A troubled sport?

For years, we've proceeded under the quaint assumption that impropriety and shadiness aren't nearly as rampant as they were in the 1970s and 1980s before the age of NCAA reform.

Mark Richt and priorities

In yesterday's blog we touched on Dana Holgorsen's behavior and talked about how rare it's become for high-profile head coaches to publicly demonstrate impulses and frailties that affect the rest of us humans.

West Virginia's gambler in waiting

So we can add another line to the growing list of reasons why coach-in-waiting plans aren't a great idea.

Russell Wilson and Auburn

Interesting news out of Auburn with Russell Wilson supposedly visiting The Plains, though that info appears to be in some question.

Home, sweet Doug

Don't mean to jinx anything, but my calendar for next week now bears the following:

"NCAA Regionals--Clemson."

I wouldn't bet the farm on it, but the Tigers' chances of returning home for postseason baseball certainly look good.

This team boosted its hosting certification credentials the last weekend of April by taking two of three from Georgia Tech at home. Then came the attention-grabbing series win at Florida State over the weekend, including Saturday's victory on the Seminoles' senior day.

The Tigers (39-17) probably need to win a game at the ACC Tournament -- they play Georgia Tech, Florida State and N.C. State -- to feel totally secure about their chances, but it's hard to dispute their case at this point.

They have won 25 of their last 30 games. They rank No. 9 according to the RPI. They are 12-12 in games against Top-50 RPI teams, and five of those wins came against teams in the top seven of the RPI (2 vs. Georgia Tech, 2 vs. Florida State, 1 vs. South Carolina).

Six of the losses came to teams that are 1-2 in the RPI (North Carolina, Virginia).

And when you look at the recent struggles of some other teams the Tigers could be contending with for a hosting spot, you like the Tigers' chances even more:

-- Southern Miss (38-15, 15 RPI) enters its conference tourney leaking water, having lost four of its last five. Included are two home losses to Rice by a combined score of 20-2.

-- Stetson (40-16, 19 RPI) has lost four of its last five, including two of three at home to Belmont over the weekend. Another bad loss in the last 10 came to Lipscomb (217 RPI) by a score of 9-3. The Hatters' resume is also smudged by two losses to Bethune-Cookman (134 RPI), one to Campbell (256), one to Siena (194), and one to South Carolina Upstate (215).

-- Arkansas (36-18, 13 RPI) sports some nice credentials, including a May series victory over No. 3 Florida, a sweep of No. 20 LSU, a victory at No. 6 South Carolina and a series victory over No. 41 Ole Miss over the weekend. But the Hogs are 7-5 against teams ranked 101 to 200 in the RPI, and Clemson is 16-2 in the same statistic.

Here's how Aaron Fitt of Baseball America saw things heading into the weekend:

REGIONAL HOSTS

SECURE TEAMS: The eight national seeds listed above, Texas, Arizona State

ON THE BUBBLE (IN): North Carolina, Southern Mississippi, Cal State Fullerton, Oklahoma, Texas Christian, Arkansas

ON THE BUBBLE (OUT): Rice, Clemson, Stetson, Fresno State, Miami

Miami, by the way, has lost five of its last eight. The Hurricanes (33-20) are 16th in the RPI.

A few more baseball thoughts:

-- Remember in recent years when Clemson suffered a cluster of mid-week losses that ended up being costly come NCAA selection time? Well the Tigers took care of that problem this year, as illustrated by the aforementioned 16-2 record. Their only two "bad" losses were to Presbyterian and Eastern Michigan, and now we're seeing how important it is to avoid a high number of slip-ups against teams you should beat.

-- As important as pitching has been to the Tigers' late-season blossoming, you can't ignore an offense that has delivered in a number of clutch situations.

The Tigers are hitting .320 this season -- 14 percentage points higher than last season with the old bats. They smashed 93 homers last season in 70 games, compared to just 39 this season through 56, but they're averaging 10.9 hits per game -- exactly the same clip they accumulated last year.

Run production is down to 7.1 per game from 8.5 last season. But given the new bat specs and the loss of three productive bats (Kyle Parker, Mike Freeman, Wilson Boyd), it's hard to complain.

-- Kudos for Jack Leggett for keeping his cool when this team was 14-12 and doing a lot of soul-searching after a sweep at North Carolina.

Leggett knew his team wasn't far away from turning things around, knew things could change once a number of guys got healthy, knew the schedule was turning in the Tigers' favor.

He could've freaked out, but he didn't. He outlined the "30-game season" mentality he wanted his team to follow and said he wasn't going to brood about the past. As trite as it might've sounded at the time, the premise and the forward thinking it promoted was easier said than done.

Carrying it out was an important piece to the puzzle this team is figuring out at a most opportune time.

LW

Clemson-UGA: Make it happen

Not all of my ideas are original, and certainly the following is not a novel thought:

Clemson and Georgia need to play every year.

In football.

Period.

The thought occurred to me while reading the news that teams' scheduled meetings in 2013 and 2014 will be the season-openers in Death Valley and Sanford Stadium, respectively.

I'm already excited about those games, and I'd bet a number of you are as well. I'd also assume a bunch of folks out there are like me in deeming it an abject shame that a full decade will have passed between meetings of these two old rivals.

My understanding, based on explanations from former Georgia AD Vince Dooley years ago, is that Georgia's neutral-site game with Florida mucks things up and makes it difficult to schedule a regular home-and-home with Clemson. Georgia needs the revenue from a seventh home game, and playing Clemson regularly would mean the loss of that revenue every other year.

But the logic doesn't make sense to me in view of Georgia's non-conference games in recent years. Off the top of my head, the Bulldogs have engaged in home-and-home arrangements with Arizona State, Colorado and Oklahoma State.

Since the teams' last meeting in 2003, Clemson has managed home-and-home dates with Texas A&M and Auburn.

A 12-game regular season is what allowed the Canines and Felines to meet in 2002 and 2003, resuming the rivalry for the first time since 1995.

The 2006 season brought the resumption of the 12-game schedule, and the idea was to cultivate more attractive cross-sectional and inter-conference matchups.

Clemson-Georgia is precisely the sort of matchup that should be enabled by this setup. And it should happen every single year.

Tell me what rivalry in college football was better from 1977 to 1991, when the two teams battled to a 6-6-1 draw.

Nine of those 13 meetings were decided by a touchdown or less. Five of them were decided by three points or less.

Georgia won on a 60-yard field goal in 1984. Clemson won on last-second field goals in 1986 and 1987.

Over a four-season stretch from 1980 to 1983, Georgia lost two regular-season games with one tie. Clemson was responsible for one of the losses (1981) and the tie (1983).

In 1978, 1981, 1982 and 1983, Clemson's aggregate record was 41-3-2. Two of the three losses, and one of the two ties, were against the Doggies.

The pinnacle of the rivalry was 1980-83. Georgia won the national title in 1980, Clemson won it in 1981, and the two teams hooked up for the 1982 season opener in titanic matchup in Athens (Georgia won, 13-7).

In that era, a number of Clemson players considered Georgia a bigger rival than South Carolina. That gives you an idea of how big it was.

Clearly, both programs are a long way from the aforementioned dominance and glory; they're both still shell-shocked over 6-7 seasons in 2010, and neither of these proud programs should ever have losing records.

But they're still separated by just 78.3 miles of asphalt, and there's really no excuse for them not to trade trips on that asphalt on a yearly basis.

It might not be an easy thing to work out, but it can happen if they really want it to happen.

Get it done.

LW

Brownell goes to camp

Seems as though the normal protocol around these parts is to pay attention to basketball from, say, January to March, then completely forget about it until the next winter rolls around.