Chris Conley. [credit: Blake Aued]

You may know me as Flagpole's resident political junkie and Gabe Vodicka as our insufferable hipster music editor. But in our spare time, we're also football fans. We think there are a lot of folks in Athens like us, who wouldn't be caught dead on North Campus in khakis and red polo shirts, but still follow the Dawgs. (Or, in my case, the Ole Miss Land Sharks Black Bears Rebels.)

To that end, Flagpole is going to be experimenting with a little football coverage this fall. (Take a deep breath. It'll be OK. Think Deadspin without the dick pics.) Gabe and I went down to Butts-Mehre (huh huh) today to talk to Coach Mark Richt and a few of the players, among them Chris Conley, a junior wide receiver and one of the team's rising stars who's also writing an Athens Diet column for us later this month.

As it turns out, Conley's musical roots run almost as deep as his football roots. He's played guitar for more than nine years, dating back to a church band growing up in his native Dallas, GA. He aspired to professional musicianship, he said, before football took him down a different path.

Conley owns five guitars, he said, three he keeps in Athens and two back home. His favorites are his first—a Dean acoustic-electric he calls "Old Faithful"—and a Fender Tim Armstrong model (yes, that Tim Armstrong).

Conley said he listens to all kinds of music, but his favorite to play is "easy listening," in particular John Mayer. (So his taste's not that cutting-edge. Give the guy a break.)

"That's definitely a way I blow off steam—have a rough day, go back to my room and start strumming something," he said.

Regrettably, we didn't get a chance to ask Conley—or Richt—about this atrocity.