UGA blog finds new home
Morning all. As I’ve said a couple of times this week, we’re converting this blog over to a WordPress platform and it will be a permanent move the first of next week.
Those of you who are regulars probably know that I’m not what you’d call techno-wizard when it comes to these things. But from what I understand the technology offered in this new format should make the blogging and commenting experience better for all. Of course, I’ll be learning as we go along, too. But I’m hoping to provide more pictures and video and things like that which should bring the blog more to life.
Of course, this blog is nothing without all you guys so I want to heartily invite (read: beg) you to come over to the new site by CLICKING HERE ON THE NEW ADDRESS and save it in your browsers. As of Monday, Feb. 23rd, this will be the permanent home of the UGA blog you so love or, in the case of some of you, love to loathe. If you’d prefer to copy and paste or just memorize, the new address is: http://blogs.ajc.com/uga-sports-blog/.
See at the new place!
AJC > Sports > UGA > Blog > Archives > 2009 > February > 19
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Bulldogs swing new bats
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Now I’m just going to gloss over this because I haven’t looked at a bunch of data on it but Georgia has made a change its baseball players and coaches believe could make a huge difference.
The Bulldogs — who open the season Friday against Youngstown State — will be allowed to use Easton bats this year. To hear a lot of them talk about it, not having that luxury may have cost them the national championship against Easton-swinging Fresno State in the College World Series finals last June.
I talked to athletics director Damon Evans about the switch Wednesday night before the Georgia-Auburn basketball game. Clearly he’s not sold on the premise that Easton’s composite bats are markedly better than Nike’s bats. According to him, there is no scientific data to support that hypothesis. And the Bulldogs did hit 96 home runs last season with Nike bats, the second-most in school history. Personally I haven’t looked into it enough yet to have a strong opinion either way.
But coach David Perno and his players were passionate in their belief that they needed the technological advantages the Easton bats provide to remain ultra-competitive. That carried enough weight with Evans that he was willing to, well, go to bat for them.
Now keep in mind, this is a thorny issue. UGA is a Nike school. It gets paid millions of dollars by Nike to use it’s equipment exclusively, which the sporting goods giant provides generously for all 20 sports the Bulldogs field. So this wasn’t a little thing for Evans. It required some phone calls and some negotiating and more than a little research to find out who was doing what nationally.
In the end, Evans said, “Nike was kind enough to work with us on this.” So Georgia is using Easton bats, for now just for this one season. But it still has Nike bats, too, and it’s up to the players to decide which one they want to swing.
Word is it’s 10-to-1 Easton. If they want to keep them the Bulldogs best hit 100 homers.
Couple o’ links:
Speaking of Nike bats, there is a really cool video that can be found on YouTube about former Georgia star Gordon Beckham made last season. Called “Gordon Beckham All-Access,” it was pointed out by JordanDawg33 and it features a little snippet about all the Nike bats he busted last season. Don’t know how I missed it last year but it’s very entertaining and I’d recommend watching the whole thing… .
Hope you saw my report on the Georgia-Auburn basketball game. Here’s the one from Charles Goldberg of the Birmingham News… .
Here’s a nice little story on former Bulldogs David Greene and Matt Stinchcomb visiting some older alums over in Augusta… .
The Sporting News unveiled an interesting ranking system designed to determine which schools do the most with the least amount of talent. Spoiler alert: Cincinnati was No. 1.
- By the way, I’m in the process of making the switch over to the WordPress blogging platform on Monday. By all accounts it’s supposed to be a much more user friendly way to negotiate the blogosphere. I’m hoping not to lose touch with any of you guys during the transition so I’m going to be posting on both platforms for the next few days. You can see the NEW BLOG at: http://blogs.ajc.com/uga-sports-blog/. Be sure to bookmark that address in your browser. The plan right now is to make a permanent move over there by Monday (Feb. 23). Happy blogging!
Permalink | Comments (33) | Post your comment | Categories: Baseball
