Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Offseason

It just hit me that it really, truly, sincerely is the offseason.

As of Saturday's conclusion of the N.C.A.A. Outdoor Track & Field Championships, University of Georgia athletics officially are done for the school year. There will not be another Bulldog sporting event of any kind for the rest of the summer.

Granted, there always are subjects worth discussing in the intercollegiate athletics blogosphere and the ability to get a conversation going even in the offseason is one of the beauties of college football, but what, pray tell, are we to do to satisfy our need for competition between now and Labor Day weekend?

Somehow, this just isn't a suitable alternative.

What we will not be able to do is enjoy blogger-on-blogger brutality as a new form of mixed martial arts. Peter Bean, SportsBlogs Nation's manager of college sports weblogs, has offered a thoughtful take on my recent constructive criticisms regarding the blogosphere.

While I stand by what I wrote, I understand and appreciate the contrary views that have been expressed to me, both publicly and privately, and I would not wish to be viewed as someone who failed to be supportive of my fellow sports webloggers. I greatly appreciate txtwstr7's show of solidarity, but 54b is right that the transformative potential of the medium is what is most important.

The Big Picture's recent interviews with such standouts as Bethlehem Shoals, Jamie Mottram, Will Leitch, Dan Shanoff, and Dan Steinberg have helped to underscore the extent to which ours is a revolutionary medium in which we are not competitors of one another's, but colleagues in a common cause.

Peter is a good man who makes a fine point which I fully support, which is all well and good in the grand scheme of things . . . but where on earth does that leave us in the doldrums of the offseason? Am I truly going to be reduced to following the fortunes of the Georgia Force?

I suppose it could be worse. . . .

Wait, though . . . it turns out that there is something worthy of our attention. It's competitive---even cutthroat---and everything!

The first round of the hot blogger bracket so masterfully executed by the Ladies . . . is over and, due to your conscientious support and unethical electioneering, I managed partly to validate my No. 6 seeding by defeating my honorable opponent, Sean of Pop Jocks. Sean waged a clean campaign and I salute him for his integrity while encouraging you to check out his weblog.

All precincts have reported and, according to the official tally, I received 524 of the 796 votes cast, outpolling by 252 votes the 272 ballots cast for my distinguished opponent. I could not have garnered a 65.8 per cent majority without your help (well, that, and Holly's endorsement), for which I am most grateful.

If Al Gore had hired Dawg Sports readers to oversee the Florida recount in 2000, he might be in his second term as president today.

Naturally, this means that the campaign goes on and the competition will intensify in the second round, when I will need your heartfelt support and fraudulent shenanigans more than ever before.

The Georgia Bulldogs may be taking a much-deserved break from intercollegiate competition for the summer, but we here at Dawg Sports are in the arena.

I need your support in the second round. After all, once I'm eliminated, there's nothing but a vast unending desert stretching between us and September 1.

Go 'Dawgs!