Side hustlin'.

So if the posting traffic on here hasn't been quite as brisk as it's been in the past, it's because I've been busy mucking up not just this blog but several others since football season started.

First off, you're looking at the senior Georgia football correspondent for SB Nation's Atlanta regional site -- that's not an official title per se, but go ahead and call me by it anyway, makes me feel important -- where I'll be posting on the Dawgs on a regular basis. You'll be able to find me in story streams on each week's upcoming game -- offensive previews on Wednesdays, defensive previews on Thursdays, with occasional in-game updates as warranted. I'll also be doing short recaps each Monday, along with "Opposition Research" posts each Tuesday taking a peek at what the Dawgs' upcoming opponents accomplished over the preceding weekend and judging whether that should lower or heighten Bulldog Nation's worry level.

Obviously I'm biased here, but I can't sing the praises of SBN Atlanta enough, nor the SB Nation network in general. The Atlanta site is headed by a talented and knowledgeable gentleman named Jason Kirk, who's an avowed Tech fan but arguably one of the most tolerable, least douchey Tech fans I've ever met. More importantly, unlike Bleacher Report, where any jagoff with a 56K modem can begin firehosing his ill-informed, syntactically dubious judgments at the rest of the world with minimal-to-nonexistent editing, Jason and the rest of the guys running SBN's various Keebler trees actually take pains to seek out good writers who know what they're talking about and can make it all entertaining. Even if you barely spend 10 seconds skimming anything I've written, I hope you'll read SBN blogs regularly, join their communities and support what they're doing; I think you'll get more out of their content than just about anyone else's, mainstream sites included.

And as long as I'm making an impassioned SBN sales pitch, I should probably also plug Every Day Should Be Saturday, which joined the SB Nation liberation army back around the beginning of the year. I'm assuming most of you are tuned into EDSBS already -- and if you're not, seriously, what the hell is wrong with you -- but either way, I'm sure you'll be thuh-rilled to know that I've got a regular feature going there, the "CFB Buyers' Guide," every Tuesday. I'll also be pitching in on Holly's "Best in Class" post each week and other random goofarounds here and there.

Finally, I'll also be offending and alienating people as far away as San Antonio, Texas, through the "Gridiron and Grits" blog on the San Antonio Express-News's website. The blog is run by one of my supervisors, a former San Antonian who -- steady, now -- got her degree from South Carolina. So yeah, she's the enemy, but she follows the SEC rabidly (and possesses no small amount of influence over my future wage-earning ability), so if you read and/or comment over there, be nice. She didn't ride me nearly as hard for the Dawgs' loss to the Gamecocks as she could have, so there's that.

Between all this and a travel schedule that, not surprisingly, picked right up once the season started, I've had to re-evaluate some of my time commitments, and that means I won't be contributing to the Dr. Saturday blog over at Yahoo anymore. But read my other stuff, make me feel like a special flower, and comment to your heart's content. And by all means keep coming by here -- I'm not abandoning this joint by any stretch.

A new side hustle.

I'd file this under "shameless self-promotion" if the mere act of having a blog didn't qualify as self-promotion in the first place, but either way: If you're into the Atlanta sports scene and you're not already keeping up with SB Nation's Atlanta-specific site, you need to be. Tons of worthwhile stuff on the Braves, Falcons, Hawks, Thrashers and, of course, the Bulldogs.

I'm contributing twice a week with some armchair analysis of what's going on with Georgia football. Which, unfortunately, has mostly involved the Georgia legal system of late -- but hey, it's summer, and if your college football program is getting written up at all, it probably ain't good. Whatever: Here's some of what I've been banging out the last couple weeks:

· My take on the tragicomedy of Damon Evans's downfall -- specifically, why he had to go.

· Actual number-crunching in the service of explaining why it would be all but statistically impossible for Georgia's turnover margin -- a garish -16 last season -- to get any worse in 2010.

· And, of course, plenty of material on the recent arrests of Dontavius Jackson and Tavarres King for booze-related offenses: why their punishment might signal a major strengthening of discipline in the wake of the Evans embarrassment, and why certain folks should get over themselves before turning the sanctimony dial up to 11 in discussing such incidents.

The actual football discussion, of course, will ramp up considerably as the actual season draws closer -- by which time, of course, both our athletes and our administrators will be too busy to get arrested for shit.

Reputations I'm sullying this week (other than my own, of course).

My apologies for posting having gotten off to a slow start in this, the blog's first week of, uh, re-emergence. I moved into my new place over the weekend and have been trying to get shit straightened out, which yesterday included sitting all morning in a half-empty house waiting for someone to turn my water on, only they never came, because who cares, my time's important because I don't have, you know, A JOB or anything.

Ahem.

But anyway, I've still been on the grind, which included posting the annual college-football composite ranking over at EDSBS. This, as you may or may not recall, is where I dig up the unofficial "preseason" rankings put out by folks like Phil Steele, Athlon, ESPN.com and the like, and combine them into a single top 25 ranking that gives a reasonable preview of where teams are going to be ranked in the official preseason polls that'll be submitted by the sportswriters and coaches in a few weeks. As it stands now, this summer's composite looks-a like this:

1. Alabama
2. Ohio State
3. Boise State
4. Texas
5. Florida
6. TCU
7. Nebraska
8. Iowa
9. Oregon
10. Virginia Tech
11. Oklahoma
12. Wisconsin
13. Miami
14. USC
15. Pittsburgh
16. Arkansas
17. Florida State
18. North Carolina
19. Georgia Tech
20. Penn State
21. Oregon State
22. LSU
23. Georgia
24. Cincinnati
25. Auburn

Full analysis is over at EDSBS, but the salient nugget for Bulldog Nation is that the Dawgs do check in down there at #23, which may seem like an insult if you've been following Senator Blutarsky and his Steele-sourced glimmers of hope for why Georgia could be in for a pretty promising year -- but then again, if you saw Georgia crash and burn against Tennessee and Kentucky last year and are still having PTSD flashbacks of our threadbare secondary and -16 turnover margin, you might be happy just to be nominated.

And then over at Dr. Saturday, I'll be throwing occasional assists this week to the lovely Holly, who's flying solo while the good Doctor is on vacation. My first contribution is here, a rumination on the Mountain West's chances at earning BCS status now that they're losing Utah to the Pac-10; it's meticulously researched (like everything else I do, duh!) but probably not as fun as Holly's post on the new spiderweb Lane Kiffin has managed to flail around in. OK, look, I know the guy beat the pants off us last year, but since then he's led a very schadenfreude-friendly (schadenfriendly?) existence; I wouldn't say he has a reverse Midas touch, exactly, but he does seem to have a very particular kind of bizarro Midas touch, the kind where everything he touches turns to DERP.

Also, I've been pulled in to contribute to a new project SBNation is doing -- they've been rolling out a number of "regional" sites over the past few weeks, and the Atlanta site goes live this week; I'll be posting a couple times a week on Georgia football. So keep your eyes peeled.

Further updates as developments warrant. Now I gotta head out so I can swing by my new place and see if I can actually use the crapper there yet. Fun!

Plug.

If you're not keeping up with the RoboShark Publishing House & Fuzzy Kitty Emporium on Tumblr, you're depriving yourself of stuff like this . . .



. . . and that can't help but be a detriment to your well-being.

(Oh, and Christina Hendricks.)

The mild side.

A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever -- powered by Cracked.com

. . . Which brings me to the two truest, most brilliant, spot-on paragraphs I have seen written about American cinema in eons, courtesy of you-know-who and you-know-who's BFF:

Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side

LIVIA: Oh, Sandra. I really don't know what to say about this nomination. You have brought me so much joy over the years, beginning with your bizarrely compelling performance across from a never-creepier Bill Pullman in While You Were Sleeping. You are glorious, and to be honest, I love you a little. However. That does not mean I will be endorsing you for Oscar gold. If they gave out Oscars for dyeing your hair blonde and acting like a bitch at football games, three ladies on my block would be Academy voters. Color me unimpressed.
NASTINCHKA: This is the only remotely relevant section in which I can point out that the Tuohy's real-life daughter is eons prettier than that tramp-stamped little minx they put in the movie. Who de-hots an Ole Miss cheerleader for filming purposes? If they were going to get one thing right about this festering delta puddle of an adaptation, that one seemed like easy money.

I'll confess right now that I somehow still have not managed to see "The Blind Side," but I did devour the book -- whose author, outrageously, didn't get mentioned once on Sunday night -- and I've seen enough clips and promos of the film adaptation to be confident I got the better end of the deal on that one.

So anyway, all I'll say about Sandra Bullock's Oscar win is this: Not having seen any of the five films to receive Best Actress nominations, I can't say where Bullock's acting job should rank among them. My beef is that she got nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role to begin with. Had they filmed Michael Lewis's book completely accurately, Bullock's character of Leigh Anne Tuohy would only have been eligible for the Best Supporting Actress category. She plays an important role in Michael Oher's awe-inspiring transformation, to be sure, but the story isn't about her; it's about Michael Oher. Flipping the script to give Bullock a shot at a bravura leading performance basically turns the whole deal into Very Very Special White Lady Saves Minority Youth, and I think that trivializes the amazing story of what both Oher and the Tuohys accomplished.

Did race play into that decision at all? Ergh, I'm not going near that can of worms. Not knowing any of the filmmakers, I'm not qualified to say whether turning "The Blind Side" into Very Special White Lady Story was a product of any racial condescension on their part. But whatever the motivation, it sure seems like it made for a less interesting movie.

And no, I can't imagine a reason why they would've had anyone but the Tuohy's actual daughter in the Collins Tuohy role. As cinematic mysteries go, that's right up there with Rosebud.

Curling, curling, curling towards freedom.

When Spencer and Holly were invited up to Knoxville to learn the sport of curling with one of the few bona fide curling clubs in the Southeast, my presence was requested as a co-novice who could perhaps absorb some of the foolish n00bness that would otherwise have been concentrated on just the two of them. And absorb I did. (They say that blah blah percent of life is just showing up, so I showed up.) Spencer's recap is here. A taste:

The question remains: is it a sport? What's it doing in the Olympics? Isn't it more of a game than a sport, a kind of overgrown bar distraction played on ice? Absolutely. Additionally, Ski-jumping is just formalized suicide, Biathlon is a quantified military training exercise, and short-track speed skating is a shoving match that happens at twenty miles per hour. Figure skating doesn't even have points or goals, and lies in the hands of potentially corruptible judges.

Curling is mesmerizing for one reason: its simplicity. Chess on ice is the usual comparison, but it may be even simpler than the endless variations and gambits of Kasaparov's game. Leaning out on the hack and staring down the ice, curling engages the game-playing brain at its most basic and addictive of levels. Put this there; leave space here; completely screw over opponent. Like the best games, it is a true zero-sum game, but unlike chess involves the body, a kind of meditative rock-toss you do over and over again until you're in the wordless space Zen Buddhist monks are always blabbing on and on about. The ice helps: there's blank whiteness, a few lines, and everything else evaporates away.

Curling doesn't involve speed or too much agility. You don't need a mountain to play it, and you most certainly don't need rhinestones, though if you wanted to wear a Johnny Weir body suit no one's stopping you from bringing fabulous to the sport. In fact, you can pretty much wear anything as long as you have clean tennis shoes on. It's really the only hard and fast clothing rule in curling besides "wear pants," and even that might be negotiable. NFL-style celebrations are also considered acceptable, as illustrated in Doug's thanking of the Supreme Being after a final point-scoring thrown on the Hammer, or the final toss of an "end" or round.

Hey, anything that involves that much beer can't be bad.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Admonishing Tiger, demolishing "Twilight," and wrapping up the week in hotness.

· I know it's been talked about endlessly over the past week, but I think it bears repeating: The above individual is what Tiger Woods cheated on. Tiger Woods looked at her, thought to himself, "You know, I'm Tiger Woods and that's not good enough for me, I should get to bang other ridiculously hot women besides her." So what I'm saying is that after Elin finishes working her dear hubby over with a nine-iron, every guy in America who's ever had to beg for nookie from even an average-looking chick should get in line behind her to give Tiger a boot to the nuts themselves, because . . . well, that's just being greedy in addition to being adulterous. To say nothing of stupid. Tiger, here's hoping she rips you for every last Escalade-crashin' dollar you have.

Maybe next time he should consult this.

· Apparently the Twilight book series goes off in directions even more fakakta than I could've ever imagined. A Twilight book so godawful that they don't even think they can film it? God deliver us. Seriously, if you're a woman under the age of 30 who's read any of those books as anything other than a goof or a dare from one of your friends, please e-mail me so that I can give you some suggestions as to actual works of literature you might un-rot your brain with. And if you're a human being over the age of 30 who's gone to see any of the movies in an un-ironic context, please kill yourself now. You're only going to mess up humanity's chances for survival when the "2012" apocalypse comes.

· All right, it was bad enough when the asinine Salahi couple attention-whored their way into a White House dinner to which they weren't actually invited. But lying about being a Washington Redskins cheerleader? Now you're messing with the integrity of one of the greatest cheerleading squads in the history of professional sport, ma'am, and that just isn't gonna sit with me. (Seriously, if you want to be an NFL cheerleader that bad, go be one of the Dallas Cowboys cage dancers.)


White House Party Crasher Lady, whatever the hell your name is, trust me, you can't roll with this.

· A season of unrelentingly awful handicapping at EDSBS comes to a merciful end with my final picks column of the regular season, which involved me bending the laws of time and space just so that I could punt the responsibility of picking games onto someone else -- in this case, my 2002 self, fresh-faced and (hopefully) clear-headed enough to not make any worse a hash of the job than I already have.

· You may be surprised to know that I didn't actually watch any of the Victoria's Secret fashion show on CBS the other night. Seriously, if I want to see scantily clad women, why would I settle for viewing them through the PG-rated filter of a major TV network's censorbots? I did come across this, though:



I'm as outraged by that clip as anything I've seen on the Internet. Listen, I'm all for free speech and everything, but there is no reason that the words "too tall" or "boobs too big" should ever be uttered, either to this poor girl or anyone else. Shame on you, People In Charge Of Model Selection. This will not stand!

· One last video, also from Warming Glow, concerning a TV show that looks way too awesome to ever see the light of day in the U.S. -- and indeed, it's actually being produced for BBC4. Herewith, "The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret" (put those headphones on, especially if you're at work, because the audio is highly NSFW):



Let me get this straight: I and millions of other people have been clamoring for the return of "Arrested Development" in some kind of form -- revival of the series, feature film, Internet shorts, anything -- ever since that show was cruelly killed off before its time a few years ago. So now they put Will Arnett and David Cross in a show together -- woohoo! -- and I can only watch it if I'm in Great Britain?

Not cool, TV gods. Y'all still owe me for the series finale of "Seinfeld" and the mere existence of "The Hills," and you're gonna pull this crap? I'm calling shenanigans. Shenanigans!

Thank you.

While we're all taking this day to ponder all the things we're thankful for, I thought I'd take a moment to do the same here. I know the ratio of maudlin posts to overall posts on this blog has been creeping upward of late, for which I apologize, but I want to thank you all for being regular readers, even through some very difficult times over the past few months in which I didn't do as good a job of keeping this thing updated as I should have.

When misfortunes happen in bunches and depression sets in, the attitude that frequently takes over is, "Why should I bother doing [X], it's not gonna make a lick of difference one way or the other" -- and for me, that's been particularly applicable to my writing, in spite of the fact that it's one of the things I do best and enjoy the most. This blog, the work I've been doing for other people's sites, the book that I've been alternately trying to write and trying to give up on for years now -- with each one of these things, I've had that "Why bother" attitude at one point or another over the past year or so, or multiple points, to be more accurate. But y'all are why bother, and now is as good a time as any to remind myself of that and thank all of you for it. Y'all have taken the time to read this blog, care about what's written here, and on occasion even be entertained by it, and that's kept me from throwing my hands up and saying "screw it" despite many temptations to do so.

So a heartfelt "thank you" to you, the readers, for both your time and attention and for the encouraging words you've commented, e-mailed, and Twittered my way; to Holly, Orson, Matt Hinton, and all the other bloggers who have permitted me to deface their sites with my invective over the past few months; and to my family, who have put up with my constant presence (and the nonstop stream of "Super Mario Bros." theme music that comes with it) and still been able to grit their teeth, smile, and assure me sincerely that better days are ahead. Not a day goes by when I don't thank the Lord for all of you, and it's about time you knew that.

Five for Slive podcast: Heading down the home stretch and gearing up for the bowls.

MP3 File

This week's Five for Slive podcast is up, and while the SEC championship-game matchup may be long decided and this weekend's slate may be pretty weak sauce -- seriously, if Georgia-Kentucky is the second-best game, then move along, folks, there's nothing to see here -- there's still plenty of stuff to discuss. Jerry Hinnen of War Blog Eagle and I get into bowl placements, players we'd like to steal, and what the blue hell happened at Vandy this year, among other topics. Enjoy.

You've got a home here.

"Georgia Wins" on the Jumbotron, and Athens itself -- both sights for sore eyes.

I felt my eyes welling up not once but twice Saturday night -- the first time was when the lone trumpeter started playing in the southwest corner of the upper deck at Sanford Stadium and the highlight video started up on the Jumbotron. Hearing Larry Munson narrate the video, the crowd shout at the top of their lungs as "Baba O'Riley" started, seeing the team rush out onto the field, I realized it'd been more than a year since I got to see all that in person, and I realized how much I'd missed it; and I also realized that after months of variously expressing hope, despair, barely contained frustration, and a million other conflicting emotions over the state of our football program, there is still no better place to be on a beautiful evening in the middle of November than Athens, Georgia, surrounded by friends.


Bacarri Rambo: big-hitter, game-saver, hero. Get well soon, baller.

The second time came with less than a minute to go in the actual game, when Bacarri Rambo made his bid for folk-hero status by flinging himself at Mario Fannin at the goal line, knocking what would've been the tying touchdown pass away from him, and landing flat on his back and motionless. Whether he knew it as he was flying through the air or not, Bacarri was sacrificing himself to make the game-saving play in what might've been our biggest and most desperately needed win of the season. I hope everyone who was out there saying silent prayers for him and then chanting "RAM-BO, RAM-BO" as he was carted off the field remembers that guys like him are the ones down there on the field doing our dirty work; guys like him are the ones we're pinning our hopes on each week; guys like him are the ones who take the hit when we give into our temptation to lay into our own players and divine sinister motives for what they're doing or not doing on the field each Saturday. There will be time enough after this season is over to determine what worked in 2009 and what didn't, who's likely to be a major contributor to our success going forward and who isn't, but for right now I hope Bulldog Nation keeps that image of Bacarri in their minds and remembers just how much each and every one of our guys are risking out there just so that we might have something to be proud of the next morning.


Israel Troupe, hopefully the forgotten man in our receiving corps no more after making this catch.

In between those two emotional moments, of course, there was the usual roller-coaster ride of momentum being given away, snatched back, and changing hands many more times over before the final gun sounded; in a way, it did follow the early-season script I alluded to in my preview of the game -- go in a hole early, claw our way out of it, dangle the momentum in front of our opponents' faces and risk handing it back to them at least one more time before the whole show finally ends -- but with a couple of differences.

First of all, we didn't dig ourselves into the early hole with turnovers. Quite frankly, we dug ourselves into the early hole with abysmal play-calling on both sides of the ball -- seriously, you've got A.J. Green, the best receiver in the nation, and you're going to waste his once-in-a-generation talent on swing passes? You're gonna let Auburn convert three straight third-and-longs on the way to a second easy touchdown? And when we ended the first quarter down 14-0 in points and 145-5 in yards (needing a seven-yard run from Caleb King on the last play of the quarter just to sneak into positive territory), I'll be honest, I was giving serious thought to the prospect that I might not be there to see the second half start. But as the game unfolded and Georgia hunkered down, got their heads on straight, and clawed their way back from the early deficit, a funny thing happened: For the first time all season, we didn't commit any turnovers. Nor did we kill ourselves with penalties -- after a dumb offsides/false-start flag on each team's opening drive, we only committed two penalties the rest of the way.


Washaun Ealey, Knowshon's evil twin, says "So long, losers."

For all the nail-biting I'm sure we all did and all the opportunities we let whiz by our heads, it was a surprisingly clean game in that regard, and it gives me hope that someone or something is starting to sink in with our players. There's going to be a lot of soul-searching amongst our coaching staff once the season's over about why it took 10 games for all that stuff to sink in -- actually, 23 games, when you consider that last year's team wasn't exactly a paragon of excellence in those categories either -- but for right now, it's nice to be able to sit back and revel in something other than our program's uncertain future for a change. We needed this win in the worst way, and we got it thanks to a tremendous team effort from a bunch of guys who refused to give up.

All in all, except for the whole going-into-a-two-touchdown-hole-in-the-first-quarter thing, it was a weekend that couldn't have gone any better if I'd scripted it myself beforehand. I got to give Orson Swindle and Holly a taste of the Full Athens on a beautiful autumn day in which Athens the Georgia fan base put their very best respective feet forward. The tailgating scene was everything Holly had been told about and then some, and even Orson, a Florida grad rarely inclined to say anything nice about Georgia unless compelled to by crushing gridiron defeat and/or gunpoint, evidently had a blast:



So thanks to the city of Athens; the Georgia fanbase; the Tent City crew, especially Scott Hartman for being my ticket hookup; Holly and Orson; and, of course, the Georgia team and coaching staff for collectively giving me the best Saturday of the football season thus far. As Holly and I were sitting there in section 134, row 12, watching the Dawgs do a little post-victory dancin' in front of the student section, it occurred to me just how many of my most cherished Georgia football memories are from the UGA-Auburn rivalry; this was the 13th straight Georgia-Auburn game I've been to (and it was the day after Friday the 13th, no less), but it was anything but unlucky.

Elsewhere:

· I don't know how much comfort this will be to the more beleaguered segments of our fan base (and I certainly don't like that it's coming at the expense of Paragon SC, a guy I've met in person and love like a brother), but for what it's worth, Bulldog Nation, the whole "Has Our Coach Lost His Mojo?" meme is hardly exclusive to Georgia at this point. Pete Carroll arguably had a good bit further to fall, too, and it'll be an interesting (if perhaps not especially enjoyable) exercise to compare him and Mark Richt as they try to steer their teams through lower-than-expected bowl bids -- and, potentially, through thorny off-season dilemmas concerning the respective states of their defenses. As much as you might want Willie Martinez gone, folks, we at least haven't given up 55 points this season, to Stanford or anyone else.


That's Commitment with the stop; Integrity gets credited with an assist.

· While taking in as much of Florida-South Carolina as we could before heading down to the stadium, I noticed a Gamecock player with "Courage" on the back of his jersey, followed by one with "Service," and I remember thinking, "My, those South Carolina guys do have some cool, if unusual, last names" -- but then I saw the guy with "Commitment" and I was reminded that both South Carolina and Maryland were gearing up in special military-themed unis to mark Veterans' Day. Here's my question, though: If I'm the Wounded Warrior Project marketing guy tasked with pushing this idea, how thrilled am I that the two teams agreeing to wear the special jerseys are South Carolina, for whom November 11 is right around the point where their annual late-season slump is hitting terminal velocity, and Maryland, who at this point isn't making a run at anything other than the title of worst team in the ACC? Don't get me wrong, I have no beef with the idea in principle; I just hope that for the sake of our troops they manage to land two more inspiring teams next time around.

· Speaking of the ACC, big ups to Clemson and some other team for locking down their divisions' respective berths in the ACC title game -- but given how weak a draw that game has been even in favorable circumstances, how thrilled are the ACC bigwigs, really, that this is just gonna be a rematch of a game we've already seen? Will the Tech and Clemson fanbases be rejuvenated enough by their teams' apparent rise from mediocrity that they'll make the long drive down to Tampa, or will half the purchased tickets end up getting tossed like last time?

· UAB Blazers Watch: Don't look now, but dear old UAB is 5-5 after dispensing with Memphis and only needs one more win to earn the second bowl bid in the program's history. I kind of doubt that they'll get that sixth win against East Carolina this weekend, but I'm seriously considering heading back up to the Salty 'Ham on the Saturday after Thanksgiving to see if Black Tebow can nail down that sixth win at the expense of George "Master's Degree" O'Leary and the UCF Knights. Oh, how delicious that would be.

· Wofford Terriers Watch: A difficult season continued in its difficult-ness with a close loss to Samford. The switch to an option-based offense, clearly, has been a rough one for the Terriers, but they can end the season on a high note with a win at Furman this weekend.



· Cheerleader Curse Watch: The winsome Chelsie (above) did not manage to doom her team to a loss on Saturday, but the fact that her Minnesota Golden Gophers had to come from behind to beat DI-AA South Dakota State on a late field goal should prove that the Curse's powers have not disappeared.

· And finally, never let it be said that I don't keep my promises. Flag run, engage.

Speaking with the enemy: Pickin' the brains of a Plainsman.

This Saturday will mark my 13th straight season of attending the Georgia-Auburn game, for as I mentioned in the game preview, I've always looked forward to this game as one of the friendlier, less bile-infused rivalries on the annual Georgia schedule. Not that I don't want the Dawgs to kick Auburn's ass up and down the field, of course, but as for the fans, there doesn't seem to be nearly the kind of rip-you-limb-from-limb hatred that exists even in a lot of rivalries that haven't lasted nearly as long as this one has (117 years and counting, to be exact).

As an example, I give you one Jerry Hinnen, Auburn grad, War Blog Eagle writer, podcast producer, and all-around stand-up guy. After numerous interactions over the past couple years, it only seemed logical to partner up on a roundtable to mark Georgia-Auburn week; my answers to his questions went up at WBE earlier today, and his answers to my questions can be found below. I think you'll agree we managed to pull this off with mutual respect, worthwhile insight, and minimal aspersions cast on each other's literacy or lack thereof.

1. Maybe I'm being naive here, but one of the reasons I've always liked the Georgia-Auburn rivalry so much is that there seems to be a truly congenial attitude toward the proceedings -- it's a friendly rivalry without the bitterness and nastiness of, say, Auburn-Alabama or Georgia-Florida. Of course, there are always those who disagree (cough Kyle King cough). What's your take on the "personality" of this particular rivalry?

My take is the same as yours and I think it's the same as a lot of Auburn and Georgia fans' -- when you find yourself spending most of the season trading barbs with Tide fans or Gator fans (and occasionally, for a change of pace, LSU fans or Vol fans), trading them with the generally lower-key, less-volatile folks who make up the Dawg (or, if you are not a Tide fan dealing with our regular baiting, Tiger) fanbase is a welcome relief. It also helps from this side of the aisle that Mark Richt -- whatever you think of his football coaching ability, especially here in 2009 -- is basically impossible to hate. Even Evil Richt has mostly saved his shots for the Gators, and Auburn fans (particularly those old enough to remember when the Gators were an annual foe and third only to UGA and 'Bama in rivalry significance) can appreciate that.


Ahh, Evil Richt . . . back when a black uniform accessory meant something (sniff).

That said: It's easy for me to say that when I grew up in rural Alabama and only knew one ostensible Dawg fan in school, and even he gave it up (after years of abuse) before we ever made it to junior high. (He converted to crimson, lousy typical front-running Tide bandwagoneer.) Several commenters at WBE this week who live and work in the Peach State have mentioned that they want a victory over the Dawgs more than they do the Tide, which to me is like saying you'd prefer to have long bank-teller lines eradicated before world hunger. But I think we do have to acknowledge that personal geography does clearly play a role in our football hate or lack thereof.

2. I was stunned to see that Georgia is favored at all in this weekend's game, to say nothing of the fact that the spread opened at five points. Is there some major weakness on the Auburn side of the ledger (or some simmering strength on Georgia's) that I'm completely missing here?

To be honest, I think you're not giving your Dawgs enough credit. Routs thought they might have been, there's a lot less shame in losing to Okie State, Florida, and Crompton 2.0's Tennessee than Kentucky at home. Both our teams played LSU; Georgia had to suffer what's still the worst call in an SEC season threatening to be defined by them to lose to the Bayou Bengals, while Auburn had to score a last-second touchdown to avoid losing by four full scores. The Dawgs beat Arkansas in Fayetteville; Auburn lost up there, and lost badly.


Above: Chris Todd, not enjoying the greater Fayetteville area.

Now, I know you can't just ignore the Tennessee comparison that works in Auburn's favor, the margin-of-defeat in the Dawg losses to the Gators and Vols, the turnover horrors the Dawgs have been inflicting on themselves all season, or that so many different teams have had so much success squaring off against Willie Martinez's defense this season. Still: Looking over the season as a whole, Georgia hasn't been much worse off than Auburn -- the Tigers won their big non-conference test, the Dawgs didn't, and that's about the extent of the gap -- and it doesn't surprise me at all that playing between the hedges, the Dawgs are the Vegas favorite. I don't think it's a matter of hidden strengths or weaknesses; I think it's just a matter of the game being a virtual toss-up and one team being at home.

3. Auburn got off a midseason three-game schneid by throttling Ole Miss and Furman in its last two games. How worried were you during that losing streak, and how confident are you that the Tigers have put it completely behind them?

I'd just about resigned myself to 6-6 during the losing streak; when your team's first-string offense scores 10 points in two weeks and one of those weeks is spent facing Kentucky at home, it's hard to muster up a lot of hope. The Auburn defense was still playing at right around the same adequate-if-hardly-"good" level they'd been at all year, but Chris Todd looked to have completely lost the swagger he'd discovered early in the season (he was particularly wretched against the 'Cats, missing a number of open receivers for simple third-and-short conversions), and with Auburn's inexperienced wideouts the passing game had crumbled to dust around him. You can write off one bad week as a fluke, but three straight? I figured that without a ton of help in the turnover and/or special-teams department, Auburn was headed for .500.

Naturally Todd came out and put up better numbers against the Rebel secondary than any other QB has done this season, then set a single-game Auburn record for completion percentage against Furman (17-of-18, and the miss was a drop). And now Auburn looks like their dangerous original selves again. As for how confident I am that Todd and the offense is back for good . . . I would say "reasonably" confident, since Todd did actually take some baby steps forward vs. LSU (no one noticed, what with his pass protection betraying him and the running game unusually inconsistent) and then built on those the next two weeks. As sharp as he looked against Furman, I'm guessing he'll be competent -- at least -- in Athens. But Todd also showed us midseason that he could revert back to his 2008 form at any time, so it's just a guess -- there's no real telling what we're going to see Saturday.

4. Chris Todd looked awful last season, masterful during Auburn's 5-0 start, horrendous over the ensuing three-game skid, and is back to looking just fine again. Which one is the REAL Chris Todd, for crying out loud, and is that the one we're likely to see on Saturday?


Above: Chris Todd, squaring off against BIZARRO EVIL CHRIS TODD.

Whoops, I kind of just answered that, didn't I? So I'll add this as a kind of bonus to the above: No one factor has been as closely linked to Auburn's success all season as Todd's performance and the success of the Auburn passing game. Auburn has won when the running game has produced and lost when it's produced; they've lost with solid defensive play, won with solid defensive play, won with weak defensive play, lost with weak defensive play; they've struggled mightily in special teams all season long and have won seven games in spite of it.

The one thing that's been markedly different in the seven wins and the three losses: Todd and the passing game. When it's been working, Auburn's won. When it hasn't, Auburn's lost. That such a huge component of Auburn's success can still be such a question mark is on the frustrating side, but it's better than having three or four factors be question marks, I guess.

5. Tennessee, Kentucky, Ole Miss, and now Furman have all scored the majority of their points against Auburn in the second half. In your mind, does that validate preseason concerns about a potential lack of depth on Auburn's defense -- and if so, is it enough that Georgia will actually be able to exploit it, or am I just grasping at straws here?

Well, I think the Ole Miss and Furman "surges" are kind of irrelevant as far as matching up the Auburn D with the Georgia O goes -- the Rebels got 7 of their 14 second-half points on a kick return (meaning the offense scored the same in both halves) and Furman's second-half success came exclusively against a selection of Auburn second- and third-stringers, walk-ons, and even moonlighting offensive players. Georgia's not going to see very many of those guys Saturday, and if the Ole Miss game is any indication, Auburn's defense will actually get stronger as the game goes along (the Rebels failed to score in the fourth quarter despite a pair of drives that started in Auburn territory).

That's not to say that Auburn's defense doesn't have a depth problem, because it absolutely does. With JUCO corner Demond Washington moving into the starting lineup at safety, Auburn now has one -- ONE -- upperclassman on its entire defensive second-string (junior DE Michael Goggans). Everyone else is a freshmen or sophomore, and Auburn will apparently head into the Georgia game with one (one) scholarship linebacker and one (one) scholarship corner on the bench.


Then again, Michael Goggans has been known to make life difficult for some folks.

However: Auburn's proven against Ole Miss (and in a handful of other games) that that won't be a major problem if there's no injuries and the offense is humming along -- the starters are in excellent shape, they've been particularly stingy since weakside linebacker Eltoro Freeman came back from a one-week pseudo-suspension vs. Arkansas and started wrecking fools, and adjusting for the staggering increase in overall number of snaps forced on them by the hyperdrive offense, they've never been as bad as their reputation in some quarters has suggested.

However however: If the offfense stalls repeatedly? Auburn will be in trouble. The Arkansas and Kentucky games have illustrated what happens if the offense (which uses up a stunningly small amount of time in a three-and-out) doesn't get rolling: Eventually the defense will wear down and will give up big chunks of yards and points. The old saying about the best defense being a good offense gets flipped against this Auburn team; the best thing Georgia can do for its offense is to have its defense show up and get a string of stops. And as for injuries, there's simply no adequate replacements if one of the linebackers (or possibly a corner or safety) goes down.


I SAID, I AM SOOOO GLAD TO BE OUT OF AMES, IOWA!

6. So: Gene Chizik. What was your initial reaction to the hire, and how has that impression changed now that the Tigers are 7-3 and doing better than just about anybody expected? What are the most important things he's brought to this program?

I wish I could say I was one of the foresighted Auburn fans who passed on the Chicken Little act when Chizik was hired, but I wasn't. I was as baffled and disappointed and anyone and even a careful combing through of his tenure at Iowa State didn't help much; he was a little unlucky that second year there, but I still don't think there's any way to spin his time in Ames as anything but a failure.

But clearly Chizik had some good ideas he just wasn't able to implement at ISU, like, for instance, hiring Gus Malzahn and Ted Roof and Trooper Taylor and Jeff Grimes and Curtis Luper and Tracy Rocker and Tommy Thigpen. Frankly, those guys are the most important things he's brought to the program.

But that's not to sell Chizik short, since 1) there's an awful lot coaches out there who wouldn't have taken the risk of hiring a weirdo like Malzahn, or been able to sell coaches like Taylor and Thigpen and Luper on making what were just about lateral moves, and 2) if the staff's the best thing he's done, it's not the only thing. The 2008 Auburn team was as dysfunctional and fractured and miserable as college football teams get, and Chizik swept away all that to create a coherent, unified team that clearly enjoys playing together and rooting for each other. There was a moment in fall camp which I don't think has made a lot of waves outside of Auburn, where Kodi Burns responded to the news he'd been passed over for the starting QB job by asking to speak to the team as a whole. He told them he was going to support Todd as the starter, learn whatever role he could to help the team, and ask everyone else to line up behind Todd and the coaches going forward. For a player who'd had no previous connection of any kind to Chizik before his hiring to express that kind of loyalty is a huge credit to Chizik and, in my view, one of the turning points of the season.

7. I'll end things with a fairly obvious question: Which matchup do you see as being the "key" to this game, and which way do you see it breaking?


Above: Mario Fannin, the Auburn player within five yards of whom our defensive backs are least likely to be on Saturday.

Again, going back to the importance of the passing game for Auburn, I think it comes down to the Georgia secondary taking on Todd and the Auburn receivers. (To sum those receivers up briefly: the WRs are Darvin Adams and Terrell Zachery, with Adams more the tall possession guy and Zachery the explosive deep threat; Mario Fannin and Eric Smith get a lot of looks from H-back, especially on third down; and every now and then Tommy Trott will pop up from TE, though he mostly blocks on wide running plays these days.) It's not too tough to see Todd having an off game on the road, and if the Tiger receiving crew has had a hell of a year statistically they've also disappeared in a number of games. On paper, guys with as much experience and talent as Prince Miller, Bryan Evans, Brandon Boykin, and Reshad Jones should be able to hold their ground.

But of course it hasn't worked out that way for the Dawgs this year, has it? I don't think Todd's going to explode Crompton-style, but UGA's secondary has been so shaky this season and Malzahn so adept at putting pressure on secondaries like that (or even better ones, like Ole Miss's) that I don't see a Kentucky- or LSU-style sputterfest, either. I think Auburn will make enough hay in the passing game to keep Georgia honest up front, break some big runs, and ride the balance to victory.

But that's all just talk. We'll see Saturday. Good luck, Dawgs.

All the time, Mr. Blight. All. The. Time.

I don't think I've ever identified with a blog post on a more personal level than I did with this one over at Corn Nation, a Nebraska blog.

Boy, does this guy get me.

Five for Slive podcast: What's the matter with the refs, Florida, Auburn, the BCS, and everything else?

It's my turn to host the Five for Slive podcast this week, in which Jerry Hinnen of War Blog Eagle and I discuss topics of note in the SEC. This week we get our licks in at SEC officiating, diagnose a couple of ailing offenses, and toss out a few upset opportunities.


MP3 File


Other places you can find me this week:

· At Dr. Saturday, sampling the tears of Ohio State fans and taking stock of an Oklahoma team that might be playing for its season this weekend against Kansas.

· At EDSBS, inflicting my usual strain of terrible gambling advice on an unsuspecting public. (Hey, not my problem. Y'all really should be "suspecting" by now.)

· On Twitter, where, wow, I've managed to come across as really angry the past couple days.

St. Louie linkdump.

I'm en route to Dallas for this weekend's Texas-Oklahoma game, and banging this out on an iPhone, no less, because there's no free wi-fi in the St. Louis airport, but here are some links so that I still might entertain you (sort of) while I'm out of pocket:

• This week's Profiles in Disillusion, in which Georgia does indeed play a prominent role. Though by no means the starring one: At least we didn't let Duke score 49 on us on our own field.

• Also at Doc Saturday, a preview of Notre Dame-USC, otherwise known as Charlie Weis's come-to-(Touchdown)-Jesus meeting in South Bend, and my two cents on the top CFB scandal of the past decade (shocking hint: it involves Alabama).

• In exchange for those brilliant bits of insight, the Doc tips his hat to my Richt/Tuberville manifesto in his own take on the increasingly touchy times down in Athens.

• Gambling picks at Orson's joint that might -- might! -- manage not to suck out loud for like the first time all season.

• And last but definitely not least, the inaugural Five for Slive podcast -- the brainchild of War Blog Eagle founder Jerry Hinnen -- jumps off this morning, with Yours Truly bravely pontificating through clenched teeth about the state of the SEC at the season's midpoint (and UGA's dwindling relevance to same).

Enjoy! See you folks when I'm back on the ground in Big D.

What is to be done?, or: Separated at Birth, the not-funny edition.

Now that I've (mostly) recovered from the shock of seeing this in a context other than a sushi-and-Pernod-induced nightmare, I guess it's time to take a stab at gauging The State Of The Program. The estimable Senator Blutarsky -- who, coincidentally, joins me today in hoisting the "Tears of Unfathomable Sadness Award" in Brian Cook's This Week in Schadenfreude feature -- has already summed up things about as tidily as anyone could, and I don't know that I have too much to add that he hasn't already said, but obviously I'm going to try just the same.

Yes, we know we have a lot of young players. Yes, we know the departure of Matt Stafford and Knowshon Moreno has left a sizable vacuum, possibly in terms of leadership, definitely in terms of talent. And it's possible that I was way too naive about both of these issues in my preseason projections of Georgia's fortunes, in which case, ancient mariner, you may consider me a sadder, wiser man from this point on. But the fact remains that we possess the following assets on our team:

· a fifth-year senior who is currently second in the SEC in total offense;
· the most dominant receiver in all of college football right now;
· a pair of tight ends with nine recruiting stars between them;
· an offensive line that returns every starter from last year's unit, which paved the way for 1,400 rushing yards for Knowshon Moreno and only let Matt Stafford get sacked 17 times all season;
· two senior defensive tackles;
· one of the hardest-hitting linebackers in the country; and
· a special-teams unit featuring the nation's leading punter, a placekicker with only one field-goal miss all season, and a kick returner who already has two 100-yard TDs

. . . and we're still only 3-3, with a four-touchdown loss to Tennessee.

That's embarrassing, and unacceptable. It is no more acceptable than any of the blowout losses Jim Donnan sustained even after bringing in all of his outstanding recruiting classes; if anything, it's less acceptable, because while Donnan never gave us consistent evidence that his teams would be better than that, Mark Richt already has.

On that note, some people have compared Saturday's Tennessee loss to the Auburn game in 1999, which is frighteningly apt. For those of you fortunate enough to have not been in Sanford Stadium on the evening of November 13, 1999, here's the thumbnail sketch: A 4-5 Auburn team that had just recently snapped a five-game losing streak came into Sanford Stadium to face a ranked Georgia squad, rolled up a 31-0 halftime lead, and coasted to a 38-21 win. Ben Leard, a mediocre QB who had accomplished nothing of note that season, completed three-quarters of his passes and shelled us for 416 yards. Georgia's offense accomplished nothing until the game was way out of hand. A coach already developing a reputation as a complete asshole in his first year on the job got to laugh in our faces. (All this starting to sound familiar?)

That comparison would be bad enough for Mark Richt, since the blowout Auburn loss is generally seen as the beginning of the end for the Donnan regime. But I'd like to make another comparison that I think bears more relevance to the state of our program on a macro level, and if my Auburn friends will forgive me for dragging out their program one more time, this is where the Separated at Birth part comes in:



First of all, in the interest of full disclosure, let me state that I didn't care for Tommy Tuberville either as a person (the smarminess of his poor-man's-Steve-Spurrier act was downright irritating, and got even more so as he had less and less to back it up) or as a coach (just last year I pronounced him maybe the most overrated coach in the league). But anyone who survived the turmoil and embarrassment of an attempted coup in 2003, only to turn right around and lay waste to the entire conference on the way to a 13-0 season the very next year, must have had some coaching chops.

The problem, though, with that phoenix-like resurrection in '04 was that it turned Tubs into a bit of a monster. This is a purely subjective judgment, I grant you, but once he had the 13-0 season in his back pocket, Tuberville seemed to start acting like he was invincible. I can think of few more retroactively embarrassing sound bites by any SEC coach in the last decade than when Tuberville bitched and moaned about how hard it would be for his team to play for the BCS title -- just two days before Auburn went out and got themselves pounded by an unranked Arkansas team. It gave the impression of someone who had already put himself in the championship spot and thus was devoting more energy to settling pointless old scores with the BCS than to settling the scores that mattered on the field. And when Auburn did lose a game like that, Tuberville frequently employed "weasel words" with the skill of a politician, giving any and every explanation for the loss other than "We just got outcoached" or "I didn't prepare the players well enough."

The biggest indicator of success-induced complacency on Tuberville's part, though, was his loyalty to an underachieving group of assistants, most of whom Tuberville either brought with him from Ole Miss or had worked with in some prior capacity. And let me be clear that I mean position coaches, not coordinators, whom Tubs burned through so quickly it started to become a running joke -- but that was symptomatic of the problem: Given the choice between unloading a coordinator or unloading one of the position coaches with whom he went way back, Tuberville opted for the coordinator time after time, even in the face of mounting evidence that the position coaches weren't pulling their weight (and were, in some cases, actively trying to submarine the coordinator who wasn't part of the good-ol'-boy network). By the end of 2007, Auburn had a QB who'd gone from four-star recruit to basket case; an O-line that was allowing said QB to be pounded into goo on a regular basis; and a receiving corps that pundits repeatedly trucked out when they needed a poster child for the "underachieving" label. Yet instead of ditching the position coaches responsible for those units -- Steve Ensminger, Hugh Nall, and Greg Knox, respectively -- Tuberville chose to part ways with Al Borges, who had been brought in to save the Auburn offense from Nall's dismally incompetent hands following the 2003 season and helped turn it into a 13-0 machine (with on-the-brink QB Jason Campbell being magically transformed into an NFL first-rounder in the process).

Borges, as we all know, was replaced by spread guru Tony Franklin, who, like Borges before him, was disdained as an outsider by the good-ol'-boy group -- and when the internal conflict resulted in disaster, Franklin was shown the door with the 2008 season just half-over. Incredibly, the guy who received the interim OC tag in his place was none other than Steve Ensminger, who managed to be even less productive in that spot than Franklin had been. Make no mistake, Tuberville didn't get fired at the end of that season because he'd hired Tony Franklin; Tuberville got fired because his assistants had poisoned that offense so completely that it would've sucked no matter whom they hired as OC. In spite of the evidence that whatever they were doing wasn't working anymore, Tuberville stuck with blind loyalty and an insistence on "staying the course" (whatever that was), and he paid for it in the end.

Now, after all that, let me say that, even after Georgia's recent struggles, I have complete faith that Richt is both a better coach and a better dude than Tuberville was, and the same goes for our assistants compared to Tuberville's. But Richt's legendary loyalty to his assistants is starting to show cracks just like Tubs's did. Our defense, for example, has followed an almost linear downward trajectory ever since Willie Martinez took over from Brian VanGorder in 2005, yet there has never been any hint that Martinez's job is on the line. Our special-teams coach (who has to divide his attention between ST and the defensive ends) justifies our continued use of disastrous directional kickoffs with about the most asinine explanation possible -- yet not only does he remain in control over special teams, there's little evidence he's received any directive to dispense with this tactic. The presence of Logan Gray on the field for punt reception is a veritable flashing neon sign indicating that we're not going to attempt any kind of runback, yet we keep on putting him out there, and he keeps on not running it back. Georgia starts the Tennessee game in a soft zone, and despite that soft zone getting picked apart by the play-action, no discernible adjustments are made. As with Auburn in the latter years of the Tuberville regime, things that aren't working aren't getting fixed.

There are other creeping symptoms of Tuberville Syndrome: veteran players at a variety of positions not being properly developed; implications that past success should mitigate current failure; Richt's increasing testiness with the press; his growing tendency to put blame on players not "executing," which sounds just as bad as when Terry Bowden used to do it. I got chills this morning -- the bad kind -- when I read Paul Westerdawg's explanation that Georgia's current "Lack of a Sense of Urgency" was "a by product of Coach Richt's eight year deal and his enormous buyout." Not because I was shocked to hear something like that, but because I'd considered the same possibility just the day before, and I couldn't believe I was having those thoughts about a guy I liked and respected as much as Mark Richt.

I don't believe that Mark Richt is a bad or stupid person, nor do I believe that about any of his assistants, even the ones whom I hope aren't working for us this time next year. And I don't think for one second that he's satisfied with our performance this season. But changes have to be made, in some cases big ones, and I've begun to have doubts that he's committed to making all of them. More and more, we're seeing a "stay the course" mentality coming from our coaching staff that's proving detrimental to the product we put on the field. Last year, for example, Richt backed off on full-contact tackling drills in practice, which manifested itself in the shocking decline of our run defense over the second half of the season -- yet no effort was made to change course until our defenders were literally bouncing off Georgia Tech players in the regular-season finale. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result; if that's the case, then we've been doing some pretty insane things lately.

Following last night's Dolphins-Jets MNF game, Jets coach Rex Ryan had the guts to call his team's performance an "embarrassment" and claim "full responsibility" for not having the team properly prepared. He cited specific decisions he'd made that turned out to be bad ones, and explicitly vowed to do a better job the following week. And this was all after losing by only four points, on the road, to a team with the best rushing attack in the league, with the winning score occurring in the very last minute of the game. If Rex Ryan is willing to hold himself that comprehensively accountable for a close, valiantly fought loss, is it too much to expect our coaches to be just as accountable for a loss in which we all but laid down for Jonathan Crompton?

I'm not simply seeking Richt's shame or self-flagellation here; his shame plus two bucks might get me a cup of coffee at Starbucks, depending on what part of the country I'm in. What I'd rather have is an end to the complacency, a recognition that the old ways of simply staying the course and "hoping that [the team] can ride sheer talent to get through a game" are no longer keeping our heads above water. And while I think we need a big staff shakeup at the end of the season, I'm not even calling for that now, because as naive as I am, I'm at least smart enough to realize that such a shakeup this week wouldn't improve our immediate prospects at all. What I'd rather have, if you conservatives out there will pardon the dredging-up of an Obama trope, is a more obvious commitment to change. Directional kickoffs not working? Then don't do them anymore. Walk-ons and bench players not covering kickoffs well enough? Then stop being afraid to use starters. Veterans not producing? Then put the good of the team before your desire to reward seniority and give the young kids a shot. This is not about giving veterans their due, or giving the players a "challenge," or proving the worth of what you think should be considered a time-honored strategy. This is about winning games, and an emphasis on anything other than that is missing the point.

I like and respect Mark Richt both as a coach and as a human being, and he's too good in both of those capacities to fall into Tuberville Syndrome. But to avoid that fate, he's going to have to make some tough decisions over the next couple months, decisions that may test concepts such as tradition or loyalty. We've seen what happens when he unleashes the power of Evil Richt on other teams, but the time is fast approaching when he may have to be willing to turn it on his own.

I do it for the kids.

What I've been up to this week:

· Rollin' through the Kübler-Ross stages of grief with last weekend's most disillusioned and despairing football fans, sampling the tears of each and finding Florida State's and Miami's particularly smooth, with a nice finish;

· Examining the state of Michigan State football as they try to break a three-game skid against Michigan, of all people (see, I know Big Ten stuff!);

· Wagerin' money I don't actually have on this weekend's games, and using mad MS Paint skillz to depict Lucy from "Peanuts" packin' big-ass heat; and

· Carrying off the Straight Bangin' Award in this week's BlogPoll for being most cynical about the general worth of my own team. In case you hadn't noticed, we don't do optimism here.

Where the bad penny has popped up this week.

My latest attempts to sully the names of other people's perfectly good blogs:

· The first installment of Profiles in Disillusion over at Dr. Saturday's joint, in which I had to include Bulldog Nation's misery on the menu but also got some digs in at Oklahoma and Ron Zook, and presented what will hopefully be the return of one of my favorite bloggers to active duty, even if only to chronicle Al Groh's one-man show of the last 20 minutes or so of "Casino."

· Also at the Doc's place, a pre-Trobuckalypse look into Ohio State's big-game misery and why the stakes have only been raised for the Big Ten as a whole.

· And at EDSBS, my bettin' column for this week attempts to make amends for last week's awful handicapping. Let the record show that in my original draft, I took Clemson plus the five and a half in last night's game. Do I get to count that?

Also, I get noted for my post-Stillwater Dawg-pessimism in the rundown of the Week 1 BlogPoll results, and land a couple quotes in the first SEC Power Poll of 2009.

Tomorrow I'll be doing a roundtable with Paul Krugman and David Brooks on the chances that Obama's health-care bill will get passed, and if so, whether it will include the public option -- oh, wait, no, I'll be in Athens drinking myself silly. Sorry, Paul and David! We'll do it next week, I promise.

Branching out.

I've, uh, vertically integrated myself. You know, diversified and shit.

In addition to the football-related bloviating that has already begun in earnest here, I'll also be spending this fall befouling the blogs of two other gents who should know better. At Dr. Saturday, I'll be contributing "On the Spot" every Tuesday, taking a look into the program, coach, player, or whoever that has the most at stake in the coming weekend; once the games actually start, I'll also be regaling you good folks each Monday with "Profiles in Fan Disillusion," a weekly survey of the most despondent, angst-ridden, and hilarious reactions from the fanbloggers whose teams sustained high-profile and embarrassing donkeypunches the previous Saturday.

The Wannabe Wagerer, on the other hand, will not be returning at Doc Saturday; instead I'll be inflicting my preposterously unqualified betting advice on the readers of EDSBS, where "Free Money Doug" will be ridin' dirty around the middle of each week. Picks will be rated on a risk scale of one (oddsmakers all but dumping bundles of crisp twenties in your lap) to five (the financial equivalent of Russian roulette, only with bullets in five chambers as opposed to just one). As these picks are for entertainment purposes only, I refuse to accept responsibility for any monetary losses on the part of readers, though paradoxically, I do accept tips in the event of wins.

This in addition to regular participation in the BlogPoll and the SEC Power Poll soon to get cranked up again over at Team Speed Kills. Man, if I were getting paid an hourly wage for all this stuff, I could quit looking for a job. Ahem.

There's no promotion like self-promotion.

I may have finished up my guest-hosting week over at EDSBS, but I'm still not done befouling other people's Web sites with my presence.

Here, at Dr. Saturday, is the latest installment in my ongoing Better Know an Embattled Coach series. This week's victim: Indiana coach Bill Lynch, who took over in mid-offseason after the previous coach died of a brain tumor, led the Hoosiers to their first bowl in 13 years, but after a 3-9 season is fighting for his job anyway. (Man, this economy is crushing everybody.)

Also, despite being a Florida blog and therefore under no obligation whatsoever to give a flying fuck what I think, Gators First gave me the opportunity to hold forth with my at-best-modestly-educated opinion about how the 2009 season is going to shake out for the SEC. Thrill to the first and very last time I will say anything nice about Tennessee or South Carolina this year.

Also, that post I did for EDSBS about Lou Holtz's (short-lived) Congressional ambitions? Got linked by The New Republic. (Which, in retrospect, probably would not have happened had I gone with my original concept for that post, "What Kind Of Sex Scandal Will Lou Holtz Get Caught In Once He Becomes A Congressman?" I think I'd decided to go with "Name found in little black book of Florida madam whose prostitutes are exclusively Asian women catering to men with lactation fetishes"; my sincere thanks to whoever talked me down off that ledge.)

My life at 31: an equation.

This + (This / This) = This.



(Hat tip: Holly.)