Glutton for punishment

Kudos to Georgia Tech offensive lineman Andrew Gardner, who’s elected to come back for his senior season to obtain his degree.

It’s just that he should have quit while he was ahead.

“I’m looking forward to one last year, one more crack at the ACC, one more chance at Georgia,” Gardner said.

To that sentiment, I only have one thing to say.

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Mack Brown ♥ Alabama.

schadenfreude \SHOD-n-froy-duh\, noun:
A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others.

This is one blogging meme I’ve been dying to use for a while, but the opportunity just hasn’t presented itself. Until now.

You know all those ‘Bama fans that have been ragging on Auburn as being nothing more than a feeder school for Mack Brown’s coaching staff?

Welp, it looks like the shoe is on the other foot, guys. And this isn’t even a lateral hire, as were Muschamp and Chizik.

Karma, once again, proves to be a bitch of the first order.

Wishing and hoping

CFN has a piece up today inviting its writers to provide their college football wish lists for 2008.

In the spirit of the season, I thought I’d join in, sort of. So here’s my college football media wish list for 2008, in no particular order.

• It would be great if Matt Hayes would watch a Georgia football game or two before opining about the Dawgs. Or just do some general research before hitting the keyboard.
• Kirk Herbstreit cuts back on his embarrassing tendency to lobby for the BCS title game.
• John Feinstein to write exclusively about college basketball and golf, so he can’t plague us with any more excruciatingly stupid columns about football.
• The New York Times displaying a less haughty attitude about sports bloggers… in its blog. The same from the thin (albeit clean)-skinned Stewart Mandel.
• A better sense of perspective about coaches and job prospects would be nice. Feel free to call a spade a spade, but make sure the cards are dealt first.
• Stay goofy, Tom Dienhart.
• Don’t ever change, Stewart Mandel, or half of the college football bloggers out there wouldn’t have as much to post about.
• More Ivan Maisel, please.
• Less self-pity from Chip Towers.
• More Bruce Feldman.
• A little more – hell, a lot more – forthrightness from Dennis Dodd when he makes a crucial error in a column.

I’d make a wish about Terence Moore, if I could figure out where to start. Maybe I’ll just settle for hoping that he never writes anything else I agree with.

Ask not what Michael Adams can do for you…

The man goes statesmanlike about playoffs:

Adams, an Ohio State graduate who has been the president of the University of Georgia since 1997 and is the chairman of the NCAA executive committee, chastised his former school as well.

“I have good friends [there], I have two degrees from Ohio State, I love Ohio State,” he said. “But this is not a way to serve the country.”

How Kennedyesque. Next he’ll be telling us that if we can put a man on the moon, we can create a D-1 playoff.

Now that he’s gotten his butt kicked by the NCAA, he doesn’t have to pull any punches.

Adams essentially claimed that the Big Ten has had unworthy participants in the title game. Ohio State is the only Big Ten team to make the BCS championship game, and the Buckeyes have done so three times, including the past two.

“You see, what we have now is a system where the Big Ten has the opportunity to most every year get a team into the national championship game that, based on their performance, would not get there through a playoff system,” Adams said. “So, they are not dumb people.”

If his opponents aren’t dumb, they are selfish, putting their own needs ahead of Adams’ … er, ours.

“The bowls have contributed a lot through the years. My proposal acknowledges that, and keeps them in the system. But they ought not be making ultimate decisions based on their individual needs, without regard to the national need.”

Adams’ radio host, former Clinton political operative James Carville (now there’s a match made in heaven) thinks telling a BCS bowl and two major conferences to go screw themselves would have one significant benefit:

Carville pointed out what a potent recruiting tool that scenario would provide for the SEC and Big 12 – if they could offer recruits the chance to play for a national championship, while the Big Ten and Pac 10 teams would forfeit that opportunity.

Yeah, I bet Bobby Johnson is just chomping at the bit to have an opportunity to sway kids away from Southern Cal.

Well, shoot, James, why wait on the NCAA to do something? Just have a bowl game that matches the winners of those two conferences and call the winner of that game the national champion. Voilà! Problem solved. (It’s worked for Auburn, right?)

Look for Adams to take his media tour to a sympathetic Mark Bradley, who actually labeled D-1 football the “silliest of sports” in a column this morning. Because when you’re on the side of the angels, it’s OK to break one of the cardinal rules of marketing by degrading the product that you’re trying to “help”. After all, you’re just trying to serve your country.