Damn good dawg

I just heard Rick Neuheisel tell this story on ESPN Gameday:

One quarterback who didn’t have much success in an opener was Neuheisel. When the Bruins opened the 1983 season at Georgia, Neuheisel received a pregame omen from the team’s bulldog mascot.

“Uga threw up on my cleats during warmups,” Neuheisel said. “I threw four interceptions.”

The good news is that the dog puke washed off during the deluge that came down during the game – the hardest rain I’ve ever sat through at a football game.

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Mission accomplished, woo hoo!

My favorite meaningless stat of this week has to be this one:

Matthew Stafford leads the SEC and ranks sixth nationally in pass efficiency (203.3).

Sleep well, Dawgnation.

In the blood

It looks like Will Muschamp channelled his inner Erk Russell in Texas’ opener.

(photo via Dr. Saturday)

(photo courtesy AJ-C)

Getting back to normal?

Unlike the opening week of 2007, life wasn’t too topsy-turvy in the world of college football this year.

There were 32 games matching I-A and I-AA teams, with the big boys going 31-1 (and we’re not sure we count San Diego State as I-A anymore). The average score was 40-10.

Tick, tock.

In a post from a couple of days ago, Groo wondered how much impact the clock rules changes had on the number of plays run on opening day.

With eleven games in the bag, I thought I’d take a look at how the SEC games fared along the same lines, by comparing the numbers of plays run in the conference’s games of the opening weekend of 2008 with those of 2007 (Tennessee excepted).

• Alabama – 128/144
• Arkansas – 134/151
• Auburn – 141/141
• Florida – 118/107
• Georgia – 130/136
• Kentucky – 136/138
• LSU – 125/131
• Mississippi – 143/146
• MSU – 144/131
• South Carolina – 126/126
• Vanderbilt – 133/126

That’s six schools with less, three with more and two the same… nothing too dramatic at this point.  I suspect coaches are still feeling their way around the effect of the new rules, but I also think that once they figure the chess match out, the new clock rules are going to make comebacks harder.  Note the drop in Alabama’s play numbers, and remember that Saban has NFL experience with the 40-second clock.

Two funny points with those numbers… first, Urban Meyer sure believes in calling an efficient opening day, and second, for all that talk for Tuberville about how the new offense is all about running lots of plays, it looks like Borges wasn’t as much a dinosaur in that department as we thought.

Final game participation numbers

The final number on the official site looks like 69.  Here’s the list:

POS ## OFFENSE
SE 16 Kris Durham
SE 88 Kenneth Harris
LT 75 Kiante Tripp
LG 72 Vince Vance
C 63 Chris Davis
RG 71 Cordy Glenn
RT 78 Josh Davis
TE 86 Tripp Chandler
FL 1 M. Massaquoi
TB 24 Knowshon Moreno
QB 7 M. Stafford

POS ## DEFENSE
DE 41 Rod Battle
DT 95 Jeff Owens
DT 56 Geno Atkins
DE 55 Jeremy Lomax
SLB 51 Akeem Dent
MLB 33 Dannell Ellerbe
WLB 35 Rennie Curran
SCB 2 Asher Allen
FS 9 Reshad Jones
SS 5 CJ Byrd
WCB 3 Bryan Evans

Georgia: 2B-Marquise Brown, 3K-John Knox, 3D-Kalvin Daniels, 4-Caleb King, 5N-Casey Nickels, 6D-Matt. DeGenova, 6-Logan Gray, 8-A.J. Green, 10-Zach Renner, 11-Ramarcus Brown, 12-Tavarres King, 14-Joe Cox, 15-Benjamin Boyd, 17-Chad Gloer, 19-S. Commings, 20-Brandon Boykin, 22-Richard Samuel, 23-Prince Miller, 25-Vance Cuff, 26-Tony Wilson, 28-Israel Troupe, 32-Brian Mimbs, 37-Akeem Hebron, 38-Marcus Dowtin, 39-Nick Williams, 42-Justin Houston, 46-Justin Fields, 47-Andrew Williams, 49-Shaun Chapas, 50-Darryl Gamble, 54-T. Strickland, 57-Blair Walsh, 58-Demarcus Dobbs, 59-Bo Fowler, 61-Ben Jones, 69-Andrew Gully, 74-Kevin Perez, 79-Justin Anderson, 81-Aron White, 82-Michael Moore, 85-Demiko Goodman, 87-Vernon Spellman, 90-Corvey Irvin, 94-DeAngelo Tyson, 97-Brandon Wood, 98-R. Crawford, 99-Jarius Wynn.

The names of the true freshmen who participated are a little different than the first ones published, but it still looks like 10 or so played.

By the way, I haven’t seen a replay of the play that saw Jeff Owens go out for the season, but please tell me that Trey Dunmon wasn’t in on it.