Thursday Morning Dawg Bites

We’re only a couple of days away from another glorious weekend of Georgia Bulldogs football now. It seems like, at this point in the week, time always slows down to a crawl. Saturday seems forever away. To that end, as always, we endeavor to help you pass the time in some small measure. Thus, I am pleased to bring you your Thursday Morning Dawg Bites:

• First, The Red & Black brings us Wednesday’s practice report. As usual, we learn about the injured Bulldogs without actually learning anything about the injured Bulldogs. We also get a tidbit about Mecole Hardman’s continued development as a receiver. I can’t explain why, but this makes me very, very happy:

he loudly expressed his displeasure with himself

• Seth Emerson provides a nice profile of John Atkins. He also shows us why sometimes the least recognized starters have the greatest impact.
• YAY!!! It’s that time of the year when Fran Tarkenton decides to tell us something we all already know! But chooses to do so in an obnoxious and belligerent way! As sure as the Sun rises in the East and sets in the West... like your crotchety grandfather... Fran Tarkenton will be there. Always complaining. Always criticizing. Even when everything is going great. Gotta get that dig in.
• Let’s get a couple of things straight. First, I like Mark Fox. Second, I am pleased as punch that when the basketball scandal news broke my first thought wasn’t “Is Georgia involved?” I knew it wasn’t. That said, I don’t care for the term “vindicated” as used here. It implies that Georgia’s recruiting troubles in the Fox era have been exclusively the result of Georgia’s/Fox’s unwillingness to cheat. I just don’t think that is true. I want our coaches to do things the right way and I’m just giddy that they avoid embarrassing UGA when they do so. But I’m not convinced that it isn’t possible for Georgia to recruit a higher quality basketball athlete without paying off their families using ill-gotten money from an athletic apparel company (or by hiring strippers for that matter). It seems to me there that have to be more quality players (maybe not super-elite 1-and-done, but quality) than there are 100k payoffs. Then again, I know less about basketball recruiting than I do football recruiting (and I’ll be the first to admit, that isn’t a whole heck of a lot), so maybe I’m just rambling incoherently. Perhaps I’m naive, but I would like to believe we can stay clean and still improve our overall recruiting profile significantly beyond even the improvements Fox has already made. TL;DR I’m glad Mark Fox is keeping us out of trouble and I badly want for him to be successful at UGA, but I continue to think he can and should be able to improve further on the recruiting trail.
• Finally, speaking of Mark Fox, this is... an unexpected take(?). It’s real out there, but it’s definitely interesting. I mean, I’ll take a panda bear that just loves to spend money over Greg McGarity, but this had not crossed my mind.

That’s all for this morning, folks. Until next time...

GOOOO DAWGS!!!