TheFletch one day EARLY

With my weekly picks segment dominating Friday, I've decided to give you TheFletch one day early. Be sure and pick up Score Atlanta tomorrow at metro-Atlanta QuikTrips and Krogers

As a Georgia Bulldog fan, sitting down and watching the Dawgs tilt against the South Carolina Gamecocks was not just painful for my alma mater-football pride but also for my ears. Georgia was put on ESPN2 with Mark Jones and former Notre Dame coach Bob Davie calling the action. I have not heard a worse pairing since I heard Chris Spielman explaining to Pam Ward why Georgia Tech would want to go on defense first in overtime. With all due respect to ESPN, just because some one has at one point in his life been a coach or a player, that does not mean he should automatically get a spot in a play-by-play booth. Lots of folks “know” the game of football from being around it all of their lives, watching, listening and breaking down, and clearly every play-by-play crew spends time with the coaching staffs the week before the game. That is where they can get insight. Let some folks that can speak coherently have a shot at a major gig and perhaps let some of the old coaches just watch the games from home. It would certainly save on the “well, back when I was coaching…” stories. Really? If you were any good at the whole coaching-thing, “back when you did coach,” perhaps you’d still be on the sidelines.

Anyway, back to the Georgia Bulldogs, after appearing on ESPN this week against Arkansas, the Dawgs will return to television next Saturday night at 7 p.m. against Mississippi State on Fox Sports Net. It will be the first of two straight games on Fox Sports Net as the Dawgs travel the following week out to Colorado for a late afternoon game against the Buffs. I will be interested to hear which announcers will call that game in Mississippi. I doubt the same crew will call the Georgia/Colorado game as the different region of the country will likely mean a Big XII-favored crew, but I wonder which SEC crew gets assigned to the battle of the Bulldogs. If it is Bob Rathbun, I will clearly only be able to think about 790 The Zone’s Mike Bell just doing an impression of him throughout the game with engineer Marvin providing the “Yes sah,” every now and then as The Stinger. In fact, could we just go ahead and get those two to call the game AS Bob Rathbun and whomever his color analyst is?

And the Georgia football television coverage news doesn’t stop there. The Idaho State game on November 6 will be shown on WSB-2 in Atlanta instead of shown only on pay-per-view. According to a story in the AJC, Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity said in a statement, “This free-of-charge broadcast is a way to give back to our fans throughout the state. We believe making the game available on WSB-TV and its coverage area is a way to show our appreciation to Bulldogs around our state.” Every SEC school is permitted to produce one game a season outside of the ESPN and CBS contracts and the school opted to go for local coverage instead of the pay-per-view route. No word has been released on who the announcers might be for the non-conference contest.
I will give full credit to Matt Stinchcomb for his evolution as a studio analyst. I remember watching the former Bulldog offensive lineman and NFL vet when he first started on television on a weekly UGA football recap show. He would talk directly to the host and refuse to turn to address the camera straight-on. Now though, Stinchcomb’s conversational skills and his turning to the proper camera appears effortless on the SEC on ESPN halftime and pregame coverage on Peachtree-TV and ESPN during Southeastern Conference games. He has come a long way and now I really enjoy hearing from him because he is smart on the broadcasts, offers incredible insight and is generally a player that, unlike earlier, I don’t mind talking about the game. If a former player/coach can come across the way Stinchcomb does, let him rock-and-roll in the booth. He doesn’t just rely on bad jokes and stories from his playing days. Way to go Stinchcomb.

Braves manager Bobby Cox’s final Saturday showdown with NL East-division rival Philadelphia will now be broadcast nationally on Fox as the network picked up the game as its Saturday Game of the Week. This is important because the organization was planning a pregame ceremony to honor the retiring manager. The ceremony has been moved to 3 p.m. with Fox sure to show bits and pieces of the ceremony on its GameDay-like pregame show before first pitch at 4 p.m. The game was originally scheduled for 7:10.

Georgia Public Broadcasting was able to land quite an interview earlier this week when GPB Sports Central host Gil Tyree was able to land an interview with former Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden. The now-retired coach recently addressed the Touchdown Club of Atlanta and spoke with Tyree about the quality of Georgia High School football recruits and how social media has changed coaching and recruiting. The interview was set to air on both GPB’s Sports Central, which originally aired last Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. as it does every week and the episode will re-air Friday night at 11 p.m. and Saturday morning at noon. Or you can log on to GPB.org’s Sports page to watch the shows on-demand at anytime.

Finally, folks are coming out in droves to the gpb.org/sports webcasts and chatting it up with Alex Ewalt. Chats are offered during GPB’s Sports Central, Sports Central XL as well as the Friday Night webcasts of the football games and the last few Friday nights have seen over 2000 chatters join the game with folks as far away as Korea contributing in the chat. The conversations are mostly a series of chest-beating but every now and then folks discuss polls that Ewalt puts up for discussion and even a celebrity or two has made an appearance on the chat. Last week with Peachtree Ridge faced Newnan, a “Cam Heyward” posted several chat lines, referencing the next day’s game against Miami. Cameron Heyward is a former Lion who may have been watching his high school alma mater play on GPB.org!

Can you believe he said that?
“It made me more sick as I had to watch Michael Vick playing for the Iggles. Just awful. How do you balance wanting a team you root for to win while knowing you have to then root for a bad guy?” - That was John Kincade on his blog for the 680 The Fan website. It is difficult for fans all over the country having to root for bad guys on their teams all the time. Too bad Kincade now has to “root” for a guy that a certain faction of Atlanta residents still apologize for despite that he lied to the Falcons owner and then went on a local radio station saying he wanted to come back and beat the Falcons twice a year. John, you can be a fan of a team but not a player, the mirror-opposite of what these guys are: fans of the player over the team.