President calls for football playoff system
UGA President Michael F. Adams, who also is NCAA executive committee chair, is proposing that the NCAA manage a playoff system to determine a national collegiate football champion. In a letter to NCAA President Myles Brand, Adams asked that a committee be appointed to study his proposal.

Adams requested that a committee of the NCAA Division I Board of Directors be appointed to look into the possibility of staging a championship tournament in January to follow the traditional bowl season. His proposal calls for an NCAA selection committee to place the top eight teams in the four major BCS bowls. The winners of those four games would compete in two playoff games with the national championship between the two winners. To mitigate the physical stress on athletes involved, Adams’ proposal also calls for returning the regular season to an 11-game schedule.

“Colleges need to regain ownership of their football teams,” Adams wrote in his letter to Brand. “While much has been made of the unique nature of the post-season in the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A), the fact is that the networks and conferences exercise much more control over football teams at this level than the institutions that sponsor them. Reorienting the national football championship is an important step in managing a model that benefits students, institutions and our constituents.”

Top scholars will speak at conference focusing on black issues in higher ed
Keynote addresses by two widely recognized scholars in education policy and leadership and program development will highlight UGA’s third annual Conference on Black Issues in Higher Education on Feb. 1.

John L. Taylor, professor of educational leadership at the University of Arizona, and Penny Ralston, professor of family and child science at Florida State University, will highlight the conference sponsored by UGA’s College of Education.

The daylong event also will include three panel discussions featuring several UGA faculty members on the topics of “Blacks in Higher Education ­Leadership,” “Grant Writing and Dissemination of Research Results” and “The Art of Teaching at a Research University.”

Taylor will give the opening address and Ralston the luncheon address. The conference will take place in Masters Hall at the Georgia Center from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Registration is $20 and ends Jan. 21. To register, call (706) 542-2134.

Peach State Poll finds that drought is the state’s biggest problem among Georgians
A substantial plurality of Georgians believe that the drought is the most important problem facing the state today, according to the latest Peach State Poll conducted by UGA’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government. Forty-one percent of the public said that the drought is the most important problem facing the state, followed distantly by crime (11 percent) and education (9 percent). Since the start of the Peach State Poll in September 2001, no single issue has ever been cited by more than 30 percent of the public as the most important problem until this latest poll.

While Georgians express high levels of concern about both water quality and the availability of water in the future, the concern about availability is greater. Eighty-one percent of the public said that they are very concerned that Georgia may not have enough water in the next 10 years. In response to this concern, Georgians across the state are taking measures to conserve water in their homes by washing only full loads of laundry or dishes (61 percent), and using faucets less (59 percent), among other measures. Georgians who live in the northern counties with the more severe drought conditions (level four) are even more likely to be taking measures to conserve water in their homes.