Here are your SEC news and notes for Thursday:

Kentucky cornerback Trevard Lindley lands at #12 on The Gainesville Sun’s countdown of the SEC’s 25 best players.

Here’s a “strength/weakness” preview of the Georgia Bulldogs’ 2009 squad.

Robbie Andreu, also of The Sun, gives you five burning questions facing Florida’s football team.

Tim Tebow’s backup — John Brantley — opened up with Mr. Andreu and confirmed that Urban Meyer IS putting the Gators through a tough offseason workout program.

Sophomore Georgia offensive lineman Tanner Strickland will miss the entire 2009 season due to shoulder surgery.

Strickland was expected to be a back-up at guard for the Dogs.  Obviously his absence hurts their depth on the O-line.

Georgia self-reported four secondary violations in their football program yesterday… due in part to Chicago Bears’ quarterback Jay Cutler (a Vandy man!). 

UGA AD Damon Evans has put the kibosh on rumors that Georgia is lining up a football game with Michigan.

Kentucky’s Darius Miller scored 10 points at the FIBA Under-19 World Championships yesterday.

Jodie Meeks chose the NBA over a return to UK… and yesterday he signed a three-year deal with the Milwaukee Bucks.  Most importantly, the first two years of the deal are guaranteed.

Brett Dawson of The Louisville Courier-Journal has a number of SEC-related basketball notes in his latest blog, among them: Kentucky will probably have new unis under John Calipari… and many coaches believe Florida will be better than expected.

According to South Carolina, their secondary violations were inadvertent and isolated… but The State says some folks’ secondary violations are worse.  (Uh, that’d be you Auburn and Tennessee.)

Travis Haney of The Charleston Post & Courier ranks the top returning offensive players in the SEC.  I’m guessing Ole Miss fans won’t like the fact that Jevan Snead is ranked fourth.

Tennessee finally announced — officially — Bruce Pearl’s new contract which will make him the SEC’s third highest-paid coach.

The deal wasn’t as big as expected, but it still averages out to $2.32 million per year over six seasons.

Phillip Jurick says the reason things didn’t work out at Tennessee was his less then stellar classroom performance.

Josh Bean of The Mobile Press-Register takes an interesting look at just how quickly things have changed when it comes to college football recruiting.

Harry King of The Northwest Arkansas Morning News chimes in on the SEC’s decision (more than a month ago) to cap “oversigns” at 28.

Folks in Fayetteville can look forward to the “Celebration of the Razorback” later this month.  No word on plans for the city’s always popular Feast of Saturnalia.

Here’s a profile of incoming Arkansas receiver Cobi Hamilton… with a nice photo of a Texas Longhorn thrown in for confusion’s sake.

Former Arkansas coach Jack Mitchell — who passed away at 85 on Sunday — bridged the gap between Bowden Wyatt and Frank Broyles.  This is a very solid “remembrance” column from Nate Allen of The Northwest Arkansas Times.  Kudos.

Jared Mitchell’s career as an LSU wide receiver came to a close when he inked a deal with the Chicago White Sox yesterday.

Former Tiger Marcus Thornton signed a contract with the New Orleans Hornets yesterday, too.

Here’s a photo of the tiny “LSU” that will appear on the Tigers’ football jerseys this fall.

Receiver Shay Hodge is the 18th most important player for the Ole Miss Rebels this fall.

Jarvis Varnado only played four minutes in a US win over Serbia in the World University Games.  Damn.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 10:40 am and is filed under Alabama, Homepage . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.