Wanker of the day

Traffic at the AJ-C blogs must be a little slow:  Mark Bradley projects Georgia Tech, “the new lords of the ring”, as a preseason #9 in 2009.

No word on where he thinks LSU would be ranked.

Dude can coach.

You know how you see those lists that start out “if you had to choose one coach…”?

Well, all I know is that if I were a head coach, the last place I’d want to be would be in a game against a Pete Carroll team that had a month to prepare for my team.  Sure, USC has a bad habit of screwing the pooch against Numbnutz U once a year, but, man, in a big game, the guy is money.

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I love a good debate.

Point.

Counterpoint.

Don’t forget Alabama and Texas Tech either, should they win.  Or Utah, for that matter, were the Utes to pull the upset.

It’s interesting to note that in the past few days I’ve noticed more pundits arguing in favor of the other version of the “plus-one”, where they play five BCS games and then have a revote for a new number one and number two to play in the championship.  It sounds like an attractive solution for this season, with as many teams having a “we deserve to be there” argument as there are, but with the right (or maybe wrong) matchups and results, it would be easy to have a situation where you wind up with more contenders than there are slots in the title game.  And in years when the field isn’t as deep as this one, ugh.

Some final, random Cap One thoughts

Just a few things bouncing around in my head on the morning after:

• One thing you could always count on with a Mark Richt team would be that one game every year when everything just clicked.  Even in 2006, there was the Auburn game.  The team never found that groove this season.
• I kidded a friend during halftime that Richt was trying to lull MSU into a false sense of complacency with the questionable playcalling on the last drive of the first half.  The reality of the situation, though, was pretty dreary – he didn’t have much faith in the offense to do more than burn clock to keep the defense off the field.
• Bobo called a weird game.  Very little imagination in the first half, at least after the first scoring drive, although part of it was no doubt driven by Stafford’s poor play.  On the other hand, the 96-yard drive in the third quarter was capped by one of the sweetest plays he drew up all season, a perfectly designed, perfectly executed pass to Mike Moore off of a play fake and a fake screen (start at the 9:17 mark on this clip):

• If you want to talk about slippage, think about this.  In the eyes of many, Georgia and Southern Cal finished last season on fairly equal footing.  The team that Georgia beat yesterday by 12 points lost to Ohio State by 38 and to Penn State by 31.  Both of those teams were waxed by the Trojans.  There’s definitely some ground that needs to be made up here.
• C’mon, admit it.  You knew the kick after the score that put the Dawgs up 17-6 was going out of bounds, didn’t you?
• The textbook definition of “bittersweet” begins at the 9:24 mark on this clip: