The little things in life.

Greetings and Happy Thanksgiving to all. After a day of stuffing your faces full of turkey and watching some ugly football games, I hope you've all given yourself the opportunity to give thanks. I know I had an entire post planned out, but it appears that Adam read my mind and took it all last night, so I'm going to change course a little bit. Obviously, sports fans in the greater Atlanta area have plenty to be thankful for in sports. Brian McCann, Joe Johnson, Matt Ryan, Reggie Ball...You can't crack open a sports page without seeing their latest accomplishments. Unfortunately, for every great thing that they do, it takes setting up from an assortment of other people. Plenty of people do their jobs extraordinarily well, but nobody ever stops to give them recognition, even the effort to learn their names, until they screw up. So I'm here to sing the praises of the little man.

1) Ben Jones, C, UGA. Well, maybe not little in the sense of size, but certainly in the sense of notoriety. In the complete catastrophe that has been the UGA offensive line, Jones, a manchild who is starting as a true freshman, has protected Matthew Stafford against some of the roughest D-Lines in college football. For all the criticism that was poured on the line after the Alabama game, Jones still shone in his performance, doing everything he could to stop the monster that was Mt. Cody. The future NFL draft pick was notably impressed by the true freshman's performance, going out of his way to shake his hand post game. Jones never gave up, and for a freshman to have the kind of year he is having with the expectations Georgia had preseason is phenomenal. Losing a senior in Fernando Velasco last year should have been a tremendous blow to the team's cohesion, but Jones has stepped it up on the field, and I'm thankful for that.

2) Paul Snyder, director of scouting, Atlanta Braves. Quick, name me five prospects the Braves have traded away in the past fifteen years that have gone on to be successful. If you made it past two, I would be impressed. Adam Wainwright, Jason Schmidt, Jermaine Dye, and Odalis Perez are, to my knowledge, the only prospects that had sustatines success in their post Atlanta years, and that's because the Atlanta Braves system knows their prospects. So much of John Schuerholz's success as a general manager can be attributed to knowing his prospects better than the other team did. Players such as Bruce Chen, Jung Bong, Andy Marte, and Melvin Nieves have been cornerstones in trades for crucial parts of pennant-winning teams, where Atlanta ultimately got star players for free. Even now, with the Braves at potentially the lowest point in 20 years, the farm system is still absolutely stacked, to the point where we can consider trading three prospects rated B+ or higher by John Sickels and still not even touch our top three prospects. Snyder is supposedly retiring soon, and I would just assume the Braves retire his jacket size in lieu of a jersey, because he has contributed every bit as much of the franchise's historical run as Bobby Cox or John Schuerholz. That is not a slight to either of them, but a tribute to Snyder.

3) Billy Knight, former GM, Atlanta Hawks. Yes, he was highly criticized for taking Marvin Williams over Chris Paul. Yes, he resigned rather than get fired. But you know that somewhere, he is bitterly laughing to himself, because he knew this team could do it. Three years later, Marvin Williams is blossoming into the second scoring threat we needed him to be. Josh Smith was looking to be dominant before he hurt his ankle, and Joe Johnson has become the superstar Knight envisioned, though not at the PG position he expected. Looking back on Knight's track record, his biggest mistake was passing on a great player at a position we needed to select a good player at a position we didn't. While some critics will never forgive him for that, I know that if Babcock was still running Atlanta, the Knicks would be our best case scenario.

4) The underdogs of the SEC. And that is with no pun intended. The wonderful thing about teams like Vandy, Ole Miss, Kentucky, and Mississippi State is that, with the abundance of talent flourishing in the southeastern area, inevitably one of them is going to get enough second tier prospect to turn the team into a contender. They won't all be able to do it at once, but without these teams, the SEC is a joke. Even this year, I here college football fans proclaiming the SEC as a two, maybe three team conference. (Granted, these are the same fans that proclaim that the ACC is the hardest conference as stated by the Sagarin rankings, but I digress...) This year, with Tennessee and Auburn at new lows and LSU looking to be above average at best, the SEC needs someone to pick up the slack. The last thing we need is for the nerds to match up against some bottom tier team in the SEC and win, thus proclaiming their superiority. For those of you who trudged through my last post, it's quite evident that we can't take solace in the head-to-head victory, as the fighting Paul Johnson's have the greater tally of moral victories over us. Fortunately, there is little doubt in my mind that they'll come across a Kentucky team that will play them just as hard as they played us, and make the conference look all the more stronger. Remember, a OOC win for the SEC is a stepping stone in the BCS ladder for next year.

I'm also thankful for Adam typing stuff that actually has literary merit on here. I'm well aware that my insightful posts come maybe once a month, and the lackluster ones have become overbearingly predominant as of late. Fortunately, someone who actually knows what he is doing is able to pick up for my slack.

And finally, as cliched as it is, I'm thankful for the handful of you that take the time to read my ramblings every week. Because without you guys I'm just talking to myself, and seeing OTR quoted in a facebook status last week was quite possibly the most exciting thing that could have happened on a Georgia bye week short of Tim Tebow being declared academically ineligible. (For those of you who didn't know, he didn't crack 1000 on his SAT. I don't remember the exact number, but it wasn't even close).

Good luck to any of you who are crazy enough to brave the cold weather and rabid shoppers tomorrow morning.