Envy and jealousy: Coach O’s obituary

Sunday Morning Quarterback waxes eloquent about the demise of Ed Orgeron:

Ed Orgeron is luckier than he is smart, and he’s not very lucky. Which is the most polite way I know how to express my complete lack of surprise that Orgeron is no longer employed as Ole Miss’ head coach after aggressively giving away a game his team had in the bag Friday – in the bag, against a hated rival, in the fourth quarter – to finish an 0-8 conference season. In the bag, tied up in knots, and beaten repeatedly with heavy sticks until lifeless, up to the point, with a little over twelve minutes left in the game, Oregon stopped the proceedings, untied the bag, and injected Mississippi State and its tens of thousands of cowbell-ringing, previously moribund partisans with an adrenaline shot and an unobstructed view of Coach O’s jugular.

It’s not the sudden firing I don’t understand; it’s why they hired this guy in the first place.

But then again, just like SMQ, I don’t understand how Virginia Tech is ahead of LSU in any of the polls/rankings. Life is full of mysteries, I guess.

Advertisement

Barbarians at the Flats

More classlessness, courtesy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  With oranges.
And the Redcoats are encouraging it! Shocking.

If the regular season’s over, that can mean only one thing.

Yep, fire up the barbie – it’s coaching rumor season!

Start with Brian’s post at MGoBlog about whom Mee-shee-gan has supposedly offered the HC position to. It ain’t Les Miles. Make sure you read the whole thing, especially the “bonus-bonus” at the end.

Then, there’s this article in the Houston Chronicle about who will replace Dennis Franchione at TAMU. And no, “… Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville, long rumored to be the front-runner, was not seriously considered for the job, according to a person close to Tuberville.” Does that mean that Jimmy Sexton has already extracted the sweeteners he was hoping to get from the Auburn administration, or he’s holding out for another job for TT? Who knows? Personally, I’m hoping the job goes to Bob Davie, if only to remove one of the most annoying college football commentators from television.

If you’re looking for an overview on the head coaching shuffle, Coaches Hot Seat Blog, which currently lists Mark Richt as the fourth safest head coach in America, is as good a place to start as any.

****************************************************************

UPDATE: It wouldn’t be a complete coaching rumor blog post without the latest Dienhart take on the situation. It looks like he’s done his usual “do diligence”. Apparently his spell checker didn’t catch that one. Oops.

Sometimes it’s meant to be.

By the way, sincere congratulations to the Tennessee Volunteers for winning the East with Georgia and going to the SECCG by virtue of the tiebreaker.

When you beat Vanderbilt and Kentucky in back to back weeks because they can’t hit game-winning field goals, it’s pretty much a message that you’re destined to go.

If you’re goin’ to San Francisco…

A couple of weeks ago, some commenter here had a good point that it’s kinda silly to talk about “class” in the context of college rivalries.

But every good rule has its exceptions. And this one’s no different. That’s why Georgia Tech exists.

It’s not what the average Jacket fan thinks passes for witty banter that qualifies. Or he/she/it living vicariously through other schools (a lot of ’em were playing and singing “Rocky Top” after the game) – when you haven’t beaten your biggest rival this millennium, that’s to be expected.

It’s the sanctioned crudity that reminds you what a special place Georgia Tech really is.

I had to use the facilities at BDS before the game. I couldn’t help but notice the placement of splash guards in the toilets, thoughtfully bearing the phrase “Piss on them Dawgs”. Now that’s class. (Of course, it probably does help with the aim of their fanbase, but I digress.)

I want to be bigger than that, though. After all, Georgia is headed to a BCS game. And Tech… well, if we’re to believe the folks at CFN, Tech will get to enjoy a trip to Boise to play on the blue turf in the first Roady’s Truck Stops Humanitarian Bowl game (I called that one months ago, by the way). However, others think that Tech will return to the Emerald Bowl. In honor of that possibility, I thought I might offer this musical thought as a tonic to sooth the beast that rages in all Jacket fans’ souls this morning.

I have to admit it didn’t seem to provide much comfort when I was singing outside of BDS after the game yesterday.

SIAR, B!

The play by play line – Matthew Stafford pass complete to Sean Bailey for 22 yards to the Geo 42 for a 1ST down out-of-bounds – hardly does it justice. From where I sat, above the Tech band in the end zone seats, that throw of Stafford’s which got Georgia moving on the third quarter drive that would put some distance between the Dawgs and Jackets was remarkable. Bailey was bracketed by a linebacker underneath and a safety coming over, and Stafford got the ball out so quickly that it seemed as if the ball was in Bailey’s hands before the linebacker even knew it was thrown there. But it wasn’t just the quick release and the velocity on the ball. Stafford put the ball in a perfect place between two defenders and the sideline, where, as the cliché goes, only his guy could make a play. It was all over in the blink of an eye, it seemed.

If there are five other quarterbacks in college that can make that throw, I want to see their names.

It was like that all day. Tenuta basically set his defense up to stop Moreno on the run on the early downs and to force the Georgia receivers outside. He hoped that his corners would be good enough to make some plays on the long throws that he invited with that scheme. And they did make some (Stafford was below 50% on his completions), but they also got burned spectacularly on occasion (Georgia had a scoring drive in the second quarter of 77 yards in 0:51 and a third quarter 80 yard scoring drive that took all of 1:20).

Yes, Tech held Moreno to 45 yards on 17 carries. Let me extend my congratulations to the young, drunken Tech fan who was so proud of that after the game that he couldn’t maintain his balance.

But the Jackets couldn’t account for Thomas Brown, who ripped them for 139 yards (8.2 yards per carry) and a 33 yard TD run during which he was never touched by a Jacket defender. And Bobo made the entire Tech defense look foolish on a 31 yard Stafford run, keyed off of an outstanding play fake to Moreno, that managed to evoke memories of that horrible George Godsey plod in the 2000 game.

As I said, it was like that all day. When Georgia needed to make a play, it did.

The box score doesn’t lie on this one. Georgia racked up 432 yards of offense – 214 passing, 218 rushing – on what had been the #7 school in the country in total defense. The only thing Tech’s defense did well was to hold the Dawg offense to a poor 4 of 13 performance on third downs.

Seven in a row.

“Drop me a line when you get settled at your new gig.” (photo courtesy Curtis Compton /AJ-C)