I have never been quite sure why in the past few years Georgia has been unable to build a strong men’s basketball program and tradition. It’s a great school, has one of the top overall athletic programs in the NCAA and sits an hour from our great city of Atlanta. Sure, the arena is far from the best but have you ever been inside the building where Duke plays? Cameron Indoor Stadium is old, dank and it smells. In other words, the excuse I hear all the time that Stegeman Coliseum is the reason Georgia isn’t any good in basketball is silly.
Look, Tubby Smith and Hugh Durham won there.
Also, I don’t want to hear that Georgia is a football school, as Florida has proven it can win big in both sports.
But I will say that bringing Bobby Knight to Athens would be a huge … no, a horrible mistake.
Knight—and I know him personally and have interviewed him on more than a few occasions—was a great basketball coach when physical and verbal abuse was more acceptable among college athletics.
But remember, even the great Bear Bryant regretted to the day he died the way he treated his 1954 Texas A&M football team (“The Junction Boys”). The difference with Knight is he never stopped the abuse and he certainly has never admitted to regretting it. He is and has always been a baby and when he doesn’t get his way, he goes off grumbling into the sunset … no, make that the darkness.
I know what it was like playing football under a hard ass (the great Wayman Creel) but he never crossed the line. Knight always seems to do just that and whether we like it or not, times have changed, especially in basketball, where those types of tactics scare off the best kind of talent. Also, borrowing a line from Mark Bradley of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia already tried to recycle one coach (Jim Harrick) and that failed miserably.
What Georgia needs to do is first decide what it wants to be in basketball. If the Bulldogs want to be able to compete on a high level, they need to go out and find a Bobby Cremins like Tech did back in the 1980s: a likable coach that recruits day and night, befriends the alumni and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Cremins was far from a great coach on the court but he had a plan, attacked it and put Tech on the map in the best basketball conference in America.
Surely a school with the resources of Georgia can find its Cremins and therefore should never consider Bobby – at least not the Bobby with the last name Knight.
RECRUITING SHOW
Over the next few weeks you will hear a new show on 790 The Zone focused on high school recruiting. We plan on doing the show year-round and will slip it into the 1-3 p.m. slot on Sunday on 790. To begin with, I will be hosting the show with every intention of turning those duties over in a month or so to someone more knowledgeable about recruiting. But our panel will be one comprised of experts, consisting of Scott Janovitz, Alex Ewalt and Fletcher Proctor. All three study the recruiting scene and we will not only follow football and basketball but all sports, interviewing coaches, national recruiting experts and athletes. The two hours will be a must for all the recruiting nuts around town and, from what I can tell, there are a lot of you guys.
HOW BAD ARE THINGS AT THE AJC?
It’s hard to believe that 22 years ago when I was in my first year at the AJC, the paper had perhaps the top sports section in the country. Sunday, they didn’t even cover the Super Bowl and one former staffer told me they were the largest paper in the country that didn’t cover the game. That’s a sign of just how bad things are going and word is it won’t be long before it is no longer a daily paper, instead coming out four or five days a week. I do think, however, that they have done a good job with ajc.com, though it’s hard for papers to make money online, especially with the huge infrastructure the paper has built over the years. I do hope that they find a way to keep going seven days a week.
AND FINALLY
I didn’t mention in my last column that I made it to the Braves Foundation Celebration at the Intercontinental Hotel and ran into a few old friends, including Chipper Jones, who was still bothered by the fact that the team didn’t re-sign John Smoltz. Interestingly, Chipper wondered out loud to me about whether he would get another contract from the team, though I do think the Braves will keep him and that he will retire here. It was Jones that after the 2005 season restructured his contract, freeing up money the Braves could use elsewhere. He is signed through this season and will make around $11 million this year. On another note, when do you think baseball players, and for that matter team owners, are going to realize that the economy is going to effect the number of fans attending games this season, and when are they going to bring down salaries? Even the NFL is getting stung, as most teams are cutting back staffs; I heard many of the clubs plan to be well under the salary cap next season. But for some reason, baseball has never really stood up to the players and got rid of things like arbitration and the fact that every contract is guaranteed. Someday, that house of cards is going to come tumbling down.
Rosenberg can be heard every Sunday from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. on Score Atlanta Sports Sunday on 790 The Zone. Score will also be hosting a two-hour recruiting show on Sunday beginning at 1 p.m. The call-in number at the station is 404-233-1570 and *790 on your AT&T phone. Rosenberg can be reached at ijrosenberg@scoreatl.com or 404-256-1572.
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