I know the Friday Random Ten+5 has been absent for a few weeks, and it's mainly because I just couldn't come up with any good ideas for +5s -- but a conversation I had with Holly the other day gave me one. We'll talk periodically about what we might plan, wedding-wise, if we ever decide to pull the trigger on this thing, and mainly it's just us coming up with outlandish ideas such as a Super Mario Brothers-themed ceremony where she comes down the aisle dressed like Bowser. (Her idea, not mine, which just makes it that much more awesome.) But we were talking about ideas for what song to play at our first dance, and we came up with some doozies. Hence, the Friday Randomness returns with Five Unbelievably Inappropriate Songs To Play As The First Dance At Our Wedding Reception.
Wu-Tang Clan, "Shame on a Nigga" This is the song that inspired the entire conversation, and we've talked about it enough at this point that the chances we actually do it are probably right around 50-50. Which will make our parents so very proud of us, I'm sure.
Dead Kennedys, "Too Drunk to Fuck" This would be appropriate since it describes quite a few people at the end of a wedding reception anyway. You go there to pick up some bridesmaids, you dance, you drink, and by the end of the evening you're in no position to do anything but puke on your nice clothes and cry in a cab on the way home. Or maybe that's just me.
Wham!, "Careless Whisper" Hits the inappropriateness trifecta: references to infidelity, references to dancing . . . and five minutes' worth of pure, uncut, Colombian '80s cheese. Including '80s saxophone, which could make even "The Star-Spangled Banner" sound goofy.
Josh Groban, "You Raise Me Up" I'm not including a YouTube here because this song is so godawful I can't even stand to have it on my blog. Yes, it's much worse than "Careless Whisper." Most of Groban's catalogue, if this song is any indication, makes "Careless Whisper" look like "Smells Like Teen Spirit." And to my ears, at least, it's way more offensive than "Too Drunk to Fuck." If we played this as our first dance, we'd have to play "Too Drunk to Fuck" or maybe Cee-Lo's "Fuck You" immediately afterward, just to demonstrate to everyone we didn't really mean it.
Nirvana/Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine, "Rape Me" Pretty self-explanatory, no? It's either this or the Beastie Boys' "Girls."
And now the Ten, whose appropriateness cannot be verified in advance:
1. Pet Shop Boys, "K-Hole" 2. Johnny Cash, "Give My Love to Rose" 3. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Scartissue" 4. Pet Shop Boys, "Vampires" 5. Nanci Griffith, "I Don't Want to Talk About Love" 6. Tito Puente, "Mambo Gallego" (remix) 7. Fatboy Slim, "Going Out of My Head" 8. Underworld, "Ring Road" 9. Moby, "Bodyrock" 10. U.N.K.L.E., "Logan's Run"
Please welcome back the Ten+5 by putting your own Random Tens, and your ideas for utterly horrible wedding-reception numbers, in the comments.
So we're nearing the end of a difficult season, and the Dawgs now sit at 5-5, and at a crossroads -- they've got two big rivals left, Auburn and Georgia Tech, and they're gonna have to beat at least one of them to make it to a bowl this year. Will they make it? Manic Doug, who watched every last second of the Dawgs' 55-7 beatdown of Idaho State last week, and Depressive Doug, who used the time to catch up on his flossing, bring you their views and predictions on the first of those two matchups here. You probably will not be surprised to find what their respective positions are.
Manic Doug: So has Cam Newton been suspended yet?
Depressive Doug: Seriously? Is that what you're waiting on? 'Cause if it is, this is gonna be the shortest preview we've ever done.
MD:No, Eeyore, I'm just trying to feel out every angle I can. Any little competitive edge we can get is gonna help us.
DD: First of all, I'm sure Mr. Newton is ever so flattered by your characterization of him as a "little" edge, not to mention the Heisman Foundation. Second, am I to infer from this that you're actually worried about the Dawgs' chances with him in the game?
MD: Well, of course I'm worried, dumbass. I'm an optimist and an aggressive drunk, not a complete idiot. But I'm not about to sit here and say that having to face the best player in the country automatically dooms us to a loss.
DD: Well, no problem there. I'll be happy to do it for you.
MD: What a shock. OK, then, answer me this: Can you name one guy on Auburn's offense besides Newton?
DD: Michael Dyer, running back. Darvin Adams, receiver. Mario Fannin, receiver. Lee Ziemba, offensive guard.
MD: Well, that one kind of blew up in my face.
DD: Onterrio McCalebb, running back. Philip Lutzenkirchen, tight end . . . shall I go on?
MD: Well, congratulations, you read your Phil -- wait, Lutzenkirchen? You made that up. Or else he's a character from a Dr. Seuss book.
DD: Nope, he's quite real, and he's got nine receptions for 81 yards and two TDs this season.
MD: Oh, well! Nine catches for eighty-one whole yards? Screw Cam Newton, it's obvious they don't need him!
DD: Are you anywhere close to making a point here? 'Cause if not, I'd love to go ahead and put in that DVD of the third season of "Mad Men" we were watching earlier, if it's all the same to you.
MD: What I'm saying is that while yes, there are other players on Auburn's roster, none of them have come close to making the kind of contribution that Newton has. Even you have to admit it's pretty much a one-man show. If we stop Newton, we've got a chance at winning. It's that simple.
DD: Yeah, and if I was Superman I could reverse the earth's rotation, go back in time and keep A.J. Green from selling that fucking jersey. So what? How do you propose we stop him?
MD: We don't have to stop him . . . if he stops himself.
(long, very weird pause)
DD: Was there supposed to be some music there? I feel like something was supposed to happen there that didn't happen.
MD: Yeah, I had Dramatic Chipmunk cued up, and then my computer froze on me. Hold on, you take a moment to admire this week's Associated Hottie, model and Auburn polymer engineering major Scarlet South, while I try to make this thing work.
DD: I'm not sure what I find harder to believe about that statement -- the idea that her real name is "Scarlet South," or the idea that there's a chick who looks like that anywhere who's majoring in polymer engineering.
MD: You want to go look it up, be my guest. All right, here we go. What was I saying again?
DD: Something about Cam Newton "stopping himself" that I can only imagine was beyond inane.
MD: Right, right. OK. We won't have to stop Cam Newton . . . if he stops himself.
DD: Bra-fucking-vo. You want to explain this line of thinking before I start regretting having asked in the first place?
MD: OK, check it: For the last two weeks all we've heard about are scandals about Cam Newton -- why he left Florida, what his grades were like, whether his own dad was shopping him around out of junior college, even what kind of traffic citations he ran up while he was at UF. Last week that didn't matter, because Auburn was only playing Chattanooga, and they were never going to keep him out there for that long anyway. But against Georgia, an actual team, and with this recruiting scandal blowing up bigger and bigger with each passing day, that's got to wear on him a bit, don't you think? Cause a bit of a distraction?
DD: OK, you know what? If we were playing stellar defense right now, I might actually be somewhat inclined to agree with you. To a point. But you can't honestly believe that "distraction" alone is going to be able to keep Cam Newton from running wild on us.
MD: Why wouldn't it? Auburn's offense is clearly biased toward the run, and I don't know if you noticed or not, but Georgia's got the #13 run defense in the entire country. And only a tick behind South Carolina in the SEC.
DD: Yeah, fine, but it's one thing to clamp down on the running attack of a team like Idaho State or Vanderbilt. We still can't stop a running QB to save our lives. You saw what Trey Burton did to us a couple weeks ago, right? And even Burton's not anywhere close to the level that Cam Newton's playing at right now.
MD: But we've got another ace in the hole, which is that Auburn can't pass. Their aerial attack is ranked 73rd in the nation at the moment -- they're just barely getting up over 200 passing yards per game.
DD:Can't pass, or just doesn't need to? They may be going to the air only sparingly, but Newton is still number two in the country in pass efficiency. He's completing more than two-thirds of his passes and has only thrown five picks all year, compared to 19 interceptions. Hell, he went off for 317 yards passing against Chattanooga just last week.
MD: Pfffft. Chattanooga. You don't think we can clamp down on their receivers a little better than the Mocs did? Is that all the credit you're prepared to give us?
DD: All I'm saying is, the dude can pass, whether they actually need him to or not.
MD: Look, is Cam Newton going to roll up some yards? Of course he is. And is Auburn going to score some points? Sure. But I refuse to believe that we can't keep up with them on the scoreboard. Look at the points they've let people roll up -- 27 to South Carolina, 34 to Kentucky, 43 to Arkansas. Hell, they even gave up 24 to Chattanooga, and not all of that in garbage time, either.
DD: So what you're telling me is that Georgia's going to be able to keep up with the SEC's best offense in both yardage and scoring, huh? Is that what I'm supposed to take away from this?
MD: Why not? Auburn has the second-worst pass defense in the league right now. And you've seen what Aaron Murray can do when the opposing defense has A.J. Green to worry about. Even against Florida, even in a game where he threw three picks, he still managed to go off for three TDs and more than 300 yards. And that was against a good secondary. Auburn's pass defense is going to be ripe for the picking.
DD: Well, if Murray decides to throw three picks again this weekend, we're fucked no matter how vulnerable their secondary supposedly is. But let's say, just for the sake of argument, that they really are going to play that badly against us. What if we can't keep Murray upright enough to take advantage?
MD: Why wouldn't we? Our pass protection has come around the last few weeks -- only three sacks allowed in the last month.
DD: Yeah, but none of those teams had a Nick Fairley to throw at us. Fairley is second in the SEC in sacks, right behind Justin Houston, and number one in tackles for loss. You'd better be crossing your fingers for both Aaron Murray and our running game with a guy like that on the other side of the line.
MD: Our running backs are going to be fine. Yeah, Auburn's run-defense stats look good on paper, but it's not like they've had to face that many elite running backs this year.
DD: I'm touched that you think our running backs qualify as "elite." OK, Pollyanna, hit me with your prediction -- just give me a second to get my popcorn ready, I'm sure it's gonna be a doozy.
MD: Well, again, it could very well be a shootout. But Auburn's gotten caught up in shootouts before -- Kentucky and Arkansas, right off the top of my head -- and we've got a better defense than Kentucky and a more balanced offense than Arkansas. I think we'll keep within striking distance of Auburn for most of the game, make a couple stops on defense when we need to, and then Aaron Murray will lead us down the field for the winning touchdown with less than 90 seconds to play -- sort of a replay of the "Prayer on the Plains" from 2002. Georgia wins, 37-34.
DD: That'd make for a great story, and I'd be as thrilled as anyone if it came to pass, but I just don't see it. I think Auburn, like four of the five teams who have beaten us this year, rockets down the field to a touchdown on their very first drive and puts up a multi-score lead on us before we even have a chance to blink. The offense gathers itself, starts getting into a rhythm, but they're playing out of a hole and the pass rush really has an opportunity to key in on Aaron Murray once it becomes clear we've got a big deficit to make up and not a lot of time to do it. Auburn wins big, 42-23.
MD: Wow. I mean, you've predicted losses here before -- lots of 'em -- but three touchdowns? That's depressing even by your standards.
DD: Maybe, but at least it's grounded in something resembling reality. You really think we're going into Auburn and coming out with a win over the number-two team in the nation?
MD: You act like we've never done this before. Four years ago, we were coming off that awful 1-4 stretch -- we'd managed to lose to Vanderbilt and Kentucky, lest you forget -- and we took advantage of an Auburn team that was ranked fifth in the nation but playing sloppy. Picked them off four times, won by three TDs. This year they've got the distraction of the Cam Newton situation, they're in danger of looking ahead to a huge Iron Bowl matchup in a couple weeks, we're playing in Auburn, where we've won six outta the last nine . . . and come on, you can't seriously think that a Gene Chizik team is gonna run the table, do you?
DD: Not really, but at this point it doesn't seem any less probable than a five-loss Georgia team knocking off a top-three Auburn squad led by a Heisman frontrunner.
MD: Man, fuck that. The intangibles all break in our favor. Auburn is the one feeling the pressure, both in terms of the national-title race and whatever the NCAA is looking into regarding Cam Newton. This is our time. This could be our chance . . . to stun the world.
(Another long and embarrassing pause)
DD: Yeah, if it's all the same to you, I'm gonna go put in the "Mad Men" DVD now.
MD: Well, our predictions average out to a 38-30 win for Auburn, so congratulations, you've managed to massively skew another one in favor of a Georgia opponent. But it's cool -- I'll be sure to bring you back an awesome souvenir from Auburn after we win. You know, since I'll be going to the game and all.
DD: Fan-flippin'-tastic. As long as you come home under your own power, as opposed to me having to come out to Auburn and bail you out of someplace, your clean criminal record is all the souvenir I need.
MD: Suit yourself. I'll do my best to stay out of trouble. . . . Or will I?
Well, what can I say about this past weekend except I shouldn't have watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" Friday night -- everything I needed to know about what was going to go down the following afternoon was right in there.
Except when you get right down to it, the above scene, iconic though it may be, is insufficient -- and entirely too simplistic -- to accurately portray Georgia's misery in this rivalry, particularly when there's a far more apt metaphor in the very same TV special. I mean, yeah, Charlie Brown gets the ball whipped away from him at the last second every single time, which is embarrassing enough, but you'll notice nobody is ever around to watch it; the humiliation is at least a dark secret shared only between him and Lucy. To declare that "Lucy = Florida" also doesn't work -- while Lucy and the Gators are both bitches who wear blue and aren't nearly as hot as they fancy themselves, that statement implies that Georgia's chances for success are entirely in Florida's hands, which, no matter what Bulldog Nation may be thinking in its most desperate moments, isn't true either.
No, the better metaphor is "Great Pumpkin = equal footing in the Georgia-Florida rivalry." More obscure, I know, and definitely more abstract, but sometimes to make sense of cosmic absurdity like this you gotta be willing to try and wrap your brain around something challenging. Every year, we think it's coming; every year we think that if we just believe enough, it will reveal itself to us and, out of moral obligation, reward us for our seemingly unending persecution in its name. OK, I just totally fucking freaked myself out by sussing out that the Great Pumpkin is a metaphor for the Second Coming -- seriously, Charles Schultz, way to blow a brother's mind on what is otherwise a day of perfectly festive debauchery -- but all that being said, we believe, it doesn't show, and we get publicly humiliated for our faith all over again.
I believed. Oh, boy howdy, did I believe. I believed even after Aaron Murray got picked off on the game's very first play from scrimmage, believed even when Florida's previously moribund offense started gathering steam, believed even when we went into halftime down 21-7. Because look! We roared back after halftime and went on a 17-3 run to tie things up, and then, when Florida scored a relatively rapid-fire TD that put them back on top, we went right back down the field to tie it up again and, just for good measure, held on Florida's final drive of regulation and successfully forced overtime. All the trappings of that rare amazing Georgia victory were there: More than 30 points against a very good Gator defense? Check. Great QB play? After a miserable first half, Aaron Murray settled down in the second, going 13-of-21 for 198 yards, two TDs and no turnovers, looking once again like the stunningly poised player we'd seen over the first eight games. Confident squad? By the time Georgia tied it up with four and a half minutes left in regulation, our guys were jumping all over the place. The defense couldn't wait to get out on the field and make a stop; the offense looked hungry to get out there and take a stab at getting the winning score.
But obviously we didn't. Yeah, some of it comes down to inferior play -- the turnoverpalooza in the first half, f'rinstance, without which we might have been up by two scores and simply handing the ball off to Caleb King and Washaun Ealey to see how much clock, and how much of Urban Meyer's soul, they could grind down. Some of it also comes down to inexplicable coaching -- we were lucky enough that the Mikey Henderson "One and Done" play worked the first time three years ago, so did we really think we were gonna outsmart Florida's secondary with it a second time, particularly with a QB who I'm not sure has hit a fade to the end zone all season?
Some of it, though, I'm struggling to justify with any word other than "luck." Take these four situations:
Trey Burton fumbles at the Florida 14 and Georgia picks it up.
Aaron Murray fires a pass over the middle to 6'4" TE Aron White, and it's a little high but White gets a hand on it.
John Brantley gets sacked by Darryl Gamble at the Georgia 35 and fumbles, and a Georgia player gets a hand on it.
Aaron Murray throws another one over the middle to A.J. Green, the best receiver in college football, and A.J. gets a hand on it.
Two times the ball began the play in Florida's hands, two times it started off in Georgia's; all four times Georgia gets a hand on it at some point; but all four times it belongs to Florida by the time the whistle is blown. Yeah, yeah, I know: Inferior play had a hand in some of this, too, even the blown opportunities with the fumbles -- if we just fucking fall on that first one rather than trying to pick it up and run with it, for example, we start inside the Florida red zone with three near-automatic points and a pretty good chance at seven, and we deny Florida the long TD drive that swing momentum in their favor for pretty much the rest of the first half.
Still: Four times we get a hand on the ball and we don't get any of them? Not one? If we can have a game like that less than a year removed from going -16 in turnover margin, fuck a regression to the mean. It wasn't just the turnovers, either. Late fourth quarter, game tied at 31, Florida's gotten another good KO return from Chris Rainey -- and oh, God, don't get me started on his sociopathic ass being suited up and in the game to begin with -- and they've got 2nd-and-9 just a couple yards shy of midfield. Darryl Gamble crushes Brantley eight yards behind the line, resulting in 3rd-and-17 from the 40 (on a day when we're actually covering third downs pretty well, wonder of wonders), which gives us a chance to force a punt and set ourselves up with not-horrible field position and a couple minutes and two time-outs with which to get Blair Walsh in place for the game-winning field goal. Awesome, right? Right?
Nope -- a false start by Florida, their fifth false start of the day, negates the sack. They get the first down, drive into Georgia territory, pin the Dawgs at their own 6 and it's off to overtime we go. Even when they fuck up, it turns out better for them.
I realize I'm leaving myself getting open to getting flayed here -- by fans both Florida-identified and non -- with charges of whining. Hey, you're taunting a dude who's lost the ability to feel, so you're the one who's arguably wasting more energy here. And yes, again, I realize that no small amount of what I've described above goes back to Georgia's players not having the focus or fortitude to make the optimal play in a given situation, whatever that happens to be. And not long after I got home from Atlanta this evening, as I gathered my thoughts and tried to figure out what exactly I wanted to say in this space, I'll admit I briefly entertained the thought that the loud, heavily publicized, tension-fraught atmosphere of Jacksonville might have something to do with that lack of focus, which of course led to me wondering if maybe we should move the Cocktail Party out of there after all. (I mean, we've already officially ripped the words "Cocktail" and "Party" out of it to begin with; after that, any talk of tradition, on the parts of the respective university presidents at least, is pretty ridiculous.)
But no, I'm not gonna go there. Even if you think the series would be more fun for the students as a home-and-home; even if you can make a case, in spite of Georgia's still-pretty-good road record under Mark Richt, that the Dawgs' greater travel distance is a tangible hindrance to their chances of winning in this rivalry; even if you think that the Dawgs face a "hostile environment" in a stadium that is divided directly down the middle between Dawgs and Gators, it would be wrong to move this game. Why? BECAUSE IT WOULD BE A BITCH MOVE. If we were to go to a home-and-home, then no matter how dominant a run Georgia went on immediately afterward, no matter how supposedly solid our reasoning was for moving the game, we'd be the the school that whined the Cocktail Party out of Jacksonville and one of the sport's last remaining neutral-site rivalries out of existence. I'll be damned if I'm going to have that on my conscience, or the University of Georgia's.
Unfortunately, that doesn't get us a millimeter closer to solving the critical question: What do we do? I'm sorry if you came here for answers, because I don't know. What I do know is that I won't be watching the game next year. If I'm in front of a TV, it'll be tuned to something else (maybe I'll put a "Mad Men" DVD on); if I'm in the Jacksonville area, I'll be relaxing on a sunlit beach, stuffing a lime into the neck of a Corona and thanking the good Lord that, independent of any fortune or misfortune being visited upon my football team, I'm gainfully employed, living in what remains the freest country on earth, and blessed with an inordinate number of family and friends who care about me dearly. But I can't put myself through the misery of another one of these -- not for another year or so, anyway. Believe me, I've got nothing but admiration for Linus for going out there year after year in the face of overwhelming odds and public humiliation and laying bare his trusting soul for all the world to see. But I'm not Linus; I don't have a blanket to turn to anymore; and when I dated a girl named Sally in high school, she dumped me for a dude in the band. I've had an inkling for a while now, in other words, that the Great Pumpkin ain't coming for me. So I think I've earned a year off.
Is it just me or are postgame victory celebrations even more satisfying in other people's stadiums?
My sister told me a joke one time about the difference between Gentile moms and Jewish moms (and she heard it from a Jewish friend of hers, so no charges of anti-Semitism, please): If a Gentile mom gives her son two neckties for Christmas and sees him wearing one of them, she says, "Oh, you're wearing one of the ties I got you, it looks so nice!" If a Jewish mother buys her son two ties for Hanukkah and sees him wearing one of them, she sighs and says, "What's the matter, you didn't like the other tie?"
That joke popped into my head as I was looking back over the stats for the Georgia-Kentucky game this past weekend -- if you looked at the box score and only the box score, you'd think a) the offense didn't accomplish much except for Washaun Ealey and b) the defense got shredded. Both of those statements are true, and yet not. The offense didn't accomplish much other than Ealey's 157 yards and five TDs, but mainly because it didn't have to; Kentucky's cavalcade of turnovers meant our average starting position in the first half was at the Wildcat 40. Which was only fair, given that a turnover-fueled second-half implosion was what basically handed Kentucky the win in Athens last November. Some statistically misleading wins you feel guilty about because you feel like you got lucky and stole something, but if Kentucky doesn't feel guilty about last year's win -- and they don't appear to, not that they should -- then I feel just fine about this one.
Sanders Commings intercepts a pass intended for Kentucky receiver and MSNBC political gadfly Chris Matthews.
Because this win didn't come down to luck -- somebody on the other side of the line of scrimmage had to make those turnovers happen, and that's where we get to statement b), the inference that the defense got shredded because they gave up 427 yards and 31 points. Yeah, our third-down defense was kind of atrocious, and I'll admit the thought of breaking a household appliance flashed through my mind as the 'Cats converted four straight third-and-longs on their second drive. While the defense did a lot of bending, though, it didn't do all that much breaking until the fourth quarter, when the game was pretty well in hand. Not that it was especially inspiring to hear players admit that they "relaxed" with a big lead in the second half, but when you're 19 years old and you're leading 41-17 in the fourth quarter of a conference game, I guess there's a tendency for those kinds of things to happen.
Here's the greater impression I got from Saturday's game: That increased aggressiveness that Todd Grantham promised us all through the off-season is finally starting to make itself apparent. Against Kentucky, we were better than +2 in turnover margin for the first time all season, and for only the third time in the last three years. We only forced 12 turnovers all of last season; just two-thirds of the way through 2010, we've already forced 15, and are sitting at +7 on the year, a blessed number after last year's wretched -16. And the front seven have been playing unbelievably well lately. Akeem Dent is flying to the ball like a guided missile, and Justin Houston . . . I've heard the voices of more than a few rival fans crack a little when they mention his name. (I wish I could describe to you the smile I get on my face when I hear this; you'll just have to watch this and let your imagination take it from there.)
The yang to the yin, of course, is that with greater aggressiveness comes greater risks, and we saw that Saturday night, as Georgia's relentless blitzing did sort of allow the defensive backfield to turn into a crapshoot. When the pressure worked, our guys paved Kentucky's O-line and made Mike Hartline do something stupid; when it didn't, unreasonably long third downs got converted, and occasionally points were scored. Still, if you'd told me before the game started that the payoff for such pain would be a 41-17 lead that turned the vast majority of the fourth quarter into what the average fan would probably call "garbage time," I'd have taken you up on that offer. If the greater aggressiveness Grantham has already preached to his unit is already paying off this handsomely in more turnovers and sacks, then I'm optimistic about what our D could look like once he's had a chance to refine their technique and minimize some of that risk.
Washaun, the evil brother of Knowshon, hits the mushroom boost and speeds into the end zone.
So now it's off to Jacksonville, where God only knows what's going to happen. Three weeks ago, though, who on earth would've thought that the Dawgs would march into this game matching, if not exceeding, the Gators' swagger (and impressing the oddsmakers enough to be favored by three points)? I was as miserable as any of y'all were when the clock ticked down to 00:00 in Boulder and we put the last bit of frosting on a 1-4 start, but if Tyler Durden really was right all along about how once you lose everything you're free to do anything, maybe this was what it took to get our swagger back and turn back into the kind of team we'd wanted to be all along . . . in which case it just might've been worth it.
But I guess we won't know until Saturday night.
Fleeting thoughts:
· I never thought I'd be thinking to myself that I'm far more terrified of a Gene Chizik team than an Urban Meyer team, but when you get right down to it, it's not 5-19 Gene I'm afraid of:
There aren't enough jocks in the entire LSU equipment locker to replace all the ones that their players got faked out of on that one run alone. Maybe Auburn gets caught looking ahead to the Iron Bowl in a few weeks and we manage to pull another 2006-style miracle out of our asses, but otherwise I'm thinking we really better beat Florida (and Idaho State, and Tech) if we want to avoid going 6-6 this year.
· Here's a couple questions for you, and feel free to answer honestly in the comments, because I have a feeling my answers are probably the same as yours: 1) Three weeks ago, how much money would you have paid to switch places with the Texas Longhorns, and 2) how badly would you want that money back right now?
· Here's another one: Over/under on a hypothetical Oregon-Auburn matchup in the national championship game -- how high would it have to be for you to take the under?
Since I was thisclose to going to Mizzou, I kinda have to feel happy for these guys.
· If the regular season ended today, the Big 12's final championship game would be Missouri vs. Baylor. I'll give you a few minutes to stop laughing.
· UAB Blazers Watch: For the second time in the past month, UAB erased a deficit on the road against an SEC opponent only to fall in the final seconds. It's looking highly unlikely that they'll make a bowl this year, but they're sure playing their asses off. (And yes, it pains me greatly that the Blazers gave State a tougher challenge than we did.)
· Wofford Terriers Watch: A 28-21 win over Elon keeps the mighty Terriers undefeated in Southern Conference play; they'll face the only other undefeated SoCon team, Appalachian State, on Nov. 13 in a game that will more than likely decide the league championship and an invite to the division playoffs.
I don't remember where the inspiration for this week's +5 came from, but I was talking with Holly the other day about something -- maybe it was a movie, maybe it was an album, maybe it was a car -- and we were remarking on how well it had held up over the years. In our instant-gratification culture these days, I think that's a quality that doesn't get talked up enough: Anybody can make an object, whether it's a work of art or a consumer good, that gets people jazzed at the moment it's introduced, but it's much harder to make something about which people will be saying 20 or 30 years hence, "Wow, it's been a long time but that thing has still managed not to be embarrassing. I'd still be proud to watch/drive/listen to/be seen in public with that." So here's a salute to that which has stood the ravages of time better than lesser creations: Five People, Places, And Things That Have Held Up Really Well.
"Terminator 2: Judgment Day" It's hard to believe that this movie is nearly 20 years old -- it was one of the first movies I saw after we moved down to Georgia in the summer of '91 -- and even harder to believe just how good the "liquid metal" visual effects look. For all the hype these days about advancements in CGI and 3D and whatever else, James Cameron probably set a bar with this movie for seamlessly blending CGI and live action that still hasn't been cleared. And while Cameron himself hasn't entirely resisted the temptation to make movies with so much CGI they might as well be video games, he still does it better than just about anyone out there.
Kathryn Bigelow Cameron's one glaring error: calling it quits with Kathryn Bigelow after only two years. The picture above, taken shortly before Bigelow became the first female Best Picture winner in Oscar history? She was fifty-eight years old when that was taken. Guys, I know I can't speak for all of us, but if someone came to me and said "Marry your current girlfriend and she'll still look like this 30 years from now," I'd take that deal no questions asked. (Side note: Does winning the Oscar for "The Hurt Locker" give Bigelow the creative leeway she needs to make the "Point Break" sequel we've all been awaiting for nearly two decades? God, I hope so.) Honorable mention: Helen Mirren, old enough to qualify for Social Security but still straight-up crushing it in stuff like this.
Tears for Fears As much as I like '80s New Wave music -- fuck that, as much as I love it; I celebrate its entire catalog -- even I have to admit that a substantial portion of it comes off as really cheesy these days. Tears for Fears, though, is in a lot of ways an exception. I mean, you can occasionally hear some 1985 in the tinniness of the synthesizers or drum machines, but otherwise, this shit still sounds really good, and Songs from the Big Chair is just a great album, period.
old Volvos This past Tuesday I went down to the Volvo dealer in town for a special promotional event unveiling the new S60 sedan, which is certainly a gorgeous automobile, but let's take a minute to salute its boxy predecessors for their noble service in the mission of getting us to where we need to go and not getting us killed on the way there. Given how a lot of car manufacturers are re-introducing the concept of sharp angles in some of their recent designs, it's remarkable to ponder how good some of these old-style Volvos still look (the ones that have been well-maintained, at least), and while they may not have the laundry list of computerized, triple-redundant, radar-guided safety features that the new S60 has, they're still safe as a freaking house in the unfortunate event that you actually hit something. (Though I have to admit that the new S60, which has a camera mounted above the rearview mirror that scans the road for objects that look like people and will slam on the brakes for you if you're about to hit one of them, is pretty badass. Still, they're not bringing the wagon, and that is damn near unforgivable.)
"Muppet Babies" This was the centerpiece of my Saturday-morning cartoon viewing for the vast majority of my childhood, and looking back on it now, it's funny how many of the visual gags went completely over my head. There was the Monty Python-esque cut-and-paste animation, which of course I totally didn't recognize as being Monty Python-esque to begin with, but this show was also chock full of pop-culture references that perhaps presaged all of us Gen-Xers growing up to become witheringly post-modern pop-culture-obsessed hipsters. That's what this show was: a training class for future hipsters. I'd really like to do a study interviewing people who were regular viewers of this show back in the '80s and seeing how many of them went on to become bloggers.
And now the Ten:
1. Young Holt Unlimited, "Soulful Strut" 2. Underworld, "EssGee" 3. Pet Shop Boys, "Minimal" 4. Moby, "Guitar Flute and String" 5. Cee-Lo, "Let's Stay Together" 6. Meat Beat Manifesto, "Everything Counts" 7. Underworld, "Kittens" 8. The Chemical Brothers, "Swoon" 9. New Order, "Thieves Like Us" 10. Ice Cube, "When Will They Shoot?"
Your turn to take over in the comments: Random Tens, and nominations for stuff that's really stood up well over the years, are welcomed.
Construction of the Friday Random Ten+5 has been delayed by technical issues (and a plate full of writing assignments that turned out to be a lot fuller than I anticipated), but in the meantime, here's a funny for your Friday morning:
Now, here's the part where you stop laughing: That "Cami Secret" thing is a real product. Whose sole purpose appears to be hiding cleavage. And not in any kind of straightforward way, either, but in the cruelest manner possible: "Oh, look at my low-cut top! You like these? WELL, TOUGH LUCK, ASSHOLE, because look at this lacy pin-on bra dickey I'm about to put on." Seriously, that's the kind of thing Mormons would look at and go, "OK, now that is a weird undergarment."
Also available from this same company: the Countertop Coffee De-Caffeinator and the Air Ferry basketball shoe, which is specially weighted to keep you from jumping too high.
Over the past couple days, a number of the SBN-affiliated blogs -- EDSBS and Burnt Orange Nation among them -- have been posting about their favorite players from their respective teams. Not the players with the best stats, mind you, or even the players who won the most, just the guys they most enjoyed watching, the guys who put smiles on their faces and made them think, "OK, that dude makes me proud to be a [insert team name here] fan." Particularly at a time when the nauseatingly contrived spectacle of last night's Lebronathon makes us wonder if it's worth it to even call ourselves sports fans at all, it's nice to be able to pick out guys we do like and give them the credit they deserve just for brightening our days.
So I decided to make this week's +5 my own list -- not definitive, by any means, since I only came to UGA in 1995 and hadn't really had anyone indoctrinate me into the ways of the red and black before that. But these are the guys I got most excited about watching, the guys who would put the proudest grins on my face when somebody would ask me, "So, hey, what do you think about . . . ?" Herewith, simple, short and sweet, my Five Favorite Georgia Players:
5. Tony Taylor Tony never seemed to get quite the same national media attention that, say, Rennie Curran or Odell Thurman got. But he always seemed to have a knack for being in on the play. If you needed a sack, he'd get one. If you needed an interception, he could come up with that too. And if you needed one of the weirdest, wildest scoop-'n'-scores in Georgia football history to flip the momentum of a game -- i.e. the play against Georgia Tech in 2006 seen above -- he'd pull that off, too. Never talked a lot of shit to his opponents, even though he'd usually earned the right to; just worked his ass off every single play, and more often than not had a big grin on his face afterward.
4. Hines Ward The 2006 Super Bowl MVP did it all, too, just on the opposite side of the ball: He caught passes, he carried out of the backfield, he returned kicks, and just for good measure, he passed quite a bit too, taking over at QB midway through his sophomore season in '95 after both Mike Bobo and Brian Smith got hurt. (As a result, he holds Georgia's record for passing yards in a bowl game, with a 31-of-59, 413-yard performance in the '95 Peach Bowl.) Oh, and he'd block a bitch into the earth's mantle, too, if he had to, a talent he has continued to display with great relish in his justifiably lauded career as a Pittsburgh Steeler. In both Athens and Pittsburgh, he's always seemed to have a big smile on his face as he climbs out of a pile of tacklers, and the smile just gets bigger the harder he's been hit. If this was an "I Hope He Plays Until He's 60" list, he'd probably be at the top.
3. D.J. Shockley Shock was the perfect story: Hypertalented recruit commits to the Dawgs, ends up having to wait his turn for four years behind the guy who would eventually set a new record for wins by a I-A starting QB, then has an absolute dream season -- 24-5 TD-INT ratio, another four TDs on the ground -- that culminates in an SEC title. He had every opportunity to turn into either a cranky, resentful also-ran or a raging egotistical douchebag, yet somehow it never happened; he was such a good kid that, if someone gave me a time machine but said I could only do three things with it, I'd stop the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy, then go back to October 2005 and convince Mark Richt to bench him for the second quarter of the Arkansas game. Seriously, Shock deserved an undefeated season that year (or at the very least deserved to go out with something other than an utter defensive collapse and loss to West Virginia in the Sugar Bowl). I still hold out a glimmer of hope he's gonna break out and do something incredible in the NFL one of these days.
2. Knowshon Moreno Man, what isn't there to like about this kid. He had awesome moves in the backfield; he bounced right back up after tackles, Hines Ward-style; he pulled off highlight-reel plays like it was nothing; he danced a mean Soulja Boy; he played with Legos. But even with all that, I think my favorite thing about him was how much fun he was obviously having every minute he was out there. Ideally, all our players would be enjoying themselves that much. Do I wish he'd stayed around two more years? Oh, clearly, but I can't quite begrudge him leaving; I'll just root my ass off for him with the Broncos and hope that our paths cross one of these days when I'm wealthy and revered beyond all reason.
1. Champ Bailey If we'd had one or two like him in the secondary the past few years, even Willie Martinez couldn't have found a way to make us give up points. Schooled opposing wide receivers while playing defense, then turned right around and schooled his fellow cornerbacks while playing wide receiver (and schooled any of those guys who dared try to cover him on kick returns). Wore my lucky number. Dated one of the hottest gymnasts on campus. And then, just to ensure that we would be forever bonded in an irrevocable star athlete/groveling fan relationship, he went and got drafted in the first round by the Redskins. Champ's with the Broncos now, but he's still one of the bigger badasses in the NFL, I still have his jersey . . . and yeah, I named one of my dogs after him. There have been a lot of damn good Dawgs in Athens since I started school there, but he's the damn goodest.
Honorable mention: Jeff Owens (Georgia's own "huggy killbear"), David Pollack, Jon Stinchcomb, Rennie Curran, and Boss Bailey.
And now the (other) Ten:
1. Lifelike, "Discopolis" (Chris Lake remix) 2. Pet Shop Boys, "Fugitive" (7" mix) 3. Hard-Fi, "Hard to Beat" (Axwell mix) 4. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Sir Psycho Sexy" 5. Underworld, "Born Slippy.TELEMATIC" 6. Dr. Octagon, "3000" 7. U2, "City of Blinding Lights" (Hot Chip 2006 remix) 8. Morcheeba, "Shoulder Holster" 9. Boogie Down Productions, "Jimmy" 10. Pet Shop Boys, "It Doesn't Often Snow at Christmas"
Your turn: Your Random Tens and/or shortlists of favorite athletes from whichever team you call your own, in the comments, please.
My first thought was that the unfortunate player at the end of the clip would have to be Italian, since they're the masters of clutching various body parts and writhing in pain when they haven't actually been touched.
Just out of curiosity, how does the Nobel Committee decide whether to award prizes in new categories? 'Cause if ever there was a reason to award a Nobel Prize in Beatboxing, this would be it. I mean, come on, this is at least as worthwhile as the Chemistry prize. (Stupid chemistry. "Oh, look at me! I mixed a bunch of chemicals in a bottle! Where's my million dollars?" Hmm, I don't know, can you do the sped-up music from Super Mario World? You can't? Then I guess you don't get a million dollars. [/realtalk])
OK, maybe not my dad. My dad's not so bad. But maybe my granddad, because seriously, I bet Joe Barton's kids live like fricking kings.
I didn't do a lot of egregiously bad isht when I was a kid, but I did get in a heap of trouble when I was 18 for throwing a party while my parents were out of town, after having been explicitly instructed not to. The party was a real rager -- 50-something people, underage drinking, smoking, people running around naked in the backyard, a true suburban Columbus classic -- but it wasn't the party itself my parents were mad about. Hell, I cleaned up so well afterward that they didn't even find out about it until nearly a week after they'd gotten back. What they were mad about was that I'd lied about it, and lying being about the worst thing you could do in my family, they brought the hammer down on me: Lost the use of my car for the rest of the school year, grounded anytime I came home from UGA, probably forfeited my monthly allowance somewhere along the line. About the most severe punishment I got for anything I did as a teenager, now that I think about it.
If Joe Barton had been my granddad, though, he would've bitched my parents out and apologized on their behalf for being so mean to me.
Your eyes/ears do not deceive you -- Barton apologized to BP for mean nasty Obama making them pay for the damage they'd inflicted upon the Gulf coast. And while he claimed to be speaking only for himself and not the Republican Party, he wasn't the only one: The Republican Study Committee -- a caucus that comprises nearly two-thirds of the GOP's current House membership -- echoed Barton's sentiment that BP being instructed to set up a $20-billion escrow account to pay spill-related claims amounted to a "Chicago-style shakedown." All of the usual talk-radio suspects -- Limbaugh, Hannity, Oliver North -- are using suspiciously identical "slush fund" rhetoric to criticize the account. Tea Party hero Rand Paul, of course, said it was "un-American" for Obama to criticize BP at all.
Look, everyone has the right to criticize Obama (or any other president) to their hearts' content, but how craven do you have to be to plant your nose in BP's anus so that you can trash-talk him? Are they so confident in their ability to retake Congress this fall that they figure they can afford to throw a pity party for the most despised corporation in the country? Or as one of the few entities in America whose approval ratings are almost as low as BP's, is this their idea of "climbing down into the crevasse"?
I have no idea. All I know is, the next time I get stopped for speeding, I hope I've got Joe Barton in the car with me to wring an apology out of the cop for pulling me over.
(Yeah, the political stuff's back too, dorks. Drink it in.)
The "Onion News Network" has already put out dozens of pitch-perfect parodies of 24-hour news networks and morning shows, so it should probably come as no surprise that their piss takes on "SportsCenter" are seamless as well.
Stay with it through the stinger at the end. I hope some of these guys are getting acting jobs elsewhere; to be able to ape the tone of ESPN's reporters and anchors that closely speaks to some level of talent. (I mean, if Paris Hilton can still show up in movies . . . )
"Archer" is just reruns tonight and "30 Rock" is obviously being pre-empted by the Olympics, so I thought you might need some surrealism to tide you over until the morning.
One of the nice things about getting plugged into the wider community of sports bloggers is you make some pretty knowledgeable friends and acquaintances. This past summer, I consulted with Coach Beergut of Texas A&M blog I Am the 12th Man on coach Mike Sherman's employment status heading into 2009; five months or so later, guess who Georgia gets matched up with in a bowl game. Given the mutual curiosities between our two fanbases -- we haven't played the Aggies since the national-championship season of 1980, and have played them like all of four times throughout history -- he was more than happy to participate in a little Q&A exchange leading up to the Independence Bowl. My answers to his questions are up on his blog now, and his answers to my questions follow.
1. A&M is a program with a lot of heritage and a lot of proud traditions, but this decade hasn't been especially kind to the Aggies. Where does A&M see itself in the college-football firmament, and does a bid to this year's Independence Bowl qualify as a disappointment (as a lot of Georgia fans see it), or as a sign that things are looking up?
I believe we Aggies see ourselves as one of the top 20 porgrams in the nation, histoircally speaking. We are one of the top 20 winningest programs in college football history, we have a solid winning tradition, we have won a national title and boast a Heisman Trophy winner in our past, so we had the tradition to back up this claim. We are one of the programs where it is capable to win a national championship in any given year; we are one of the destination college football jobs where a coach can come and win big.
The bid to the Independence Bowl is not a disappointment in that I believe going to a bowl game and making the postseason was one of our preseason goals after the losing season we had in 2008. We made a poor hire in bringing Dennis Franchione to our program in 2002, and we are still recovering from that five-year mistake. When you spend half a decade standing still or moving backwards, you have a lot of catching up to do, and we are still trying to do that on the field. Making the postseason this year is a sign of progress, but only a small one in that we have merely accomplished a goal, not surpassed one.
Yeah, the rest of the country joins you in wondering what the hell happened with that one.
2. The Aggies have fielded an impressively balanced offense this year, which a lot of Georgia fans no doubt watched hitting on all cylinders against Texas on Thanksgiving. Of the many talented skill-position players in your arsenal, which one is the one you would recommend Georgia spend the most time watching out for?
Quarterback Jerrod Johnson is probably our most dangerous player, simply because the ball is in his hands on every single play, and he is the triggerman for our offense. If you slow down Jerrod, you slow down our offense, period. Moving away fromt he quarterback position, WR Uzoma Nwachukwu (coaches and teammates call him "EZ") is one of our most explosive players, scoring TDs through the air and on the ground. EZ averages 18 yards per catch, has 6 TD receptions this season, and 1 rushing TD.
Prince? Bryan? Have fun defending this, fellas.
3. At the same time, there have been games in which the Aggie offense has exploded (Texas, TTU) and times when the explosion was more like a backfire (Arkansas, Kansas State). Do you have any idea where the source of that inconsistency lies?
During the Arkansas and Kansas State games, we were still shuffling our offensive line around, and were trying to find the perfect lineup to throw out there. The result was poor pass protection for Jerrod, which helped those teams shut down our offense. The Kansas State game was the first true road game for a young team where everything that could go wrong did, and the result just snowballed. The Arkansas game was a game where we went up early, they made some adjustments, and once they got their pass rush going, we weren't able to protect Johnson.
4. On the flip side, which of Georgia's offensive players scares you the most in terms of what they might be able to do to the Aggies? (And does anyone scare you on our defense?)
All of your RBs scare me, because I watched y'all rush for over 300 yards against Georgia Tech in your win, and we don't have much of a defense. Washaun Ealey and Caleb King really worry me, because I am concerned y'all will be able to control the game on the ground, and keep the ball away from our offense.
For the Aggie fans out there who may have missed the Georgia-Georgia Tech game, here's a bit of what Beergut's referring to.
Defensively, anyone who can pressure the QB concerns me, so Justin Houston and Cornelius Washington worry me. I am hoping the loss of your defensive staff will help us here, but I'm not optimistic.
5. When I talked to you about Mike Sherman's status back in the summer, you said his job was pretty safe, with the minimum expectations being 6-6 and a bowl bid. Now that he's cleared that bar, what are the expectations for the bowl game, and for the 2010 season?
Well, I hope we can win the bowl game, but I don't expect to. Georgia was a top-10 team in the preseason, so y'all have some talent, and beating y'all will be tough. As for the 2010 season, we return a lot of people, so expectations to win 9 games and compete for the Big 12 South are reasonable.
(Thanks to Coach Beergut for participating in this. Good luck, and good health, to both teams this evening.)
Last season: Head coach Mike Sherman's very first game with the Aggies was an 18-14 home loss to Arkansas State, the Red Wolves' first-ever win over a Big XII team, and it just got worse from there, with the Ags squeaking by New Mexico and Army and getting drilled by Miami before entering the gauntlet of their conference slate. A&M won only two Big XII games all year, not coincidentally the only two conference games in which they allowed fewer than 40 points, and finished the season 4-8 and unranked.
This season: No losses to Sun Belt teams, thank God, and things actually looked pretty good for the Aggies as they rolled to a 3-0 start, but that got blown up in a 47-19 loss to Arkansas at the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium. A&M's conference slate ran the gamut from a horrendous 62-14 loss to a bad Kansas State team to a 52-30 upset over Texas Tech; they finished the regular season 6-6 but only 3-5 in Big XII play.
Hate index, 1 being Ron Franklin, 10 being Thom Brennaman: Seven and a half. I have a long-standing policy whereby any school that sent me a "yes" letter when I applied to them back in high school earns secondary-rooting-interest status; that means I am a de facto Texas fan, so guess what, Aggies, that means you're dead to me. Sorry; it's just business. Though I have to admit that even if I had no feelings for the Longhorns one way or the other, y'all would still be a difficult team to root for. The "Yell leaders," the whole military-cadet thing -- that's just weird, not to mention redolent with cryptofascistic overtones. You do have a really pretty dog, though.
Associated hottie: If you've gone hunting for pictures of the soon-to-be-ex-Mrs. Tiger Woods over the past few weeks, chances are you've stumbled upon some extremely spicy photographs of A&M alumna Kim Hiott, a Playboy Cyber Girl in the summer of 2002 and one of their "Girls of the Big 12" later that fall. Somehow she got confused with Elin Nordegren after that, which is sort of ironic, as Hiott appears to be one of exactly twenty-three women in all of North America whom Tiger hasn't had sex with. Well, his loss.
What excites me: How to put this politely? Texas A&M's defense kind of, well, sucks. They finished the season ranked 87th against the run (168.6 yards allowed per game), 111th against the pass (262.8), and 107th overall. In nine games against teams from BCS conferences, they've allowed fewer than 30 points only twice -- 10 points to Iowa State and three to Robert Griffin-less Baylor, both of which ranked in the bottom 20 nationally in scoring offense. And those two games are surely balanced out by the two times they allowed 60-plus points (to Kansas State, currently ranked 82d nationally in scoring and staying home for bowl season, and Sam Bradford-less Oklahoma). It doesn't matter whether the opponent is good, bad, or just so-so, the Aggies are in danger of getting scored on. A lot.
And for the most part, our greatest vulnerabilities on offense are not ones which their defense has proven any particularly great ability to exploit. Sure, Joe Cox has thrown a bunch of interceptions this season, but against Georgia Tech -- whose run defense is actually better than A&M's statistically -- we proved we can still put up big offensive numbers even when we're only passing the ball sparingly. And even if we do go to the air, the Aggies have only picked off 11 passes all season, and we'll have A.J. Green back as a further hedge against ill-advised passes. The one thing A&M's defense is demonstrably good at is QB pressure -- they rank eighth in the nation with 35 sacks on the year -- but Georgia has protected the QB better than all but 11 teams in DI-A. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of A&M's takedowns came against New Mexico, Utah State, UAB, Colorado, and Baylor, not coincidentally the only teams on the Aggies' '09 schedule with losing records.
Great job getting revenge against Baylor, though! (Yes, I said "revenge.")
On special teams, the Ags average 22.6 yards per kickoff return but a mere six and a quarter on punt returns, which against the nation's best punter means we should be dealing TAMU some rough field position in the event we don't score. In the highly likely event that we do score, of course, our rotten kickoff coverage means the Aggies will probably make out just fine, but maybe having fired the coach primarily responsible for our special teams means we've got a fighting chance there. Who knows.
What worries me: Yeah, about those coach-firings. As you've no doubt heard by now, Willie Martinez, DE/special-teams coach Jon Fabris, and linebackers coach John Jancek all declined the option to stay with the team and coach through the bowl game, which is a pretty big wild-card, all things considered. Sure, I've heard all the jokes about how our defense was so bad this year that we won't even notice that any coordinators are missing; and this being a bowl game, where crazy things are known to happen, I guess it's possible that our defensive players will take an "us against the world" attitude, play way over their heads, and have a "Rudy"-like performance stopping the Aggies cold in Shreveport. Logic, however, tells me that all other things being equal, a defensive coordinator is kind of a good thing to have, and is probably preferable to an interim-tagged DTs coach (however good he may be) and a hastily assembled group of graduate assistants.
I have nightmare visions of this scene playing itself out at Butts-Mehre a couple weeks ago.
Particularly when we're going up against the fifth-ranked offense in the entire country, which is motoring right along at 465 yards and change per game. The Aggies aren't necessarily the most consistent bunch in the world -- I don't know how you go from scoring only 10 points on Oklahoma to unloading 39 on a Texas defense that's just as good, if not better -- but their offense is every bit as poised for a big breakout performance as their defense is for a collapse.
Against our defense, which finished in the bottom half of the SEC in pretty much every category except the run, I am very, very worried about what A&M is capable of doing. They've got an excellent quarterback in Jerrod Johnson, who's sixth nationwide in total offense and maintaining a QB rating of 140.7; he hammered the formidable Texas defense for 342 yards, four TDs, and one pick on 26-of-33 passing. They're also extremely well-balanced, with running backs Christine Michael and Cyrus Gray combining for an average of 132 yards per game. A&M fortunately doesn't use the kind of spread offense that's given our defense so many fits over the past few years, but their system is very similar in a lot of ways to what Arkansas used to ring us up for 485 yards and 41 points early in the season. They're also likely to bring a lot of the uptempo, misdirection-based stuff that Tennessee embarrassed us with a month later. I know Mark Richt kept Rodney Garner around for a reason, and the coaches and players alike have been saying all the right things about staying focused and prepared, but between A&M's offensive prowess and our chaotic coaching situation, there's a good chance we end up in a shootout on Monday.
Player who needs to step up: SS Bacarri Rambo. When number 18 gets to Shreveport, he'll be taking the field for the first time since sacrificing himself to save the game against Auburn on November 14. And he will find, if he hasn't already, that the hopes and dreams of the fan base have begun to rest on him as the guy to inject some passion and leadership into a pass defense that languished badly for the better part of this season. Hopefully his return will energize his teammates and give them an emotional boost as they face one of the most difficult situations of their Georgia careers.
What does it all mean? As much as I hate to see Georgia fans not show up for a game, be it a home game, away game, bowl game or whatever, I don't blame anyone for not electing to make the trip to Shreveport this year. It's a long way to go to a city few of us would have any inclination to visit otherwise, and it makes that much more of a disruption in personal schedules that are frequently stretched to the breaking point to begin with this time of year.
But with bowl games more so than any other type of game, I always have to wonder how much fan apathy rubs off on the players. Like I said, the Bulldogs have been saying all the right things about staying motivated and being anxious to show the world their determination to rise above the recent turmoil, and I don't doubt that a lot of them are telling the truth. But let's be real here: Just as none of our fans started off the season hoping for a trip to Shreveport at the end of it, I can't imagine any of our players did, either. And between player frustrations and the general lack of Georgia interest, the news stories of which I gotta believe at least a few of our guys have read, there's a danger of them simply calling this one a wash and looking forward to the offseason. In the past I've termed this kind of attitude "Kansas State Syndrome," but it's happened to plenty of other teamsin the past. This is only A&M's fourth bowl trip in the past eight seasons, and the first of Mike Sherman's tenure; I don't think it's an unfounded assumption to say that this game means more to the Aggies than it does to us, and in December and January, sometimes discrepancies like that make the difference between wins and losses.
And I don't need to remind anybody about this one, do I?
Now, do I think we're the better team? All of this season's disappointments aside, yes, I do. We've played a much tougher schedule and done better against it. I think we've got more talent overall. The question is whether they're motivated enough to overcome a skeleton coaching staff on defense and the memories of a frustrating season.
Will they? I don't know enough about our players' psyches to dare make a prediction, so I don't mean it as a comment on their motivation, or potential lack of same, when I predict that we're likely to get caught in a shootout against the Aggies. They did it to Oklahoma State, they did it to Texas, they can do it to us. And for that reason -- even taking into account what I said earlier about Bacarri Rambo in the step-up category -- I think this game rests in large part upon what Joe Cox is able to do in his final game in a Georgia uniform. A&M has let seven different QBs throw for more than 250 yards this season (four of them for more than 300), putting up a 19:6 TD:INT ratio in the process. So it stands to reason that the Ginger Ninja could put up some big numbers in Shreveport. Yes, he has had some awful games this season, but -- and this should get a nomination for Backhanded Compliment of the Decade -- against the lesser pass defenses he's played this season, he's been remarkably efficient (a combined 36-52-1 for 591 yards and 8 TDs against Arkansas, Tennessee Tech, and Georgia Tech, the three teams on our '09 slate with pass-efficiency defenses worse than A&M's). If our play-calling against GT is any indication, he still may not be asked to do too much, but with A.J. Green back and Joe facing his final opportunity to leave a good impression in the minds of Bulldog Nation, I think he'll end his Georgia career with a fine performance.
The Ginger Ninja after tying a school record with five TDs against Arkansas. Really wouldn't mind it a bit if you did that again, Joe.
Fine enough to win a shootout, though? He did in Fayetteville, where it should be added he didn't get much help from our turnover margin (-2 in that game) or, for that matter, our running game (which averaged only 2.1 yards per carry if you took away Richard Samuel's 80-yard TD run in the second quarter). There's no reason for Georgia not to go over 30 points in this game, which we would've done in five of our last six games but for one extraordinarily ill-timed red-zone turnover against Kentucky.
I'll be honest with you: I've gone back and forth many, many times on this game, with my first (and third, and fourth, and I think also sixth) inclination being to brace myself for an A&M upset. Between the danger of a letdown in a second-tier bowl and the upheaval on the coaching staff, I could easily see the Aggies -- who have managed to get up for a few big games this season, even if their final record doesn't seem to reflect it -- taking advantage and carpet-bombing us to a sixth loss. I still think this one's going to be a shootout, and you're crazy if you don't think likewise; both teams have been so inconsistent for most of this season that you could practically flip a coin here. Indeed, if we succumb to the same turnover affliction that hamstrung us in so many early games this season, as well as the later game against Kentucky, this will not be a fun game to watch. But if we stay even or on the plus side in turnover margin, as we've done in three of our last four victories (the one exception being Tennessee Tech, with the one turnover coming way past the point at which the game had already been decided), then we should be able to fire away at them with A.J., Washaun, and Caleb, while our better-than-it's-been-given-credit-for run defense renders A&M one-dimensional (OK, one-and-a-half-dimensional) in a way that they really won't be able to do back to us.
I think both teams will break 30 points on the scoreboard. Really, I wouldn't be surprised to see both teams break 40. But I think we'll pull ahead in the second half, make the critical big stop toward the end of the game to seal the win, and cap off a difficult season with an eighth victory. No, it's not New Orleans, it's certainly not Pasadena, and it's not even Atlanta, but it'd be a win. And I think it's one we'd all be happy to take.
And then it's RIVERBOAT GAMBLIN' 'til the clock strikes 2010!
If you're trash-talking: Georgia and Texas A&M do not exactly have a lengthy tradition of intense rivalry on the gridiron; I think you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times we've faced each other. But the last time that happened, the Bulldogs destroyed the Aggies 42-0. That Georgia team, incidentally, went on to win the 1980 national championship; A&M, for all their tradition and alleged football heritage, hasn't won a consensus national title since 1939, and their non-consensus or "retroactive" titles go back even further into the bowels of history.
And let's talk about those traditions for a second. Now granted, most of what I know about A&M traditions I've learned from Longhorn fans, who are not exactly unbiased observers here, but even from a purely objective standpoint, some of this "Aggie tradition" is just surreal. The whole "corps of cadets" thing? I've been dubious about that one for a while, because frankly, it looks like a lot of those guys are just playing dress-up, but apparently A&M does send a lot of graduates on to become military officers so I'll give those guys a pass. The "Yell Leaders"? Hey, anyone can shout gibberish for three and a half hours, that doesn't make them a cheerleader. For example, when I lived in Atlanta there was a guy on my regular subway ride to work who did that, and I don't remember anyone's spirits being raised by it; mainly it just sort of made everyone uncomfortable.
Yes, this is what has come to be known as "The Squeeze," which the Aggie cadets supposedly do at critical junctures in games so that they can "take the pain" for their football team. I would like to point out to these young men that pain is not a zero-sum game, and their arbitrarily inflicting damage upon their genitalia does not actually do anything to lessen the suffering of their football players. But even if it did, it's a wonder A&M still exists -- that video was recorded toward the end of the A&M-Texas Tech game in 2006, and the Ags are 22-24 since then, so that's a whole lot of pain to be taking, fellas. If things don't get much better in College Station, this "tradition" is going to result in the eradication of entire future generations of potential Aggies.
I will run up and down the street in front of my house wearing nothing but a Georgia flag wrapped about my nether regions if: Georgia scores more than 50 points (in a victory, obviously). We may need every one of those points to outlast the A&M offense, but whether we actually end up needing them or not, we might as well end this season with a bang, fellas. Go Dawgs!
