Mike Slive to Auburn: “keep that toilet paper under wraps, boys.”

The SEC slaps the Tigers around for “Big Cat Weekend”.

Now that’s coaching.

If you haven’t seen this clip of once upon a time Georgia recruiting target and now Florida State offensive lineman Zebrie Sanders from the Florida game, it’s worth a moment of your attention.

I know your typical offensive lineman is coached to hold his stance if it looks like there’s encroachment by the defensive line, but even by that standard, that’s taking a good thing too far.  I would love to have heard what FSU offensive line coach Rick Trickett, a notorious hard ass, had to say to Sanders when the kid got back to the sidelines after that.  And what Sanders said in his defense – if anything.

“May we live in interesting times” roundup

It’s been a surreal couple of weeks lately, hasn’t it, Dawgnation?  There was the Tech game, overshadowed by the fate of Willie Martinez, then, the fate of Willie Martinez overshadowed by the results of the Tech game, then, the results of the Tech game overshadowed by the dismissal of Willie Martinez… hey, has there been an announcement about the bowl game yet?

Speculation about the new defensive coordinator is at a level that makes you think the school is holding a raffle contest with a prize that will go to the fan whose suggestion gets picked – wait a minute, maybe that’s not a bad idea in these troubled economic times – but it’s understandable as it comes nine years into the most stable coaching regime at Georgia we’ve experienced in a very long time.  (It seemed like there was a stretch in the nineties when Georgia was changing defensive coordinators as frequently as people change socks.)  It’s crazy, but just remember, Dawgnation, we’re doing it so that the Tom Dienharts of the pundit world have something silly to post about.

Anyway, here are three things that we can take with a higher degree of certainty:

• Mark Richt ain’t tipping his hand early.
• Nobody is exactly stepping up with a spirited defense of the job Martinez did.
• Damon Evans is braced for what Auburn and Tennessee hath wrought.

And for those of you who are complaining that Mike Bobo should have been shown the door along with Martinez, I invite you to take a look at the final regular season SEC team scoring figures.  Georgia finished tied for first (with Arkansas) in scoring in conference games; Georgia finished dead last in points allowed in conference games.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing that leading the conference in scoring in SEC games has rarely been an impediment to at least playing in the SECCG.  I very much doubt that teams with the kind of defensive showing Georgia produced this year have overcome that to have a shot at a conference title.  Mark Richt’s focus right now is in the appropriate place.

Spirals are bunk. Q scores are not.

I don’t know how I missed this quote from Corch Meyers about the GPOOE™, but I thank Dennis Dodd for sharing it with us now:

“Does he throw a tight spiral?” Meyer asked rhetorically back in June. “Spirals, according to the history of football, are not the most important thing.”

I keep wondering where in the hell Urban keeps this college football history book he constantly refers to… and whether it goes back beyond 1990.

I will say this – Tebow’s fan club could care less about how prettily he throws the ball.

ESPN was apt in entitling a documentary of his 2005 senior season of football at Nease High School in Ponte Vedra, Fla., Tim Tebow: The Chosen One.

Tebow’s presence has grown significantly since then. A Google search of his name delivers more than 600,000 entries. You can choose from nearly 2,500 Tebow-related links on YouTube. He has graced more Sports Illustrated covers — six in the last 16 months, sharing a seventh with two other players — than any other college athlete.

With advertisers showing increasing interest, the company that computes popularity-measuring Q scores took stock of Tebow last spring. He was recognized by 49% of sports fans ages 12-64, equaling their familiarity with the Boston Celtics‘ Paul Pierce, the Tampa Bay Rays‘ Evan Longoria and Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson. Baseball’s Chase Utley and Johan Santana, among others, scored a tick lower.

Tebow’s Q score of 21, the percentage who identified him as one of their favorite athletes, ranked with that of NFL mastermind Bill Parcells and NBA stars Kevin Garnett, Chris Paul and Steve Nash. And it was well above the average score of 14 for sports personalities.

“It’s a pretty good likability score for someone being measured for the first time,” says Henry Schafer, executive vice president of New York-based The Q Scores Co., which has compiled the ratings since 1963.

Last Saturday, after Tebow took the field against FSU and continued his tradition of inscribing a Bible verse on the glare-reducing black patches beneath his eyes, his chosen “Hebrews 12:1-2” was Google’s third-most popular search term. When he cited “John 3:16” during the national championship game against Oklahoma last January, it was the day’s No. 1-searched-for term.

If you think there’s a question leading up to the NFL draft that’s going to dominate the media chatter more than “where will Tebow go?”, you’re kidding yourself.

By the way, as an aside, I don’t know if you caught it in Dodd’s puff piece, but here’s his description of the outcome of the Florida-Tennessee game:

“I would think in their locker room there was a little bit of frustration,” Kiffin said after “losing” 23-13 on Sept. 19, “because there were such high expectations.”

Yep, that’s “losing” in scare quotes. I guess that answers the question about which game provided the greatest moral victory in the SEC this season.

SECCG vs. ACCCG

Rather than indulge in an analysis of tomorrow’s SEC Championship game (which looks to boil down to which school’s offense can squeeze a little more out against the two best defenses in the country), I thought I’d ask the musical question instead of whether there’s ever been a larger gap between the SECCG and the ACCCG (aka The World’s Smallest Outdoor Cocktail Party) than what we’re seeing in this year’s versions.

For yucks, I took a look at Stub Hub to see how demand for the two games is shaping up.  Tickets there for the game in Atlanta are running higher in price than their Tampa counterparts by a factor of eight.  You can get into the ACCCG for less than half the cost of the ticket to the Georgia-Tennessee Tech game.

Is there anything the ACCCG offers this go ’round that’s superior to the SECCG?  About all I can come up with is that the Cuban food in Tampa is better than what’s available in Atlanta (I miss you, Kool Korners) and Mons Venus trumps the Cheetah (at least that’s what people tell me, heh).  Your thoughts?