Corky Kell Classic

Looking forward to this battle Friday night...

Last weekend before this year's Corky Kell + Dave Hunter Classic kicks off! If you haven't secured your tickets to the games yet, do so by clicking the link below!

🔗: https://gofan.co/app/school/GA68093

CONGRATS to our Day 1 Champs…. the North Gwinnett Bulldogs!



Thank you so much to all the teams that came out and competed!

I was a sophomore at Alabama when Coach Bear Bryant retired and 41 years later I am sitting at my office desk in Roswell taking in the news that Nick Saban's coaching career is over ... I think Saban is tired, constantly seeing changes in a game he wished was still three yards and a cloud of dust ... I also think this team may have been his favorite, a talented but inconsistent group that gave him everything but a national championship ... They avenged the loss in 2022 to Tennessee, did the same with LSU and we will never forget the win at Auburn ... Then there was another SEC Championship and win over Georgia ... Saban finished his career against Georgia 8-2 and against Kirby Smart he is 5-1 ... Saban won all three SEC Championship games against the Bulldogs ... Those numbers will never change ... For me, its hard to say who was the better coach, Bryant or Saban ... They both won all the time, each winning six national championships in Tuscaloosa and Saban also has won when he was the head coach at LSU ... I do think that in modern day college football, they both sit at the top of the mountain ... It will certainly be different without Saban, his moody press conferences and temper tantrums on the sidelines, although the latter we haven't seen much of in the last few seasons ... I certainly wish him the best in retirement and do hope he has some say in who takes his place ... Personally, I don't want a Lane Kiffin or Steve Sarkisian, both carrying serious baggage, and the only college coach I would hire would be Smart but he is not leaving Georgia ... I hope Alabama looks to the NFL, where there are some great young coaches to pick from ... The Crimson Tide did this with Bryant when they plucked former Alabama All-American Ray Perkins from the New York Giants ... But football was different then and it came during a time when schools favored taking former players ... I loved Perkins, who did so much for my career in journalism though he didn't stay very long before he was back in the NFL ... But before we start worrying about who is going to be the next head coach, let's take some time to appreciate what Nick Saban did for Alabama ... It was such a fun and great run ... Thanks Nick ... Roll Tide!

What a crazy year for Score Atlanta ... Yesterday, in the 11th installment of the Georgia Elite Classic, the nightcap between a large group of the best freshmen and sophomores in the state, the game came down to the final play with two seconds left at Barron Stadium ... The sophomores scored on a beautiful end zone fade and with no OT in our All-Star Games, decided to go for two for the win ... They were stopped inches short on a wildcat run and you would have thought the freshmen had won a trip to Disney World as they sprinted around the field throwing off their helmets ... It was a fitting end to a very fortunate year for Score Atlanta, which continues to grow the professional side of the business and is having a blast on the high school side ... Add it up and we did 42 games on TV among the Sheriff's Cup, Corky Kell Classic-Dave Hunter Class football and basketball, Great Atlanta Bash, Drive For the GHSA State Title and Georgia Elite ClassicElite Junior Classic ... We took part in the opening of a new sports network Peachtree Sports Network, inducted our second class of the Georgia High School Football Hall of Fame, added boys and girls basketball to Corky and had a memorable night at Mercedes-Benz Stadium hosting the first ever African-American school (1973 Southwest Atlanta) to win a GHSA state football championship which we are turning into a 30 for 30-like feature for PSN ... Score Atlanta enters our 20th year wanting to do more and I personally am thankful to way too many people here to point them all out ... I will do this and point our one person, Graham David ... Graham is the son of my University of Alabama schoolmate Stanley David, who is the general manager of Score and is the one that really makes Score go ... He came to me as an intern years ago and has turned into a machine and is the big reason behind our success ... But more importantly, Graham is one of the best human beings I have ever met and does the heavy lifting ... People love him and he represents Score Atlanta well .. I am proud of the entire staff of Score Atlanta, which includes of full timers and huge number of contractors but we would never be entering 2024 with such momentum without Graham David ... Graham, I raise my glass to you and everyone else to have a great New Year ... And Roll Tide!

First of all ... I do have a Dawg in the fight here ... I had twin girls that went to Georgia, been a season ticket holder for more than 20 years and will always give to the Hartman Fund because I am huge believer in the man and the family the fund is named for ... I also have tremendous respect for where the school has come since I was at Alabama ... It's a tremendous place but if I were a graduate I would be upset about this story and the seemingly lack of focus on education by the football program ... We all know regardless of whether they are going to the playoiffs or not this season, Georgia is the top football program in the country ... I read an ESPN story on the upcoming draft and the number of Georgia players expected to be drafted at the top of the board is incredible ... I also don't want to hear any excuses about players leaving early for the NFL ... Alabama has as many or more yet with Ole Miss sits on top of the conference in overall athletic program graduation rates ... Considering football players have to be at school in the summer as well as many of them getting a spring semester in their senior high school year, there is no reason they can't graduate in three years with no better example than Bama quarterback Jalen Milroe, who began his education in the spring of 2021 and graduated last week ... Now for those that think it's harder to graduate Georgia than Alabama or Ole Miss, think again ... We're not talking about going to Georgia Tech and having to take calculus ... The hardest part about Georgia is getting in, not staying in ... After last season, former ESPN college football anaylst David Pollack put his foot down and said Kirby Smart was the best coach in college football ... But should Smart be judged only on what happens on the field and not in the classroom ... Does athletics director Josh Brooks turn his head about education when it comes to the football program?
Look, Smart is still young and some of the players included in the graduation rates in this article he inherited from Mark Richt ... But if you get a chance read the piece from Chip Towers, who was very careful to make sure he dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's on this story (It's worth the monthly fee just to ready this piece) ... Towers is the beat writer for the AJC for Georgia and in that job you have to be careful with editorializing in stories ... But look how Towers ends his story:
"At an athletic board meeting in September, faculty athletics representative David Shipley, a UGA law school professor, proudly reported that Georgia athletes achieved the highest cumulative grade-point average in school history (3.20) for the 2022-23 academic year that ended in June.
That prompted Brooks to proudly proclaim: “We have an athletic and academic powerhouse.”
For football, though, that extends only to the field of play.''
Good job Chip as winning is important and Georgia will do plenty of it for years to come. But a football program and coach is judged on more than just national championships. The coach also has to get them ready for the real world and their future and for most of the players that will be done in the classroom, not in the NFL ...

Georgia football graduation rates lagging far behind other programs ATHENS – Georgia has finished at the top of the SEC -- and the nation -- in college football the last three years. The same cannot be said about the Bulldogs’ academic performance.

I agree and you know while you are at it, include the Weedeater-Weight-Watchers-MyPillow-Bear Stearns Bowl that is played in Urban Meyer's backyard in the CFP as well ... Score Atlanta

Georgia lawmaker ‘demands’ Orange Bowl be included in CFP Bulldogs, Florida State left out of 4-team playoff

Before I touched on the subject of the College Football Playoff committee's decision on the schools for the four-team playoff, I wanted to see a full day of reaction from teams, schools, the national media, etc ... It has been an interesting 32 or so hours ... First of all, being an Alabama alumni I had prepared myself for the Crimson Tiide not getting in and wrote about it here ... But as soon as ESPN announced that Texas was No. 3, I knew Alabama had made it and undefeated Florida State was out ... Was it the right decision? ... Does it really matter? ... In the 10-year history of the playoffs, this was bound to happen ... Unlike professional sports which splits into divisions and sends divisional winners and wild card teams, which are established by wins and losses. to the postseason, a diverse committee of people tried to come to a consensus on who the four teams would be ... How did they do? ... Well, Georgia despite losing their first game since the SEC Championship in 2021, fell from No. 1 to sixth after losing by just three points ... Ohio State, losing just one game barely to what is now No. 1 Michigan, fell to seventh ... Personally, I think both those teams are better than Washington and would be favorites in a game against probably anyone in the Top 3 except Michigan ... But it's a waste of time arguing about this and that but one thing to remember that didn't help FSU was that two years ago ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said his conference was opposed to going to a playoff that included more than four teams ... If Phillips would have kept his mouth shut then we likely would have had a 12-game playoff this year and his Seminoles would be in ... Also, what's interesting is two of the members of the 13-person committee had strong ties to the ACC .... The committee chair, Boo Corrigan, is the athletics director at North Carolina State, and Jim Grobe, coached at Wake Forest for 13 years and was national coach of the year in 2006 when he was with the Demon Deacons ... It's interesting to see the outcry for Florida State yet both the committee's chair who currently works in the conference and a top coach who was one of the ACC's better coaches, obviously didn't feel the same ... Perhaps they realize that the conference isn't quite the same in football since Clemson's fall as the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and soon-to-be-defunct Pac 12 ... But in the end I think the biggest problem and failure of the committee was no one really knows what the rules are ... I mean what is the difference between most deserving and four best teams? ... We know that the committee can factor in the loss of a team's top player(s) but does mean more than a conference championship or undefeated season? ... We were never really told as Corrigan's after each ranking was carefully scripted ... If losing their top player meant that much, then why did the committee have FSU ranked in the Top 4 going into the conference championships? ... The committee knew star quarterback Jordan Travis was out for the season and that backup Tate Rodemaker had sustained a concussion in the last regular season game ... Still, Florida State was fourth ... I think what happened was the committee was banking hard on Georgia beating Alabama and then the decision would have been simple ... Just take the four undefeated conference champions ... But going undefeated against the rest of the SEC, Alabama beat Georgia and all of a sudden the committee the Crimson Tide had to be considered which meant so did one-loss and Big 12 champion Texas which beat the Crimson Tide ... Now the committee had to ask itself does it leave out the SEC, which has won the last four national titles and six in the history of the nine-year playoff ... So who do you take? ... Alabama, which had missed the playoffs just twice and won three of them and was a finalist in three more and now won 11 straight with perhaps the hottest quarterback in the nation or Florida State, who didn't look great in its conference championship and was done to their third-string quarterback .. Also, the Tide had beaten the committee's No. 1 team and there was no way Texas was going to be left out if Alabama was among the final four teams ... Seems like if you are looking out for the best interest of college football it was a rather easy decision ... So where now? ... Funny, but the sun came up Monday morning and the semifinals matchup of Alabama-Michigan and Washington-Texas will do well on television and tickets to both games will be tough to get ... And I have a lot of Florida State friends and I do understand where they are coming from ... But their anger, and those in the media that feel this is a travesty, should be direct that at Corrigan and the other 12 members of the committee ... Their refusal to go into the season making the college football world aware of what the rules really were, turned this into a bloody Monday ... But like everything else that makes big headlines deadline, it will be mostly forgotten when Alabama and Michigan kick off the playoffs on Jan. 1 ... Yes, college football will survive ... Score Atlanta