It's the time...of the season...

It's that time of the year again...the time when this space becomes less football oriented and centered more around some of my other passions, mostly TV related. The content won't be completely sports-free, it just won't be so sports-centric. Hopefully, those of you who have been kind enough to visit here to view my Dawg related ramblings will stick around and join in the other conversations...if not, I'll see you in August (hopefully)!

So consider this something of a transition post...first, some quick football thoughts and then some pre-Idol and LOST stuff...

First a couple of points on the defensive coordinator search:

- Kirby Smart is dead to me. Not because he chose to stay at Alabama...my thoughts on why that is a perfectly rational decision are in this post. My problem is with him using his alma mater to get more money, as well as possibly going so far as to sign an offer sheet and then back out (that part is still alleged). Pull that crap on Texas or Virginia if you wish...but pulling it on your alma mater is pretty low.

- As worked up as we all are right now about how this search is going, six months from now it's not going to matter. All that will matter at that point is that we have the right coach in place to restore some Junkyard to the Dawgs, not whether the blogosphere was happy about the announcement.

Bottom line is that Richt needed to make a change on the defense, and he has. To pretend that we can grade who the hire is before he's even had a chance to field a team is totally asinine, and the type of stuff that gives message boards a bad name.

Oh, and Brian Van Gorder is not coming here for less than a million a year. I love the guy, but that is not the direction I want to see the program take.

OK, on to the non-sports stuff...

- Idol is back tonight! Much like last season, don't expect too much in the form of recaps for the audition rounds. I hate the mentally ill and delusional portion of the show, and only watch the audition episodes for the 15 minutes of quality singers who we might actually see again among the two hours of mostly crap. Once we get to actual performance shows, I will be doing the regular recaps like I did last season.

- The big Idol news today is that Simon Cowell is going to call it quits after this season. He will certainly be missed, but I'm not one of the Idol fans who thinks that this will be the death of the show.

Actually, I think this may be a good opportunity for the show to fix some of the things that are broken on the show. In particular, the show has become at least as much about the judges as the performers, and that is not what the show is supposed to be. If they are going to constantly scream "THIS IS A SINGING COMPETITION", then they need to go back to being about the actual performers. Last year's disasters are well documented, but nothing was worse than when they actually cut songs in the later rounds because they couldn't get the judges to shut up.

- LOST COMES BACK IN THREE WEEKS!!!!!!

- Sorry, just want to say it again....

- LOST COMES BACK IN THREE WEEKS!!!!

- So I am in the middle of rewatching as much of the previous seasons as I can before February 2. I finished the season 2 finale last night, so I still have three more seasons to go. Probably not gonna make it.

But I am being reminded of some stuff from the first couple of seasons that I hope we get answers to. A couple of the main ones are:

• Why these people? The show went to great lengths to point out the connections between the passengers of Flight 815. Was that just some kind of statement on how we are ALL connected? I hope not...I'm hoping we get some sort of insight into how all these folks fit into whatever the big picture is. I'm thinking Jacob probably has something to do with it...
• What is up with Walt? Him being a "special boy" was drilled into our heads over and over again for two whole seasons...we better get some closure on that (and Aaron, too, while they're at it)
• What was the deal with the Hurley bird? You know, the big bird that was flying through the jungle, screaming Hurley's name? See, look...

OK, we probably won't get an answer to that one...

- Today was the LOST panel of the Television Critics tour...some interesting stuff, of course. The best recap is probably Sepinwall's, located HERE.

I still stand by my belief that The Incident at the end of season 5 has led to some sort of time loop/reboot. Some evidence:

• Carlton Cuse making statements about viewers of season one being in good shape if they want to jump back in, and also him not wanting to answer ANY questions or show ANY clips about the S6 premiere. I think this is because the Season 6 premier looks so much like the Pilot that it would be obvious what they are doing.
• Damon Lindelof's answers to questions about character development. He wants to show the audience the characters the way they are in Season 6 and also remind us how they were in Season 1.
• The multitude of returning characters.
• Emilie de Ravin's (Claire) response to her favorite memories today on the panel. She talked specifically about doing scenes with the "original cast" and how they were doing a lot of that again in season 6.

I could be completely wrong, or partially wrong, or whatever...that's part of the fun of the show, after all.

Guess we'll know in three weeks!

(Yeah...probably not).