Thursday Links (11/12)

Don't forget we're chatting live at Macon.com/UGAchat today at noon. If you have Dawgs-related questions, you can head there now, submit your inquiry, then check back any time after noon for answers.

In addition to the chat, however, I also have football and basketball interviews and six stories to write today, so we're going to have to go a little light on the blogging. Sorry for that.

But I wouldn't want you to feel like you had to accomplish something at work today, so here are some links to help you kill that all-important time between your morning coffee break and lunch.

-- I have a story in today's Telegraph on A.J. Green's much-anticipated return to action after the first week off in his football career.

-- Andy Bitter has a story on what Auburn plans to do to slow Green down this weekend.

-- There will be pressure to perform on a lot of Dawgs this weekend, but Paul Westerdawg writes that it's the fans who really have to step up their game.

-- The Junkyard Blawger looks back at 10 memorable matchups between Georgia and Auburn.

-- Ted Roof is now an assistant coach at Auburn. Joe Cox is now the starting QB at Georgia. But the two were almost working together at Duke back in 2004.

-- Get the Picture seconds something one of my readers brought up in yesterday's mailbag... Georgia isn't alone this season. Oh, and you should really just check out all of GTP's posts today. Lots of good stuff.

-- Chris Low is predicting a Georgia victory this week. Considering my luck, I'm going to pick Auburn just to give the Dawgs a fighting chance.

-- Among many other bits of info from War Eagle Extra's notes is news that Gene Chizik has his squad prepared for Branden Smith's "Wild Dawg" package this week.

-- Track 'Em Tigers breaks down the game position by position.

-- If you're planning to attend the game this weekend, Dawgs Online says there could be some complications when parking due to the weather.

-- Next week's opponent, Kentucky, is extremely banged up but is managing to keep winning despite the injuries.

-- The best part about this story is clearly this line: "Kiffin has touted the discipline in his program and a clean arrest record as recently as Wednesday's SEC teleconference."

Given the severity of these charges at Tennessee and Dez Bryant's ouster from Okie State combined with the bad call that cost LSU against Alabama and Florida... what are the odds there's a Georgia Jinx going on around college football this season? Beat the Dawgs and dark days are ahead. Next thing you know, Rep. Corrine Brown will be arrested for performing unlicensed circumcisions with Timmy Tebow.

-- I've actually really enjoyed this season of "Top Chef." There have been just enough jerks on the show to keep in interesting. CNN talks to one of the judges who chats about this year's competition.

-- Here is a great post on why the spaceships used in "V" (and tons of other alien-centric films) are completely dumb. It fits well with my theory that when the aliens really do come, they'll be driving a 1965 Pontiac Tempest.

-- Judge Wapner will be spending his 90th birthday back on the set of "The People's Court."

-- The AV Club ranks its 30 best TV series of the decade and the only major complaint I have is that the list counts up from 1 rather than down from 30, thus ruining the element of surprise. But their choice for No. 1 would be mine as well, and there's really not any serious competition.

-- And finally, my soapbox moment:

I am officially done with reading Deadspin. What was once a fun and occasionally thought-provoking sports blog that dared to take on the big boys has now become less credible than most talk radio blowhards. It's a joke. It's an embarrassment.

You may remember just three weeks ago when the site decided to "unload the inbox of all the sordid rumors" surrounding the sex lives of ESPN employees. No fact checking. Just print whatever B.S. flew into it's email account all because editor A.J. Daulerio was mad he got scooped on the Steve Phillips story. What followed was a series of malicious attacks on employees at the WWL, one of whom was not even an on-camera personality.

Plenty of hate mail followed, and clearly Daulerio learned his lesson because this week, Deadspin upped its game by posting a story defaming Arizona State baseball coach Pat Murphy. The story was submitted by an anonymous reader, was never fact checked, Murphy was never contacted for his side of the story, and, you'll be shocked to learn, was completely and totally false.

So is Deadspin sorry this time? Of course not. They were doing you a favor by printing lies! Be appreciative dammit! You're just mad because you're old-guard newspaper fogies and hate the new hard-core blogger media!

Actually, here's exactly what Daulerio says about his borderline libelous publication:

-- It was the fault of the tipster for lying about the story in the first place. Apparently this is Daulerio's first foray into the Internets and he was unaware that anonymous commenters occasionally use misleading information.

-- It would be "ridiculous" to blame the writer for not vetting his story since it was part of a series of firsthand accounts about coaches being jerks. Absolutely right, A.J. Why would any journalist feel a need to fact check a firsthand account? Heck, I was told by a guy named Steve that he once saw A.J. Daulerio beating up a hooker in times square. And since it was a firsthand account, I'm sure it's all true and fit for publication.

-- A policy of not bothering to get both sides of a story is OK because, "it's been my experience, more often than not, that putting these first-person accounts on items reveal a larger truth or open the door to finding out the bigger story."

You see, Deadspin is doing you a favor, dear readers. By printing lies that seem to be true because the person the lies are about has been rumored to be a jerk, we're really all just getting at a larger truth, peeling back layers of the onion to get at the stories the traditional media won't tell you, simply because they're false. It's no wonder newspapers are failing the way they keep investing in facts!

-- But hey, at least the problem has been corrected, right? I mean, sure, Deadspin is shirking any real responsibility for the problem -- "the real culprit is the misguided fellow who emailed the bullsh*t story to begin with" -- and they're doing a much better job of it than those louts in the "traditional media" -- "unlike other traditional publications, I think we draw a lot more attention to our mistakes than just a 10 word correction buried on page A12." (Aw, that's cute. You went ahead and took an unsubstantiated meme about how traditional media handles errors and used it to defend your lack of any ethics whatsoever.) So clearly Deadspin has done its due diligence. Nice job, guys.

Yes, when a newspaper gets the time of a bake sale wrong or the number of RBI Jim Rice had in 1977, that gets corrected in a rather covert way. But when they slander a well-known public figure, even veteran, accomplished journalists like Dan Rather get canned.

Of course, there's no need for pinning the blame on Daulerio anyway. This is your fault for reading in the first place.

"Most people read Deadspin for various reasons but I don't think any readers come here with the idea that what they'll find will be something they'd find in magazines, newspapers, or websites that they'd find elsewhere. This site has been built employing both traditional journalism practices and non-traditional ones, which has tremendous benefits but plenty of risks as well. I don't think it's that difficult to distinguish between when we're practicing journalism and, especially, when we don't."

You see... you asked for this by reading their crap in the first place. By clicking on Deadspin's Web site, you unwittingly endorsed Deadspin's policy of printing whatever crap they feel like without worrying whether it's true or not. You told Daulerio it was acceptable to no longer abide by any sentiment of journalistic ethics or, to varying degrees, media law regarding slander and libel.

He says this is your fault because that's what you expect when you visit a site like Deadspin. So I say, stop going there.

Deadspin -- you're dead to me.