Athens held hostage: Day 3

OK, I wanted snow. I'll admit it. Even at the advanced age of 34, I still act like a kid when I hear the forecast, wondering what it'll take to have school canceled.

Well, school has been canceled all right. Classes at UGA are off again Wednesday, and who knows about the rest of the week: While it hasn't snowed since early Monday morning, the six inches of snow on the ground have pretty much remained there because the temperature hasn't gotten much above freezing, and the forecast for the next few days doesn't offer much hope either.

The weather has apparently put the football offseason in a bit of a holding pattern. We had the Marcus Dowtin news on Tuesday, but that had been in the works for awhile. A.J. Green smartly got his announcement out of the way Sunday, and is on his way to Arizona to train. (He's not taking classes in the spring. Green and UGA have said he's about two semesters away from getting his degree.)

I'm told that the other juniors contemplating the jump - Justin Houston, Brandon Boykin and Cordy Glenn - are all back in Athens and attended a team meeting on Sunday night. That doesn't mean they're coming back. They could have come back to gather their things and officially inform their coaches they were leaving, but even that process has been put off by the snow.

They have until Saturday to enter the draft. Maybe there will be news today, maybe there won't. No way of telling, although if I see Justin Houston on cross-country skies on his way to the airport, I'll let you know.

As for the coaches, spokesman Claude Felton estimated that about half of them got out of town to recruit on Sunday before the onset of the storm. The rest are trapped or either feeling very adventurous.

So, with nothing to do but count ice cycles or work on my novel, maybe we can do another mailbag, if there's anything left over from Monday. Feel free to post your question below.