This is a busy time of year, personally and professionally as well as athletically, and that set of circumstances lends itself to random half-formed thoughts. Sometimes, this causes me to make dated references and mathematical errors in the midst of instantaneous reactions; other times, it leads me to share a collection of nuggets such as these:

• It is no secret that I am no fan of the Heisman Trophy, but college football’s most overrated award occasionally lurches uncontrollably into the correct result by anointing the student-athlete who actually has a credible claim to being the most outstanding player in the sport that year. It appears this will be one of the years in which the Heisman Trophy actually goes to the person whose performance on the field merits the accolade. That being the case, why are we engaging in the pretense that there are four “finalists” for this award? LaMichael James, Andrew Luck, and Kellen Moore have front-row seats to see Cameron Newton win the award he deserves to win. The only drama will be whether he breaks O.J. Simpson’s record for biggest landslide victory in the Heisman Trophy balloting. Cam Newton is the most outstanding player in college football this year; his receipt, vel non, of this award will not make the foregoing statement any more or less true, but ESPN’s silly hyping of this sillier award is unseemly. Recognize the guy for his achievements, but cool it with the dog and pony show, all right, Worldwide Leader?
• An inconsequential math error in the final BCS standings has caused a bit of an uproar, resulting in descriptions of the situation as “dumbfounding,” questions whether the computer polls could “be intentionally manipulated,” and this claim by the fellow who caught the mistake: “The BCS owes us an entire system that is open, accountable and verifiable.” Why is this so? The deliberations of the NCAA Tournament selection committee are not open, accountable, and verifiable; neither are the deliberations of trial juries, grand juries, or the U.S. Supreme Court. Plenty of widely accepted and implicitly trusted results come to us from systems that lack openness, accountability, and verifiability from start to finish; in fact, rare is the system that provides those features throughout the process. Many perfectly reasonable college football fans dislike the BCS; I am one of them, in fact. The notion that we are “owe[d]” a wholly open system, though, is ludicrous, and the claim that we are entitled to any such thing is utterly hypocritical coming from anyone who does not make similar claims about much more important matters, or even about other NCAA-sanctioned sports. It was a minor math error that affected absolutely nothing. Fix it, forget it, and focus on the actual matter at issue.
• In games decided by seven or fewer points, Central Florida went 1-2 in 2010, whereas Georgia went 0-3. In games decided by ten or fewer points, Central Florida went 2-3, while Georgia went 1-3. In the last four Liberty Bowls, the SEC representative has beaten the Conference USA champion by eight or fewer points, as the margins have gotten closer year after year. Something’s got to give.
• Finally, friend of the blog Josh D. Weiss sent me some of his photographs from Tuesday night’s Georgia-Georgia Tech basketball game, three of which are visible below and the rest of which may be seen here:

Go ‘Dawgs!

Tim Riordan over at SBNation’s Buffalo Bulls blog Bull Run recently challenged those of us on the network’s college football beat to vote for a series of awards analagous to college football’s cavalcade of postseason awards, including the Heisman, Bednarik, Doak Walker, etc. I thought it was a fabulous idea. I quickly and enthusiastically volunteered.

Having now completed my ballot, I am reminded of the sage wisdom imparted to me as a teenager by the father of a good friend. This gentleman had fought against the Viet Cong alongside U.S. servicemen only to see his country overrun just the same. He then fled to America with his family but brought along a saying which he learned under far, far more harrowing conditions than the casting of a blogger award ballot. It is this: “The brave ones always die first.”

This ballot was, indeed, a killer. Seriously, have you ever tried to figure out who the best linebacker in the country is? The best punter? What about tight ends?There are hundreds of the S.O.B.’s running around out there on the college football landscape. Depending on the system, they have wildly varied responsibilities. And then, once I figure out who I’m voting for I just know that I’m going to get hit with the statistics I didn’t consider, the clutch performances I didn’t see, and the human interest stories that should have tugged at my heart strings.

It’s a gargantuan task. So, rather than cast a half-assed ballot for every category, I’ve cast a ballot in those categories about which I feel pretty strongly. In no particular order, here are my 2010 College Football Blogger Award choices:

Blogger Biletnikoff (best wide receiver): A.J. Green, Georgia. I’m a self-avowed homer, but it feels particularly good to make a homer pick that I find incredibly easy to defend. Unlike A.J. Green. Green did not make the 1^st Team SEC list according to either the coaches or the conference media, I would assume because many of the voters looked only at the receiving numbers and said (and I’m quoting here) “Derp, not as many yards as Jones and Jeffery, derp de derp!” By my count, I watched Julio Jones play 7 games this season. Ditto for Alshon Jeffery. Neither demonstrated the ability to be absolutely uncoverable quite like Green. In the 8 games he’s played this season he’s averaged north of 95 yards and 1 TD per game, all the while catching passes from a first year starting quarterback. Honorable mention: Justin Blackmon, Oklahoma State.

Blogger Butkus (best linebacker): Justin Houston, Georgia. Again, homer pick. But Justin Houston finds himself playing the linebacker position for the first time in his football career and has responded with 10 sacks and just single-handedly won a rivalry game to get his team to bowl eligibility. The primary job of the outside linebacker in Grantham’s 3-4 is to create havoc. Nobody does that better than Justin Houston, who will soon be doing just that on Sundays. Honorable mention: Kelvin Sheppard, LSU.

Blogger Coach Award (best coach): Frank Beamer, Virginia Tech. How could I select a coach who began the season by losing a close one to Boise State and then going 0-for-James Madison? Because he’s 10-0 since then, including getting over the hump against Florida State. Chip Kelly and Gene Chizik have obviously done great things to get their teams to the BCS title game. But to make an academic analogy, those guys have helped already bright kids become the valedictorian. Beamer tutored Charlie Sheen’s nephew from Two and a Half Men and got him admitted to Northwestern. He has no Cam Newton, no Lamichael James. He has an above average quarterback, a decent running game, some bailing wire and an ACC title. After the first two weeks of the season I never would have forecast that. The ACC is not the best conference in college football. But Beamer managed to take a team that could have packed it in after only two games to the Orange Bowl. Honorable mention: Dan Mullen, Mississippi State.

Blogger Bednarik (best defensive player): Patrick Peterson, LSU. I enjoy watching Peterson play football as much as any other player in college football. He’s fluid in coverage, willing to come up and play vicious run support, and is even a danger on special teams. Peterson is a really special player who hasn’t gotten the credit he deserves.

Blogger Maxwell (best offensive player): Kellen Moore, Boise State. Moore’s numbers this season throwing the ball were video game quality:  3405 yards passing, a 71.5% completion percentage, and 33 touchdowns versus only 5 interceptions. Perhaps most  impressive was Moore’s consistency. He never complted less than 60% of his passes in a game this season, and his low number (60.5%) came in the first game of the season against Virginia Tech, a game in which he threw 3 touchdowns and zero interceptions. There’s simply better passer in college football right now, and I have trouble envisioning any secondary containing him next season as a senior. Here’s hoping I’m proven wrong about Moore’s abilities next year in the Georgia Dome, but I somehow doubt that will happen.

Blogger Heisman (self-explanatory): Not Cam Newton. I don’t know how to say this other than to say it: I find the notion that Cecil Newton would require $180,000 for his son to attend Mississippi State but allow him to attend Auburn for free laughable, to the point that anyone who believes this to have been the case is either deluding himself (as I would if these kind of allegations were levelled against Aaron Murray, for example) or simply not very bright. Cameron Newton’s services were bought and paid for. Not by anyone employed by Auburn, but by someone willing to spend a lot of money to get a very good football player to attend Auburn.

Spare me the “Cam didn’t know” spiel. As an attorney I’m a big believer in the principle of “agency.” That is, when you choose to allow someone to represent you in an enterprise with the hope that you’ll benefit from it, you must also accept the responsibility when your agent acts to your detriment. Cam Newton was an adult during his second round of recruiting. He chose to allow his father input in that process. His father pimped out his services. I have no doubt that Cameron Newton will win the Heisman Trophy. I also have no doubt that he will eventually have to give that award back. Other than that, I abstain.

Your thoughts on these and Bull Run’s other postseason awards are, as always, appreciated in the comments.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Ok folks so here’s the deal.

I am willing to bake a pan of my brownies and ship them to you.  Since I don’t usually make you this offer, you might guess there is a bit of a catch.  I’m not going to make a pan of brownies for each and every one of you.  I’m only making 1 pan of brownies here.  So that means y’all are going to have to work for it. 

I’m using the term “work” pretty loosely here.  In order to have a shot at the brownies – you have to help out that sweet little boy that needs a Service Dog.  Yep – you’ve got to contribute to A Dog for Deeds.  Then you have to tell me about it – so here’s how you do that – either use your Dawg Sports screen name when you donate, or let me know in the comments below.  I don’t care how much you donated, or how often you donate – the only requirement here is that you donate.  Donate .50 if that’s all you can do – fine by me.

I’ll put everyone’s name in a hat and then contact the winner for an address.  Brownies will come straight from my kitchen to your mouth. 

I admit to stealing the contest idea from Real Salt Lake and you may or may not think their prizes are better – but hey – you still get a shot at a pan of brownies.

So hurry up and donate and let’s get a very special dog for a very special boy.

You’ll have to pardon me if I’m a little bit gun shy here; I bid a respectful farewell to Urban Meyer last December, after all, and he made me regret that show of decency . . . repeatedly. This time around, therefore, I come to bury Coach Meyer (metaphorically, of course), not to praise him.

In case you’ve been under a rock since around 2:30 this afternoon, Urban Meyer has resigned as the head coach of the Florida Gators. Yes, again, although it sounds a lot more real this time. Last year, Coach Meyer made his decision in the midst of a health scare, which can cause anyone to react erratically; this year, he seems to have realized the toll coaching has taken on him and responded appropriately after careful consideration. Going 7-5 will do that to a guy.

Jeremy Foley spoke of Urban Meyer as a guy who wanted to spend more time with the family that he loved. I could be crass and roll my eyes at such a statement after the infamous reversal following the “I got my daddy back!” exclamation of a year ago, but, if, after putting football ahead of faith, family, and health last December, Urban Meyer has re-ordered his priorities this Christmas, I say good for him, and better late than never.

This all could have ended very, very badly. After being taken to the hospital at the end of a pressure-packed 2009 season, Urban Meyer quit abruptly before reversing course just as quickly, and that decision ultimately could have sent his health into a downward spiral that concluded in a tragic denouement. Fortunately, if belatedly, he saw the light before allowing that to happen, and all we can do is wish Urban Meyer well. 2010 was his worst season as a head coach, but it did little to diminish the extraordinarily successful career preceding that disappointing, but not more than merely disappointing, ending.

Now it is time to look to the future.

I agree with Year2 that Dan Mullen will succeed Urban Meyer in Gainesville and Gus Malzahn will succeed Dan Mullen in Starkville. While Kirby Smart could prove to be the wild card that reshuffles the deck in that scenario, I strongly suspect that Jeremy Foley will be making a trip to Jacksonville to entice Coach Mullen back into the Florida fold while Coach Meyer’s former offensive coordinator is in town for the perhaps presciently named Gator Bowl.

There is no denying Coach Mullen’s credentials—I believe he should have been named the SEC Coach of the Year, given what he did with what he had—but it is hard to believe that anyone could be more successful than Coach Meyer was. Granted, it was hard to believe when Urban Meyer was hired at Florida that anyone could be more successful there than Steve Spurrier had been, but the recent resurgence of the Florida State program makes this a tough time for the Sunshine State Saurians to be in transition. The Gators could take a step back, however slight; given the fact that six of the last nine series meetings in the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party have been decided by margins of seven or fewer points, a slight step back by Florida may be all the steps back we need.

If all goes according to Year2’s sensible prediction, that will send the SEC’s hottest coaching commodity, 2010 Broyles Award winner Gus Malzahn, to Mississippi State. If, as many suspect, Coach Malzahn is the true power behind Gene Chizik’s throne, the most exceptional autumn in Auburn history could be followed by the winter of the Tigers’ discontent, as Cameron Newton goes pro, the architect of the Plainsmen’s impressive offensive attack bolts for cowbell country, and the NCAA investigation continues. One small step back for Florida could be one giant leap to the rear for Auburn.

In short, it is too early yet to know for sure, but there is the distinct possibility that two of Georgia’s three biggest rivals are about to get worse . . . and Mark Richt is 9-1 all-time against the third. Skeptics have asked, somewhat sensibly, how the Bulldogs will be better in 2011. To that reasonable inquiry, I now respond simply: we don’t have to be better, as long as everybody else is worse.

We send our best wishes to the Meyers, congratulating Urban Meyer on a stellar career and hoping this Christmas season brings joy to his family and him as they begin this new chapter of their lives together. As we bid Urban Meyer farewell, though, we in Bulldog Nation should look ahead to a future that now appears just a tiny bit brighter . . . and we should appreciate the fact that it may not be entirely coincidental, after all, that Santa Claus wears red and black.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Urban Meyer stepping down as Florida’s coach, sources tell FanHouse. Press conference this evening to announce decision

In a series notable for offering an overwhelming home court advantage, Mark Fox’s Bulldogs went on the road and claimed a 73-72 victory over in-state rival Georgia Tech in Alexander Memorial Coliseum. In many respects, the game was as even as the score indicated.

Both teams shot 44.3 per cent from the field, with each squad sinking 27 of 61 two-point shots. Georgia and Georgia Tech garnered ten fouls apiece, and the Yellow Jacket bench contributed 18 points, just four more than the Bulldog reserves added to the tally.

In other facets, though, the game was a mismatch. The Engineers dominated the boards, pulling down 43 rebounds to the Red and Black’s 30, and the home team hit ten of twelve free throws (83.3%) while the visitors struggled to go seven of 15 from the charity stripe (46.7%).

The Bulldogs benefited from twelve-of-22 shooting from beyond the arc (54.5%) as the Golden Tornado managed to get just eight of their 20 three-point tries to drop (40.0%). Perhaps most significantly, Georgia Tech turned the ball over twice as frequently as Georgia (14-7), and the Red and Black turned those steals into 15 points, more than offsetting the ten ticks put on the scoreboard by the Ramblin’ Wreck off of takeaways.

Despite their slow start, the Hoop Dogs overcame a 35-29 halftime deficit and stormed back to score 44 points in the second half, led by Trey Thompkins’s and Dustin Ware’s respective 21-point performances. Thompkins hit four of five free throws, while Ware went seven of nine both from two-point range and from three-point range.

Ware’s symmetrical shooting performance was a nice touch, as it allowed the fans of the home team to drown their sorrows with mental pictures of Jeri Ryan while the Red and Black faithful did what Bulldog fans do; namely, celebrate yet another victory over Georgia Tech in yet another sport.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Mark Fox’s Hoop Dogs go on the road to a venue I recently visited for the purpose of squaring off against in-state rival Georgia Tech in a battle for Peach State bragging rights that could benefit the Bulldogs in the eyes of the NCAA Tournament selection committee. (Although, really, the selection committee’s machinations make the BCS seem coherent and transparent by comparison.)

If you can’t be at the Thrillerdome, join in the conversation in the comment thread. Your participation is welcome, so that it doesn’t wind up being just one guy talking to himself . . . not that such a thing would ever really happen, mind you.

Go ‘Dawgs!

[Georgia Tech's] longest win streak against the [D]ogs was 10 games stretching from 1958-1961. As a member of the SEC from 1932-1964, Tech dominated the [D]ogs with a 57-31 overall record. Since joining the ACC, Tech has actually posted a 15-20 record against the [D]ogs. The ACC era included a particularly brutal stretch where the [D]ogs defeated Tech 7 times in a row (Dominique Wilkins’ college tenure was right in the middle of this run). Paul Hewitt has yet to amass a winning streak against Georgi[a]. The last time Tech posted a winning streak against the [D]ogs was 1992-1994.

College football’s championship weekend is a bit of an oddity, as few teams are playing games yet most of the games that are played carry more than merely ordinary consequences. Only 15 of my top 25 teams were in action this past weekend, including just two of my top nine and just five of my top 16, so, when assembling this week’s rankings, I started from last week’s BlogPoll ballot and adjusted where circumstances warranted. These are the rankings thereby produced:

Dawg Sports Ballot – Week 15

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Auburn Tigers	–
2	Oregon Ducks	–
3	TCU Horned Frogs	–
4	Michigan St. Spartans	–
5	Arkansas Razorbacks	–
6	Oklahoma Sooners	4
7	Wisconsin Badgers	-1
8	LSU Tigers	-1
9	Stanford Cardinal	-1
10	Ohio St. Buckeyes	-1
11	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	–
12	Missouri Tigers	–
13	Texas A&M Aggies	–
14	Alabama Crimson Tide	2
15	Nevada Wolf Pack	2
16	Boise St. Broncos	2
17	Virginia Tech Hokies	2
18	West Virginia Mountaineers	3
19	Nebraska Cornhuskers	-5
20	South Carolina Gamecocks	-5
21	Florida St. Seminoles	-1
22	Utah Utes	–
23	Navy Midshipmen	1
24	Central Florida Knights	1
25	Connecticut Huskies	–
Dropouts: Northern Illinois Huskies

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings “

Here, in a nutshell, are my reasons for ranking the teams as I did:

• Absent a reason to move a team relative to the squads around it, I left a team alone. For instance, the Sooners leapfrogged the Badgers because Oklahoma’s wins over No. 11 Oklahoma State and No. 19 Nebraska trumped Wisconsin’s win over No. 10 Ohio State.
• There is still no comparison between Auburn’s resume and Oregon’s. Both teams went 9-0 against conference opponents, with the Tigers carding a thirteenth victory to set alongside the twelve collected by the Ducks. The Plainsmen beat No. 5 Arkansas, No. 8 Louisiana State, No. 14 Alabama, No. 20 South Carolina (twice), the Gator Bowl-bound Mississippi St. Bulldogs, the Liberty Bowl-bound Georgia Bulldogs, the Meineke Car Care Bowl-bound Clemson Tigers, and the BBVA Compass Bowl-bound Kentucky Wildcats, while Oregon defeated No. 9 Stanford, the USC Trojans, the Alamo Bowl-bound Arizona Wildcats, the Holiday Bowl-bound Washington Huskies, and the Music City Bowl-bound Tennessee Volunteers. The Ducks may well get the better of the Tigers in Glendale on January 10—I hope they do, as a matter of fact—but any blogger who’s still voting Oregon No. 1 at this point isn’t Addicted to Quack, he’s addicted to crack.
• Yes, I continue to allow logic to dictate the sequence in which I have the three 11-1 Big Ten co-champions ranked. The Badgers, the Buckeyes, and the Spartans all have identical ledgers, both overall and in conference play, and none of them has a meaningful win against a team from outside the league. All other things being equal, Michigan State’s win over Wisconsin gets the Spartans ranked ahead of the Badgers and Wisconsin’s win over Ohio State gets the Badgers ranked ahead of the Buckeyes.
• I considered ranking the Fresno St. Bulldogs after Pat Hill’s squad defeated the bowl-eligible Illinois Fighting Illini, but, since the West Coast FSU finished 8-4 and lost at home to the Hawaii Warriors, who went 10-3, I couldn’t very well include the Bulldogs in the top 25, and I wasn’t about to rank the Aloha State Islanders after they lost to the Colorado Buffaloes, so the idea of a third WAC entrant into the top 25 was a non-starter.
• With Fresno State and Hawaii thus eliminated, the spot in the top 25 vacated by the Northern Illinois Huskies very nearly went to the Miami (Ohio) RedHawks, who upset NIU in the MAC Championship Game to run their record to 9-4. Unfortunately for Miami (Ohio), the Mid-American Conference champions’ 45-3 road loss to the Cincinnati Bearcats disqualified them from inclusion, so the last spot went to Connecticut, an 8-4 Big East co-champion bound for the most undeserved BCS bowl berth ever. Yes, I’m just as embarrassed about that ranking as you are.

As always, I welcome your constructive criticisms in the comments below, where I will be happy to answer any questions. I still have time to adjust my ballot in the event anyone states a persuasive case why I should do so.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Please Lend a Helping Hand to a Fellow SB Nation Blogger

Our mindset going into the Liberty Bowl, and you can see that from the season we’ve had, is we’re going to win it. We’re not just going to a bowl game and going to play an SEC school. We’re going to win this game.

Central Florida Knights defensive end Bruce Miller (December 4, 2010)

Miller seems rather sure of himself in the wake of UCF’s Conference USA championship campaign, in which the Knights tied a school record with ten wins in a single season. I can’t help but admire the young man’s confidence, especially since Central Florida has never in its history won a bowl game and the SEC has gone 4-0 against Conference USA since the Liberty Bowl began pairing representatives of the two leagues.

In 2010, the Knights have gone 10-1 against teams from Division I-AA, Conference USA, and the MAC while posting a ledger of 0-2 against teams from automatically-qualifying BCS conferences. George O’Leary’s club fell to the N.C. State Wolfpack by a 28-21 margin in Orlando and dropped a 17-13 decision to the Kansas St. Wildcats on the road. However, Central Florida outgained N.C. State but finished at minus-five in turnover margin, and Kansas State needed a go-ahead touchdown with 24 seconds to play to beat UCF in a game featuring a weather delay of almost 90 minutes.

In short, the Knights are no pushovers, but they have gone 0-11 against major conference opposition since upending N.C. State by a two-point margin to start the 2007 season. Since moving up to Division I-A status in 1996, Central Florida has gone 1-13 against the Southeastern Conference, falling to the South Carolina Gamecocks in 1996, 1997, and 2005, to the Mississippi Rebels in 1997, to the Auburn Tigers in 1997, 1998, and 1999, to the Mississippi St. Bulldogs in 1997 and 2007, to the Florida Gators in 1999 and 2006, to the Georgia Bulldogs in 1999, and to the Arkansas Razorbacks in 2001, but beating the Alabama Crimson Tide in 2000, when the defending SEC champions went 3-8 in Mike DuBose’s final season at the Capstone.

Go ‘Dawgs!

It’s Official: Georgia Bulldogs Are Liberty Bowl-Bound

Growing up just outside of Athens my parents were not the biggest UGA fans.  My uncle played for Georgia Tech and my father has been an unapologetic Tech fan since then.  When I was growing up you always planned your gameday outings to occur during game time so you did not get caught up in traffic.  My fondness for the Dogs and the intensity of my fandom has only increased with age.

 The first Bulldog game I attended was the 1976 36-24 victory over the California Golden Bears. My dad also took me to the Tech/ Auburn game the same year. Wonderful time for a five-year old kid.  The Richmond game my next year was also a Bulldog victory. One of the worse gameday experiences was watching the victory over BYU in a severe downpour from the upper deck.

But as a young man in Athens, there was no more of a Bulldog centric place in town, save the university, than the Athens YMCA.  All the jerseys had a bulldog on them, regardless of sport or color.  The team’s names were taken from college teams. For example 2nd grade basketball would be teams from the Big 8, 4th grade football from the PAC 10.  When your teams were from the SEC, no one was the Georgia Bulldogs. Coach Squeaky would not have it.  As much as the Dogs were loved, the Engineers were despised, so no team was condemned to be Yellowjackets either.  Many Bulldog players were around the “Y” and Pine Tops during the summer, Dicky Clark and Scott Woerner to name a few.  I heard the 1982 “sugar falling from the sky” call from a YMCA bus on the way back from Thomaston, Ga.

One of the highlights of football at the “Y” was the annual trip to play “between the hedges” before a home game.  This meant getting to the stadium at about 11:00 to scrimmage, and take the game in from the east end zone.  My first trip was as a third grader in 1979 to the UVA game.  A terrible, horrible, homecoming loss.   It rained so much the day before we were not allowed to play on the field but had our scrimmage on the practice field.  That day was also memorable because the next day the embassy in Tehran was overrun.  The remaining trips resulted in true “between the hedges” experiences.

The early 80’s were a heady time in Athens.  The summer of 1981 found me at the Bulldogs football camp.  Coach Dooley put in an appearance from time to time. But for the most part it was all Coach Erk Russell, all the time.  Days spent running drills with among others, Mike Cavan, and nights spent watching endless amounts of NFL films production in the cow barn behind the Coliseum, with Coach Kasay doing bed check.  During camp we were taken to the bookstore so the campers could buy some UGA swag.  My grandmother worked there and not only gave me the employee discount, but an additional twenty bucks to load up with.

During high school I attended a few games, mainly working around my job.  That was before the west end zone was enclosed and you get spots on the hill adjacent to the visitor’s section.  Saw a thrilling victory against LSU, made all the better given the proximity to the Bengal faithful.  During my junior year of high school I was lightly recruited by a few schools, including both UGA and Tech, which speaks more to the massive efforts by those schools than to any talent I had at playing football.    I was offered the opportunity to walk on at Tech, but in a decision that was at the time not appreciated by all, I declined.

My game attendance while enrolled at UGA was not all that spectacular.  I kept my high school job while in college and with the future Ms. Parker attending an out of state school my schedule was adjusted to permit travel to spend time with her.  My next job involved working only weekends as well so I attended maybe only one or two games a year during my three years at UGA.  The future Mrs. Parker’s parents and their friends were big Dawg fans and would drive from Greensboro to Athens on game days in a converted Harvester Scout called the “Bulldog Buggy” so we would go and tailgate with them.  Given that this was during the Goff years, perhaps it was for the better that my game attendance was not higher..  It was interesting to share classes with Mack Brown (calculus) and Garrison Hearst (contemporary Georgia).

Moving on to medical school in Augusta the class schedule kept me from many games as well.  The future Mrs. Parker was also in Augusta during that time so the motivation to return to for games was not that strong.  When residency moved me to Charleston, WV I followed the Dogs from afar.  With Donnan leaving Marshall to coach the Dogs, there was interest in the local media as to how he and the Dogs were doing.  I bought my house at the end of my intern year and my parents came over during the second week of October, and my Dad graciously bought me a large screen TV for the new house.  The first show watched on that screen was the 38-13 loss to Tennessee in 1997.

My return to Georgia was about six months after Mark Richt’s arrival in Athens.  Living in Columbus the population of football fans here are roughly 1/3 Auburn, 1/3 Bama, 1/3 UGA.  I make it to Athens for about 1 game a year, which is a nice time for the kids to visit their grandparents.   Notable games included the lovely 51-7 win over the North Avenue Trade School in 2002 as well as the 2007 wins over Oklahoma State, Auburn at Sanford Stadium, and Tech in Atlanta.  Once the outcome of that game was no longer in question, the focus of the Dawg faithful became the outcome of the UT/UK game.  In their constant struggle to stay classy, we were serenaded by “Rocky Top” from the fraternity houses on the way back to the car.

It is probably when and where I grew up that has influenced my choice of Tech as UGA’s biggest rival.  While Florida and Auburn are the games I most want UGA to win, the Tech game is the one I can’t stand for them to lose.

Oh, and I’ve never been to the WLOCP, maybe someday.

As a lifelong Georgia fan, I am disposed both by birth and by training to think the worst of Georgia Tech. Consequently, I came away from my visit to Alexander Memorial Coliseum for this afternoon’s basketball game between the Lady Dogs and the Lady Jackets inclined to note, inter alia, that the so-called “Thrillerdome” is surprisingly small, that the roof on the place doesn’t appear to have had a lick of work done on it since the place was built in the 1950s, that the ticket windows are remarkably poorly organized to have been set up by a bunch of engineers, and that the absence of liberal arts majors at the Institute is attested to by the fact that the menu board at one of the concession stands advertises a “souvenier [sic.] mug,” but I come not to bury my trip to the City Too Busy to Hate, but to praise it.

My family and I traveled to Georgia Tech’s basketball arena today to witness a contest that was competitive in the first half before getting out of hand in a foul-heavy second half. My seven-year-old son, having learned the most famous abbreviation the Yellow Jackets ever inspired a Georgia man to create when he saw the sign emblazoned with those four special letters while entering Sanford Stadium beside the Uga graves prior to kickoff of the Idaho State game, exhorted the Red and Black ladies: “GATA!” (For the record, when asked for what those initials stood, I told him what Erk Russell told the news media: “Get after their anatomy!”)

That we got to see Georgia play Georgia Tech, though, was incidental to our reason for being there (or, at least, as incidental as a sporting event pitting the Bulldogs against the Yellow Jackets can be for someone like me). My son belongs to a group called “Little Dribblers,” which is made up of second graders at his school who do synchronized basketball dribbling tricks. Their first public performance of the school year was at halftime of today’s women’s college basketball game.

This video from a year ago shows the same group, although this was before my son joined Little Dribblers, the routine has changed somewhat, and this year’s routine was set to James Brown’s “I Feel Good”:

My son, Thomas, was positioned at the end of a row for this afternoon’s performance, which put him directly under one of the baskets on Cremins Court. The boy bristled somewhat at having to high-five Buzz as he left the hardwood, but I reminded him that he was just being sportsmanlike as a visitor to the Yellow Jackets’ arena. Given the final score of the game played by Andy Landers’s Lady Dogs, I’m just glad Thomas’s participation in Little Dribblers ensured that at least one loyal Bulldog could claim to have performed well with a basketball in Alexander Memorial Coliseum on Sunday afternoon.

Go ‘Dawgs!

An SEC team has won the last four BCS championships, the single piece of factual information its fans have to hold over the rest of the country in their insistence on the on-field dominance of the South. Oregon’s ever-changing array of flashy uniforms and spread option offense are the living antithesis of the salt-of-the-earth image the SEC cultivates for itself. Rest assured, their confidence in a fifth straight win – the first over a bunch of West Coast pretty boys – will be staggeringly high. The Ducks can either shut them up and usher in more respect for an expanded, rebranded Pac-10, or leave the rest of America to another year of gloating from the other side of the Mason-Dixon.

Remember that in each of the past three seasons, the nation’s No. 1 team has lost on Championship Saturday.

At noon, the Central Florida Knights take on the SMU Mustangs in a game that likely will determine the Georgia Bulldogs‘ bowl opponent. At 3:00, the Civil War (as opposed to the War Between the States) kicks off when the Oregon St. Beavers host the Oregon Ducks. At 4:00, the Auburn Tigers begin their clash with the South Carolina Gamecocks for the SEC championship. The showdown for the Apple Cup gets underway at 7:00, three-quarters of an hour before the Florida St. Seminoles and the Virginia Tech Hokies square off with the ACC crown on the line. After the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Oklahoma Sooners add the concluding chapter to their storied rivalry, the UCLA Bruins and the USC Trojans meet to settle hegemony in the City of Angels.

No, Georgia isn’t playing, but that just means it’s a pressure-free weekend. Your thoughts on the day’s action are invited in the comments below.

Go ‘Dawgs!

“The Dawg Gone Podcast” is Available for Your Listening Pleasure

Remember the Notre Dame game? Evidently, this was a repeat of that, only with the good guys holding on to win this time.

After holding a commanding halftime lead, Mark Fox’s Hoop Dogs fell behind in the second half, ultimately prevailing by a 66-64 final margin to run their record for the season to 5-2 overall and 3-0 in Stegeman Coliseum. Trey Thompkins led the way for the Red and Black, adding a trio of blocks and a pair of steals to a performance that included nine rebounds and 20 points.

Georgia turned the ball over 13 times to the Blazers’ 11 and sunk only three of ten shots from beyond the arc while allowing UAB to hit seven of 17 three-point baskets, but the Bulldogs made up for it by pulling down ten more rebounds (37-27) and tacking on ten more points off the bench (13-3).

The Red and Black shot 50 per cent from the field (28 of 56), while Alabama-Birmingham saw only 25 of 57 two-pointers fall. Despite giving the ball away more frequently, the Hoop Hounds turned their takeaways into more points, putting 21 ticks on the scoreboard to the visitors’ 17 points off of turnovers.

Perhaps most encouraging is the fact that Georgia shot 77.8 per cent from the free throw line, including four for four shooting from the charity stripe by Jeremy Price and Gerald Robinson in the final 66 seconds to render moot Jamarr Sanders’s three-point basket at the buzzer.

The Bulldogs held a commanding 38-23 lead with two minutes to play in the first half and remained out in front by eleven points at the break, but the Blazers whittled the home team’s advantage down to nothing before claiming a 57-56 edge on an Aaron Johnson free throw inside the final four minutes. Georgia deserves credit for winning a thriller, but it is cause for concern that Georgia had to win a thriller.

After a year of near-misses last season, the Bulldogs have found a way to win a close one; now they need to learn how to put teams away. If they don’t, more than a few of these sorts of games aren’t going to go their way. For now, winning ugly is good enough, but winning ugly won’t work when the Red and Black get to the meat of their schedule.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Since I totally missed the existence of the Georgia Bulldogs’ last game on the hardwood, I thought I’d better get this evening’s basketball game day open comment thread up early. (I remain ashamed of my oversight in overlooking entirely the Hoop Dogs’ outing against the Manhattan Jaspers, if only because “Manhattan Jaspers” is just plain fun to say.)

Why should tonight’s outing be on your radar screen? Well, I’ll just let Mark Fox answer that question for me:

Game day! 7pm tip vs a good UAB team. It’s our 1st home game in 2 weeks &we aren’t home again for another 15 days. Come cheer for the Dawgs!

There you go. If you can’t be in Stegeman Coliseum, you can join in the fun here by sharing your thoughts in the comments below.

Go ‘Dawgs!

I had planned a posting on the early returns from the 2010-2011 basketball season for today, but as in other avenues of life, college football news is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. So basketball will wait until tomorrow.

By now I assume you’ve all read Kyle’s excellent take on the announcement yesterday that Coach Dave Van Halanger will be transitioning out of the S&C Coordinator position into an administrative role which appears to be “Special Assistant Life Coach/Dr. Phil/Driver’s License Commissar.*” He did not sound particularly happy about the move, but as Kyle indicated yesterday, this season we’ve been outscored in the 4th quarter as often as not. We’ve lost as often as not, as well. Some of that has been the result of mental lapses at the end of the game. Caleb King’s fumble against Colorado. The missed block/sack against Arkansas. As the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. To Coach Richt’s credit, for the second season in a row, he’s doing something different.

Coach Joe Tereshinki and Coach John Kasay, long familiar faces around Butts-Mehre, will be moving into the Strength and Conditioning Program. The uniform initial response to this move from the Dawgosphere and message boards seems to have been a collective face palm followed by a cautious reservation of judgment. I think the former was perhaps a bit premature and the latter certainly justified. What follows is the roundest, rankest speculation imaginable. I don’t have any “inside sources”, a fact which I happily acknowledge here a lot. It allows me to bloviate without feeling the need to be accurate, which believe you me is a nice scinture to be free of as a college football blogger. But I digress.

Contrary to popular opinion, the director of your strength and conditioning program does not need to be a world reknowned exercise physiologist. The director of this portion of the program needs to get guys into the football complex on cold February mornings at 5:00 a.m. (not hard, really) and then get them to give maximum effort on every repetition of every set of every exercise once there (i.e., the hard part). A lot of this work is done by assistant strength coaches, most of whom even the most diehard Bulldog fans could not name without first finding that ubiquitous picture of them in the media guide. It falls to the Director of Strength and Conditioning to make sure that those unknown stuntmen of the weightroom are getting the maximum effort.

I do not think that either Coach Tereshinski or Coach Kasay is going to be the one personally spotting the squats. I think what we’re seeing is an acknowledgment that the problem was not what we were doing in the strength & conditioning program, but rather how we were executing it. Expect to hear some grumbling from the players. Life is about to get a bit tougher for them. This is about a change in the culture of our strength and conditioning program. And culture shock is no fun.

One aspect of this of this story that I think has been undercovered is the fact that Greg McGarity’s fingerprints are all over this move. Florida employs a slightly different model in their S&C program, in that they have a Director who oversees the program for all sports and assistant coaches who work with specific sports on sport-specific programs. I am willing to wager that this is a move in that direction and that we will see additions to the staff that put that model into effect.

It also bears repeating that it matters not what Justin Anderson can bench press, or how fast Brandon Boykin can run the Spec Towns track on a July morning. What matters, what is required from a strength & conditioning program, is the inculcation of mental toughness. The physical strain is merely a means to an end. A way of demonstrating to young players who have spent their high school years dominating lesser physical specimens that they can in fact do more than they believed that they could. That they can, in the words of Erk Russsell, get the stop “one more time.”

Teams that win the 4th quarter go into the 4th quarter knowing that they will win. Not because they have developed an overabundance of fast twitch muscle fiber, but because 4-5 days a week for the preceeding months and years they have pushed through their own barriers and come out the other side. It’s about being mentally tougher than the guy across the line. That does not happen in October. It happens in January, and March and July when nineteen year old men would rather be sleeping.  This isn’t a move about plyometrics and hyperplasia. It’s a move about changing what kind of young men we put on the football field. And while we’ll certainly hear the occasional trickle of information about how that’s going over the next few months, we won’t truly know if this move, perhaps a move which is still in progress, was successful until the Georgia Bulldogs next play football and have to mentally outlast someone to win a football game.

*I added that last part out of pure aspiration. Bloggers have dreams too.

When attempting earlier this season to address the problems in the Georgia Bulldogs’ football program, we looked at the team’s strength and conditioning regimen, and the general consensus appeared to be that this was at or near the top of the list of issues in need of correction.

Accordingly, the news that a change was being made at the top of the Bulldogs’ strength and conditioning program was greeted with mixed emotions: Georgia fans were pleased to learn that the organization had decided to go in a different direction, but many were lukewarm at the announcement that this was accomplished by reshuffling the organizational chart rather than by going outside the program. Joe Tereshinski is a damn good ‘Dawg with an unimpeachable Georgia pedigree, and we all hope he will restore the toughness that was a hallmark of the Red and Black in their heyday, but, lately, hiring from without (Warren Belin, Todd Grantham, Greg McGarity) has worked out a good deal better than promoting from within (Mike Bobo, Damon Evans, Willie Martinez).

How critical is conditioning to the Bulldogs’ success? Consider these data:

• Against the South Carolina Gamecocks, Georgia trailed by eight points after three quarters. The ‘Dawgs lost by eleven points.
• Against the Arkansas Razorbacks, Georgia tied the game with just under four minutes to play. The ‘Dawgs gave up a three-play game-winning touchdown drive in the final minute.
• Against the Mississippi St. Bulldogs, Georgia trailed by one point after three quarters. The ‘Dawgs lost by twelve points.
• Against the Colorado Buffaloes, Georgia led by ten points with eight minutes remaining in the third quarter. The ‘Dawgs were outscored 15-3 down the stretch and lost by two points.
• Against the Florida Gators, Georgia tied the game with just over nine minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. The ‘Dawgs were outscored 10-7 down the stretch and lost by three points.
• Against the Auburn Tigers, Georgia trailed by four points after three quarters. The ‘Dawgs lost by 18 points.

The Classic City Canines have been in a position to win the game in the fourth quarter of all six of their losses this season, but they are not closing the deal. Heck, they aren’t even holding the line; they’re surrendering late leads and falling by double digits to teams they trailed by single scores. Even in last weekend’s win over the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, the Red and Black were up 35-21 with 15 minutes to play and were outscored in the fourth quarter . . . and that is in spite of the fact that the Golden Tornado voluntarily conceded a touchdown to the Bulldogs in the closing minutes of the contest. Last Saturday marked the sixth time this season that Georgia has been outscored in the fourth quarter.

Prior to one of the brutal battles between the Bulldogs and the Clemson Tigers in the 1980s, John Brantley—the Georgia linebacker, not the Florida quarterback—said the border war was “to see who the men are. It is the kind of game where women and children need to be sitting in the top level because bones are going to be cracking. It’s going to be really intense.” Clemson coach Danny Ford summed up a familiar Tiger lament: “They’re taught they can whip us in the fourth quarter.”

The ability to whip the opposition in the fourth quarter is not now a defining characteristic of the Bulldogs, and Georgia’s hard-earned reputation for intensity and toughness has been squandered. Coach Tereshinski is a part of the Red and Black’s proud past, who certainly has the ability to hand down the lessons Vince Dooley and Erk Russell once taught in Athens. The question is whether what David Pollack describes as Coach Tereshinski’s “very, very old school” approach is what best serves the program at this point. Says Pollack:

I don’t think there’s anyone that ever pushed me harder than Coach T. Just old school, hard work, you’re going to do things the hard way. He’s just got that really passionate, fiery, he’s gonna let you know if you’re not doing it his way. It’s different.

At this point, I’m on board for “different,” because whatever the ‘Dawgs are doing now ain’t working. Here’s the problem, though: Georgia’s best chance for restoring its elite status in the SEC isn’t “to do things the hard way,” it’s to do things the smart way. Nick Saban didn’t restore Bear Bryant’s Alabama Crimson Tide program by taking his players to Junction, Texas; he restored it by hiring Scott Cochran, who was born the year Coach Bryant won his last national championship.

I don’t mean to sell Coach Tereshinski short; now that he has been given the opportunity to take charge of his alma mater’s strength and conditioning program, he may make sweeping changes to modernize Georgia’s approach. I certainly hope that is the case, and I will be encouraged if the next report we get out of Athens is of a phone call from Coach Tereshinski to Coach Cochran to discuss the younger man’s methods. Until we start to see results on the field, though—not reports from the spring of how the players are “really getting after it”; not even three quarters’ worth of toughness in next fall’s opener against the Boise St. Broncos, but 60 minutes of solid football—I am going to raise four fingers into the air over Sanford Stadium to the tune of “Krypton Fanfare” with high hopes but muted expectations.

Lateral moves are not necessarily bad moves, and splashy hires are not always the best hires, but this program will not cure what ails it with “more of the same.” This may be a step in the right direction, but it just as easily could prove to be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and I had been hoping for a more confidence-inspiring hire than this.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Strength program changes coming at Georgia

This is why the Internet was invented.

Uploaded by cwashpt . HT – trillium via the DawgVent.

Mark Richt rebuilt the Georgia Bulldog football program in 2001 on the core premise of Finishing the Drill. The idea was simple. If we work harder than the other guys, we’re going to win the fourth quarter and therefore the game. (Image by Jim Hipple)

There’s been lots of bitching and moaning here and elsewhere about our strength program. The crux of the argument usually sounds like this, “Look at us getting mauled at the line of scrimmage.” Or “I hear bad things about S&C.” Beyond that the feedback is usually either very vague or full of innuendo.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t really know what goes on in the weight room. But you know what? I don’t care. I don’t give a damn if they try ballet, dabble in yoga, bust rocks or replicate the Siberian Workout Scene from Rocky IV. The process is of no interest to me. All I care about is the outcome.

This year against BCS opposition, Georgia was outscored in the fourth quarter/OT in 8 of 10 games by a combined score of 54 UGA to 88 opposition. In the six losses, the numbers are even more lopsided at 37-61. That point differential is an unacceptable outcome.

This isn’t a symptom of some larger issue. This is one of the DNA-level problems that Coach Richt has to resolve between now and next season, and it’s not going to be solved by touting fake 40 yard dash times or making field trips the swimming pool.

It’s time to GATA again.

PWD

There are a variety of reasons to get a bit crotchety over this weekend’s SEC Championship Game, a game which for the fifth year in a row will not include the Georgia Bulldogs. For one, Auburn is playing in the game, and around here we hate Auburn. For another, South Carolina is playing in the game as well. We don’t hate South Carolina, though we do hate to see them succeed because, egad, they were insufferable enough when they were awful for decades at a time. After a national championship in baseball and a divisional tittle in football, every door in Richland County will have to be widened by 2 feet just to allow for all the big-headed traffic.

But we’ll watch it and we’ll like it because its the last SEC football of the season, and like squirrels in September we must fatten ourselves up for the impending lean times. You know what else you can do on a frigid night when other teams in your conference are playing meaningful football and your team is not? Drink.

So, in lieu of a gameday cocktail, I thought I’d provide you with a way to wile away the evening with whatever cocktail you choose. Dawg Sports readers, I am pleased to present . . . The 2010 SEC Championship Game Drinking Game:

• Every time Vern Lundquist gets confused and thinks Steve Spurrier is coaching the Florida Gators in the Georgia Dome, drink.
• Every time a member of the broadcast crew refers to Cam Newton as “this young man” or uses the words “adversity”, “scrutiny” or “debit card linked to a secret numbered account”, finish your drink.
• If Tim Tebow is shown onscreen cry in your drink, then drink.
• If Bo Jackson appears onscreen in file footage from his playing days, drink, then scream at the television “Bo knows elective hip surgery!!!” Depending on how much adversity Cam Newton has faced by that point in the game, and whether Tebow can be patched in via satellite, this may become very, very difficult.
• If Bo appears onscreen live from the Auburn sideline point and shout “Hey it’s Charles Barkley!” and drink or don’t drink at your leisure. This would be even better if you’re in the Georgia Dome, because Bo’s a little touchy about that weight he’s gained. Maybe he should try MMA.
• Every time Stephen Garcia scrambles out of trouble then inexplicably makes things even worse with a fumble or interception, the first player to scream “Brah!!!!” and finish his drink becomes “The Tanneyhill.” The Tannyhill gets to direct one person per quarter to finish their drink at any time. Unless the Tanneyhill actually is Steve Tanneyhill. In which case, Bro, you totally need to send us some pictures of your SEC Championship Game party.
• If Pat Dye is mentioned by the broadcast crew, slip the person to your right whatever cash you have in your pocket under the table, then drink.
• If Pat Dye actually speaks on camera, take your pants off and finish your drink.
• Every time Steve Spurrier makes that constipated face of his (you know the one, don’t even pretend you have watched a scintilla of SEC football and don’t know the Spurrier constipation face . . .) drink.
• Every time Spurrier throws his visor, finish your drink. Then throw your visor or hat. If you’re not wearing one grab the headwear off the person nearest you and throw it. If your headwear theft fails, you must finish your neighbor’s drink.
• Every time Nick Fairley does something unsportsmanlike without getting penalized, drink half your drink.
• The first time Fairley is penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct, whether he had it coming or not, chug your drink. The last person to finish his drink is known as “The Trooper.”
• Subsequently, every time Trooper Taylor is shown waving his towel around like a jackass, take turns punching the Trooper in the face and screaming “act like an adult, jackass!”
• Every time Marcus Lattimore breaks a big run, drink. No joke here. I’m just trying to get you hammered and this seemed like the quickest way to do it.
• Every time Alshon Jeffery makes a catch, scream “pump that, Kiffy!!!” then drink.

Remember, drink responsibly, and don’t spear anybody two seconds after they release the ball. Or pimp your kid’s athletic services out for cash. Stay away from those and you should be fine*. I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about the mens’ sport we’re best at, basketball. All together:

Until then . . .

Go ‘Dawgs!!!

*It would also help if your short term financial interests align with Mike Slive’s. Every little bit helps, right?

2010 Season Highlights from Aaron Murray. The video was uploaded to Youtube by pr1sonmike

Watching this is about as encouraging as it gets.

PWD

If you had told me preseason that Aaron Murray would throw for 2,851 yards, 24 TDs and only 6 INTs with one game remaining on the schedule, I would’ve thought for sure that we’d have won 9-10 games. Easily. But here we sit at 6-6.

As a point of comparison, here are the first year starter totals for other recent UGA QBs:

• Joe Cox (RSr.) – 2,584 yards / 24 TDs / 15 INTs
• Matt Stafford (Fr.) – 1,749 / 7 TDs / 13 INTs
• DJ Shockley (RSr.) – 2,588 / 24 TDs / 5 INTs
• David Green (RFr.) – 2,789 / 17 TDs
• Quincy Carter (Fr.) – 2,484 / 12 TDs
• Mike Bobo (RJr.) – 2,440 / 13 TDs
• Eric Zeier (Fr.) – 1,984 / 7 TDs

INT information isn’t as easy to get your hands on prior to 2004. Also…Bobo was technically a first year starter in 1995, but he was injured so early that I didn’t think it was fair to post those stats.

Murray’s current passer rating of 162.7 is greater than Mike Bobo’s UGA single season record of 155.8. His 61.8% completion percentage is third best in UGA history for a single season, and he’s one TD away from tying the single season Georgia record Matt Stafford obtained in his final season before being the #1 pick of the draft.

All of which baffles me when I think about us being 6-6.

PWD

Dr. Saturday Looks at Todd Grantham’s Defense

A couple of readers already have beaten me to the punch on this one, but it bears amplification: Cameron Newton was determined by the NCAA to have been the subject of an amateurism violation, as a result of which the Auburn Tigers declared him ineligible, . . . and the reinstatement committee moved with unprecedented swiftness immediately to reinstate his eligibility.

This is ridiculous. The NCAA determined that Cecil Newton and Kenny Rogers attempted to “market the student-athlete as a part of a pay-for-play scenario in return for Newton’s commitment to attend college and play football“—in short, that the allegations we have heard in the press essentially were true (and these are the “facts of the case agreed upon by Auburn University and the NCAA enforcement staff”)—but, because this scheme ostensibly was orchestrated by his father (who, by all accounts, including Cam Newton’s, wielded enormous sway over his son’s choice), the younger Newton has been cleared to play without conditions, while the elder Newton has had his “access” to the Auburn program “limited.” Gee, that’s a heck of a punishment for a guy whose son has two games left in his career on the Plains.

The NCAA determined on Monday that a violation had occurred. Auburn declared Newton ineligible on Tuesday. The NCAA reinstated Newton on Wednesday. How long did the sword hang over the heads of the players, coaches, and administrators in Athens, Chapel Hill, Columbia, and Tuscaloosa while the NCAA left those programs twisting in the wind earlier this year? Might the fact that there now are television ratings and BCS bowl dollars to consider have caused the NCAA’s glacial pace to be replaced with lightning swiftness?

As noted by Year2, though, this is far from an acquittal, much less an exoneration. Reports the NCAA in a carefully-worded release:

Based on the information available to the reinstatement staff at this time, we do not have sufficient evidence that Cam Newton or anyone from Auburn was aware of this activity. . . .

Reinstatement decisions are independent of the NCAA enforcement process and typically are made once the facts of the student-athlete’s involvement are determined. The reinstatement process is likely to conclude prior to the close of an investigation.

In short, Auburn could still pay the price for this one, even though the NCAA apparently has concluded that Auburn merely being Auburn is not sufficient evidence of Auburn cheating. (This presumption is fair in a technical legal sense, although it is open to debate whether it is reasonable in reality.)

In the meantime, though, Clay Travis’s concerns suddenly seem much more important. Just think how much better the Georgia Bulldogs’ season might have been if A.J. Green had told the NCAA that his father was the one who signed onto Facebook and sold that jersey. Cam Newton’s NCAA defense basically boils down to this: “My own father appears to have shopped me around like chattel property, but it’s all right, because he was consistent enough in his treatment of me as a fungible commodity rather than as a human being not to give me any of whatever money he may have received in the deal.”

As fans, our fervent hope when someone associated with our preferred sports program is accused of wrongdoing is that we’re not backing the wrong horse. At the end of the day, our strong desire is to be able to say, “Everyone involved was innocent.” Given the facts as determined by the NCAA and agreed to by Auburn University, no Tiger fan can make such a claim here. There is a wide divide separating “proven innocent” from “insufficient evidence.” When your history of going undefeated on the gridiron invariably coincides with seasons in which at least one of your sports programs was on probation, though, you become accustomed to having to take your successes any way you can find them.

There are no moral victories at Auburn, but, for all the sighs of relief being heard on the Plains today, we now have been given reason by the NCAA to believe that there have been a dozen immoral victories at Auburn this season . . . and counting.

Go ‘Dawgs!

An Alabama Fan Gets A Taste of Good Clean Old-Fashioned Hate

I was a little pressed for time when compiling this week’s BlogPoll ballot, so I welcome your constructive criticisms in the short span of time separating the publication of this posting from the submission deadline. In particular, if you know of any four-loss teams that are worthy of inclusion (or if you wish to state a case for three-loss Hawaii or Tulsa), by all means, let me know in the comments below. As matters stand, here are the top 25 teams in the land from my perspective:

Dawg Sports Ballot – Week 14

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Auburn Tigers	–
2	Oregon Ducks	–
3	TCU Horned Frogs	1
4	Michigan St. Spartans	2
5	Arkansas Razorbacks	8
6	Wisconsin Badgers	1
7	LSU Tigers	-2
8	Stanford Cardinal	–
9	Ohio St. Buckeyes	–
10	Oklahoma Sooners	5
11	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	-1
12	Missouri Tigers	–
13	Texas A&M Aggies	1
14	Nebraska Cornhuskers	4
15	South Carolina Gamecocks	1
16	Alabama Crimson Tide	-5
17	Nevada Wolf Pack	5
18	Boise St. Broncos	-15
19	Virginia Tech Hokies	–
20	Florida St. Seminoles	–
21	West Virginia Mountaineers	–
22	Utah Utes	-1
23	Northern Illinois Huskies	1
24	Navy Midshipmen	1
25	Central Florida Knights	–
Dropouts: N.C. State Wolfpack, Arizona Wildcats

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings “

I will be happy to answer any questions or consider any feedback left in the comments, but, generally speaking, these are my reasons for ranking the teams as I have:

• Finally, the official rankings state what I have said all along: Auburn is a more accomplished team than Oregon. The Ducks and the Plainsmen both are 8-0 in conference play, but Auburn has beaten No. 5 Arkansas, No. 7 Louisiana State, No. 15 South Carolina, No. 16 Alabama, and eight-win Mississippi State, whereas Oregon has defeated No. 8 Stanford, seven-win Arizona and Southern California, Division I-AA Portland State, and six Division I-A squads with losing records. I considered ranking Texas Christian ahead of the Pac-10 champions, since the Horned Frogs have bested five teams above .500, but TCU’s best win (over No. 22 Utah) was markedly inferior to the Ducks’ best triumph.
• While I understand the argument for letting margin of victory break the Big Ten deadlock, I am much less inclined to reward Bret Bielema for being a smirking jackass who runs up scores than I am to recognize the simple reality of head-to-head competition: Michigan State beat Wisconsin, and Wisconsin beat Ohio State, and all three teams finished with identical records, overall and in conference play, while none secured a marquee (or even particularly meaningful) out-of-conference win. (The Spartans’ three Division I-A non-conference opponents have a combined 17-18 record, the Badgers’ three Division I-A non-conference opponents have a combined 8-27 record, and the Buckeyes’ four Division I-A non-conference opponents have a combined 22-26 record.) All other things being equal—and all other things are—what ought to matter most is who beat whom.
• Six wins over teams with winning records (including No. 6 Wisconsin) earned the Spartans the No. 4 spot ahead of the Hogs, who rode a trio of quality victories (over No. 7 LSU, No. 13 Texas A&M, and No. 15 South Carolina) and a pair of respectable losses (to No. 1 Auburn and No. 16 Alabama) to the No. 5 ranking. The Badgers edged out the Bayou Bengals on the strength of Wisconsin’s win over No. 9 Ohio State, but Louisiana State earned the No. 7 spot with wins over No. 16 Alabama and No. 21 West Virginia, coupled with quality losses in close road contests against a pair of top five teams. For all the sparkle and glitter of the Cardinal’s stellar record, eight of Stanford’s eleven wins came against Division I-AA opposition or teams with losing ledgers, and Jim Harbaugh’s outfit has yet to defeat a team with more than seven wins to its credit. The Buckeyes likewise have beaten only one team with a record better than 7-5, and that team is 8-4 Ohio (Ohio).
• Then begins a tangled muddle of massed Big 12 teams. The Sooners finished at the head of the pack with the No. 10 ranking by virtue of beating No. 11 Oklahoma State and No. 20 Florida State while dropping road contests to a pair of top fifteen teams. The Cowboys sport the same record as the Sooners, but Oklahoma State lost to Oklahoma at home. Nevertheless, the Pokes finished in front of Mizzou because Mike Gundy’s club lost only to 10-2 division champions, whereas the Tigers lost to seven-win Texas Tech. A better record and a head-to-head win still kept Missouri ahead of the Aggies, but victories over both Nebraska and Oklahoma (along with losses to a trio of 10-2 teams in the top twelve) kept Texas A&M ahead of a Cornhusker unit that lost at home to a Texas outfit with a losing record.
• The Gamecocks might have edged Nebraska for the No. 14 spot, but the Palmetto State Poultry were embarrassed by Arkansas at home and fell to a .500 Kentucky club on the road. In addition, South Carolina’s best win (over No. 16 Alabama) was not of the same caliber as the Cornhuskers’ (over No. 11 Oklahoma State and No. 12 Missouri). The head-to-head result still kept the ‘Cocks in front of the Crimson Tide, but a quality win over the Razorbacks and a losses to three top fifteen teams kept Alabama ahead of the Wolf Pack, whose second-best victim after Boise State was a Fresno State club sporting a 7-4 ledger. The Broncos dropped behind the Nevada team that just bested BSU, as Boise State’s resume (featuring wins over six teams below .500, including three-win Wyoming, two-win New Mexico State, and one-win San Jose State) lacks the heft to survive a blemish. The Broncos remain in front of their most accomplished victim, a ten-win VPI team with only one win over a team with a record better than 7-5 and a loss to Division I-AA James Madison.
• The pickings get rather slim thereafter. The Seminoles, whose best win is over eight-win Maryland and whose losses came to three teams with a combined 25-11 record, narrowly beat out the Mountaineers, whose best win is over eight-win Maryland and whose losses came to three teams with a combined 24-11 record. The Utes cling to close wins over Air Force, Pittsburgh, and San Diego State to validate their 10-2 ledger, and the Huskies likewise point to victories over a pair of 8-4 outfits to justify their inclusion. The Midshipmen’s wins over Notre Dame and Southern Methodist barely allowed them to overcome a close loss to three-win Duke, and a dearth of otherwise acceptable options was all that allowed the Knights to sneak into the poll, despite UCF’s failure to beat so much as a single team with a winning record in the course of its 9-3 campaign.

I watched all or part of Miami (Ohio)-Temple on Tuesday, Texas-Texas A&M on Thursday, and Alabama-Auburn, Arizona-Oregon, and Boise State-Nevada on Friday before viewing much of Kentucky-Tennessee and attending Georgia-Georgia Tech on Saturday.

As always, your questions and constructive criticisms are most welcome in the comments below.

Go ‘Dawgs!

A pitiful 4-3 mark in last week’s SEC predictions dropped me to 52-13 for the season in conference forecasts, while a middling 3-2 ledger in last week’s national games of interest doomed me to limp into the final weekend of the regular season sporting a 36-22 record in non-SEC prognostications. Accordingly, it almost goes without saying that, when it comes to my ability to pick the winners of college football games, you should heed my weekly advice: Don’t Bet On It!

All of this week’s games are slated to take place on Saturday, December 4, unless otherwise noted:

MAC Championship Game: Miami (Ohio) RedHawks v. Northern Illinois Huskies (Friday, Dec. 3): This matchup of mascots is better suited to a Jack London short story than a college football game, which I suppose is appropriate, since the fact that this affray is taking place in Detroit in December suggests that tailgaters would be well advised to review the particulars of “To Build a Fire” before grilling bratwursts in the Ford Field parking lot. NIU is riding a nine-game winning streak, and the Huskies have topped 30 points in eight of those outings. Since the RedHawks rank 50th nationally in scoring defense, I’m going with Northern Illinois. Well, that, and the fact that I’m still ticked off over the fact that the ‘Dawgs lost to Miami (Ohio) in the ‘74 Tangerine Bowl.

Conference USA Championship Game: Central Florida Knights v. SMU Mustangs: Given the very high likelihood that the Georgia Bulldogs are Liberty Bowl-bound, I’m actually more interested in this one than in any other game being played outside of the Atlanta city limits. Here’s a fun fact for you: Orlando has hosted two previous Conference USA title tilts, and, in both of those games, the winning team scored exactly 44 points. Home field advantage has mattered little in this league championship clash, but, because the East Division champion has won three straight conference crowns, I’m predicting that the Knights will pad George O’Leary’s resume with a win.

ACC Championship Game: Florida St. Seminoles v. Virginia Tech Hokies: All right, all right, all right, Florida State is back, already! Which way will the game go when the ACC Atlantic Coastal division champion Seminoles face the ACC Coastal Atlantic other division champion Hokies in Jacksonville Charlotte some city along the Eastern seaboard lying somewhere between Miami and Boston? Dude, that’s easy: FSU will win, because VPI’s Michael Vick is suffering from the Sports Illustrated cover jinx. Wait, what’s that? Vick no longer plays for the Hokies? Oh, well, that makes it even easier, then; I’m definitely going with Florida State.

Big Eight Twelve Championship Game: Nebraska Cornhuskers v. Oklahoma Sooners: The over-under on references to the 1971 Game of the Century during the broadcast is 47. Take the over, and also take the ’Huskers to stick a final finger in the eye of the Big Twelve Ten on their way out the door to the Big Ten Twelve.

SEC Championship Game: Auburn Tigers v. South Carolina Gamecocks: From the outset, I wish to be clear that (a) I am picking this game based upon the expected result on Saturday, not the expected vacating of that result after Cam Newton later is declared ineligible, and (b) I will be rooting for the Palmetto State Poultry. However, this rematch in the Georgia Dome reminds me a lot of the 2003 SEC Championship Game, which pitted the Red and Black against the LSU Tigers. Earlier in the year, Georgia had lost a single-score game to the Bayou Bengals in Baton Rouge, which offered some hope that the ‘Dawgs might stand a chance against Louisiana State at a neutral site. Instead, the national championship-bound Tigers defeated Georgia handily, for the simple reason that Nick Saban’s squad had improved dramatically over the course of the campaign. While Steve Spurrier’s 2010 South Carolina squad arguably finished the season stronger than Mark Richt’s 2003 Bulldogs did, I fear the same scenario will be played out on Saturday, as a Gamecock club that played the Plainsmen tough in Jordan-Hare Stadium earlier in the autumn will find that Auburn has gotten much better since then.

Those are the picks for this week’s slate of games, and I am apt to be wrong more often than I am right, so I will end this set of projections the way I always do, by reminding you, whatever you do, . . . Don’t Bet On It!

The national game of disinterest is a seven-way tie between the four Pac-10 games and the three Big East games being played this weekend. I’m sorry, but you don’t have a championship game, so the rest of us don’t really care. If you didn’t know we were right, you wouldn’t be adding teams, now, would you?

Go ‘Dawgs!

It looks like the Liberty Bowl is about as much of a mortal lock as it can be at this point, short of the Outback Bowl doing something stupid again to throw everything into chaos. Unfortunately, the Tennessee Volunteers’ victory over the Kentucky Wildcats made the Big Orange available as an attractive in-state option for the Nashville-based Music City Bowl, which likely eliminates all hope of a postseason renewal of the rivalry between the Georgia Bulldogs and the Clemson Tigers.

Since it appears pretty clear that the ‘Dawgs are Memphis-bound, we need to do what we can to make the best of a bad season by looking for the silver lining. Why should we love like tolerate receiving a Liberty Bowl bid? Let me count the ways:

• The Liberty Bowl is sponsored by AutoZone. It’s always a plus when you know what product or service the corporate sponsor sells, and it’s an extra added bonus when you’ve actually been to one of their stores and bought something. At least we won’t be wondering, “Who the heck is BBVA Compass?” or, “What the heck is MagicJack?”
• The Liberty Bowl is being played on the afternoon of December 31. Getting to a New Year’s Eve bowl game counts for something.
• Memphis is roughly 450 miles from Athens and a little under 400 miles from Atlanta. That’s not ideal, but it makes for a nice trip, particularly to a city with as much to offer as a tourist destination as Memphis has. (One word: Graceland.)
• The Bulldogs will face the winner of next weekend’s Conference USA title tilt between George O’Leary’s Central Florida Knights and June Jones’s SMU Mustangs. Given Mark Richt’s history with the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and Mark Richt’s history with Coach Jones’s previous team, I like Georgia’s chances against a gold-and-white-clad club led by Coach O’Leary or a team guided by Coach Jones.
• The Bulldogs have history with both Central Florida and Southern Methodist. In 1999, the winless Golden Knights came into Sanford Stadium and nearly upset eleventh-ranked Georgia between the hedges. Aided by a missed UCF extra point and a debatable pass interference penalty, the Classic City Canines escaped with a 24-23 win. Against the Ponies in the Cotton Bowl at the end of the Bulldogs’ 1966 SEC championship campaign, Georgia cruised to a 24-9 triumph with the help of two future members of the State Bar of Georgia: Kent Lawrence, currently a State Court judge in Athens, broke off a 74-yard touchdown run on the second play of the game, and Billy Payne, a 1973 graduate of the Joseph Henry Lumpkin School of Law, brought in a 20-yard touchdown pass from Kirby Moore.

(Kent Lawrence’s 74-yard touchdown run.)

• Georgia has history in the Liberty Bowl. The Bulldogs fell by a 14-7 margin to an N.C. State Wolfpack club led by quarterback Jim Donnan in 1967. The future Georgia head coach earned most valuable player honors by completing 16 of 24 passes for 121 yards and a touchdown. The Red and Black went on to win a 20-17 outing against the Arkansas Razorbacks in Memphis in 1987, in a game that appeared in doubt when the Hogs drove inside the Georgia ten yard line with fewer than 120 seconds remaining in a tie ballgame. A holding call set Arkansas back, and a missed 35-yard field goal try set the stage for John Kasay to close out his freshman year with a game-winning 39-yard field goal as time expired.
• The Liberty Bowl has history, as well. It is the eighth-oldest existing bowl game, behind the Citrus (now Capital One), Cotton, Gator, Orange, Rose, Sugar, and Sun Bowls. While never a major postseason destination, the Liberty Bowl has been around for more than half a century, which carries some cachet in a sport with so many fly-by-night small-time bowl games.
• Since the Liberty Bowl began pitting an SEC representative against a Conference USA squad in 2006, the Southeastern Conference has gone 4-0 in Memphis, but the league’s four victories were decided by margins of eight, seven, six, and three points, respectively. We should expect a good game.
• The likelihood that the Conference USA Championship Game will determine the Red and Black’s bowl opponent spares that contest from the ignominy of being named this week’s national game of disinterest.
• The O’Jays will be providing the halftime entertainment, so those who attend will get to hear “Love Train” performed live.

Is the Liberty Bowl a perfect option for the Bulldogs, or even the best possible option? No, it isn’t, and no Georgia fan should be satisfied with this outcome to a season that ought to have been better than it was. Nevertheless, we are where we are, and, given the reality of our situation, the Athenians could do a lot worse than the Liberty Bowl. If everything plays out as expected, the Liberty Bowl is a tolerable opportunity of which the Red and Black (and their fans) should make the most.

Go ‘Dawgs!

It’s Week 14… also known as “Championship Week!”  The conferences that have championship games will be staging them, and the conferences that don’t have championship games will still have their champions decided this week… hence the moniker.  And, in the midst of all this Championship Week celebration, the Georgia Bulldogs and their fans will be… 

…

Well, then.  Moving along…

I normally post this segment on Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening, but I was beset with some kind of odd viral illness that both kept me from attending the game and from doing much of anything this weekend other than lying in bed drooling and reading one of the greatest 19th century novels of all time on my Kindle.  As a result, I was unable to post my weekly missive in a timely manner.  I do apologize for the tardiness. 

I’m from the “Better late than never” camp, though, when it comes to turning in homework… so I’m letting the following people know that, for Championship Week, You’re on notice, dawg!

This week’s honorees (in no particular order), are:

1) Michael Adams – Why Michael Adams?  Because he’s a jerk, has stolen money from and is a disaster for University, and everybody that has ever worked with him hates him. Plus, I have it from a very authoritative source inside the UGA administration that he spent the entire 24 hours after the Georgia Tech game in the futile pursuit of garnering an invitation to either the International Bowl (in Toronto) or the Pinstripe Bowl (in NYC).  He was overheard to have said loudly, “But I can’t stand comfortable weather in December!  I want to see some snow, dangit!”

2) The Yellow Jacket Juke – There has been some disagreement regarding the proper tactical response to this play.  I must admit that, for my part, I also considered the term, “Bumblebee Belly-flop” when naming this maneuver, but I wanted to make sure I respected the Techsters by using the correct nomenclature to refer to their mascot.

With about 1:40 left in the game, Georgia took the sportsmanship route and kneeled the ball on the Golden Tornado 20-yard-line.  Paul Johnson immediately used his last timeout to stop the clock, and the Georgia bench responded by saying, “Ok, you want to call a timeout?  We’ll just go ahead and score, then.” The Georgia Tech defense then performed their version of the Florida Flop. 

Tactically, it might have been a sound play.  Of course, tactically, it might also have been a sound play to get Washaun Ealey to run 10 yards and take a knee.  Of course, tactically, it was probably also the correct call for Han Solo to bribe Greedo instead of shooting him first (which he did).  But men don’t do these things.  Men say, “You want me to score?  Thank you.  I will then go for two, followed by an onside kick, both of which I will successfully convert.  Then I will score another touchdown before the game ends.”  Personally, I think we let them off too easy by just scoring one touchdown.

I feel strangely compelled to post this picture now.

But, then again, I was confident in our victory Saturday night.  In fact, throughout the entire game, I was supremely confident that the Bulldogs would come out victorious.  From the moment Georgia muffed the opening kickoff over to Tech to the moment Georgia scored a touchdown in the 4th quarter and our fans started shouting, “What the **** is he doing?” I was supremely confident.  As soon as Georgia scored first, I told Mrs. VineyardDawg, “Well, that’s it.  We’re going to win!” and never looked back.  Even when the game got really close near the end, I never wavered in my supreme faith that Georgia would finally win their first close game in 2010.*

* – These statements are such huge lies that, while typing them, my pants spontaneously combusted and my nose started growing at the same time.

3) The contact lenses worn by the ACC officiating crew in Sanford Stadium – I have a couple of friends who referee games in sports other than football, and out of respect for them, I will not poor-mouth the officials in charge of Saturday night’s game.  The contact lenses those referees were wearing, though, left a lot to be desired in their work.

I know the referees can only perform as well as their equipment allows them to, so I want to know what exactly those contact lenses were doing in the 2nd quarter when, on a 3rd down play, Kris Durham clearly landed on the 4 yard line, only to have the referees spot the ball a good 2 feet short of where he actually landed.  Then, on the ensuing 4th & about a foot play, Aaron Murray performed a QB sneak that gained at least a yard, and the ball was spotted by the referees virtually right on top of the line of scrimmage.

I found it also very interesting that the ESPN telecast showed exactly zero replays of both of these downs.  Perhaps the referees and the ESPN crew were sharing a pair of contact lenses between them?  And while we’re talking about ESPN…

4) ESPN – A company that calls itself the “Worldwide Leader in Sports” should seriously be able to do a better job at producing the games that we see week in and week out. I mean, it’s better than Fox Sports’ BCS coverage, but if that ain’t damning with faint praise, I don’t know what is.  The pictures are fantastic and awesome and poppin’ fresh and all that, but some of us like to hear words that, you know, make sense to go with the pictures.

And, to be fair, there’s a fairly large drop-off from their best two broadcast teams to the likes of Mark Jones and Bob Davie.  But when a play-by-play announcer calls Bacarri Fudge Rambo “one of the most improved players they’ve had on defense this year,” he’s either talking about Georgia Tech or he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. And then they don’t even talk about major plays that, you know, were in dispute, and you know, could have completely changed the outcome of the game.  But, no, I’m sure there’s some witty remark  you could be bringing up instead about your years at Notre Dame that’s far more important right now.

Step it up, Worldwide Leader.  You can do better.

5) The South Carolina Gamecocks – Great job in dispatching an inferior ACC rival.  Now come on boys.  (crosses fingers)  We believe in you… you can do it!

(Ok, so maybe we don’t necessarily believe you can do it.  We will be cheering for you, though, when this Saturday rolls around, so please go out there and ruin Cheater Auburn University’s dream season-to-be-vacated, ok?)

6) The Boise State Broncos – Damn.  Just damn.  You guys couldn’t do us just this one solid, could you?  I hope we beat you little kids by about 50 next year (though I know you’re just as likely to beat us).  And I’m laughing right now that all the “Big Boys” in your new “Big Boy Conference” have officially deserted you.  Enjoy your new WAC, Broncos.

See ya real soon.

7) The SMU Mustangs – I know it’s equally likely (possibly more so) that we we end up paired off in the Liberty Bowl with the Golden Knights of the University of Central Florida.  I’m far more interested, though, in the ramifications of matching up with the Mustangs from Dallas.

You see, this would be a great matchup for us.  Not only have we had a significant amount of experience in beating programs who are huge historical cheaters (4 out of the last 5 years, in fact), but we also have some recent experience in beating very successful teams who are coached by June Jones.

Ok, I admit that I only added SMU so I could post this picture.  Excuse me for a moment while I lose myself in a happier time…

Students with Tickets – By the time the TV cameras panned up to the student section in the 2nd quarter, I patted myself on the back somewhat, because the student section looked about 75% full, which is not great, but good, and I like to think I had some small part in that effort.  Then Josh Weiss has to go and post the following picture, which quite clearly shows upper deck student section as being 90% empty, and about 5 minutes before the team actually ran onto the field. (You might have to click on the picture to see the full-size version.)

For shame, UGA students… for shame.  I might have expected (and received) a turnout like this for Idaho State, or Vanderbilt… but in the season ender against Georgia Tech?  That’s just inexcusable.  

I know many students will wail and gnash their teeth when Greg McGarity reduces the size of the student section by about 50% in 2011… but if he does so, you have no one to blame but yourselves.

Well, we’re done until bowl season rolls around, but until then I’ll be looking forward to an improved 2011 and yelling…

Go Dawgs!

As always, this is your friendly reminder that I am scheduled to call in to John Frary’s sports talk show on ESPN Radio 1420 out of St. Augustine during the 7:11 commercial break this evening; please tune in if you can.

I also want to extend my thanks to Josh D. Weiss, who was gracious enough to permit Dawg Sports to post some of his excellent sports photography from Saturday night’s game in Sanford Stadium. Be sure to check out more of the great shots he got of the game here after you have taken a gander at these:

While I’m at it, here is this week’s drive chart for the 2010 edition of Clean Old-Fashioned Hate:

FULL SCREEN VERSION

Animated Drive Chart brought to you by Gameday Depot.

Finally, I received an e-mail this morning from the Blogger Who Came In From the Cold, who offered the following observation:

Following a lackluster 1979 season (6-5) the head football coaching job at the Alma Mater of the Georgia Football Coach (Auburn/Dooley) came open. The Georgia coach chose not to take it and won a National Title the next year.

This year following a lackluster season (6-6) the head football coaching job at the Alma Mater of the Georgia Football Coach (Miami/Richt) came open. If Richt chooses not to take it, I am making my reservations in New Orleans for January 2012.

Herschel, by my reckoning, still has one year of college eligibility left. Just sayin’

Go ‘Dawgs!

If it’s Monday and your team’s defense spent the weekend looking like it was coached by Andre Maginot, you probably have some things to do. Allow me to momentarily slow you down without actually stopping you, just as my boy Dre would have, by distracting you with this morning’s to do list gleaned from the weekend’s college football action.

10) Give props to Abry Jones. Among a group of defensive linemen who were run over, around and through all night on Saturday, that guy was in on a dozen tackles if he was in on one.

9) Email Texas Longhorn friends a message of sympathy. For a few minutes on Saturday I was certain I was going to be in the same dark, Bowl-less place they are right now. While the Liberty Bowl isn’t paradise, it’s 15 extra practices and one more game, all of which we could certainly use.

Be thankful that Todd Grantham and staff won’t be scheming for the Tech flexbone for the very first time ever again. Say what you will about Johnson, his offense is maddening to stop once he figures out how to run it against you.

7) Try to remember a defense doing a worse job of playing the pitchman against the triple option. Fail miserably.

If Tevin Washington had gotten the ball to Roddy Jones more consistently it could have been a very bad night for the home team. Washington looked at times to have it stuck in his head that he needed to hew to the fullback dive and quarterback keeper rather than the riskier pitch. In fairness, Jones did in fact cough it up once on the pitch. As it was he touched the ball 9 times for an average of 7.0 yards a pop. He could easily have gashed us for more.

6) Imagine Aaron Murray with another year of experience. Smile.

5) Remember that Kris Durham certainly and A.J. Green likely will not catch any passes from Aaron Murray next season. Look at Rantavious Wooten and Israel Troupe’s combined receiving stats for 2010. Stop smiling.

4) Join the Facebook group “The Bronco Nation Loves Kyle Brotzman.” Say this for those Idahoians, they’re taking their kicker’s slip up at least as well or better than Georgia Tech fans are theirs.

3) Figure out what we need to do to sign Mississippi Gulf Coast C.C. nose tackle John Jenkins. Email plan to Rodney Garner, marked “urgent.”

I believe that offenses like Tech’s that feature the triple option have a tougher time against the “one gap” 3-4 over the “two gap” variety employed by Georgia. The reason is that the nose is going to get doubled a lot in both schemes, but in the one gap that’s the plan from the beginning. In the two gap you end up expecting an undersized nose like Deangelo Tyson to fight through double teams all night long and still make tackles on the dive. That’s not a recipe for success.

2) Laugh heartily at the “John Gruden to Miami” rumors. I don’t know how to say this, other than to say it: John Gruden is not going to be coaching college football. Not at Miami, not anywhere else. If I were Miami I would concentrate my efforts on Gus Malzahn, Kirby Smart or any number of other competent coaches who would actually consider taking the job. I for one would love to see what Malzahn could do recruiting offensive talent from the Miami metro area for his scheme. It would be breathtaking, and many of the necessary players are already on the roster.

1) Book tickets for Memphis. Try hard to get jacked up at the prospect of playing either Central Florida or SMU in the Liberty Bowl. Realize that as a blogger I’ll either get to poke fun at George O’Leary or Craig James. Deem situation a “win/win.” Until later . . .

Go ‘Dawgs!!!

The final weekend of the SEC regular season left the conference picture clearer than ever, as I had no trouble whatsoever filling out my SEC Power Poll ballot. Frankly, it seems perfectly obvious to me that the only sensible way to rank the twelve teams of the Southeastern Conference is to do so in the following sequence:

1. Auburn Tigers (12-0): Am I the only one who is starting to think of this Auburn team as the college football equivalent of the 1997 Florida Marlins, who didn’t so much win the national championship as rent it for a season?

2. Arkansas Razorbacks (10-2): If the Hogs are going to get a BCS berth, it’s lucky for Bobby Petrino that this wasn’t the year the Sugar Bowl was moved to the Georgia Dome, because it would require some pretty complex math to figure out what 13/16ths of 60 minutes is.

3. LSU Tigers (10-2): Thank goodness they lost! I was beginning to think Les Miles’s sideline dice rolls were like the coin flips from “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.”

4. South Carolina Gamecocks (9-3): The typical late-season swoon never happened, so an autumn that produced wins over Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, and Clemson made this year the “next year” Gamecock fans have been anticipating for generations. If a team that hasn’t won a conference championship since 1969 and didn’t win a bowl game for the first 100 years of its history can emerge victorious from either of its last two games to card the second ten-win season in school history, 2010 will end up being remembered as the greatest year of South Carolina athletics.

5. Alabama Crimson Tide (9-3): The good news for ‘Bama fans is that there is precedent for a Nick Saban-coached SEC team going 9-3 the year after winning the national championship. The bad news for ‘Bama fans is that there is no precedent for what a Nick Saban-coached SEC team does two years after winning the national championship.

6. Mississippi St. Bulldogs (8-4): Dan Mullen will never bring an SEC West championship to Starkville. That’s because he’s going to be hired away by a marquee program before he gets the chance to bring an SEC West championship to Starkville.

7. Florida Gators (7-5): On the plus side, there’s no risk that the stress of coaching in the SEC Championship Game will send Urban Meyer to the hospital this year.

8. Georgia Bulldogs (6-6): At least the ‘Dawgs have a stranglehold on the state championship. Well, until Mercer gets its football program up and running, anyway.

9. Tennessee Volunteers (6-6): Clearly, the key to being successful in November is to develop year-end rivalries with teams that suck.

10. Kentucky Wildcats (6-6): At some point, Dean Wormer is going to call Joker Phillips into his office and tell him, “Non-conference patsies, two or three SEC wins, and December 28 bowl games are no way to go through life, son.”

11. Mississippi Rebels (4-8): I think it’s all been an elaborate conspiracy to defame black bears. Personally, I blame racist white bears.

12. Vanderbilt Commodores (2-10): This is what happens when you hire your head coaches from the turkey insemination crew.

As always, your feedback is welcome in the comments below, although, honestly, given the won-lost records and head-to-head results, I have a tough time believing there’s much room for improvement on that ballot.

Go ‘Dawgs!

I’ll be in tomorrow to talk about the weekend that was in college football. But first, it appears that the top 1% of the top 1% has noticed that the Gator fanbase has noticed a down year in Gator football:

It’s OK, Dee. Liquored-up Georgia fans have been telling them those things for years. This is a judgment free zone. Except when it comes to the 60 inch LED TV at Best Buy. We’re sick with jealousy and judging the hell out of you over that one.

Until tomorrow . .  .

Go ‘Dawgs!!!

It was a somewhat surreal night in a strangely subdued Sanford Stadium. Perhaps it was the cold; perhaps it was the unfamiliar spectacle of a late evening kickoff between the hedges in November; perhaps it was the quiet confidence that we were sure to get almost exactly the game we got; perhaps it was the unexplained presence of Samuel L. Jackson, clad in a red shirt with an oval “G” logo, leaning against the east end zone goalpost as the Georgia Bulldogs headed back into the locker room after their pregame warm-ups; in any case, though, it was a curious night in the Classic City.

The oddness of the experience was underscored by the fact that I was accompanied by kleph, a colleague from SB Nation’s Alabama Crimson Tide weblog, Roll ‘Bama Roll. He had arranged to be in Tuscaloosa for Friday afternoon’s Iron Bowl, so he sent me an e-mail to inquire how he might secure a ticket to Saturday evening’s contest between the Red and Black and the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. I, of course, wrote back to ask whether he would be rooting for Georgia, rooting for Georgia Tech, or attending as a disinterested observer.

When kleph gave the B answer (“disinterested observer,” which is not as good as the A answer “for Georgia,” but which is much more acceptable than the F answer “for Georgia Tech”), I wrote him back and said I’d be happy to have him use my other season ticket to the game. (He wore his Alabama gear, and, fortunately, only one person told him he was “at the wrong game.”) It’s been a long time since I entered Sanford Stadium with someone who was making his initial trip to our arena, and it was interesting hearing the impressions of a first-time visitor to that venue. (For instance, he found our barking after kickoffs to be unusual.)

All in all, it was a most atypical edition of Clean Old-Fashioned Hate, even though everything (apart from the turnovers) went exactly according to the predetermined script. At no time was I seriously concerned that Georgia might lose; at no time did the Georgia Tech fans in the vicinity seem confident that the Yellow Jackets might win; aside from the jackass in the west end zone who stupidly threw a water bottle at the visiting band, the hatred appeared to be largely cosmetic (as with the faux fight prior to kickoff, which consisted exclusively of players jumping up and down near one another) rather than heartfelt. For everyone involved, it seemed like it was just business, but nothing personal.

That remained the case throughout the game and during the drive home, lasting right up through church this morning. I am a big believer in Winston Churchill’s dictum about being magnanimous in victory and defiant in defeat; I am content with my team winning, and I feel no need to rub anyone else’s nose in it. Consequently, I didn’t seek out any of the Ramblin’ Wreck fans in the congregation or say anything other than a perfectly ordinary “good morning” to any of them, but two of them came looking for me.

The first simply pointed and said, “You got lucky.” (It was not the first time a Georgia Tech fan said that to me following a Georgia victory.) The second suggested that, had Joshua Nesbitt been healthy, the Yellow Jackets would have scored 50 points on the Bulldogs. I respectfully disagree with both contentions.

I have a hard time believing that Georgia got lucky when a couple of debatable spots went against the Red and Black, and I have a tough time seeing how the absence of Nesbitt hampered the Engineers. For one thing, having Nesbitt didn’t help a demonstrably better Georgia Tech team defeat a statistically worse Georgia team in Atlanta last year; for another, the Golden Tornado held the ball for over 38 minutes, ran 92 plays, amassed 512 yards of total offense, picked up 32 first downs, converted seven third downs in a dozen tries, and passed for 101 yards thanks to Tevin Washington’s completion of eight of his 15 aerial attempts. It’s hard to imagine the Yellow Jackets could have been markedly better with Nesbitt, particularly since the Ramblin’ Wreck never led and Washington is the more efficient passer.

In 2008, when Paul Johnson’s first Georgia Tech team defeated Georgia between the hedges, I admitted that the better team had won, even though subsequent series meetings make that outcome appear increasingly like a fumble-fueled fluke. I regret it if some rival fans are unwilling to make similar concessions in the wake of last night’s outing, but the facts speak for themselves, and these are they:

Aaron Murray completed 15 of his 19 passes for 271 yards, three touchdowns, and no interceptions. A.J. Green’s final game in Sanford Stadium featured an eight-reception, 97-yard performance. The Bulldogs finished with four takeaways to offset a pair of giveaways, tallied 425 yards of total offense, matched exactly Georgia Tech’s rushing average of 5.3 yards per carry, committed half as many penalties for roughly a third as many yards, and scored more than 30 points for the seventh straight game. (In 2010, Georgia is 6-0 when scoring at least 32 points and 0-6 when scoring 31 or fewer points.)

Frankly, though, I don’t care if the North Avenue naysayers are right. I don’t think we were lucky, but, after a season full of improvement on the stat sheet yet regression in the record, the Red and Black are due to catch a break. I don’t think Georgia won because Joshua Nesbitt didn’t play, but, at the end of an autumn in which the Bulldogs would have beaten Florida if Chris Rainey hadn’t played and would have beaten Auburn if Cameron Newton hadn’t played, I’ll take a win against a rival at less than full strength, even though I regret the fact that Nesbitt was injured and I hope he recovers in time for the Yellow Jackets’ bowl game, because he is a fine athlete and a stellar competitor.

I am not naive about the significance of this victory. All this win really proves is that a mediocre SEC team is better than a mediocre ACC team, and everyone knew that already. None of the problems that existed before this triumph were solved by this triumph. Nevertheless, a 5-7 season was avoided, bowl eligibility was attained, and a win over a rival was secured. Winning this game isn’t everything, but it certainly is something, and, right now, I’ll take it for what it’s worth, even if it is worth only a little.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Trey Thompkins leads the way with 18 points, Leslie and Robinson each with 13.  Chris Barnes with 5 points to lead the bench.  It would appear we shot slightly better than 50% from the F/T line.  That’s unacceptable.

Don’t know much about the Manhattan, but I think the fact that we struggled with a team that is expected to finish near the bottom of the MAAC suggests that there’s some issues on this team.  I think it’ll get fixed, but I’m glad the SEC schedule doesn’t kick in quite yet.

We’d better get it together, and fast.  Insert your favorite picture of Tyrone here…

In a somewhat sloppy seesaw battle pitting contrasting offensive styles on a chilly night in Sanford Stadium, the Georgia Bulldogs defeated the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets to claim the Red and Black’s ninth win over their in-state rival in their last ten tries.

Consequently, I have the pleasure of reporting that the Mark Richt Victory Watch now stands at 96. Coach Richt trails Vince Dooley’s all-time school record by 105 career victories.

With 129 games under his belt, Coach Richt sports a 96-33 ledger and a .744 winning percentage. At the same point in their respective careers, Coach Dooley was 84-40-5 (.671) and Wally Butts was 88-34-7 (.709). Coach Butts and Coach Dooley are the only two head football coaches in Georgia history to have guided the Bulldogs in more games than Coach Richt, or to have carded more career victories than Coach Richt. Coach Richt’s office is in a building named for one in an athletic complex named for the other.

Go ‘Dawgs!

One of my law partners is a Georgia Tech graduate. He was out of the office all week on vacation, but, when he called to check in, he told my secretary to quote to me the four words from the Yellow Jackets’ fight song that the Ramblin’ Wreck faithful sing most lustily, which I refuse to repeat here, but which form a Georgia Tech fan’s response to the question, “What’s the good word?”

Later during the week, I received a call from another colleague of mine, who is a University of Georgia graduate, and whose son currently attends the Georgia Institute of Technology. He recalled the 1984 game, after which Golden Tornado quarterback John Dewberry was seen holding a large chunk of the hedge. He added, “You have no idea how much it galls me to have to write those bastards a check twice a year.”

It’s the Georgia Bulldogs against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. It’s Clean Old-Fashioned Hate. Your observations go in the comments below.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Please consider this your college football open comment thread for the games being played in the 3:30 range or later, including evening outings not occurring between the hedges. As always, you will not be warned or banned for discussing a game in the wrong thread, but you may be mocked and belittled. I’m just saying.

The open comment thread for the Georgia Bulldogs‘ showdown in Athens with the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets is scheduled to appear at 6:45.

Go ‘Dawgs!

This Saturday seems almost anticlimactic after the Aggies beat the Longhorns in a barn-burner in Austin on Thanksgiving night, the Plainsmen came back from a 24-point deficit to defeat the Crimson Tide in Tuscaloosa, the Ducks trailed 19-14 at the break yet exploded for 34 points in the second half, and the Wolf Pack upset the Broncos in overtime in Reno, but there still is a lot of college football to be played this weekend, and this is your opportunity to offer observations and exchange ideas in an impassioned yet civil manner.

This comment thread will cover the early gridiron action. The mid-afternoon comment thread is set to show up at 3:15, and the comment thread devoted to this evening’s tilt between the Georgia Bulldogs and the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets is scheduled to appear at 6:45.

Go ‘Dawgs!

As the title of this series of postings implies, I am largely woefully ignorant about basketball beyond the basics that are obvious to anyone who has ever been to a game and/or seen the movie “Hoosiers.” Also, I’m back home after spending Thanksgiving Day at my in-laws’ house, where the cat dander aggravated my allergies and left me feeling a little under the weather. On top of that, the holidays have thrown off my children’s sleep schedule, so they both went to bed late tonight, as a result of which I saw literally about a minute’s worth of game action in Georgia’s loss to Temple in the Old Spice Classic. In other words, feel free to take this with several grains of salt, and to rip it apart in the comments; in fact, I’d appreciate it if someone could convince me I’m wrong.

There is absolutely no reason Georgia should not be good in basketball. Bulldog basketball is today approximately in the same position that Florida football was in two decades ago: all the pieces of the puzzle were there, so much so that the program’s singular lack of success over the long haul wasn’t just curious, but was downright baffling. The Red and Black are the sleeping giants of the hardwood.

Nevertheless, one evening after absolutely handing the Fighting Irish the game, the Hoop Dogs trailed Temple by two at the break before being outscored 34-29 by the Owls after intermission. Travis Leslie, Gerald Robinson, and Trey Thompkins combined for 43 points; the rest of the squad contributed fifteen. While the Athenians’ free throw shooting improved to 70 per cent (14 of 20), Georgia shot under 40 per cent from the field (21 of 54) and made only two of eleven three-point tries. Although dissatisfaction with his starters prompted Mark Fox to pull his first team off the floor, the increased opportunities for the reserves did not lead to the bench contributing more than three assists, one steal, or six points. The backups hit only two of a dozen field goals and no shots from beyond the arc. In Stegeman Coliseum, as in David Lynch’s “Dune,” the sleeper must awaken, but all I’m hearing at the moment is snoring.

During the course of the hiring process that produced Mark Fox—a hiring process that went about as smoothly as the hiring process that produced Ray Goff two decades earlier; which is to say, not at all—I advocated hiring our Lon Kruger. That is, since we knew we weren’t going to go out and get the guy who could take the Bulldogs to the promised land, we had to go out and get the guy who was willing to accept the challenge of taking charge of the program with the weakest basketball tradition in the Southeastern Conference, which has not historically been known as a basketball conference, and making Georgia relevant.

Mark Fox represents a clear upgrade over Dennis Felton, and I believe he will be the Lon Kruger who makes the Red and Black relevant enough that, five or six years from now, Greg McGarity will be able to replace him with the Athens equivalent of Billy Donovan. Relevance, though, is about the best I am prepared to expect at this point. I hope to be persuaded otherwise, but, quite frankly, I argued on Monday night that Mark Fox would be an ideal choice to deliver the pregame pep talk prior to tomorrow night’s gridiron showdown with Georgia Tech. After the Old Spice Classic, I retract that suggestion as a bad idea. As evidenced by the fact that I have slogged through the duty of producing content for a Bulldog weblog on nearly a daily basis through three crummy, crummy years for University of Georgia athletics, I am no fair weather fan, but, while I like Mark Fox, I see several glass ceilings above this basketball program, and I question his ability to break through any of them beyond the first one.

Go ‘Dawgs!

I’m not going to lie to you; this may be a two-shot deal here. Mark Fox’s Hoop Dogs are 3-0 in games for which I did not put up an open comment thread, and they’re 0-1 in games for which I did. Georgia takes on Temple in the Old Spice Classic at 7:30 tonight, and, if we don’t win this one, I may conclude open comment threads are bad luck and ditch the whole thing.

In other words, enjoy this one, join the conversation, and root hard for the Red and Black.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Or nerd herding, dork directing, or whatever other euphemism you prefer. I think I speak for many in Bulldog Nation when I say that I don’t consider Georgia Tech our chief rival, but I do consider them the team I most despise losing to. Of course, I don’t have a whole lot of practice in dealing with a loss to the trade schoolers, but I seem to recall it’s not a lot of fun.

There’s obviously some uncertainty surrounding this matchup. The coaches have made no secret of the fact that practices for this one have been physical. The defense has worked on dealing with Georgia Tech’s cut blocking, but we don’t know precisely how Coach Grantham will deal with the Georgia Tech flexbone attack. One presumes that he has been in contact with his old college coach Frank Beamer, and that Mark Richt and Rodney Garner have some thoughts to share from last season. Perhaps the best news for the ‘Dawgs is the fact that this Tech offense has no Jon Dwyer, a big back who absolutely can’t be tackled when he gets going downhill. Instead Tech has Anthony Allen, who’s totaled 1059 yards this season.  Allen has gotten his yards (averaging 5.6 per carry) but has broken the 120 yard mark only twice: 125 in a loss to Miami and 195 in a trouncing of Virginia.

And while Tevin Washington may be a very good option quarterback (I actually think he throws the ball better than Josh Nesbitt) he is not in fact Josh Nesbitt. Without a quarterback who’s good for 5 yards up the middle on first down, Johnson’s offense just doesn’t work consistently. I expect that Paul Johnson will put the ball in the air more than the 7 times he did against Duke. But whether in the air or on the ground, for Georgia Tech to have a chance in this game their sophomore quarterback cannot turn the ball over. I feel confident saying that if Georgia Tech turns the ball over 3 or more times, they have little or no chance to win tomorrow’s edition of Clean Old-Fashioned Hate.

On the flipside, I have little confidence that the Georgia Tech defense can stop our offense if we execute well. Seriously, there is not a man, woman, child or worgen in Gnat Nation capable of covering A.J. Green one-on-one. If there’s one capable of stopping Orson Charles, I have not seen him. Perhaps the closest thing the Yellow Jackets have seen to the Georgia offense has been the North Carolina State offense led by Russell Wilson, who burned the Jackets for 368 yards on the way to a 45-28 Wolfpack victory.

Instead, the only thing capable of stopping Georgia from scoring a bushel of points on the Jackets is some infuriating combination of a) Aaron Murray being reinjured/unable to perform, b) Mike Bobo calling a crappy ball game, or c) the offensive line failing to open holes against a defense that gave up 277 yards on the ground to Miami, 198 to Virginia Tech, and 236 to Clemson.

If the offense performs up to capacity we’ll be fine, and can send the Yellow Jackets back to their body-riddled sinkhole of a campus with a bloody gash across their collectively pasty chins and a song in our collective hearts:

Prediction: A.J. Green takes at least one short pass the distance against the tackling-optional Jacket secondary and the ‘Dawgs prevail 34-24. Until later . . .

Go ‘Dawgs!!!

‘Bama Public Address Paging Mr. Newton . . .

Crap.

Go ‘Dawgs!