Monday Links (6/7)

With my mailbag diatribe about the final episode of "Lost" last week, I think I can officially move on from discussing the show.

And, coincidentally, I'm also just two episodes away from wrapping up my first full rewatch of "The Wire," which takes such an emotional toll on you as a viewer that it'll be a while before I can do it again.

So... now I need a new show to obsess over. Here are my requirements:

1.) Must be a show that I can rent early seasons on DVD to catch up on what I've missed.

2.) Must be a one-hour drama. As I've written before, I fully intend to add "Modern Family" to my watch list for Season 2, but a sitcom won't be enough to fill the void of "Lost."

3.) Must be a show I can watch current episodes of without having to purchase Showtime or Cinemax or some channel I don't really want.

4.) Must require some level of fan enthusiasm that will allow me to write about it on this blog to the extent that fans of the show will be happy and non-fans will have something new to complain about, since I'm no longer writing about "Lost."

5.) My preference would be a show that is still airing new episodes rather than one I need to fully catch up with on DVD, but I'm negotiable on that.

So I'm taking suggestions now. My early thoughts would be: "Breaking Bad," "Sons of Anarchy," "The Shield," "Mad Men" or "Rescue Me." But I'm open to other possibilities as well.

OK, just a handful of links today after a rather light weekend of Georgia talk...

-- Well, it was a good run, but Georgia's quest for a women's college world series title came to an end against UCLA yesterday. Still, they lasted one day longer than Florida did.

-- Like many of you, The Chapel Bell isn't buying those spring combine numbers coming out of Georgia. As evidence, he offers that Georgia had a time at each position that would have been the best at this year's NFL combine -- and usually by a pretty wide margin.

-- About Them Dawgs has some great historical perspective on "The Game" played between Georgia and Auburn in 1971.

-- Today's MLB draft could have a major impact on Georgia's quest to improve on the mound next year. It could also have a big impact on Georgia Tech's football recruiting.

-- ESPN has Georgia slotted eighth in its early recruiting rankings.

-- I can only hope that Colorado State's latest commitment will eventually be cast in "Stone Cold 2" -- a sequel we've waited far too long to see.

-- Dan Wetzel wants to tie the latest expansion rumors to the lack of a football playoff, and I just don't see how the two are related. This is all about TV revenue and a conference championship game.

-- And speaking of TV revenue, the Leather Helmet Blog looks at how the SEC's contract with ESPN gives its members a lot of flexibility in adding to their multimedia revenue by selling their local broadcast rights.

Specifics when it came to expansion weren't discussed much in Destin last week, and Mike Slive did his best to downplay the SEC's role in expansion to this point, but... don't think for a second that the SEC wasn't getting its ducks in a row. The news of the huge revenue boost the league got from its ESPN deal and the repeated mentions of those local TV rights packages were meant to send a message.

And Matt Hinton agrees:

"The Longhorns have a much better chance of launching an all-Texas television network in the Big 12 than in the Big Ten, which already has a network UT would be required to buy into, or the Pac-10, which seems to be hell-bent on launching its own on the Big Ten model. (SEC commissioner Mike Slive, who seems to have more interest in Texas than Texas has in the SEC, has repeatedly emphasized the freedom SEC schools have to pursue their own media rights deals outside of the league-wide contracts with CBS and ESPN, an open invitation to the Longhorns."

-- Yahoo! has an interesting behind-the-scenes look at the life of the writers on "Parks and Recreation."

-- I'm shocked that anyone could possibly still care enough about "Flash Forward" to put this much effort into saving the show.

-- And finally, it's hard to believe that it's been 25 years since we were first introduced to the Truffle Shuffle.