera.

That was then, this is now. It was one thing when S.E.C. basketball was Kentucky, occasionally Vanderbilt, and not much of anyone else; then, there was no shame in not being very good at something no one outside of the Bluegrass State seemed terribly interested in being good at doing.

Indeed, there was, in no small sense, rather a manly satisfaction to be derived from deriding the neighboring A.C.C. as "a basketball conference"---by which was meant, of course, only a basketball conference, a league that had to settle for being good at hoops because it lacked the masculine fortitude to excel on the gridiron. If the only way to be good at basketball was to be lousy at football---and, if Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and the Atlantic Coast Conference were any indication, that certainly seemed to be the case---then who cared about basketball?

That began to change around the time Arkansas changed conference allegiances. The Razorbacks joined the S.E.C. in 1992, won the N.C.A.A. tournament in 1994, and returned to the final four in 1995. Under Rick Stansbury, Mississippi State made four straight appearances in the big dance from 2002 to 2005. South Carolina won the N.I.T. in 2006. In addition to just looking awesome, Bruce Pearl has turned Tennessee basketball into a legitimate force. There also is the small matter of Billy Donovan's Florida Gators winning back-to-back national championships.

In short, the S.E.C. has gotten good at basketball, too, without sacrificing its commitment to quality football. Moreover, men's hoops has been the lone sport in which Georgia is deficient in the 21st century. If Florida and Tennessee can build nationally significant basketball programs without having the benefit of Kentucky's tradition, surely there is no reason why Georgia cannot do likewise, particularly given the Peach State's population.

So bring on these guys . . .

. . . and keep the hot streak going as long as possible, then celebrate and regroup and build on this momentum next season.

It's an exciting time to be a Georgia basketball fan. I know that because I'm excited about Georgia basketball, and the last time I had cause to be excited about Georgia basketball, I was fourteen years old and was too busy being distracted by the sight of Princess Leia in the gold bikini in the newly-released "Return of the Jedi." That was a while ago.

An athletics program as prominent as Georgia's, and with as many natural and institutional advantages, ought to be good consistently at multiple sports, and certainly at the second-most important sport, in terms of money and prestige, in intercollegiate competition. My fear is that Dennis's Dogs, motivated by the desire to save their coach's imperiled job, played above their heads during a whirlwind four-day period in which they didn't have the time to think about the impossibility of what they were doing . . . but my hope is that this was the breakthrough that will put Georgia basketball on the road to respectability, significance, and, ultimately, success at the highest level.

Go 'Dawgs!

Those of you expecting commentary in advance of yesterday's historic victory by the F-Bomb and his team were probably surprised to get here and find nothing. But quite honestly, there was little productive commentary that either of us could have added. What words really could capture what happened? Let's face it, since the SEC went to divisional play in 1992, no #6 seed had ever won the tournament. This team won as many conference games in 3 days as they won in nearly 4 months. They beat three at-large teams in a row (Kentucky, Mississippi State and Arkansas) to do it. Preach on, blackertai, Coach Felton truly is the bomb. The F-Bomb.

And while you can't drop the other f-bomb (lower case) on this weblog, I don't think anyone will mind if you sing the praises of The F-Bomb (upper case, respect intended) in the comments section. I would encourage it as a form of atonement for the bad energy most of us (yours truly included) were sending in his direction before the tournament. Dennis Felton has probably not only assured that he will be back next season, but may well be in line for a pay raise. How's that for a turn of events?

Win or lose on Thursday, this much is certain: Coach Felton has seized some momentum going into next season. While the loss of Bliss and Gaines will be tough, several younger guys (principally Jackson, Woodbury and Swansey) really stepped up and showed they belonged. If they continue to improve, well, good things could happen. I'll just leave it at that because my tortured psyche can't really process anything better than what we experienced yesterday. As a lifelong Georgia basketball fan, yesterday was probably as good as it's been. It has truly been a long time since a Georgia basketball squad overachieved. It was a wonderful, wonderful feeling.

And speaking of Bliss and Gaines, it is a wonderful thing that they'll finish their collegiate careers in the NCAA Tourament, having lead perhaps the most surprising campaign in SEC Tournament history. Paul Westerdawg's proctologist thanks you for the business, gentlemen. To put it in perspective, this team has seen so much attrition in the past eight months that there were only nine players available. We were about 4 fouls away from finishing the Mississippi State game playing four against five, with no one on the court taller than Terrance Woodbury. Yet duct tape, bailing wire and all, they pulled out that game. And then beat an Arkansas team coming off a win against #1 seeded Tennessee. "Improbable" really doesn't even begin to describe it.

I personally enjoyed the look of disbelief on MSU coach Rick Stansbury's face as time wound down in that game. It had disappointment and dejection as its foundation, but was glazed over with a thin layer of pure, shocked disbelief. It was as if he'd just witnessed a troupe of capuchin monkeys not only trot onto the court in Atlanta dressed in little sailor suits, but also somehow learn to launch Hellfire missiles from the rafters. It was the face that prehistoric Rick Stansbury would have made upon seeing fire employed during the bronze age to forge the first cowbell. And I can't say I blame him. Because anybody who said prior to Saturday afternoon that the University of Georgia basketball team would be cutting down the nets in Atlanta was either lying or off his medication. Probably both.

It's not that the team wasn't trying throughout the SEC schedule. It was that they looked completely incapable of finishing anyone off. Of doing the right things at the most important times. Some of that was youth, but I think a lot of it was rightfully thrown at the feet of Coach Felton. What was so improbable during this three day run was that the 'Dawgs did most everything they had not done for the past 90 plus days. They hit clutch shots. They got tons of rebounds down the stretch, when Bliss, Jackson and Price are usually some combination of totally gassed, fouled out, or hurt. It was as if up was down and left was right inside Alexander Memorial for one glorious weekend.

Speaking of which, did anyone else enjoy the spectacle of watching our team celebrate the most improbable trip to the Big Dance this season on the Yellow Jackets' home court? Schadenfreude is just so much more fun when it is geographically appropriate. The only thing that would have made it more amusing would have been for Paul Hewitt and his charges to be holding their end of the season debriefing meetings in the basement at the time.

I'll be back later with a good bit of information on Xavier, the 'Dawgs first round opponent in the NCAA Tournament. And a list of the things I like about Mike Greenberg. And Steve Spurrier. Because Georgia is playing in the NCAA Tournament. I simply cannot believe I just typed that.