Are there any chinks in Alabama's armor? (Anybody? Anybody?...)

The consistently awesome Senator Blutarsky -- showing more conscientiousness on his supposed vacation than I do on a normal day -- has left behind some goodies for his readers, today's being a series of polls soliciting opinions on how many wins to expect for each team in the SEC (starting with the West Division). His exercise prompted me to sit down with a copy of this year's SEC schedule and go through it, game by game, to get an idea of where everyone would end up in the standings.

When the smoke cleared, I realized that, among other questionable judgments, I had Alabama ending up at 12-0.

It's obviously not all that far-fetched as conclusions go -- Nick Saban's obviously got them operating at maximum efficiency and then some, to the point that the Tide are basically the consensus #1 across the punditocracy's unofficial preseason rankings. Still, the law of averages dictates that it's going to be extremely difficult for any team, even one as good as the Tide, to rumble through a third straight regular season unscathed. For starters, they're only returning two starters on defense after having handed over a staggering amount of talent in the first three rounds of the NFL draft; there's also that matter of six SEC foes getting a bye the week before they face Bama (about which the always-meek Tide diehards have hardly uttered a word of complaint).

So if the Tide do have to get upended by someone, who's it most likely to be? Take a look at the rundown of the most likely contenders, then cast your vote at the bottom.



PENN STATE (Tuscaloosa, Sept. 11)
Points in favor of an upset: Name-brand team with one of the nation's top returning RBs (Evan Royster) as well as a big, experienced line to put in front of him, which will be a major test for Bama's gutted front seven.
Points against: PSU's situation on defense is almost as shaky as Bama's -- their entire starting LB corps from last year is gone -- and none of their QBs are anywhere near as accomplished as Greg McElroy. Bama has had very little trouble in these marquee early-season games over the past couple seasons.
Prognosis: Not great. Saban is cash money in games like this, and it's hard to picture a Big Ten team coming out victorious at Bryant-Denny.

ARKANSAS (Fayetteville, Sept. 25)
Points in favor of an upset: Maybe the most potent offense Bama will face all year, with all but one offensive starter returning. Ryan Mallett gives Arkansas a chance in every game they play. The game's in Fayetteville.
Points against: Alabama will be coming off an almost certain blowout win at Duke, while Arkansas will be returning home from a date at Georgia. Mallett played like cold stale ass against the Tide last year (12-of-35 for 160 yards, one TD, and a pick in a 35-7 loss); the Arkansas defense, meanwhile, has sucked out loud since Petrino got there.
Prognosis: Poor. Arkansas could be good this year, but "good enough to beat the defending national champs" sits squarely in the I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it file.

FLORIDA (Tuscaloosa, Oct. 2)
Points in favor of an upset: It's Florida, a team that will no doubt be looking for revenge after having gotten cornholed in the SEC title game last December. They've got a terrific offensive line and three of the fastest RBs in the country, all of whom will be poised to strike at the Bama defense right where they're most vulnerable.
Points against: Trading Tebow for a junior making only his fifth career start robs the Gators of any air of invincibility. No more Charlie Strong, either.
Prognosis: Decent, but it's still hard to see Alabama not coming out on top at home; the loss of Tebow, Strong, Riley Cooper, Aaron Hernandez, and Brandon James equals, if not exceeds, any glaring losses on the Bama side.

SOUTH CAROLINA (Columbia, Oct. 9)
Points in favor of an upset: The 'Cocks return more starters than any other team in the conference, including four of five on the O-line and maybe the most promising RB corps they've had in years. As a rule, beware night games in Columbia.
Points against: Carolina winning a meaningful game period, much less against the defending champs, is kind of a surreal picture. It certainly isn't going to happen without a stellar game from the quarterback, but Spurrier has sounded like he's one sideways glance away from strangling Stephen Garcia all summer long. As a rule, positive signs about the Gamecock O-line have been meaningless.
Prognosis: Am I crazy if I say "not that bad"? Carolina will be coming off a bye, and as mediocre as they've been at many points in Spurrier's tenure, they've claimed a top-10 scalp in two of the last three seasons (and come achingly close in many other such opportunities). Given Carolina's M.O., it'd be just like them to knock off Bama to get to 3-2 or 4-1, win a few more games to come within striking distance of the top 10 and get everyone excited, then pull their usual collapse down the stretch.

OLE MISS (Tuscaloosa, Oct. 16)
Points in favor of an upset: Whenever people start pooh-poohing a Houston Nutt team, that's when you should worry. Has one of the few front sevens that will give Mark Ingram and Trent Richardson any kind of challenge all year. Potential for Alabama to be looking ahead to the Tennessee game.
Points against: Landing Jeremiah Masoli looks like basically the only chance they have of putting up any kind of offense this year. Very green secondary will be a big fat bullseye for McElroy. The game's in Tuscaloosa.
Prognosis: Poor. Nutt is always a threat to pull a stunner of an upset, but he's just got too much talent to replace this year.

TENNESSEE (Knoxville, Oct. 23)
Points in favor of an upset: If ever there was a year to overlook the Vols, it's this one. Tauren Poole will be a real threat against the Alabama defensive front. The game's in Knoxville.
Points against: Other than Poole, UT's offense may be so horrendous this year that Alabama's defensive inexperience may not even matter. And even Poole will only be able to do so much behind the ragtag O-line Tennessee will have to field.
Prognosis: Sub-poor. Saban has yet to lose to the Vols as Bama's coach, and that includes his first year in Tuscaloosa, when his guys barely made bowl eligibility and Tennessee won the East; it's not gonna happen this year.



LSU (Baton Rouge, Nov. 6)
Points in favor of an upset: This game has rocketed to the top of the list of games the Tigers get geeked up for each year, as evidenced by achingly close games against demonstrably superior Bama squads in each of the past two seasons. The defense should continue to improve under John Chavis. It's hard to bet against LSU in a night game at home.
Points against: LSU is tied with Vandy for the fewest returning starters in the SEC, and that's not good coming off a year when they were mediocre or worse in nearly every statistical category. The offense, in particular, could be a mess.
Prognosis: Should be good -- and might be, by the time this game is played -- but I don't think it is. LSU got to nine wins last season in spite of being statistically awful; when a team with this much raw athletic talent relies that much on luck to win games, they're wasting a lot of that talent, and I don't see a whole lot to convince me that's going to change substantially in 2010.

MISSISSIPPI STATE (Tuscaloosa, Nov. 13)
Points in favor of an upset: Dan Mullen clearly has this team pointed in the right direction; they were quite competitive against LSU, Florida, and Ole Miss last year. The defense could be pretty good, particularly against the pass.
Points against: The gap in talent between the two teams remains substantial. Mullen is still struggling to implement his system with the players he's got.
Prognosis: Bad. I know, it wasn't that long ago that Alabama was getting punked by State on the regular, but Bama has clearly come a long way since then; MSU still has a long way to go.

AUBURN (Tuscaloosa, Nov. 26)
Points in favor of an upset: With Gus Malzahn masterminding the playbook, Auburn's offense could be even better than last season's, while Bama's will almost certainly be worse -- not good considering how easy Auburn made it look in jumping out to a 14-0 lead in Auburn last year.
Points against: Auburn's defense wasn't anything special itself, particularly against the run. As surprising as Auburn was last year, the thought of Gene Chizik knocking off Nick Saban in T-Town remains surreal.
Prognosis: Honestly? Not that bad. I think Auburn's one of the most underrated teams in the country at the moment. Should Alabama roll into this game 11-0, though, it becomes that much harder for me to picture Auburn knocking them off.

Your turn:

poll by twiigs.com

Feel free to expound on your choice(s) in the comments.

Once again, it's time to get loathsome.

Back at the beginning of 2007 I did a fairly self-explanatory series titled "The 50 Most Loathsome People in College Football." (Yes, an idea blatantly ripped from the Buffalo Beast's beloved annual feature. I only ever said I was hilarious and insightful, I never said I was original.) At the time I guess I figured it was something that could be whipped out every few years or so, and looking back over that now, the start of a new decade seems like a perfect time to open up nominations and lay into the people doing their level best to suck all our enjoyment out of the greatest sport of all time.

Obviously, I'm already putting a list together of the people who belong in there, but any list like this should be a participatory exercise, so I want y'all's suggestions as well -- anyone who by word or deed has been a blot on the landscape of college football. The parameters for inclusion here are pretty broad; it can be an asshole coach, prima donna player, smug broadcaster/columnist, or incompetent administrator of some sort; it can even be a douchebag blogger or celebrity hanger-on who somehow keeps being invited to show up at games or in the broadcast booth despite adding nothing to the proceedings. Anyone who, by their mere association, has taken away just a little bit of your enjoyment of our favorite fall pursuit.

Keep in mind, though, that we're talking about the most loathsome people, so we want to try to keep our primary focus on the most macro offenses. A coach who loudly proclaimed his own brilliance and superiority while driving a program into the ground? Worthy of inclusion. The dicklick whose season tickets are directly behind yours and who grouses incessantly about every single play call, even the ones that end up scoring? Probably not quite on the level I'm talking about. Likewise, when making the case for a particularly loathsome individual, try to focus on the things that would arouse the ire of the broadest possible spectrum of CFB fans. A defensive back who forced your favorite player to fumble in the most critical game of the season? Ehh, that kid was just doing what he was supposed to do. If that defensive back later beat up his girlfriend, left early for the NFL while trashing his team on the way out, and left his old program on NCAA probation because of cash payments he was taking while he was enrolled there, OK, now we're talking.

Put your nomination(s) in the comments thread, along with any supporting information you feel might bolster their case as a particularly loathsome boil on the ass of college football; I'll be accepting nominations right up until, oh, let's say Saturday the 23rd (i.e. one week from tomorrow). And I'll try to get the full list put up by the end of the month. I can't promise you your nomination will end up making the final cut, but they'll at least get a hearing.

Now let the rage begin!

Thought exercise.

While I work on a playoff-related post, and while Georgia continues to hunt down a defensive coordinator, I've got a thought experiment I'd like to try out on y'all, particularly if you're of the Dawg persuasion. This was inspired by the recent news (since put to rest) that highly respected Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster was officially in the mix for Georgia's DC job, and more specifically the reaction of one of my friends to the news. I'll explain the point of this in a subsequent post later on this week, but for now I just want y'all to ponder one question.

It's December 2, we've just fired Willie Martinez, we're casting about for a new DC, and there's a guy who's been bandied about as a prospect for the job. He's coached in the SEC for the vast majority of his career, including the last 10 years straight. In his first defensive-coordinator job, his team didn't win a game all season long. At the second program where he served as DC, his team won two conference titles in seven years, but they lost to LSU four times, Auburn twice, Tennessee twice, and Ole Miss three times; he's even managed to lose to Mississippi State. (Just for good measure, he's also lost to Georgia twice.) In one season, his defense gave up 30 or more points in five different games, including a bowl-game loss to a Big 10 team; he's 2-3 against the Big 10 and a so-so 7-5 against the ACC. Every year he's talked about for a number of head-coaching openings at DI-A programs, but he never seems to get any of them. And the last game he coached for his current program was a three-TD loss to an SEC rival in which his team gave up more than 30 points.

I don't want you to guess the identity of this coach. All I want you to do is answer the question, Do you want this guy to be our next defensive coordinator?

Audience participation time.

Two opportunities for you football fans out there to prove you're smarter than me:

First, join the Big Ass Pick'Em Group, my college pick'em league on Yahoo. We pick each week's top-25 games against the spread, and the person with the most correct picks at the end of the season wins. Sadly, they don't have official point spreads for I-AA games, so you will not get the chance to predict whether Florida can actually cover 73 on Charleston Southern. But you'll be able to pick nearly all of the non-embarrassing games. Go to this link and enter group ID# 13556 and password "gingerninja."

If the NFL is more your bag, or even an additional bag, you can also join the official Hey Jenny Slater survival pool. If you're not familiar with the concept, how it works is you simply pick one team each week that you think will win their game. However, once you pick a team to win, you can't pick that team again for the remainder of the season. Players fall by the wayside each week, and the one left standing is the winner. To join, go here and enter group ID# 10854 and password "jankyspanky."

The winner of each group gets mentioned by name on this blog at the end of the season, which is a prize literally worth its weight in gold. Sign up, e-mail the usual address if you have any questions, and good luck.

The expectations game, part II: Too high, too low, or just right?

When last I tried to gauge the fan base's expectations of the Georgia Bulldogs going into the 2009 season, the consensus seemed to be that nine wins and a bowl invite, possibly of the January variety, were entirely reasonable goals to shoot for. Now we have our first "official" judgment of Georgia's prospects: Last Friday the coaches collectively ranked Georgia #13 in their preseason poll.

Does thirteenth in the nation sound reasonable for a team destined to win nine games and play in a bowl? It's tough to say, because translating wins and losses into an appropriate poll ranking (or vice versa) is no less a judgment call than anything else. Basically, I think your judgment of the preseason ranking -- whether you see it as too high, too low, or basically accurate -- kind of depends on where you think Richt has the program positioned at the moment. If you're not convinced that Georgia is strong enough to weather the losses of Matt Stafford and Knowshon Moreno without paying for it to at least some degree in the standings -- consider that #13 is just three spots below where last year's national-title-touted team finished the season -- you might think the preseason ranking is a bit high. If, on the other hand, you think Richt has built the program into one that's strong and consistent enough to where even the "floor" for wins is relatively high, #13 probably seems fair, maybe even a tad low to those of you who with a more optimistic world view than mine.

Personally, I think #13 is about where we ought to be: We're having to replace Stafford and Moreno, which is not a small task by any measure, but at the same time our new guys will be playing behind one of the best and most experienced offensive lines in the country, while on defense, we may have underachieved considerably last year but we bring back nearly everybody of importance, and by all reports they've had their wake-up call and are charging into 2009 committed to making up for last season's disappointments. Flip "offense" and "defense" in that description and what you've got is strikingly similar to how people would've described our squad around this time in 2007 -- a team that was also ranked #13 in the preseason (and, as we all remember, went on to considerably bigger and better things).

So with all that in mind, I've got two questions for y'all to continue the process of analyzing fan expectations for this season. First:

poll by twiigs.com

And second, a question that's similar to the first one, but not quite the same:

poll by twiigs.com

Go ahead and vote, and feel free to explain your responses in further detail in the comments. Next up: which specific games y'all actually expect to win in 2009.

How good is good enough in '09?

The term means different things to different people, but "rebuilding year" is a pretty commonly accepted definition for the state of Georgia's football team in 2009. The silver lining to such a situation, of course, is that we aren't burdened with the kind of hype and high expectations that, as last year's campaign proved, are extremely difficult to live up to. The flip side to that, though, is that we don't really go into this season with a set of clearly defined goals. With any team, even the most talented ones, you don't know what the team is capable of until you've actually played the entire season; with this team, though, we're still somewhat uncertain as to what they should be capable of. On the one hand we're having to figure out how to bounce back from the departure of guys like Matt Stafford and Knowshon Moreno, but on the other hand, we've got Phil Steele saying we can still be a dark-horse national-title contender.

Without getting into too much detail about any one game on this year's slate -- we've got the rest of the offseason for that -- we've got only one game it looks like we should definitely win and only one game we're probably destined to lose. Between those, we've got three games we're at least fairly certain to be favored to win, two in which we'll probably be underdogs, and five (five of the first six games, in fact, by my count) that are complete toss-ups at this point. So if the absolute, end-of-the-world worst-case scenario is thus 4-8 and the best-case is 11-1 (plus, what the hell, a 12th win in a bowl game), that averages out to an eight-win season. There are a lot of similarities, though, between this season and 2005, in which we rolled out a physically gifted but largely untested QB who'd been patiently waiting his turn behind a superstar -- and yet we still won 10 games and an SEC title, despite having to replace far more defensive talent than the '09 squad will have to. Even in 2006, when we were also breaking in new QBs and managed to lose to Vanderbilt and Kentucky, we still managed to swing nine wins. So maybe 8-4 or 8-5 is still pegging things a little low.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that going 9-3 in the regular season, then notching a 10th win in a bowl game, would be huge for this team. Despite a supposed rebuilding situation, we would have matched the record (and likely the approximate bowl destination) of the previous year's team, which had been touted for the national title, and I can't think of a better case for "We don't rebuild, we reload" than that. That would also give Mark Richt a career tally of 92-25 and a seventh 10-win season in nine years; all of those factors together would serve to cement Georgia as a pretty elite program. And as history has shown us, it's certainly achievable.

But that's just my take on the subject -- what's yours? I've put together this poll to get a very basic sketch of what Georgia fans' (and non-fans') expectations are of this year's team; once the responses to this poll take shape, I'll put up some more polls to get into the specifics of which teams you think we should beat, which bowl we should go to, and that sort of thing. But for right now, I just want you to run this year's schedule through your individual brain computers and spit out what seems like a reasonable and satisfactory outcome to you. This isn't meant to be a prediction of what you think's going to happen; all I'm looking for is your baseline below which you'll be a disappointed fan, and at or above which you'll call this season worthwhile.

poll by twiigs.com

Again, more specific questions (and responses) will follow eventually, but in the meantime you're welcome to expound on your poll responses in the comments.

They see me rollin', they hatin'.

It has recently been brought to my attention that it might be time for a new picture in the ol' blog sidebar, not to mention a new Facebook profile picture. OK, then.

I'm giving you, lucky reader, the chance to choose which picture I use for each of these. Examine the photos below and then vote in the poll at the bottom. Pick your two favorite photos when you vote; the top vote-getter becomes the Facebook photo, runner-up goes in the sidebar. Voting closes Monday morning.

Here we go:


1. Me at New Year's 2007 (currently in the blog sidebar).


2. Me as a Lego minifig (currently my Facebook photo).


3. Me next to a 1:1-scale Volvo XC90 made out of Legos, at Legoland.


4. Douchebag with finger guns (Holly Anderson, Las Vegas, 2009).


5. Douchebag with cigar and martini (Spencer Hall, Las Vegas, 2009).

Now vote!

poll by twiigs.com

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Would you buy a Snuggie, an Awethumb, or a wedding photo from this man?

· Actual conversation my dad and I had a couple days before Christmas, as a commercial for the "Snuggie" was coming on TV:

ME: Ah, yes, the "Snuggie" -- the blanket for the people who are incapable of operating blankets.

DAD: (sheepishly) I ordered one for your mom for Christmas.

ME: Oh. Well, uh, good for her, I guess.

With more than one person pointing out just how much the Snuggie looks like a robe that might be worn for druid rituals, it's probably only a matter of time before someone came up with this: the "Fuggly."



· The "Fuggly," at least is a fictional product. This, however, is completely real, and it's the gayest thing since sliced gay.



That still leaves the question, though:

poll by twiigs.com

· One place you won't be able to buy Awethumb -- or anything else, for that matter, before too long -- is Circuit City, which has filed for Chapter 11 after being crushed under the weight of the economic collapse. As bad as I feel for the thousands of employees who are about to lose their jobs, there's a part of me that's gleeful that Circuit Shitty is being wiped off the map, and here's why: About a decade ago, around the time I was graduating from college, my parents bought me a 27" TV/VCR combo from Circuit City so I'd have a decent TV when I headed off to Lynchburg for my first post-college job. For whatever reason, they went ahead and bought the super-heavy-duty warranty protection that would absolve us for the responsibility of paying for any kind of repairs for three years, no matter whose fault it was -- and I figured this would come in handy shortly after I moved to the L-Boogie, when my cat went tearing ass through the apartment and succeeded in yanking the cable-TV cable out of the back of the television, socket and all. But when we took the TV to Circuit City, their response was, "Oh, the damage was caused by an animal, this warranty doesn't cover that." So congratulations, Circuit City: You fucked with the bull, and you got the horns.

· If I lived in South Carolina, I might not even be able to utter that last sentence if this anti-profanity bill, proposed by State Sen. Robert Ford, were to be passed. To which I respond: Kiss my ass, fuckstick. (Hat tip: Spencer.)



· Let's hope nobody ever takes Sen. Ford on a visit to England, because the mere sight of places like "Butt Hole Road" or "Titty Ho" might be enough to give him an aneurysm. (Actually, that may be a reason to take him there, now that I think about it.) But I'm a little disappointed that the story restricted itself to the British Isles, thus depriving all of us of a little bit of history on places like Pussy, France, or Fucking, Austria. (One thing I think is hilarious in the latter's Wikipedia entry is the sentence "The village is . . . half an hour by car from the town of Petting, in Bavaria." Which means it only takes you 30 minutes to go from Petting to Fucking.)

· The 20 All-Time Greatest Photo Bombs. Scroll through the entire list and see if you're not giggling like a six-year-old halfway through. I'd love to know the story behind this one. Then again, maybe not.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Those who stay will be mildly amused.

· Let's face it, people: Statistically, 95 percent of you out there are probably disappointed to some degree with the bowl bid your team did or didn't get. So what better way to salve that disappointment than by participating in further competitive endeavors requiring you to predict the outcomes of bowls far more prestigious than yours?

Yup, Hey Jenny Slater is sponsoring an official Yahoo! College Bowl Pick'Em group, and you're all invited. (Except you. Yeah, you. You know who you are.) To join up, go to this link and enter group ID number 25595 and the password "croomtastic." And ta-da, you're part of an exclusive group consisting only of the millions of people who have nothing better to do! You pick each bowl and assign a confidence number from 1 to 34, you accumulate points with each game picked correctly, whoever has the most points after the BCS National Championship Game is played wins absolutely nothing. Sign up today!

· While you're ruminating on the bowl matchups, you can also take a look at every ballot submitted in the last coaches' poll here and see exactly where each coach ranked each team. The only voter not to include Georgia anywhere in his top 25? Oregon State's Mike Riley. Weirdly enough, though, Mark Richt didn't include the Beavers in his ballot, either. Maybe Richt and Riley hated each other as children; your guess is as good as mine. Other balloting follies can be read about and mocked openly at Simon on Sports.



· A commenter to my Christmas-list post pointed out that the link to my Amazon wish list was incorrect, so here's a new link that should do the trick. I'm not one to place an inordinate amount of emphasis on material goods, but if you were really my friend, you'd buy me stuff. Just saying.

· Josh has a highly insightful guide as to what you should do and not do when conjuring up a Facebook status update. I think J-dog is being a little dismissive of MySpace, though. It's not just "for preteens and Pedobears"; it's also for bored housewives who want to drive their daughters' middle-school nemeses to suicide. Durrr!

· Video 'splosion! First, bumper cars with real cars, otherwise known as one of the main reasons I don't live (or drive) up North:



And here's a highly overcaffeinated (and profane) TV producer using some highly inappropriate (and, from the looks of things, highly on-air) language toward MSNBC's Contessa Brewer, my new future TV newsanchor girlfriend now that Melissa Theuriau done had to go get herself murried and whatnot.



Whooooaaa, you f%$# with Contessa Brewer, you bring down the full force of the entire Hey Jenny Slater p.l.c. global conglomerate down upon you. Check yourself, bitch.