This blog has moved! Yes, already!
As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
New features: Bigger type, more graphics, comments that load 10 times faster and a larger and more recent photo that makes me look pretty doggone old. I think you’ll like it (the blog, not the photo). But I am, as we know too well, often wrong.
Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2009 > February
February 2009
Ranking SEC football coaches: Who’s most irritating?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Given that SEC football coaches have long had the capacity to rankle — remember Jackie Sherrill? Charley Pell? Tommy Tuberville? — you wouldn’t have thought one offseason could wreak so much havoc in the venerable league’s pecking order. Well, you’d have been wrong. Here’s the new world order among SEC mentors, ranked from least irritating to most:
Bobby Johnson, Vanderbilt. Everybody likes him. Even rival coaches like him. Except when they lose to him and his intramural team. Then they hate him for getting them fired.
Rich Brooks, Kentucky. The only nettling thing about Daddy Rich is that he’d pretty well convinced UK grads — full disclosure: I’m one — he was a lousy hire, whereupon he takes the Cats to three consecutive bowl games. Which means we geniuses were wrong. Geniuses hate being wrong.
To read the rest of this intriguing entry, please visit my new little blog on AJC.com. You’ll be glad you did. And so will I.
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Tommy Hanson: Blood, guts and a mighty big arm
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On the first pitch of his first spring session throwing to live batters last week, Tommy Hanson tore the nail on his index finger. He looked down and saw blood, which would have served as a signal to most pitchers to stop throwing. Hanson kept throwing.
He felt sheepish - soon the bleeding was apparent to those standing around, Bobby Cox and some of his coaches among them - but he also felt he needed to impress these people. So he kept going. “One of our coaches finally cut it short,” Cox would say afterward. “But [Hanson] almost made his full five minutes.”
This tells us something about the 22-year-old considered the finest Braves pitching prospect since … dare we say Steve Avery? It tells us Hanson, who’s possessed of the requisite big arm, doesn’t mind shedding a little blood for the cause. It tells us he’s a young man in a hurry.
To read the rest of this item, please visit my new little blog on AJC.com.
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Bradley’s Buzz: Griffey, Frenchy, Knowshon, Vick and Kiffin!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So what exactly is it the Braves aren’t getting?
Ken Griffey Jr. — great guy, right? Not according to Gregg Doyel, who’s both a friend and a frequent contributor to these Buzz festivities. On CBSsports.com, Doyel tears into Griffey, calling him “unlikable” and “full of crap” for choosing to play in Seattle, which is 3,000 miles from the family on which Griffey claims to dote. Doyel also accuses Griffey of throwing a water bottle at him in the Reds’ clubhouse. (Griffey missed, prompting the eloquent Mr. D to write, “Gold Glove, my ass.”)
You’re free to agree or disagree with Mr. D’s opinion of Griffey, but I think we can all agree: As rips go, this one’s world-class.
As for Griffey the player … well, he’s not so hot, either. So writes Keith Law of Scouts, Inc. (I don’t know Mr. Law, but seeing as how I’ve linked to his stuff a half-dozen times now, I feel as if he lives next door. So, if you’re reading this, Keith: Howdy, neighbor!) Law believe Griffey has little left and thinks the Mariners’ move to re-sign him was “a cynical, insulting ploy to try to get fans into the park.” Whoa, Nellie!
To read the rest of this item, please see my new blog on AJC.com.
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No Griffey? Be happy, Frank! Be happy!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The guess is that one or two folks will regard this latest incompletion as further evidence Frank Wren doesn’t know what he’s doing. The belief here is that Wren keeps getting lucky like a … well, if not quite like a fox, then certainly like the luckiest dog this side of NASCAR.
Twice now an object of Wren’s affection has done an about-face. The belief here is that the Braves are better off without Ken Griffey Jr., just as they’re better off without Rafael Furcal. (As you know, I had deep reservations about Griffey and even deeper ones about Furcal.) But Wren wanted both, and what does that say about him?
It says he’s trying too hard. That’s understandable. He succeeded the matchless John Schuerholz and proceeded to put together a roster that fell apart due to injuries. Now Wren is trying to recapture all lost ground in the span of one offseason. Pursuing Jake Peavy made sense because Jake Peavy is 28; pursuing Furcal and Griffey, both on the back nine of their careers, made infinitely less.
To read the rest of this item, please visit my new little blog on AJC.com.
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A toughened Francoeur looks forward
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — It was a different Jeff Francoeur who took the field Wednesday for the first full-squad workout of 2009. He’s thinner. He has a new swing. Mostly he’s different because he bears a layer of scar tissue.
Last season hurt him. In one flailing summer the Golden Child learned the harsh lessons he’d managed to avoid in the first 24 years of a remarkably charmed life: That fame is fleeting; that people are fickle, and that the child’s game he plays for a living is actually a bottom-line business.
“My first two years [as an Atlanta Brave] were nothing but a fairy tale,” Francoeur said. “But fairy tales end.”
To read this entry, please visit my new little blog on AJC.com.
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He’s not the Griffey of old; he’s an older Griffey
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — Just so nobody accuses me of a hidden agenda - and we’ll deal in depth with agendas shortly - let me say I’m pessimistic. I understand why it makes sense for the Braves to want Ken Griffey Jr., and I understand why he’d want to be a Brave. But not every marriage ends happily. The best intentions can, and often do, go wrong.
I worry that we in Atlanta will want Griffey to be the ebullient Junior of 1990s, and the cold truth is that he hasn’t been that guy for nearly a decade. He has been hurt and his bat has slowed and he’s no longer an All-Star center fielder or a center fielder at all. As of Valentine’s Day, this Griffey was a 600-homer man who didn’t have a job, and of his 611 home runs 70 percent were struck before 2002.
I know, I know. The Braves aren’t asking Griffey to save them. They only want him to split time in left field with Matt Diaz, who was a 17th-round draft choice and who, to this day, considers himself lucky to be a big-leaguer. But I worry the infusion of any Hall-of-Famer-to-be would alter the dynamics of a clubhouse and therefore a team. I worry that Griffey’s presence would be surplus to his job requirements.
To read the rest of this item, please see my new little blog on AJC.com.
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Kawakami media mania is culture shock for Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — In other American cities, the phenomenon is old news: A Japanese player signs with a major-league team and the Japanese media congregates. It happened in Los Angeles with Hideo Nomo, in New York with Hideki Irabu, Kazuo Matsui and Hideki Matsui, in Seattle with Ichiro Suzuki, in Boston with Daisuke Matsuzaka. But for those of us in the Atlanta, it’s brand new.
Kenshin Kawakami has taken part in two workouts as a Braves pitcher. The first, on Sunday, was documented by 30 Japanese journalists. Eight still cameras and one minicam captured his brief bullpen session.
On Monday the Kawakami watch dwindled to a still-substantial dozen. To serve the apparently rabid audience back home, he has been holding two daily briefings — one before the workout, one afterward. Intrigued, an American reporter listened in and, through the translation offered by Daichi Takasue, the UC-Santa Barbara student the Braves hired to act as Kawakami’s interpreter, learned this:
The Japanese media is fixated on fitness.
To read the rest of this entry, please visit my new little blog on AJC.com.
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Bradley’s Buzz: Buzzin’ about the 2009 Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pitchers and catchers report; prognostication commences
I saw Jayson Stark of ESPN.com at Lake Buena Vista on Sunday, and I made a request and a promise. “Write something and post it fast, and I’ll link to it Monday,” I said, and here I am, true to my word. Jayson penned — actually, I’m pretty sure he typed — a nice little recap of how weird it feels to be in Braves camp and for John Smoltz to be elsewhere.
Last week the same Mr. Stark — an iron man on the order of Tony Stark — cranked out a winter review/spring training preview, and it he identified the Braves as the National League’s second-most improved club. And, being a nice fellow and a big fan of Jayson’s, I wouldn’t normally pause here to point out that the same Mr. Stark picked the Braves to reach the 2008 World Series. But he happened to bring it up in conversation.
And at least one other outlet has picked the 2009 Braves to play beyond the 162nd game. Baseball Prospectus is, according to Ted Keith of SI.com, forecasting that the Braves and the Phillies will tie for the wild card and will be forced into a one-game playoff. (The Mets, BP says, will win the NL East.) And I wish I could tell you how all this will turn out, but the cold truth is that I don’t know. Baseball Prospectus is one of those pay sites, and I refuse to pay for (or link to) anything that can’t be read for free.
To read the rest of this entry, check out my new little blog.
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Braves’ expectations are realistic and high
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — It’s as much a part of the ritual as the smack of the mitt and the crack of the bat. If you’re a ballplayer, you come to spring training and say you’re optimistic. Even if you aren’t, you say it because that’s how baseball works.
At 8:15 on the morning of the 2009 Braves’ first pitcher-and-catcher workout, Chipper Jones was asked if he’d have toed the time-honored line and claimed he was looking forward to the new season, even if his club hadn’t landed starting pitchers Derek Lowe and Kenshin Kawakami after so many offseason reversals.
“I probably would have said that,” Jones said.
Would he have meant it?
“Probably not.”
Read the rest of this entry on my new little blog.
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Favre retires again: Say it’s so, Brett!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When last Brett Favre retired, he wept. If he unretires again, I’ll weep. I never want to see him throw another interception. I feel like I’ve seen every one of them — all 310, if you’re counting — and yet I feel utterly alone in my opinion.
Which is this: Brett Favre is the most overrated athlete of our time.
The rest of this entry can be found on my new little AJC.com blog. Please take a look.
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This blog has moved! Yes, already!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
New features: Bigger type, more graphics, comments that load 10 times faster and a larger and more recent photo that makes me look pretty doggone old. I think you’ll like it (the blog, not the photo). But I am, as we know too well, often wrong.
Permalink | Comments (37) | Post your comment | Categories: Alert
Dooley: Kiffin ‘has a lot to learn’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Evil Genius talked big, too. The difference was, Steve Spurrier had already won something before he arrived in the SEC. (Like an ACC championship - at Duke.)
Lane Kiffin’s record as a head coach is 5-15. And yet he has, in two-plus months at Tennessee, managed to come off as the biggest smart aleck ever to hit the conference that eventually humbles everybody.
It will be great fun watching him lose.
In two-plus months Kiffin has taken shots at Nick Saban (who has one national championship to Kiffin’s none), jousted with Spurrier (one national championship) and suggested the only reason Mark Richt (two SEC titles) landed prized recruit Marlon Brown was because of Brown’s grandmother. And then, the morning after Signing Day, Kiffin wrongly accused Urban Meyer (two national championships) of cheating. (Kiffin has since admitted two recruiting violations of his own.) Some Act 1, huh?
“He’s young and aggressive,” said Vince Dooley, who was younger and no less aggressive than the 33-year-old Kiffin when he became Georgia’s coach. And then, after one of those studied Dooley pauses for effect, he said: “And he has a lot to learn.”
It’s one thing to try and win - every coach does that - but quite another to show no respect for your elders (and, simply on the record, your betters). Kiffin’s brashness has played well in Big Orange Country, where the shoved-aside Phillip Fulmer was seen as too dull and deferential, but it will play rather less well on autumn Saturdays. As we know, Tennessee faces Alabama and Florida and South Carolina and Georgia every blessed year.
“As long as you win, people seem to like whatever type of personality you have,” Dooley said.
But Kiffin, it was noted, hasn’t won a game as a collegiate head coach.
Said Dooley, laughing: “That’s what I mean.”
Maybe Meyer felt the same way about the SEC when he plopped down in Gainesville, fresh off an undefeated season at Utah. Maybe he felt his spread offense would wreak immediate havoc upon his new realm. But he lost four games in his first season at Florida and four more in his third, and even in the glow of his two national titles the message seems clear: This league leaves scars on every hot young coach.
Spurrier lost his first game against Tennessee and Johnny Majors 45-3. Saban lost four games his first season at LSU and six his first year at Alabama. Richt was outsmarted at the end of his first SEC game by the rascal Lou Holtz. Les Miles, he of the gratuitous fake kicks, lost his first SEC title game to Georgia and Richt by 20 points.
Back to Spurrier: In the ’90s he came as close as anybody ever will to ruling the SEC in the post-Bear era, but his domination wasn’t transferable. In four seasons at Carolina he has lost five more conference games than he did in 12 years at Florida. He’s the same smart guy, but he’s no longer the scourge of Southern football. The league unsettles the meek and the proud alike.
“I was a young fellow,” said Dooley, who was 31 when he became Georgia’s coach, “and Doug Dickey [then at Tennessee] and I would just sit in the corner close together [at league meetings]. You had Bear Bryant and Johnny Vaught and Shug Jordan - we were intimidated by those guys.”
Understand: Dooley wasn’t so cowed he couldn’t beat those legends. (He would win six SEC titles.) But he knew better than to rile rivals unnecessarily. Kiffin has gone miles out of his way to tick off his. Meyer and Saban mightn’t have known Lane Kiffin from Lois Lane three months ago, but they know him now.
“There’s a learning curve,” said Dooley, laughing again. “Definitely.”
It will be great fun watching Lane Kiffin learn.
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Bradley’s Buzz: The Dark Knight vs. Bobby Knight
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ranking the rants
Reading Entertainment Weekly’s account of Christian Bale’s infamous tirade on the set of “Terminator Salvation” — and then seeking out the tirade itself — I was struck by its similarity to another harangue, this one delivered by Bobby Knight to his Indiana players on the eve of a Purdue game. Given that Knight is campaigning, albeit indirectly, to get Georgia or Alabama or somebody to hire him, a review of his blow-ups seems warranted.
Because these, in the YouTube age, are what any school that hires Knight is going to get — embarrassment via Internet. For an edited sample of Knight’s greatest, er, hits, ESPN thoughtfully compiled a Top 10 with bleeps inserted.
For the unexpurgated versions … well, here are a few. But I must insert the STRONGEST POSSIBLE WARNING: These links contain the harshest language and are not suitable for listening in the workplace.
Here’s the pre-Purdue explosion, and here, for handy side-by-side comparison, is Bale’s diatribe against the director of photography. You’ll note that Bale’s soliloquy lasts nearly four times as long, but for sheer impassioned unhinged-ness even the latest Batman cannot stack up to the darker Knight.
If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve doubtless noticed that there are a slew of Knight “moments” on YouTube. (The chair-throw, for instance.) But for the sake of brevity I’ll link to only two more: Here’s Isiah Thomas listing all the dirty words he learned from Knight — Knight’s reaction, visible in the background, is priceless — and here’s Knight himself on his favorite word.
I’m guessing you can guess the word.
Recruiting rankings re-examined
This useful story, from Scott Kennedy of Scout.com, tracks the past four recruiting classes and how those teams actually fared on the field. You’ll note that Georgia underperformed its ranking, and that Tech outperformed, if only slightly, its. Again, we’d have guessed as much. But it’s still intriguing to see it in black and white.
A short item about hockey
Normally I don’t follow the Canadian junior leagues, but given that the Thrashers figure to be picking high in the June draft I thought I’d get a head start. So I read this rundown of prospects by Allan Muir of SI.com, and I came across this rather amazing line regarding defenseman Ryan Ellis: “His ability to share clothes with Billy Barty is the only thing keeping Ellis from battling Victor Hedman for recognition as the draft’s top blueline prospect.”
I took that to mean Ellis is short. How short is he? Er, 5-foot-10. The late Billy Barty was 3-9. So that comparison would seem a stretch. So to speak.
Not-so-hot Peppers?
Some Falcons fans are hopeful the team will make a run at defensive end Julius Peppers. Don Banks of SI.com offers a dissenting view, calling Peppers the riskiest big name among free agents. And I would whole-heartedly agree. I’ve long considered Peppers the NFL’s most overrated player. (Though I should stipulate that I liked him a lot as a basketball player.)
More NFL draft rankings
This listing comes courtesy of Mike Mayock, who’s an analyst for NFL.com and who famously championed Matt Ryan last year. Mayock has Matthew Stafford rated No. 1 among quarterbacks and Knowshon Moreno No. 2 among running backs. But he has Tech’s Michael Johnson listed as only the fifth-best defensive end available, and he has Georgia’s Dannell Ellerbee the fourth-best inside linebacker. Me, I didn’t think Ellerbe had much of a season.
Trade prospects for your Atlanta Hawks
As I tried to say the other day, the Hawks aren’t apt to do much of anything before the Feb. 19 trade deadline. But here, for purposes of independent corroboration, is Chris Mannix of SI.com suggesting the exact same thing.
And it’s worth noting that, with Phoenix apparently looking to deal Shaquille O’Neal and Amare Stoudemire, Atlanta isn’t seen as a possible destination for either. So writes Chad Ford of ESPN.com.
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Despite clunker, Hawks on right course
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rick Sund arrived in town three weeks after the Hawks took the Celtics to a Game 7 and proceeded to tamp down any lingering euphoria. This was not yet a powerhouse, he said, and the new general manager set this modest goal: “To get back to the playoffs and improve on our record.”
Sund’s team played its 50th game Saturday night, and it was, sad to say, what the new GM calls “a clunker — you’re going to have three of those a year, and you hope no more.”
Let’s hope. The Hawks were beaten by 24 points at home by a terrible Clippers team. But one game, wretched as it was, cannot eclipse what has become a bright, shiny season. The Hawks still hold the fourth-best record in the Eastern Conference and are on pace to go 48-34, which would represent a clear upgrade from the eighth-place finish and the 37-45 record of last season.
And the GM is beginning, ever so warily, to believe. “We’ve had so many injuries, and we’ve handled it,” Sund said. (For the record, he spoke Saturday morning.) “That’s a real endorsement of this team.”
True, the Hawks are only 8-11 since New Year’s Day, but circumstances have grown exceedingly extenuating. Their starting five has been intact for only 20 of the 50 games. Al Horford missed a dozen games in January with a bruised knee. Marvin Williams missed two with a concussion, and Joe Johnson missed two this week with the flu. And then, just as Johnson returned, Mike Bibby sat out Saturday’s game with a sprained foot.
And still the Hawks have risen from fifth in the East to fourth over the past month. Said Mike Woodson, the coach: “Our guys just keep fighting … I don’t know if I’m surprised, but I’m excited.”
It wasn’t so long ago that folks doubted if they’d raise even a whimper this winter. ESPN.com pegged them to go 32-50, and Sports Illustrated rated them 11th-best in the 15-team conference. Said Sund: “We’ve proved to be a little better than I thought we’d be,” he said, “and I’m a pretty even-keeled guy … I was thinking something like 42-40, or 46 or 47 wins … A lot of people in the league didn’t think that was reasonable.”
At the rate they’re traveling, the Hawks will better last season’s record by 11 games. That sort of upgrade usually coincides with a major personnel infusion, but all the Hawks did was swap subs Flip Murray and Mo Evans for the Grecian earner Josh Childress. This would suggest that, at long last, the young core has ripened.
“We’ve grown from the time I inherited five years ago,” Woodson said. “I doubt we do anything at the [Feb. 19] trade deadline — I don’t know. But I’m very happy with where we are. If we stay status quo … hey, that’s OK.”
(Those were also pregame comments. Afterward Woodson said: “We just didn’t compete — that’s the first time I’ve seen that happen this year at home.”)
Last February the Hawks remade themselves by trading for Bibby. This season began amid speculation that the point guard, who’s due to become a free agent, would himself be exported. There’s no chance of that happening now. You saw what happened without him Saturday, didn’t you?
If the Hawks made even a minor move these next 10 days, it will constitute an upset. Sund seems content to wait until summer, when he’ll work to keep Bibby, to re-up Williams, perhaps even to make a mid-level move using the rights to Childress. “The real game plan is to see this [season] through and then evaluate our club,” Sund said. “That seems to make the most sense.”
And it does. Truth to tell, there’s no player available who’s apt to lift these Hawks past Boston or Cleveland this spring. But, just as this season has been better than the last, the next one should be better still.
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Ridiculously early guesses about UGA’s class of 2009
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Understand: These are not predictions. I’ve sworn off predictions until the Final Four Fiasco, and besides, when I make a prediction I like to think I know a little bit about what I’m saying. (Insert your own punch line here.) These are flat-out guesses about Georgia’s recruiting class. And I’m guessing:
- That Branden Smith, the defensive back from Washington High, will make the biggest immediate splash - and also the widest, given that Mark Richt plans to let him return kicks and wants to work him into the offense.
- That Aaron Murray, the quarterback from Tampa, won’t be redshirted next season but that Zach Mettenberger, the quarterback from Oconee County, will.
- That Abry Jones, the defensive tackle from Northside Warner Robins, will play as a true freshman, but that Montez Robinson, the defensive end from Avon, Ind., will play even more.
- That Marlon Brown, the touted receiver from Memphis, won’t be as good as A.J. Green was as a freshman - given that Green is the best Georgia receiver I’ve ever seen, that’s no real knock - but will still be starting by the end of September.
- That Georgia will regret, not for the first time, having signed so few offensive linemen. There are only three in this class of 18, and if recent seasons should have taught the Bulldogs anything it’s that linemen are like pitchers - you can never have enough.
- That this will go down in Georgia annals as a good class but not a great one, and that these new guys will enable the Bulldogs to hang onto second place in the SEC East for the next two or three years. (Take that, Lane Kiffin.)
Again, these are guesses. I’d be intrigued and obliged to hear yours. Which is where that empty white block below figures in. Have at it, recruitniks.
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UGA’s Garner knows talent also needs coaching
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Athens — On the biggest day of his vocational year, Rodney Garner was asked a simple question: Which matters more — coaching or recruiting?
And Georgia’s recruiting coordinator said, “Coaching.” And then, surely remembering what it is he’s paid well to do, Garner hedged.
“I’m not going to say that,” he said. “Recruiting is the lifeblood of your program. No matter how good a coach you are, without talent you’re not going to have a very good team. You must be able to attract players to your campus and then coach players once they’re there. If you can’t coach them and put them in position to make plays and win games, you’re going to get fired.”
Garner is considered one of the nation’s best at the glamour part of his job, and National Signing Day 2009 yielded yet another Top 10 class for a program that has won at least 10 games six of the past seven seasons. But there are those, this correspondent among them, who believe the Bulldogs were undercoached last season. Then again, how can we tell if a prized recruit — Reshad Jones, say, the five-star safety who couldn’t tackle Georgia Tech’s Roddy Jones on Nov. 29 — is as good as advertised?
It’s the eternal riddle. No coach will ever say recruiting isn’t essential, but no coach has proclaimed on Signing Day: “If we don’t win the national championship with the guys we just got, it’s my own darn fault.”
Said Mark Richt, asked the same which-matters-more question that gave Garner pause: “They’re really one and the same. We do both. In the pros, they have coaches and scouts, but in college we’re responsible for both coaching and putting our stamp on the [incoming] talent. … I don’t know how you could separate the two.”
This class looks swell on paper, but pretty much every Georgia class looks swell on paper. And the sobering reality is that the presumably gifted Bulldogs have won the SEC East just once over the past five years.
Garner also coaches Georgia’s defensive line, which had a tepid season. Were there moments — the wipeout first half against Alabama or the unaccountable collapse against Tech — when the famous recruiting coordinator said to himself: “I need to find better defenders”?
Said Garner: “There were times this year when we fell short, and there were times when I couldn’t wait to get back in the office and think about recruiting better or coming up with a better defensive scheme. … Our product is out there on Saturday. When we don’t win, it diminishes everything.”
For the record, Garner doesn’t consider himself a recruiter who coaches. “I’m a coach who recruits,” he said, and his D-line figures to be bolstered by recruits Abry Jones from Northside-Warner Robins and Montez Robinson from Avon, Ind. But you should know that no rating Rivals.com affixes to this signing class will erase another set of numbers imprinted on Garner’s brainpan.
“My only numbers are wins and losses,” he said. “My number is on that scoreboard — 45-42.”
That was the score of the Tech game, and it will rankle for a full year. If nothing else, though, Signing Day 2009 enabled the famous recruiter to apologize publicly to Mrs. Rodney Garner. It was a year ago that her husband sat before the assembled media and said, of rating prospects: “It’s kind of like when you look at your wife, and you think, ‘If I’d have held out, maybe I could have gotten that one there.’ “
“For 365 days I’ve been in the doghouse,” Garner said. “I might still be in the doghouse.”
Let that be a lesson to us all: Even a famous recruiter sometimes needs help with his sales pitch.
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UGA would be foolish to hire Knight
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bobby Knight has won more games than any men’s Division I coach ever, but the unfortunate reality is that he has done it while acting like a little boy. That’s why, to me, he’ll always be “Bobby” Knight, not the more grown-up “Bob” he prefers. At 68, he’s still a brat.
We see it again now. Knight has let it be known he wants to coach Georgia, but according to Furman Bisher’s “mutual friend,” “he doesn’t want it to look like he’s pursuing the job.” Sad to say, that remains the Knight way.
He considers himself above the process, above the sport itself. He’s in it for Knight and his legacy. He would use Georgia the way he used Texas Tech — to win a few more games and draw a hundred more huzzahs from his amen corner on ESPN, and then he’d wake up on the wrong side of the bed and decide he’d rather go off and kill some animals.
The folks at Texas Tech looked the other way when Knight upbraided a university chancellor in a grocery store and when he chucked a player under the chin. For their forbearance, here’s what they got — three NCAA tournament victories in 6 1/2 years, a Big 12 record of 53-49 and Knight’s overmatched offspring as head coach. It was almost exactly a year ago that Knight, pleading fatigue, quit on his team. Today the Red Raiders are 11-10 and Pat Knight was just ejected from a game for charging onto the court (twice!).
And Bobby Knight, presumably refreshed, is ready to come coach Georgia.
And here’s what Georgia should say to the General: “No, sir!”
The Bulldogs have already paid the price for recycling one famous coach with a pockmarked history. Knight wouldn’t bring the same sort of dishonor to Athens that Jim Harrick did — Knight has no history of NCAA violations — but he would embarrass the school all the same. He can’t help himself. He’s Bobby Knight, who has never admitted he was wrong despite a lifetime of opportunities.
There was a time when he won big enough to override the inevitable “incidents,” but that time was a quarter-century ago. Seventeen different men have won NCAA titles since Knight took his final one, and 36 different men have taken teams to the Final Four since last Knight made it. It isn’t that his motion offense has ceased to work; it’s that he cannot find and keep good enough players to make it work well. (At Texas Tech, he was 9-28 against Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.)
Dennis Felton failed largely because he couldn’t sign enough of the players developed in Georgia. Question: Who was the last truly gifted player to labor under Knight? Calbert Cheaney, who was a senior in 1993?
Put simply, no latter-day big-timer will put up with the abuse Knight puts out. After the late Jason Collier transferred from Indiana to Georgia Tech, I asked what kind of guy it took to coexist with Knight.
Said Collier: “There isn’t one.”
As strange as it sounds, the school that has won one NCAA game in the past 12 seasons — and then had to forfeit — can do better than the man who has won three national titles. Sure, he’d draw the knee-jerk raves from Digger and Dickie V. and Fran Fraschilla, but he wouldn’t be able to recruit against Billy Donovan and Bruce Pearl and Billy Gillispie. He’d win some games and maybe eke out an NCAA bid, but then, a couple of years down the line, he’d again decide he’d “had enough.” And he’d leave Georgia high and dry.
Because he’s Bobby Knight and he does whatever he pleases. He’s the disciplinarian who, in 68 years, has never managed to discipline himself. He’s not quite the last guy Georgia needs — that’d be Jim Harrick Jr. — but he’s in the bottom five.
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Bradley’s Buzz: UGA, Tech and recruiting rankings
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Again we ask: Do rankings matter?
We at the AJC and AJC.com have mapped our comprehensive plan for Signing Day — me, I’ve been dispatched to Athens — and we hope you nice folks will give us a click or two come Wednesday. But here, leaving myself open to allegations of heresy, I ask: How much can one tell from one day in February?
I ask because, yet again, Georgia is lighting up the recruiting rankings. Rivals.com has the Bulldogs’ list of commitments rated No. 9 nationally, and Scout.com has Georgia rated No. 7. Georgia Tech, meanwhile, stands 49th according to Rivals and 26th according to Scout.
Rivals has ranked Georgia in its top 10 every year since 2002, and only once (in 2007) has Tech cracked its top 25. Scout has had Georgia in its top 10 every season save one since 2004, and over that span it placed Tech ahead of Georgia only in 2007. And yet Tech, at last check, beat Georgia 45-42 on Nov. 29.
If you were a signee in 2004, you’d have been a redshirt senior in 2008. If recruiting is all-important and Georgia had outrecruited Tech four of those five years — five of five, according to Rivals — how did the Jackets manage to stay on the same field with the Bulldogs in any of those seasons, let alone actually win a game?
I know what Tech fans will say — coaching. And maybe Georgia fans will, too.
Was Felton’s firing “repulsive”?
That’s the word Mike DeCourcy used in Sporting News Today — repeatedly, as you’ll see here. But DeCourcy doesn’t argue that Dennis Felton shouldn’t have been fired as Georgia’s basketball coach, just that he shouldn’t have fired been in midseason.
Me, I hate this kind of hair-splitting. If you know you’re going to fire a guy, fire the guy. And if anyone is looking for a reason why Felton should have been fired, read the next item.
From Norcross High to the NBA
The fine folks at nbadraft.net list two Norcross products — Gani Lawal, who’s at Tech, and Al-Farouq Aminu, who’s at Wake Forest — as lottery picks in their 2009 mock draft. They list another Norcross alum — Jodie Meeks, who’s at Kentucky — as the 41st pick in their 2010 mock. If you’re keeping score, that marks three pro-type talents who played high school ball 57.2 miles from Athens (according to Google Maps), and the Bulldogs whiffed on all three.
Speaking of SEC basketball …
After South Carolina won in Rupp Arena for only the second time in history, Andy Katz of ESPN.com pronounced the Gamecocks a legitimate SEC threat. South Carolina is working under a first-year coach (Darrin Horn) and is based in a state that doesn’t yield half the talent Georgia does. In a conference so clearly unsettled, why couldn’t Georgia have done something similar? I ask you, why?
Worrisome signs for your Atlanta Hawks
They’re still ahead of Miami and Philadelphia in the standings, but the Hawks’ ongoing slide — they’ve lost nine of 14 — has put their status as fourth-best-in-the-East in peril. John Hollinger of ESPN.com has moved the Sixers ahead of the Hawks in his latest power ratings, and colleague Marc Stein has moved the Heat ahead of Atlanta in his.
Then again, maybe we shouldn’t be all that surprised — or alarmed — that the Hawks have sagged. Art Garcia of NBA.com still regards them as the league’s biggest first-half surprise.
Hot stove, back burner
According to Jerry Crasnick of ESPN.com, the Phillies have expressed an interest in lefty reliever Will Ohman, whom the Braves want very much to re-sign. I’d link to the actual story Cras — he’s a friend — wrote, but it’s another of those Worldwide Leader Insiders-only things that drive me crazy. So I’ve linked to Phillies Nation, which reports his original report, instead. How’s that for a workaround?
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