Rocky Top Talk, a Tennessee Volunteers community

Class ends at 11, and Berry discusses his recruitment three years ago out of Creekside High School in Fairburn, Ga., while waiting for a magazine shoot at Neyland Stadium.

"I guess I just felt like Georgia thought they had me in the bag, and they didn't even know about me and I was in their backyard," Berry explains. "I remember when I went on my recruiting visit, coach (Mark) Richt had my name and stats written on his hand. I guess he thought I didn't see it or something, but I did.

"They were talking to me about playing wide receiver; they didn't even know my position was safety and quarterback. That really made me upset. Coach Kiffin (who then was at Southern Cal), he came with Pete Carroll and the running backs coach and they knew all about me. And I was in Georgia's backyard.

"But all the talk was about Caleb King (now a redshirt sophomore at Georgia battling for a starting job). I guess that's why I always favored Tennessee. They always recruited me hard and let me know what I meant to them. That hurt my feelings, I'm not even going to lie. But I love Mark Richt, love his staff. Him and coach (Rodney) Garner, because they're the ones that recruited me. They're both good men. I was just like, 'Dang.' I just felt like you need to be in your backyard. I just felt like (they) needed to know a little something about me. A few more phone calls or something."

This is Georgia's year. This is the time when everything has to come together for a national championship. An SEC title would be nice, another BCS appearance would be solid, but unless Richt is holding that crystal football in Miami at around 11:30 p.m. on January 8, 2009, this season will be a failure. While that might seem harsh, with the level of excellence set by the rest of the SEC when it comes to winning national titles, it's an all or nothing year for a Dawg team that's really that good.

Editor's note: I'm no more thrilled about having a known terrorist mastermind contributing to this Web site than any of you are to be reading it, but I hunted high and low for a celebrity who'd be willing to do the Tennessee preview and none of them wanted anything to do with it, not even Dolly Parton. But my great-aunt used to work for the State Department in the Middle East, and she knows a guy who knows a guy, and through them I found out that Osama is a huge Tennessee fan. Like, huge. In fact, 9/11? Was planned specifically to postpone the Tennessee-Florida game until December so that the Vols could get their s*** together. So anyway, he agreed to do the preview, and here it is. Please don't shoot me.