One of my favorite offseason traditions is the arrival of the preseason college football magazines to newsstands. (Do we still actually have newsstands?)
I’m not too sure about that, but we definitely still have these magazines and I still enjoy reading them every year. My favorite part is the section devoted to candid analysis provided by anonymous coaches.
This year’s dish from the coaches in the Athlon magazine was about what you’d expect. There were questions about how Georgia’s talent level compares with its high-water mark in the early 2020s, and there were lingering doubts about the UGA offense as well.
On that note, I think there are a lot of Bulldogs fans who would love for the Georgia coaches to be as tired of that narrative as most of the rest of DawgNation is. And given the chatter of the last few months, maybe there’s evidence to suggest they are indeed as fatigued by it as the fans.
Coach Kirby Smart talked plenty during spring practice, for instance, about his desire to see more explosive plays from his offense. That’s the kind of thing the anonymous coaches always seem to doubt UGA’s ability to provide.
Yet maybe this year, with the goal stated so clearly, the Bulldogs really can silence their doubters once and for all and bring an end to a storyline that’s grown tiresome for everyone.
Check out the rest of our coverage below.
Trivia time
When is the last time Georgia baseball won a game in the SEC Tournament?
Answer is at the bottom of the newsletter.
Georgia baseball looks to ‘play free’ in SEC baseball tournament
This time around, a trip to the SEC Tournament carries different weight for Georgia’s baseball team.
The Bulldogs won the regular season title with gusto, clinching the tournament’s No. 1 seed with four games to play, and are projected as the No. 3 national seed by D1Baseball. They’ve earned a double bye into the quarterfinals Thursday and have set themselves up to host an NCAA regional for the third year in a row, though seeding won’t come out until May 25 after conference tournaments conclude.
“Us not having to worry about going to win it all to make the (NCAA) tournament, it just takes a lot of pressure off, and it makes it that much easier to play free,” infielder Ryan Wynn said Tuesday.
The Bulldogs will face No. 8 Mississippi State, which earned a bye to the second round. Georgia’s quarterfinal game will take place at 1 p.m. Thursday in Hoover, Alabama.
Count the No. 4 Georgia Bulldogs as strongly in favor. The system will be used on an experimental basis for the tournament, which began Tuesday at the Hoover Met Complex in Hoover, Alabama.
“I love it, obviously, you know, I think I’ve been one of the big proponents of it,” said Georgia coach Wes Johnson, who spent 2019-2022 as pitching coach for the Minnesota Twins. “Talked a lot about it two years ago, after coming from Major League Baseball, knowing that they were putting it in. … They were testing it out in some of the lower levels of the minor leagues. And so, I’ve been a big proponent of it. I like it. I know people think it’s going to slow the game down. They’ll find out it’ll actually speed it up.”
The Bulldogs (43-12 overall, 23-7 SEC) clinched the SEC regular season title Saturday, the program’s first since 2008. They will face Mississippi State on Thursday at 1 p.m. EST.
Georgia's Daniel Jackson lines out during the second inning against Georgia Tech at Truist Park on Tuesday, April 21, 2026, in Atlanta. (Jason Getz/AJC)
Quote of the day
Georgia catcher Daniel Jackson on ‘Sour Pour’:
“This started with one of our first Buc-ee’s trips. We got some of this Sour Power, and basically every time you score, you get some. It’s honestly, I think it’s one of the things that we do that I feel like brings us together and it’s kind of part of our offensive identity, is the Sour Power.”
Some teams have rally caps. Georgia baseball has Buc-ee’s Sour Power.
What has powered Georgia baseball to a Division I-leading 140 home runs and a 2-1 win at Auburn on last week?
Sour candy from Buc-ee’s plays a larger role than you may have imagined.
“This is Sour Power, right here,” Jackson told SEC Network in his postgame interview, as teammates Ty Peeples and Scott Newman draped Buc-ee’s candy belts (the rainbow-colored quattro flavor, to be exact) over Jackson’s headset, headband, microphone and jersey.
It’s become tradition for the high-powered Georgia offense, according to Jackson — whose home run in the fifth inning tied the game 1-1. Another home run by Wynn in the sixth inning gave No. 4 Georgia the lead, which held up as they claimed Game 1 of the series vs. No. 5 Auburn and with it a program-record 22nd SEC win.
“This started with one of our first Buc-ee’s trips,” Jackson said, with shortstop Kolby Branch stopping by to take a piece of candy off Jackson’s headset and eat it. “We got some of this Sour Power, and basically every time you score, you get some. It’s honestly, I think it’s one of the things that we do that I feel like brings us together and it’s kind of part of our offensive identity, is the Sour Power.”
And it sounds like the Bulldogs have a few bags to spare.
