Here's what you need to know to get you caught up in time to begin your work week:
- In case you missed it, I completely realigned the conference affiliations throughout major college football last week. No, seriously.
- Are the resurgent Diamond Dogs for real? With a win over Georgia Tech on Wednesday and victories over Florida on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, it's hard not to think so . . . but I'm trying to maintain my doubts, for the good of the team. The Red and Black have nine conference games remaining before the S.E.C. tournament: a trio of three-game weekend sets against South Carolina, Auburn, and Kentucky, respectively. The Bulldogs will have to go 5-4 in those nine outings to finish at .500 in league play, which will be tough to do against that caliber of competition.
The Diamond Dogs have tallied 54 hits, 37 runs, and four wins in the last five days. Is it time to start believing in the Georgia baseball team all over again? (Photograph courtesy University of Georgia Athletic Association.)
- With the first pick in the 2006 N.F.L. draft, the Houston Texans took Mario Williams. This selection received some criticism in the blogosphere, although I thought it made sense for the franchise and, to a lesser extent, so did Doug. A balanced view of the decisionmaking at the corporate headquarters of the Houston Texans is available at The Corporate Headquarters of the San Antonio Gunslingers. Meanwhile, D.J. Shockley was drafted by the Atlanta Falcons, which stinks for D.J. but which ranks among the smartest draft decisions the Falcons have ever made.
- The need to find a new "Dawg Sports worthy" woman has led to the posting of the current poll question, which forces my loyal readers to accept the cruel fact of life that there are only so many usable photographs of Kristin Davis and Emily Procter out there.
When the only unused picture of Kristin Davis turned up by a Google image search is a blurry photograph of her with the guy from "Will and Grace," it's time to pick a new unofficial Dawg Sports poster gal.
- The latest posting on improving out-of-conference scheduling is available at MGoBlog. Brian proposes a binding "letter of scheduling intent," restrictions on the number of home games and on the number of guarantee games a team can play in a given year, and/or emphasizing conference titles and local rivalries more than national championships. Naturally, I completely agree with him regarding the importance of league play and rivalry games, and, if we're going to limit the number of home games a team can have, that number needs to be 13 home games in any span of two consecutive years, which would all but mandate home and home series with out-of-conference opponents, because a team that played seven home games one year would have no choice but to play an additional road game the following fall. Brian's posting is brief, but a good read.
- Under the heading of "completely unrelated," Nico offers some recommended reading. It sounds like Yann Martel's Life of Pi might be right up Nico's alley.
Go 'Dawgs!