Tuesday Links (8/19)

You know, you're never really sure taking a new job in a new city is a good idea when you do it. It takes a while to get settled in, to find your nitch, to get a routine. Weeks and months go by before you really get to know a town, for it to feel like home.

I've been through this process on several occasions, and it's always a stressful time. But driving down Milledge yesterday, past a dozen sorority houses during rush week on the first day of classes, I couldn't help but think how glad I was to be in Athens. Now, if only I could convince my parents to pay for another two years of grad school...

On to today's links:

Mark Richt has earned a reputation for building close relationships with his QBs, as David Greene and D.J. Shockley would be the first to tell you. So I always take his compliments of his QBs with a bit of skepticism -- I think he just has trouble saying anything too negative about them. So I can't say I completely bought in to all his hype of Matthew Stafford during this preseason.

Then I talked to a half dozen other offensive players and they all said the same thing: Stafford is a different -- and far better -- player than he had been his first two seasons. I wrote about Stafford's growing confidence in my story in today's Telegraph, and I must say, it sounds like he's ready to take the next step forward in his career. That's good news for Georgia fans, as he likely holds the key to those national-championship aspirations.

Of course, I could be wrong, and Bleacher Report does a good job of examining that possibility. And after questioning Stafford, Bleacher Report also lists him as a top reason the Dawgs will win it all this year.

Here's an interesting story from CNN.com on the health screening process freshmen go through -- in this case, following Georgia safety Makiri Pugh through the exam.

The Athens Banner-Herald writes that Knowshon may not be wearing red and black next year.

The AJC's Chip Towers wonders what Caleb King's injury does to Georgia's backfield depth chart.

The Gazette of Gaithersburg, Md. has a story about Mongomery Co. product Akeem Hebron. I think I'm going to institute a new rule that this will be the last story I link to that includes the phrase "managing expectations."

It looks like fans with ESPN Gameplan will have a chance to watch the Georgia Southern game from the comforts of their living rooms.

Forbes ranks Georgia the 19th best public university in the country. UGA ranked 171st among all colleges, which may not seem so good unless you compare it to the smart kids at Tech, who finished 501st.

And finally, while this isn't sports-related at all, since I'm touting how the wonderfulness of Athens, I figured I should give a shout out to an Australian town that has the opposite problem. You just can't beat a story that includes the phrase "beauty disadvantaged."

Thankfully, the story didn't suggest men "manage expectations" when it comes to meeting women there.