We can't agree about anything, where to go or even where we've been.

Uga VIII (left) and Russ sniff one another, and a torch is passed.

Before we get to the actual bidness here, I want to take a moment to tip my cap to Russ, a DGD who just had the misfortune of coming along at the wrong time. Though Russ presided over that four-game losing streak that even now is a little tough to talk about, he bookended it with the wins over Georgia Tech and Texas A&M last year and this year's four-touchdown Racheblitzkrieg against the Vols, so never let it be said that nothing good happened under his brief interim reign. He passes the collar to Uga VIII with a 4-4 record and, as far as I'm concerned, his big jowly head held high, and he is no less deserving of a dotage of fine meats and cheeses and decadent ice bags than any of the "official" Ugas who came before him.

But a new day, and a new bulldog, have dawned, which means it's time to look forward. And looking forward entails making sense of this:



South Carolina, your clubhouse leader, remains in first place (though only with a .500 record) after taking the pipe from a Kentucky team that's still only a half-game out of last place even after the victory. Vanderbilt still controls its own destiny despite taking a 43-point jackhammering from a Georgia team that somehow does not control its own destiny, but that Georgia team, despite having just recently snapped their worst losing streak in 20 years, is still tied with the Florida team that was last year's runaway division champion. And then there's Tennessee at the bottom, still awaiting their first conference win -- but at the rate things are going, can anyone say with any degree of certainty that they won't be right back in the thick of it in just a couple weeks?

Just a few weeks ago, Georgia fans -- myself included -- were convinced that our team sucked and the universe was imploding. Now it turns out that it was just the SEC East imploding, and while our team may yet be no better than mediocre, that still might be enough to win the damn thing. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and in the land that's doing a bang-up impression of the ACC at the moment, the one-eyed man who's just pantsed two straight conference opponents by an aggregate score of 84-14 is no less worthy of wearing the crown than anyone else.


Why Carlton Thomas isn't celebrating his TDs with the "Carlton dance" from "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," I still can't figure out.

Mind you, this should not be read as gloating or overconfidence. Should the 2010 SEC season continue in this fashion, then even if Georgia comes out at the end with a not-humiliating record, a lot of people are going to be kicking themselves that we didn't grab winnable games against Arkansas and Colorado and take a lot more advantage of the chaos than we actually did. If the rest of the division is this bad, then it's entirely reasonable to look back and wonder why we didn't do a better job of bringing it under our heel. Whether we finish 8-4 or 5-7, those first five weeks of the season are going to seem like a real missed opportunity.

But OK, again, time to look forward, not back. What have we got right now? Well, we've got a young QB who's fifth in the SEC (and 18th nationally) in passing efficiency despite never having thrown a pass in a Georgia uniform prior to September 4. We've got an offensive line that is finally starting to come together and open up some holes for a running game that had been left for dead after Caleb King got suspended. We've got a defense that is -- get ready -- ranked 14th in the nation (and third in the conference) in total yards allowed, better than the Florida or South Carolina units that were supposed to be so stocked this year. A few weeks ago, we were at a point when we were starting to wish we could trade places with Mississippi State or Kentucky; Saturday night, I saw a couple Tweets from Florida fans looking longingly at us.


Welcome to the SEC East, where everybody looks like this.

I'm still trying to decide whether this season is more like a Kafka story or a "Twilight Zone" episode. Maybe it's both -- sort of an even weirder cross between The Metamorphosis and "The Eye of the Beholder": On October 3 we woke up to find that we'd turned into a cockroach -- and two weeks later we ventured outside to find that everyone else had turned into cockroaches, too.

Now, after all this we're still only 3-4 and flawed in a lot of areas, perhaps the biggest being our ability to get all our star players on the field at the same fucking time. (After Caleb King's arrest and suspension, I suggested -- only half-jokingly -- that Mark Richt rescind our players' driving privileges across the board, confiscating their licenses and only handing them back when they make big plays, kind of the way they receive dawg-bone stickers for their helmets.) But in the event we ever do get everyone on the field at once, it's starting to look like we may not actually be that bad a team. There's still a lot of football to be played. but at this point I think I'm actually looking forward to watching those games be played and tabling the Mark Richt Hot Seat debate until well into December.

Elsewhere in misery:

· How delicious is it that less than two weeks after Steve Spurrier called Les Miles out for succeeding in spite of himself, Spur Dog tries to channel the Lesticles himself in the closing minutes of South Carolina's game against Kentucky -- only turns out Spurrier isn't nearly as good at being Les Miles as Les Miles is. Dude, even I'm smart enough not to call a time-out when the clock's already stopped.


You can lie to your kids, Urb, but you can't lie to God. (From Bubbaprog at 30fps)

· As far as Florida is concerned, I know I have no right to bag on someone else for losing to Mississippi State, but at least we did it on the road, and at least we were playing well enough to make State have to work for it. In the Swamp, MSU threw only one pass in the second half, and afterward Dan Mullen was griping about how they should've won by more than they did.

· I can't imagine a more terrifying offense to play than Auburn right now. It's almost enough to make me hope for an Auburn-Oregon national title game. What do you think the over-under on that would be? Do you think it'd creep up into triple digits?

· Florida and Michigan are out of the top 25; Mississippi State is in. Michigan State is a top-10 team. Oklahoma is third behind Oregon and Boise State in both polls, but #1 in the first edition of the BCS standings. Somehow it's comforting to know that the SEC East's chaos syndrome is spreading nationwide.


Two more teams you'll never be able to figure out no matter how hard you try.

· UAB Blazers watch: Directly on the heels of a 42-7 pounding by UCF, the Blazers come home to host a 5-1 UTEP team, and keep that team out of the end zone for four quarters in a 21-6 victory. If people would just leave UAB for dead every week, they'd probably be 5-1 right now themselves.

· Wofford Terriers watch: No problem whatsoever for the mighty Terriers this week as they rolled over Western Carolina 45-14. If you follow Pat Forde on Twitter, you've probably noticed that he ends all his Boise State-related Tweets with "Bus.", in reference to him proudly getting on the Boise-State-for-national-title bus in the very beginning of the season. As I am now firmly on board whatever mode of public transport the Wofford-Terriers-for-FCS-national-championship movement is using, I'll now be ending my Wofford-related posts with "Train," "Tram," "Shinkansen" or something along those lines. If you have any suggestions as to what I can use, have at it.

An empty box, an open space . . .

Losing to South Carolina is never an enjoyable experience, and I've already read a ton of comments from fellow Dawg fans professing high levels of anxiety about what this latest loss to the 'Cocks says about our team. At the risk of sounding apathetic or committing "treason by omission," I'm honestly not nearly as worked up about this loss as I thought I'd be, and that might be because -- at the risk of committing treason, period -- in plotting out how I thought this season would go for Georgia, I kind of figured we'd lose this game from the beginning. Newly revamped defense, freshman QB making his first-ever start in an SEC game on the road -- not a formula for victory, much less an easy one. Particularly if the wealth of experience on Carolina's side finally translated into actual execution on the field, which it looks like it might actually do this year.

So we lost, and it was ugly at times -- you don't ever get to be happy about only scoring six points on someone, unless you're North Dakota State, I guess. But if all you're paying attention to is the number 6 on the scoreboard, you don't seem to have paid a lot of attention to Aaron Murray's performance in his first-ever SEC start, which I'd call one of the most impressive ever by a frosh quarterback under Richt's tutelage. No, actually the most impressive -- feast eyes:

	Comp-att	Yards	TDs	Int	QB rating
David Greene (vs. SC, 2001)	21-33	169	0	1	100.59
Matt Stafford (@ SC, 2006*)	8-19	171	0	3	86.13
Aaron Murray (@ SC, 2010)	14-21	192	0	0	143.47

* did not start, but played all except one series

Hell, even D.J. Shockley didn't have that good a day against the Gamecocks, and he was a fifth-year senior who'd just suckerpunched a nationally ranked Boise State team. So let's not spend too much time grousing about how rickety the offense looked, considering that A.J. Green was out and Murray still managed not to do anything monstrously stupid, even in a stadium that's as loud as anyplace he'll have to go all season. If anything, the offense would've looked better had the coaches taken the restrictor plate off Murray much earlier in the game -- in the first half he only threw eight passes, completing four of them for 32 yards, but in the second he was 10-of-13 for 160, against a Gamecock secondary that was back at full strength with the return of Chris Culliver. And it wasn't just the passes Murray threw but the way he carried himself under center -- staying calm, not making dumb decisions, and directing the offense like he'd been doing that shit for years. I fully realize that I'll likely get laughed out of the blogosphere for calling him "Manningesque," but I'd be lying if I said that wasn't the first word that popped into my head. I'm just as hesitant to make a sweeping statement along the lines of "I'm officially not worried about our freshman quarterback anymore," but . . . I'd be lying if I said I wasn't awful close.

Now then, let's talk about the defense. Yes, it was . . . aggravating, to put it mildly. Here's what I don't get: How could we be so good at wrapping up Stephen Garcia -- whom we sacked five times -- and so bad at wrapping up Marcus Lattimore, who went off for 182 yards on 37 carries? This will puzzle me for quite a while, and if y'all have any enlightening explanations to suggest, by all means, the comment thread is open. I will say this: In both QB pressure and run-blocking, our defenders were at least in the spots they were supposed to be, so the transition to the 3-4 front -- maybe the biggest and most indigestion-inducing worry of Bulldog Nation coming into this season -- appears to be going well enough. It's the fundamentals, weirdly, which seem to still be lacking. Is a team that's picked up the 3-4 just fine but tackles like a middling C-USA squad more worrisome than a team that tackles beautifully but always seems to be doing so after an 8- or 9-yard gain because they didn't know what the hell their assignment was? And of the two problems, which is the easier fix?



Maybe this is a case of Todd Grantham, lord love his red-faced screaming little self, realizing that this team was far more lacking in the fundamentals than he thought. Maybe it's also a case of South Carolina finally having a more dynamic talent at running back than they've had in three decades. Neither one will help me sleep particularly well tonight, I have to say.

But I'm not prepared to write off this season yet, either. If I'd done that the last time we lost to South Carolina, I'd have missed us playing in the Sugar Bowl. Which is not meant as a declaration that I think we're headed there again this year (news flash: we're not), but consider that maybe some of us got our expectations too inflated after the dominating win over Louisiana-Lafayette, and now they're being reeled back in. Aaron Murray appears to be as good as advertised by that first game, the defense probably isn't, but at least there's time to work on it. As pissed as I was to see our tacklers bouncing off the ball-carriers almost as badly as they did against Georgia Tech in '08, we're at least seeing that stuff at the beginning of the season rather than the very end, which means there's time to fix it before our hopes get irrevocably dashed.

Whatever else you can say about Todd Grantham, he seems like the kind of guy who's a lot more committed to fixing glaring problems like that than just sitting there and hoping things clean themselves up on their own. And you can't deny that he's already effected some improvement: Last year we gave up 29 offensive points and 427 yards to the 'Cocks (at home). This year we gave up 17 points and 75 fewer yards (on the road) to a Carolina team that's arguably quite a bit better than last year's, for reasons that don't begin and end with Marcus Lattimore.



So yeah, I'm frustrated, but I'm not hanging my head in shame. Are we an SEC-championship-caliber team now? No, but I didn't come into this season thinking we were, either. Instead of arbitrarily overloading this team with our own expectations, maybe it's time to treat them as a blank slate or empty vessel that will get filled as the season progresses. Either way, it's far too early to presume that the team has no hope of improving; we've got 10 games left and the pieces to win most of them, so it's time to settle down and figure out how to do that.

Look at it this way: We came into the season with two big worries -- that the QB would be a deer in the headlights, and that the defense would stink -- and we're awful close to being able to put one of those to rest. So now we'll work on the other one, power through the growing pains, and see what happens. Maybe I'm being naive, but I am not terrified about watching this process unfold. There have been times over the last few seasons when I would've been happy for the season to just be freaking over already, but at this point I'm kind of jonesing for the next opportunity to get out there and watch this team get better.

Miscellaneous stuff:

· If you want to feel better, you need look no further than our in-state rivals, whose own transition to the 3-4 has gone . . . well, perhaps not swimmingly, at least so far. In case you wanted it spelled out in black and white -- and if you're a Dawg fan, here's guessing you did -- the Techies allowed 319 yards and 28 points to a team that had managed only 293 and 3, respectively, against D-IAA North Dakota State the week before. Count your blessings, folks.



· Hell, just feel glad you're not an ACC team, period: The presumptive conference champion, Virginia Tech, became the latest victim of the rapidly spreading lose-to-an-FCS-team virus; Florida State got destroyed by an Oklahoma team that was sweating Utah State until the very end the previous week; Miami scored 10 offensive points against Ohio State in the 'Shoe; N.C. State had to squeak past UCF. If you think about it, the most impressive performance put up by any team this past week was poor maligned Virginia pushing USC to the brink in the Trojans' own house. Four ACC teams in the top 25 coming into this past weekend, and all lost in fairly soul-crushing fashion. Particularly with UNC poised to receive a crushing blow from the NCAA's Thor-hammer in the near future, it looks like the date for the ACC's ascension to superconference status remains "TBA."

· The other fallout from this weekend's ACC-wide failgasm, of course, is that we no longer have to worry about Boise State being taken seriously as a contender for the BCS title. All due respect to the Broncos, but seriously, guys, a team from the Colonial Athletic Association just beat VT worse than you did. And therein lies the tragedy of only having one or two respectable opponents on your schedule: Just like it's dangerous to put your entire retirement fund in one stock, you pin your entire championship résumé on one opponent and that opponent can sink you.

· I'm more worried about Florida than I was last week, but if you're still tied 7-7 with South Florida at halftime, let's just say you clearly haven't solved all your problems. Same goes for if Eastern Michigan rolled up more yards on Miami-Ohio on the road than you did at home.



· It's still too early to call Michigan resurrected, but it sure does look like they're finally on their way to executing the kind of offense Rich Rodriguez wanted from the very beginning. Denard Robinson is going to make some coaches fear for their job security over the next few seasons.

· Little Brother update: I think UAB's season is close to being a writeoff already -- good thing I didn't, you know, predict they'd go to a bowl this season or anything, heh -- but I'm sure you will be thrilled to know that Wofford opened Southern Conference play with a win over Charleston Southern. Thus begins the Terrier resurgence, folks. Get on board or get out of the way.

The Friday Random Ten+5 remembers some pretty sweet victory parades.

Like I said yesterday, the past 48 hours or so -- thrilling wins by the U.S. and Slovak soccer teams, a match to end all tennis matches won by Georgia alum John Isner -- have been about the happiest that sports have ever made me outside of the four or five glorious months we call "football season." It's true that most of my awesome sports-related memories are intimately tied with some great success on the part of the Bulldogs -- or the Washington Redskins, in the pre-Snyder era when they still had successes -- but I've been privy to some pretty amazing non-football achievements that made my heart swell with pride to be an American, a Georgia fan, or perhaps just someone who happened to have a TV and a cable connection and be in the right place at the right time. This +5 is dedicated to the heroes who made me snap out of my pigskin-and-beer-induced trance and made me realize that there are other sports in the world, not an easy thing to do in and of itself: My Five Proudest Sporting-Related Memories That Had Nothing To Do With Football.



October 5, 1991: Braves claim their first division pennant in nine years
Confession: While I'm a ripe old 32, I'm not one of those Atlanta-area Gen-Xers with massive archives of miserable memories about how bad the Braves were in the '80s. We didn't move to Georgia until the summer of '91, right before I started high school, and I don't have many memories of paying attention to baseball period before that. But not long after we moved down to Columbus, my dad had some sort of job-related doctor thing up in Atlanta that included tickets to a Braves game, so off we went to Fulton County Stadium. The Braves were leading the NL West for the first time in forever, but only a game ahead of the Dodgers, with two games to go in the season; we got to watch Smoltzie pitch a complete game of pure ruthless efficiency, downing the Astros 5-2, then hung around while they showed the Dodgers-Giants game on the Jumbotron. I don't think a single person left the stadium as the LA-SF game wore on, and when the Giants corralled LA's final groundout to clinch their own 4-0 win, the place exploded even louder than it had when the Braves had won. A photographer took our picture as we walked triumphantly back to our car, and somewhere, in some newspaper's dusty archives, there's a picture of little 13-year-old me with the foam tomahawk someone had handed me on my way into the stadium, waving that thing like I'd caught the winning out myself.



October 28, 1995: Braves win the World Series
It took another four years before the Braves won the Big One, of course, but I remember exactly where I was when it happened: in the TV lounge of the lobby at Oglethorpe House my freshman year at UGA, surrounded by pretty much every single one of my neighbors, watching I think it was Marquis Grissom tear across left-center to catch the final out. When it finally happened, when all those years of disappointments and achingly close missed opportunities gave way to a Series title, the entire room poured out and I remember spending the rest of that evening engaging in copious amounts of underage drinking whilst wearing my Braves boxers on the outside of my clothes. Good times.



July 23, 1996: Kerri Strug vaults on a bum ankle and wins the gold for the American gymnastics team
We caught a couple of events when the Olympics were in Atlanta, but we watched the team gymnastics competition from home, and saw the whole drama with Kerri Strug's ankle and the one last vault she did to clinch the all-around team gold for the U.S. for the first time ever. Considering that she had to be taken straight from the Georgia Dome to a hospital afterward to be treated for tendon damage, I think Strug's hero status was well-deserved, as were her "Saturday Night Live" cameo and appearance in one of the funnier spots from the golden age of "This is SportsCenter" ads.



March 16, 2008: Georgia wins the SEC basketball tournament
I don't have the clearest memory of where I was when this went down: I think I'd driven home from Birmingham to Columbus that Friday night -- through a hellacious thunderstorm, of course -- and woke up the next morning fully expecting to open up the Ledger-Enquirer sports section and read about how the Dawgs had been unceremoniously bounced out of the tournament in the second round by Kentucky. Instead, I got to read about how the second-round game hadn't even been played because of a tornado that tore through downtown Atlanta -- ripping a hole in the roof of the Georgia Dome in the process. So I got to watch two games on Saturday -- the first a Georgia victory over Kentucky (their second straight overtime win), followed just hours later by an equally improbable win over Mississippi State. Keep in mind that, in the most delicious irony of ironies, this all happened on Georgia Tech's basketball court, where the entire tournament had been moved because of the damage to the Dome. And the following afternoon, the Dawgs -- who'd been the sixth seed in the East at 4-12 in the SEC, 13-16 overall -- knocked off Arkansas to claim one of the least probable NCAA tournament berths ever. They lost in the first round to Xavier, of course, and less than a year later Dennis Felton was out of a job, but still, this was one of those miraculous weekends that could bring a glimmer of pride to even the most beleaguered program. (Of course, now that Mark Fox is in charge and recruiting like a madman, the Hoop Dawgs are gonna win so many of these things that the fan base gets bored and starts taking them for granted like asshole Kentucky fans. Book it.)



February 24, 2010: Slovakia beats Sweden in ice hockey to advance to the medal round of the 2010 Olympics
Just like I really get into the World Cup despite not being much of a soccer fan, I like Olympic hockey even though I don't follow the sport much otherwise. And with the NHL being littered with bad-ass Slovaks, I figured the motherland had a great chance at a medal in Vancouver (after having smoked the rest of their group in the first round in 2006 but getting bounced by the Czech Republic in the first round of the knockout stage). SVK began the 2010 hockey tournament by getting whacked again by the Czechs, but then stunned the world with a shootout win over the Russians, and closed out group play by pounding Latvia 6-0. They dispensed with Norway in the first round of the playoff, but that only meant they'd earned the right to face Sweden, the defending Olympic champions, in the next round. Instead of folding, though, the Slovaks scored on a power play in the second period and never trailed from there, and my boys were headed to the medal round for the first time ever as an independent country. (About that: Yeah, there was no medal. Not this time. But it's happening four years from now, oh yes it is.)

Ahh, memories. And now the Ten:

1. Pet Shop Boys, "Always"
2. Fatboy Slim, "Right Here Right Now"
3. Moby, "Natural Blues"
4. A Tribe Called Quest, "The Pressure"
5. Deee-Lite, "Power of Love"
6. Pet Shop Boys, "Legacy"
7. The Streets, "Don't Mug Yourself"
8. The Pixies, "Crackity Jones"
9. Ween, "Piss Up a Rope"
10. Duran Duran, "Save a Prayer"

Your turn -- your Random Tens and/or favorite non-football sporting memories go in the comments, if you're so inclined.

It's great! To be! An American Georgia Bulldog of Slovak descent!

So let's recap: In the past 24 hours, I've gotten to see

· Team USA advance to the knockout round of the World Cup -- winning their group, no less -- on one of the more thrilling goals that's ever been scored;

· the longest tennis match ever played, which was won 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68 by a Georgia Bulldog; and

· Slovakia, in its first World Cup as an independent nation, advance to the knockout round via an amazing 3-2 victory over the defending world champions -- in the process sending the loathsome, preening, flop-artist Italians home in disgrace.

I didn't know it was possible to be this happy so far away from football season.

V-T Day.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA -- As the explosions of the epic Alabama-Florida battle were gradually silenced on the frigid plains of the Georgia Dome, a new commotion arose -- the voice of a freed people celebrating their liberation from a once-unstoppable force:

"WE ARE FREE! WE ARE FREE!"

The brave, crimson-clad soldiers of Alabama's most elite fighting force did more than vanquish Florida's feared Gators -- they unshackled an entire nation, set free a society that had spent four long years under siege from an inescapable despot that reached into every aspect of their lives to control them. The Tim Tebow Übertreibungswaffen that had subjected them to the most sickening depths of hype and overexposure finally lay in smoldering ruins, and football fans across the country were free to rejoice.

"I dreamed this day would come," said Atlanta resident Georg Kozpecl, who identified himself as a member of the "Red and Black Resistance Army" that had fought the Tebow machine with only sporadic success over four grueling years. "Finally, my family will be able to watch 'College Gameday' without being subjected to the grinning idiot's face or hearing people laud his 'humanitarianism.' Lies, I tell you. His reign has been filled with nothing but cruelty, and we are grateful to God almighty to be freed of him."

Fans of teams across the Southeastern Conference and, indeed, the totality of Division I-A took to city streets all over America, shouting "Long live players other than Tebow!" and slapping posters of the Florida quarterback with the soles of their shoes. A statue of the 6'3", 240-pound Tebow erected in Bristol, Connecticut -- headquarters of the quarterback's massive propaganda operation -- was toppled by a mob of citizens sometime Saturday night.

The location of Tebow himself is not known at this time; he is thought to have retreated to his base of operations in northern Florida, perhaps to plan one final assault on New Orleans, the Bugle-Inquisitor has learned. However, rumors continue to spread like wildfire that Reichsführer-UF Urban Meyer has fallen ill, potentially cutting off the head of the Gator war machine. In addition, Thom Brennaman, Deputy Reichsminister of Propaganda, has been found dead in his basement, dead from a self-administered cyanide pill.

CRIMSON TIDE EFFICIENT, "RUTHLESS" IN ONSLAUGHT

Those who witnessed the Alabama fighting force spring into action in the streets of Atlanta told of a well-oiled machine that was "ruthless" in dispensing with both the offensive and defensive forces of the once-invincible Gators. Lieutenant General Mark Ingram drove fearlessly across the Georgia plains, mowing down defenses once thought to be impregnable, while General Greg McElroy supported the invasion with the rapid establishment of air superiority and (continued on page A-3)

"I said, no more 45-42. Maybe you didn't hear about it, you've been away a long time."

You take the passive road, and I'll take the aggressive road, and I'll get to Knoxville before ye:A (slightly leading) Hate Week roundtable.

With UGA-UT Hate Week upon us, some kind of roundtable was certainly called for, and I could think of no better and more available source for inside Vol dope than the prolific Holly at Snarkastic. While the initial purpose of this endeavor may actually have been to educate and inform, however, it . . . well, it kind of went downhill in a hurry, as you'll see. What follows are the questions I managed to ask Holly before our exchange devolved into a game of "Why're you hitting yourself" (or, in Tennessee's case, "Why're you intercepting yourself"); my answers to Holly's equally bitchy questions will be up at her joint shortly. Enjoy, if you can.

I came up with seven questions. I know that's a lot of questions for a Tennessee grad to deal with, particularly when none of them involve things like "Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you," but if you need me to pare any of these down just let me know.

Moonshinin' is winnin', son.

1. Tennessee's most notable performance this season has been its "moral victory" at Florida in which they held the top-ranked Gators to 23 points and lost by 10. By how many points will they need to lose to Georgia to ensure another suitably moral triumph?

I don't think that's something we need to be worrying about, frankly. If that's the kind of hurt we put on Tebow, just imagine what the Ginger Ninja will be feeling come 4 p.m. or so.

2. There has been a great deal of speculation as to why Lane Kiffin so frequently looks like a fussy toddler on the sideline, much of it focusing on Kiffin not getting the juice boxes some say he was promised. Do you feel this has anything to do with his attitude, and if so, what is Tennessee's strategy for ensuring Kiffin gets juice boxes at regular intervals against the Bulldogs?

We're switching him to milk, actually, for maximum soothage:



3. Other observers attribute Kiffin's crankiness to lingering resentment over the fact that his father, Monte, is the one actually coaching the team. Please confirm or deny.

I would like to defer this question directly to Coach Kiffin for rebuttal:



4. Top UT recruit Nu'Keese Richardson's name is spelled "Nu'Keese." Why?

Ask Rantavious Wooten or Bacarri Rambo.

5. You are given the choice between starting Jonathan Crompton at QB for the remainder of the 2009 season or being surreptitiously filmed in the nude by Michael David Barrett and having the footage posted on the Internet. Which do you pick?

Option C, for "Catfish," of course.

6. In one word or less, please list the accomplishments that Tennessee has achieved without David Cutcliffe on the coaching staff.



[Editor's note: Had I known Holly was going to include that clip in her answer, I would've added "Has any fan base ever been so proud of giving up a first down to Knowshon Moreno?" to the list of questions I sent her.]

7. The Volunteer defense has barely missed a step from last season's performance, ranking 19th in the nation in total yards allowed even after playing Florida and Auburn and boasting the SEC's third-leading tackler, safety Eric Berry. Speaking of safeties, how embarrassing was it when Georgia's Sean Jones returned a fumble 92 yards for a touchdown on the very last play of the first half against Tennessee in 2003, sparking a four-touchdown win for the Bulldogs in Knoxville? Please phrase your answer in the form of a vial of Casey Clausen's tears so that I may drink and savor them.

Let's see . . . having to reach back about half as far to find the last time we really fucked y'all up, I'm gonna say it's about half as embarrassing as having fifty hung on you in your own house. Kisses!

HJS thanks Ms. Anderson for her participation in this exercise, and invites her to go fuck herself.

How to smile behind a frown.

Asher Allen (right), seen here remembering last year.

Between my seething, red-eyed hatred for all things Volunteer, which my HMO has correctly deemed a pre-existing condition, and two straight years of humiliating cover-your-eyes blowouts by UT, I wanted an asskicking Saturday night. I wanted a shutout and at least a three-TD margin of victory. I wanted blood on the field. I wanted the kind of historic dishonor that would drive an assistant coach or two to commit ritual seppuku before the clock even hit zeroes. Maybe the rest of the fan base wasn't especially geeked up for this one after the Alabama disaster, but I sure was.

As the third quarter drew to a close and our fans held four fingers in the air (or, in our section, one finger in the air toward the Tennessee band, which was drowning out the Redcoat Band with some rendition of “Carmina Burana”), it became clear that I wasn't going to get any of that. We'd just given up a short touchdown drive after Matt Stafford's second interception of the game, this one caught by Eric Berry in the end zone and taken all the way to Georgia's side of the field, and could only answer back with a drive that started out pretty well but ended up with the Dawgs getting stopped at the Tennessee 24. On the first play of the final quarter, we kicked our third field goal of the night, and a team that had dominated statistically for 45 minutes had to settle for retaking a two-score lead. We left the stadium with a convincing win but no better than a push on the point spread — certainly not the apocalyptic massacre I'd been not-so-secretly hoping for.

For a while, I'd made up my mind to be cranky about that, but it didn't take long — maybe even within the span of Georgia's 11-minute game-icing field goal drive — to get over it and decide to be happy about the outcome. There were two aspects of the game that, in reflection, helped me arrive at that decision.


MoMass brings Georgia's last drive of the second quarter to a stirring conclusion in the end zone.

The first was Georgia's final drive of the first half, a thing of beauty at the time and even more impressive in hindsight. Again, we'd gotten picked deep in Tennessee territory, and the emboldened Vols took it right back down the field on a truly sweet-looking deep bomb from Nick Stephens to Denarius Moore. (There, Holly, I said something nice about your team. My fake-marital obligations are thus fulfilled.) This unfortunate sequence of events was compounded on the ensuing kickoff, when Richard Samuel overran the ball, had to run back five yards to get it, and received a highly predictable creaming at the Georgia three. Pinned deep and sucking wind, momentum-wise, I started having wild visions of how things would go if this were 2006 — we'd grind the last two minutes and change off the clock without even trying to score, go into the locker room deflated and wondering why we weren't beating them by more, and spend the entire second half flailing around like someone who's just walked into a cobweb, trying to get this pesky (and demonstrably inferior) team out of our hair.

Fortunately, Richt and Bobo had other plans. Rather than just meekly accepting our undesirable situation, they dialed up a heart-pounding 97-yard drive, helpfully aided by a pair of stupid-ass Tennessee personal fouls — the kinds of penalties it was surprising just to see someone other than us commit — and capped off by a lovely Stafford pass to Mo Massaquoi in the end zone. Instead of the Dawgs, it was the Vols taking a knee to run out the clock and trudging into the locker room with frowns on their faces, while Georgia got to go into halftime with a two-touchdown lead.

Even if the recaptured momentum didn't quite last the entire second half, it was still an impressive way of bouncing back from adversity, and again, one we haven't always been great at. And it was a particularly gratifying display of killer instinct by a team that had had its collective ass handed to it in its previous game, to the point where there were actually questions of whether we'd be able to get it up for a hated division rival. Quibble with some of Bobo's play calls if you want, but he deserves props for designing that drive, and Stafford and MoMass deserve equal props for executing it.


A frequent sight on all but a couple of Tennessee's drives Saturday.

The second thing that made me smile despite the meh victory margin was a glance up at the Jumbotron, where the game stats were displayed several times in the waning moments: 458 total yards for the Dawgs, including another hundred-yard day for Knowshon and Stafford's first-ever 300-yard passing day. Make no mistake about it, that vaunted Tennessee defense I fretted about last week is going to be dropping a few notches in the rankings in pretty much every statistical category, because the Vols never really stopped us on Saturday. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ball, Tennessee had fewer than half the total yards we did (209, to be exact), and another worry of mine — that Tennessee might be able to run the ball on us a little — turned out to be just as unnecessary as the nail-biting I did over their defense: The Vols finished with one net yard rushing the entire night, and the Foster/Hardesty/Creer backfield that so completely shredded us in Knoxville last year ended up with only 25 total yards on 11 carries. Nick Stephens had a serviceable performance in his first SEC game ever, with no picks or blatantly bad decisions on his permanent record, but outside of the 60-yard completion to Moore he didn't do a lot that was particularly heroic, either.

Whatever it says on the scoreboard, that was still a dominating performance, particularly since we were still so banged-up at a multitude of positions. Would you have thought that a defensive front seven missing Dannell Ellerbe would've held Tennessee to single-digit rushing yards and sacked Stephens twice? Would you have thought that an offensive line that lost a second left tackle (Vince Vance) for the season would be able to block for an eleven-minute, 17-play (all but two of them rushing), 76-yard drive that produced the game-icing field goal in the fourth quarter? The pollsters and pundits who only look at the final score may not be impressed with this performance, but anyone who takes even a cursory look at the box score should find plenty to appreciate.

If you think about it, Tennessee accomplished virtually nothing that wasn't presented to them on a velvet pillow by our offense. Both of their scoring drives were started off by Stafford interceptions deep in UT territory; they racked up 118 total yards (including more than half of Stephens's 208 passing yards) and 14 points. In the nine drives they had to start thanks to something other than a Stafford pick, they totaled a mere 91 yards and three first downs on 32 plays. Without those picks, there's a reasonable chance that I'm preparing to streak down Highland Avenue in celebration of a Georgia shutout. With a little more discipline in the end zone, 40 points wouldn't have been out of the question. And yeah, I know it's kind of silly to say “Without all the screw-ups, we would've been awesome,” but you have to admit, relatively speaking, this game featured few truly inexcusable screw-ups to mar what was otherwise a solid ass-pounding.

And whether the win had been by 12 points, one point, or fifty-three, I still would've gotten to sing on my way out of the stadium:

Rocky Top, you're oh-and-three
Iiiin the S-E-C;
Poor old Rocky Top,
Rocky Top Tennessee.
You wish you had red pants like me.

I thought that one up not long after we kicked that field goal at the very beginning of the fourth quarter. I'm really glad I got the chance to use it.


Revenge: It's not just for breakfast anymore.

Other stuff I was kind-of, sort-of, in-some-cases-not-really paying attention to:

· There's plenty for me to answer for in both my Dr. Saturday picks column and my SEC Power Poll ballot from last week, but perhaps nothing as egregious as the following sentence from the latter:

[LSU's] defense has been a little less than confidence-inspiring over the past couple weeks, but it's still a real stretch to think that this is the team against whom Tim Tebow and the Gators are finally going to have their offensive breakout game, particularly considering that the Tigers have had a week to rest up for them.

In fact, the less-than-confidence-inspiring aspects of LSU's defense in its outings against Auburn and Mississippi State apparently took over against Florida the other night, because Tebow and his team did have that breakout game, rolling up 475 yards and a 51-spot on the scoreboard in a trampling of the defending national champions. It's still early to call the SEC West a one-horse race, but with Auburn tanking and LSU officially exposed, that division certainly looks like it belongs to Saban, and all the other teams are merely paying rent.


I'm really glad we fired the offensive coordinator. That totally worked.

· Speaking of Auburn tanking, how bad do you have to be to a) allow 416 total yards to Casey Dick and the Razorbacks and b) roll up only 193 yards of your own on the SEC's worst defense? In both cases, I'm going to go with “pretty bad,” and I'm going to use my editorial droit de seigneur to whip out another quote from one of my past SEC Power Poll ballots, this one my preseason ranking of SEC head coaches:

[Kyle King] says Tubs "is the most underrated coach in the league"; I say he's one of the most overrated. I mean, he's hardly a bad coach, but let's see what his nine years on the Plains have produced: one SEC title, two division titles, and a single BCS bowl. He's notched some pretty amazing upsets, but for each one of those there's also a head-slapper of a loss that should never have happened, and many of those losses have been enough to bounce the Tigers out of the SEC West lead so that a team like LSU or even Arkansas can take their place. Doesn't seem to foster a lot of consistency with coordinators, either, which may be part of the problem. (Emphasis mine, of course, but not in original — Ed.)

So now both Al Borges and Tony Franklin are laughing their asses off at the Tigers (and both of them are still getting paid by Auburn, too, if memory serves). Meanwhile, Tommy Tuberville might be praying to God right now that Tommy Bowden gets fired so that he's got a fallback position at the end of the season. Granted, I haven't been privy to exactly what has gone on in Tuberville's office or the locker room this season, but it's safe to say a pooch has been screwed this season, and the primary common thread between this team before and after the Franklin firing — besides the continued yelping of said pooch, of course — is Tuberville.

· Jesus Christ, Vandy. I (and everyone else) thought you were better than that.

· Exactly one month ago, East Carolina was 2-0 after eye-popping upsets over Virginia Tech and West Virginia, while Virginia was 1-1 and preparing for a 35-point cockpunching by the Connecticut Huskies. Today, the Pirates and 'Hoos have identical 3-3 records; ECU has shanked three straight while Virginia has overcome a humiliating loss to Duke by beating two straight opponents by double digits. And at the rate things are going, UVA stands just as good a chance as anybody of representing the Coastal Division in what I can only imagine will be a highly comedic ACC championship game.


Well, there's your problem. That isn't how you wear that.

· Even if they don't, they might beat Georgia Tech, who needed a tipped field-goal attempt with nine seconds left to survive 2-4 Gardner-Webb. In the spirit of this post, I propose a new German word for the satisfaction one feels when something bad doesn't quite happen to a hated rival or opponent, but comes close enough to happening that one can still laugh at them for it: peinlichnaheverlegenheitvermeidungfreude. Ask for it by name!

· UAB Blazers watch: The plucky Blazers led Houston 20-3 on the road last Thursday, only to give up six touchdowns in the second half and lose 45-20. I think this pretty much cements the “Worst Second-Half Team in the Country” title for UAB — this makes like the fourth time they've been within striking distance or even led a game at halftime only to get hammered the rest of the way. I added it up, and UAB has allowed only a handful more first-half points than they've scored; in the second half, though, they've been outscored by more than a 2-to-1 margin. The solution to this, of course, is simple: UAB should petition Conference USA to shorten all games to 30 minutes. I mean, with all the clock-rule shenanigans the NCAA has been pulling the last couple seasons, that's where we're headed anyway, isn't it?

· Wofford Terriers watch: The Terriers were on fire in both the first and second halves in Spartanburg this past weekend, curb-stomping Chattanooga 56-7 (and only needing to complete 4 of 6 passes in the process). They remain one of only three undefeated teams left in the Southern Conference and get a tune-up against 2-5 Western Carolina this week before going on a two-week road trip to face both of the other undefeateds, Elon and Appalachian State.

· The introduction of another planned regular feature, “Washington Redskins Watch,” has been postponed this week due to inclement weather. I'm hoping to roll it out next Monday.

Kneel before Zorn.

Dang, this was like the only good thing that happened this past weekend (aside from my fantasy team, the Dutch Ovens, kicking ass even with half its starting offense on a bye week), I can't believe it's taken me this long to brag about it.


Hail to the Redskins


Hail, vic-to-ry


Braves . . . on the warpaaaath


Fight! . . . for old D.C.


. . . And fuck the Cowboys*

* Note: may not be an actual line from the song

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:People without maps, orange outfits, busted Trojans, and other profiles in FAIL.

• The Sarah Palin bandwagon is beginning to unload, as right-wing columnist Kathleen Parker comes forward to say Palin should step down from the ticket. Well, there are plenty of equally qualified replacements out there . . . how does McCain/Upton '08 sound?





I guess I shouldn't make fun, though, since John McCain has already won tonight's debate.

• Apropos of nothing, a writer for knoxnews.com in Knoxville, Tennessee, read some comment I made on this blog about Tennessee fans' tacky gameday attire and was actually inspired to solicit my opinion for an article he was writing on that very subject. I think it says something about Volunteer Nation's current mental state that they didn't immediately fill up the comments thread with angry questions about why anyone would solicit some pansy-ass Georgia fan's opinion on Tennessee's fashion sense; the first comment ("fitting, considering our team plays a relaxed style of football") pretty much sets the tone.

What this means for Georgia? Precisely dick, thanks for asking, since UT fans were (if memory serves) just as demoralized about this time last year right up until the Dawgs strolled into Neyland Stadium and got Keyser Söze'd by the eventual SEC East champs. (Keenan Ivory Wayans pops his head in through the window: "Message!")

• In other adventures in cross-promotion, my Dr. Saturday picks column is up. Trying for a perfect 4-0 after a pretty nice 3-1 record last week.

• In the Georgia preview I did for Deadspin over the summer, I made reference to the informal headline contests we'd have back in college whenever the Dawgs beat up on the 'Cocks of South Carolina. Well, the headline possibilities are certainly just as boundless whenever the Beavers face the Trojans, and even more so when the Beavers come out with a shocking upset win. ESPN's own headline ranks pretty high on the Unintentional Hilarity-O-Meter, but something like this calls for a little intentional hilarity as well, so . . . take it away, Holly:

Trojans Can’t Pull It Out

Hungry Beavers Suffocate Trojans

Trojans Can’t Get It Up For Big Night With Beavers

Sanchez Dirtied By Beaver Attack

Trojans Can’t Come From Behind, Fall Short

22 Trojans, No Protection

I would say "It gets even more out of hand in the comments," but that would imply that it was ever in hand to begin with. My personal contribution, "Trojans Break Under Pressure of Too Much Jacquizz," pays tribute to freshman RB Jacquizz Rodgers's 186-yard, two-TD performance; I welcome your suggestions in the comments.

This is as good a time as any to reiterate my support for a home-and-home between South Carolina and Oregon State. Intersectional Game of the Century? I don't think that's too much premature exaggeration, no.

• And finally, the 17 All-Time Worst "ESPN Gameday" signs. I actually thought the Goulet one was kind of funny.

Elegy.

With apologies to Walt Whitman

1
O Ballcoach! my Ballcoach! the fearful game is done;
The QB weather’d every sack, and threw for 271;
Wofford is near, the bells I hear, the people all are cheering,
While follow eyes young Jared Cook, McKinley's return is nearing:
But O heart! heart! heart
O the hated black and red,
Who dealt the blow, my Ballcoach lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

2
O Ballcoach! my Ballcoach! there is no finer feller;
You lifted our benighted 'Cocks from the East Division cellar;
For you bouquets and bedsheet signs, for you the fans a-teeming;
For you they call, the drunken mass, their eager faces screaming;
Here Ballcoach! dear genius!
This visor off your head;
It is some dream that on the turf,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

3
My Ballcoach does not answer, his lips stand still and pout;
The genius heart, it beats no more, for Whitlock broke his route;
The Cockaboose is safe and sound, but its bell a dirge intones;
From Smelley's hands, the last pass lands, picked off by Reshad Jones;
His Gator years brought rage and tears,
But from Gainesville he fled,
And in S.C. my Ballcoach be,
Fallen cold and dead.