Man, the blogosphere is weirding me out this morning. Man.
- Looking back. HeismanPundit, complete with snappy new blog design, reflects on history to tell his critics they were FOS. (Although he concedes his ’05 call of Boise State over Georgia was “rather foolhardy”.) Too bad his comments section didn’t survive the redo. On the bright side, HP has buried the hatchet with the SEC.
- The here and the now. Matt over at Statistically Speaking takes a look at the upcoming ACC season. His sleeper pick: Georgia Tech.
- He has seen the future… and it is different. The Orlando Sentinel’s Tim Stephens looks at all the current business trends pushing at college football – all of which boil down to how can the BCS schools make more money and keep it? – and reinvents D-1 football as we know it. Notre Dame in the Pac-10, er… Pac-16? His best line is about the MAC, which, after he virtually blows up at least four conferences, doesn’t make a single change: It will survive the czar’s conference tinkering in the way the cockroach will survive nuclear winter.
Get The Picture 
Fairly typical HP. He claims everyone who argued with him was wrong without examing much in the way of detail. Claiming “10 of the 12 SEC offenses as spread or spread like offenses” is rather curious, seeing that a number of teams just got there and it would be foolish to judge this as a move that is somehow final (never mind all the so called claims of the “criticis”). Claiming that the arguments in 2005 was about the spread offense is revisionist; he gang of six weren’t and don’t all run spread offenses (one of many reasons, but never mind).
LikeLike
To his (strange) credit, HP really came around to Georgia last year…ranked them #1 at the end of the year and was one of the few non-Dawgs willing to take up the Georgia-should-be-in-the-championship-game mantle. Something about Georgia sacking the life out of his beloved Tebow must have flipped a switch.
I still find it amusing that he hate-hate-HATED ’05 Georgia but loved the ’07 version. I mean, what?
The Gang Of Six(TM) was always ad hoc nonsense.
LikeLike
At the rate GT is losing players before health related attrition kicks in during two a days, are they even going to have enough players to field a team this season?
I guess they could always bring in some ROTC ringers from other schools….like the old days.
LikeLike
The “Georgia Hate” never bothered me as a general rule (I don’t like it when anyone gets facts wrong or exacerbates things to make a point, especially where UGA is concerend. But general “don’t like UGA” doesn’t bother me). I don’t blame him or anyone predicting a Boise win; everyone’s entitled to an opinion. Mike at Braves & Birds had a pretty good answer to all of that stuff before that game and then the matter was settled on the field.
There are any number of reasons why a given person will like a team’s chances one year and not another; it’s part of the sport.
LikeLike
HP is a fanatic devotee of the spread offense first and foremost, despite the fact that he still can’t quite articulate specifically what such an offense entails. He appears to be something of a Southern Cal fan, though his love of the spread supersedes any actual team affiliations. If a team runs what he considers to be the spread, he’ll praise them ’till the cows come home; if they don’t run the spread, he pooh-poohs them. But if one of those teams turns out to be way better than he predicted, he’ll find some element of that team’s offense that he can spin as somewhat spread-like, then give that team its props, while attempting to make the case that their unexpected awesome-ness was entirely a result of that team having adopted some elements of, you guessed it, the spread offense. It’s basically “All spread-offense teams are good, X is good, therefore X runs a spread offense” — one backward-ass attempt at a syllogism, to be sure, but whatever helps him sleep better at night.
So I’m confident that HP’s newfound respect for the Dawgs at the end of the 2007 season has a lot to do with that quote cited by peacedog that “10 of the 12 SEC offenses as spread or spread like offenses” — like peacedog, I have no idea where he gets that number, but 10 of 12 means there’s a better-than-average chance Georgia falls into that nebulous “spread or spread like” group. If that’s how HP chooses to join the rest of the country on the Dawg bandwagon while still staying faithful to the spread offense, then again, more power to him, I guess. Though I admit I’d love to see Georgia somehow win the ’08 title by running the Wing-T the entire season, and then read HP’s after-the-fact justifications about how that was really just another version of the spread and we’re all too dense to realize it.
LikeLike
Doug,
I am no devotee of the spread, but merely someone who recognized its ascendancy before anyone else on the blogosphere. I have never been wedded to the spread, but rather to the idea of offenses that are contrarian, which has of late tended to encompass many of the spread variations.
If Georgia were to run the Wing-T or Wishbone, it would be a total contrarian method and I would identify it as such.
As for the 10 of 12 SEC offenses changing, rest assured that Georgia is not one of them. However, you can also rest assured that this fact may help the Dawgs in the long run, as I will expound on soon.
LikeLike
As for the 10 of 12 SEC offenses changing, rest assured that Georgia is not one of them. However, you can also rest assured that this fact may help the Dawgs in the long run, as I will expound on soon.
If you’re talking about the trend towards “smaller, lighter, faster” on defense to handle the demands of the spread and how that might work to the advantage of those offenses that still utilize a power running game, I agree.
LikeLike
Bingo. As it turns out, Georgia’s offense will become more effective as a result of doing nothing.
LikeLike
Of course, there is always an excuse. But IMO, our offense has stood the test of time and I don’t think power running with a FB, TE and play action are ever going to go out of style.
If we are better this year, it will have a lot more to do with Stafford improving and having a future first round selection at WR for the first time. JMO.
LikeLike
Read HP’s point more carefully, kckd. He’s looking at a longer term trend rather than the effect on the field this season.
LikeLike
OK, but I’m also seeing a trend of getting higher quality athletes at the skill position for the next few years too.
The more you hear about Murray and Mettenberger, the more it sounds like both are undervalued by the recruiting services.
Caleb King and Samuel (especially RS) are already getting a lot of hype.
Green and King are gonna be here for three years. We’ll see, but I guarantee you HP is gonna say it’s not because our skill positions improved but it’s gonna be his theory.
And I didn’t even talk about the huge upgrade at OL. Something tells me that HP ain’t gonna consider of that or if he does, it’ll be minor.
LikeLike
Tell ya what, if HP predicts UTK improves a good bit the next five years due to the spread offense, I’ll give him credit. Their recruiting has been down according to the recruiting sites overall the past three years. If they improve the next four to five years, I’d say its definitely due to offensive change.
LikeLike