G-Day Bloggerpalooza '06: The drinking begins at sunrise.

Ah, tailgating, how I've missed you.

Orson and Stranko from Every Day Should Be Saturday are so excited, they just can't hide it, they're about to lose control and I think they like it: Spring practice is about to start for college football teams around the country. The lonely silence in cities such as Athens, Gainesville, Ann Arbor, and Murfreesboro is about to be broken once again by the crack of the pads, and we'll once again treat ourselves to anxious talk of new-recruit sightings, position battles, and, of course, the ultimately meaningless exhibitions known as spring games.

To the non-football-initiated among you, this probably sounds like the college-football equivalent of desperately raiding the pantry and drinking all the vanilla extract just to get buzzed. Well, we never claimed it was otherwise. But it's funny you should mention drinking, because Orson came up with a wonderful idea: Blogger tailgate before the G-Day Game! G-Day, in case you were confused, is the Georgia Bulldogs' spring game, and since the Atlanta/Athens area seems to be home to an inordinate number of sports bloggers, a bunch of us decided a G-Day tailgate would be a great opportunity for area bloggers to get together, put faces with names ("Oh! So you're that asscrack who said [insert coach's name here] couldn't coach his way out of a wet paper bag!"), do some drinkin', and feed our football fix.

So if you're interested in attending, consider this post an open thread to weigh in on suggested locations, start times, food/booze selections, and whatever else. The current prevailing opinion seems to be the beautiful north campus quad, which means we'll have to get there early to snag a spot, but since kickoff's at noon we'd probably have to do that anyway. Also feel free to suggest postgame extracurriculars for those who might be interested. (You were thinking Topper's, perhaps? Way ahead of you, homes.)

While I'm thinking about it, this is as good a time as any to update my blogroll of fellow sports fanatics:

Orson and Stranko at EDSBS have officially moved up into the "Friends of Doug" category, because if a couple of Florida fans are willing to do a tailgate before the freaking Georgia spring game . . . well, those are some special people, and not in the short-bus way.

Paul Westerdawg, Mayor T. Kyle King, The Drizzle, and Gunslingers get the same treatment, as does Ian from Sexy Results, though I'm waiting for his dissertation on the societal significance of a song titled "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" being nominated for an Oscar.

Please welcome to the blogroll Michigan fans Brian from mgoblog and Yost at The M Zone. In the alternate universe where I attended Michigan instead of Georgia, I'm probably e-mailing these guys every five minutes for spiritual guidance in my attempt to reconcile Lloyd Carr's current mediocrity with the fact that he won me a national title my sophomore year.

And what the hell, Dan from What's the Good Word and Nathan from Golden Tornado. Christ, did I just blogroll a couple of Georgia Tech fans? I must be slippin' . . .

It's also time for a long-overdue link to Warren St. John, author of the book Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer and proprietor of blog of the same name. He's earned a spot in my personal Hall of Fame for being able to write the definitive SEC tailgating opus without reverting to the "Heh, get a load of these wack jobs" condescension I'd expect from a lot of the non-Southern journos out there.

Not sports-specific, but I likes 'em anyway: Fellow former Columbusite Tommy Perkins, and fellow journalist and Alabamian Newspaper Hack. Welcome! Free pigs in a blanket for everybody!