Let them eat cupcakes.

Mergz, from the comments:

… And kudos to Georgia for scheduling such fascinating games. It is really interesting to see matchups against both the Big 12 and Pac Ten with the different styles the conferences play.

You hear that Foley? Charleston [Southern] and FIU and whoever else you can get to fall off the short bus doesn’t cut it.

The response from the Florida athletic department to sentiments like that?  Talk to the hand.

… Unlike several other schools in the SEC, Florida doesn’t want to schedule any games against schools from BCS conferences that want a return trip – regardless of whether it’s a trip west or to a neighboring state.

“We’ll never say never, but it would have to be a unique situation for us to vary from our model that we have in place,” said Greg McGarity, UF’s senior associate athletic director for internal affairs.

The model that McGarity mentioned is this: play smaller Football Bowl Subdivision teams or Football Championship Subdivision teams in the early non-conference games and play a FCS school in the slot between the final SEC game and the Florida State game.

That means no games against schools such as Oklahoma or USC or Notre Dame on a home-and-home basis…

There may be a little crumb that – maybe – they’ll deign to consider – maybe.

“[Athletic director] Jeremy [Foley] would entertain ideas that may present themselves that might create a neutral-site game that would be unique matchup, Florida-Notre Dame, something like that, that wouldn’t require home-and-home,” McGarity said. “All those things are always on the table. … I think it really has to be unique [for UF to do it]. It’s got to be a school that the Gators very rarely, if ever, get to play that would really have a tremendous national presence. Thus far, we have not received any of those proposals.”

Now there’s a surprise.  Keep waiting, Mergz.

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Trash talk

In light of the unfortuate attention the post-game North Campus has received, I did want to take a second to mention an e-mail I was sent concerning a worthy effort by Alpha Kappa Psi to do something about garbage collection.

You can get the details by clicking here.

Georgia-ASU: a bullet point preview

I can’t claim to have some coherent overview about how tomorrow’s going to play out – with what we’ve seen in the first three games, how could I? – so you’ll just have to settle for a bunch of bullet points, I’m afraid.

• Given the relative national rankings of both schools, the minimalist in me wants to say it’s about the turnover margin, stupid.  Except that hasn’t mattered too much so far for Georgia, which is surprising.  The Dawgs have won the two games when they were -2 and lost the one in which they were -3.  But I’ve said all along I don’t see how that’s sustainable – either that pace, or winning in spite of it.  You’d figure something’s gotta give tomorrow night.
• From what I can tell, Arizona State sounds like it’s going to come in running a game plan fairly similar to what South Carolina wanted to do:  run a ball control offense and leave it up to the defense to do enough to hold Georgia’s score down.  That didn’t work out too great for the ‘Cocks, thanks to special teams play.
• On the other hand, if you’re ASU and your quarterback has any sort of an arm at all, aren’t you going to be the least bit tempted to take some shots throwing the ball well down field, based on what you saw from Georgia’s defense last week?
• One thing I’ll be curious to watch is ASU’s defensive scheming.  At this point, it’s fair to say that Georgia’s passing game has established itself as a credible threat.  If the Sun Devils safeties respect the pass, that in turn should open up the Dawgs rushing attack.
• For Georgia on defense, I’m interested in personnel.  I’m guessing that Martinez is going to keep throwing different combinations of guys out there in the hopes that he can find some consistent playmakers on pass defense.
• As if the Georgia secondary doesn’t already have enough problems, a wet turf that affects their footing is bound to add to those.
• I see a lot of people are calling this game a trap game, too.  How many trap games can you play in a row?
• It really wouldn’t surprise me if Caleb King takes over the starting tailback job sooner rather than later, especially if he continues to pass block as ferociously as he did against Arkansas.
• Can Drew Butler keep up the ridiculous pace he’s on?
• Gee, I wonder what the Georgia kickoff team has up its sleeve this week.  I can’t wait to see what Coach Fabris pulls out of his bag of tricks.

Friday morning buffet

Num num num:

• Lane Kiffin sees the Tennessee red zone offense as a glass half empty.  Jonathan Crompton sees it as a glass half full.  Which is part of the problem, when you think about it.
• Bryan Evans thinks the NCAA’s 20-hour rule is part of what’s holding the Georgia secondary back.  Sounds like a job for Rich Rod!
• With the mid-major underbrush getting cleared out somewhat last weekend and Boise State’s joke of a schedule, the Clemmins game is huge for TCU.
• Joe Montana craps all over the spread option.
• Here’s a pretty amazing Southern Cal factoid:  “USC, a loser against unranked opponents five times in the last three-plus seasons, has won 30 of its last 32 games against ranked opponents. . . “
• Speaking of the Trojans, Mitch Mustain continues to be the incredible shrinking quarterback.  The punting experiment ain’t going too well, either.
• Talk about your unimaginative athletic directors:  Ball State really couldn’t find anyone better than this fellow?

… The first year of a college coaching regime is often rough, but arguably no one has it worse right now than Ball State’s Stan Parrish. The young Cardinals squad—which went 12-2 last season with Mr. Parrish as its offensive coordinator—is 0-3 after losses to North Texas, lower-level New Hampshire and Army. (Army and North Texas were a combined 4-20 last season.) Next up: Auburn (3-0), which is averaging 42 points per game. “The football gods make you pay,” says the 63-year-old Mr. Parrish, who endured similar misery in his last head job at Kansas State (2-30-1 from 1986 to 1988). [Emphasis added.]

Slouching towards Atlanta: a look back at South Carolina-Ole Miss

Last night’s game was of interest to me if for no other reason than to calibrate the gauge by which we’ve been measuring Georgia so far.  And we got treated to the stereotypical SEC game – two great defenses, if you’re a proponent of the conference, or two pathetic offenses, if you’re a kindred spirit to someone like HeismanPundit.

The truth is somewhat more complicated than that.  Ellis Johnson did a marvelous job mixing and matching and giving Norwood plenty of opportunities to have an impact on play.  And the Ole Miss front four is every bit as dominant as advertised.  On the other hand, I was struck by how sluggish the Rebels offense looked all night, with the glaring exception of Dexter McCluster.  And it’s clear that Garcia struggles with man to man coverage far more than zone.

The quarterbacks’ mediocre play was probably the big story of the game.  Here’s how it broke down, courtesy of Team Speed Kills:

NAME	COMP	ATT	PCT	YDS	TD	INT
Garcia	16	34	47.1	220	1	0	111.12
Snead	7	21	33.3	107	1	0	91.85

That is not the stuff from which legends are born.  Garcia was marginally better, and that was the difference.  But he sure disappeared in the fourth quarter when the game was in the balance.

So, what to take from this?  I think it’s more of an indication of Ole Miss being overrated than where South Carolina is going.  Thus, I lean less towards cocknfire’s take – “It’s not time to put South Carolina in the Top 15 just yet. But for the first time in a couple of years, the idea didn’t seem completely laughable” – and more towards Doc Saturday’s – “If Garcia and South Carolina are still basically mediocre, what does that make Snead and Ole Miss?”.

A few more random observations from a Dawg fan’s point of view:

• I switched on a replay of the Georgia-South Carolina first half during halftime last night (damn, I’m sorry I missed this) just for a little comparison.  The good news?  That Georgia offense looked fast and – dare I say it? – purposeful once it got going.  The bad news?  The realization that Garcia’s high water mark for the season may very well be against Georgia’s defense.  An ineffective pass rush and soft zone coverage will do that.
• Empty seats in Columbia?  What’s the world coming to?
• All those SEC quarterback rankings we read in the preseason weren’t worth the bandwidth they consumed.
• The over/under in the Tennessee-South Carolina game may be in the single digits.
• Craig James sure talks a lot.
• I do wonder how much of Ole Miss’ offensive performance was affected by the flu that swept through the team.  The on-field performance, that is.  You can’t blame the playcalling on illness, it was sickly on its own.  You think the Nuttster would like a mulligan on that fake field goal call?
• After last night, Gamecock fans have no reason to complain about SEC officiating.  Aside from the two blatant missed calls in the fourth quarter, it’s clear that the official method that South Carolina receivers have for creating separation is the push off.  There could have been flags thrown for offensive pass interference on almost every SC possession.