Press corps mancrush at SEC Media Days

Over at Garnet and Black Attack, cocknfire is liveblogging the goings on at SEC Media Days.

Here’s his report of the media fellating the GPOOE™.  At least we learn why Florida lost to Georgia:

3:04 p.m. Tebow: More important to “put a smile on a kid’s face” than to beat Georgia. Man, it’s sad to see how out of whack some players’ priorities are.

3:16 p.m. The end zone celebration by Georgia: That did nothing for me but just fire me up.” Not for Tebow to say if it’s right or wrong, but he acknolwedged [sic] it worked.

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UPDATE:  More from Chris Low –

Tebow injured his shoulder prior to the Georgia game last season and didn’t look to run as much in that game. He conceded he was never the same player after that, but refused to use it as an excuse.

“I wouldn’t say I was 100 percent,” he said, “but what player is 100 percent at the end of the SEC season?” Even the quarterbacks that don’t run … I’m sure they’re not 100 percent.”

It’s obvious that Tebow and the entire Florida team are looking forward to the Georgia game, especially after the way the Bulldogs celebrated and danced in the Gators’ end zone following the first touchdown last season.

Asked how many times he’d seen the tape of the Georgia players dancing in the end zone, Tebow shot back, “I’ve seen it enough … enough.”

Still, he doesn’t see what happened last season as insult.

“I see it as a positive,” Tebow said. “That does nothing for us except get us more motivated, more excited and more juiced coming into this year. As far as Coach [Mark] Richt’s decision, he got his team fired up. They changed their demeanor, and it really did probably change the rest of their season. That gave them that drive, a sense of passion. Good call, and it definitely got them fired up.

“But, hopefully, it will do the opposite this year.”

Don’t expect to see the Gators reciprocate if they score first this season. Tebow said Florida coach Urban Meyer would never allow the Gators to stage a pre-arranged celebration like that.

“We wouldn’t do it playing for [Meyer], and we’d try to handle it a little differently,” Tebow said.

Public service announcement

I forgot to mention this the other day, but Jerry Hinnen, at his very fine Auburn blog, The Joe Cribbs Car Wash, has done yeoman’s work in setting up links to every online preview of all the D-1 college football teams he could find.  He calls it the “Paperless Preview Project”. Handy and useful, for which the man deserves much praise.

I’ll be linking to it – and using it.

A housekeeping note

As you can see if you look above Mssrs. Brown and Dooley, I’ve created a page at the blog for the Mumme Poll.

I think it will be a good idea to try a practice run after the fourth or fifth week of the season, both as a reminder of what’s to come (there you go, Ally!) and also to make sure that everyone is on the same page about how to fill out the ballot.

Again, I’m very gratified by your response to this.  I’m looking forward to seeing where it takes us.

Don’t be surprised if they don’t stink.

If you believe, as I do, that Wake Forest head coach Jim Grobe has some idea about what he does for a living, then this quote of his about the chances of Paul Johnson’s offensive scheme succeeding in the ACC should be of interest:

“You never see it, you never practice it, you can’t simulate it in practice. No matter how hard you try to show your kids in practice what it’s going to be like, you get in the game and it’s 10 times faster than your scout team could ever show in practice. There’s just absolutely no way to prepare for it.”

Navy scored 24 points on Wake last year.  For comparison’s sake, that’s more than Nebraska, Florida State, North Carolina, Virginia, NC State, Vanderbilt or Connecticut managed.

No, that doesn’t mean that Georgia Tech is destined for BCS greatness next year.  But the Jackets aren’t going to embarrass themselves as much as people think, either.  At least if, as Grobe suggests, they find themselves a competent quarterback.

Wake up…

Here are a few items to get your morning started:

• Howard Schnellenberger has a really cool idea.  Too bad it’ll never get off the ground.
• Usually the “my team will be better this year, but its opponents won’t” school of thought is what you hear from Gamecock fans, but CFN gives a Florida blogger a chance to embarrass himself with the same kind of reasoning.
• The Birmingham News asks whether we’re in the golden age of SEC football coaches… and finds that there may be another era that can stake a claim to that.
• The Orlando Sentinel’s Mike Bianchi lays out the case for why George O’Leary is shooting himself in the foot with his shortsighted boycott of the Sentinel.  There’s a great one-liner from the president of the Football Writers Association:  “At this rate, UCF is going to be on Page D8 next to ads for the all-nude dance club.” Well, George kinda looks like he’d make a good bouncer, doesn’t he?

Clean, old-fashioned hate in 2008

Feel the pain.

“I have to (contain myself), it makes me (so) mad,” said Walker, who started last year’s game that the Yellow Jackets lost, 31-17 — marking the seventh defeat in a row to their bitter instate rivals.“We’ve missed opportunities, but the bottom line is people won’t respect us until we beat them.”

“It’d be huge to beat Georgia,” Gardner said. “This is my last year and I’ve never beaten Georgia, so I want to beat them more so than ever now. We’re just focusing on Jacksonville State now, but no doubt it would be huge to beat Georgia.”