Season’s start is getting close enough, you can taste it.
- Todd Grantham is ready.
- When Bacarri Rambo talks about “hit and run”, he’s not referring what may happen when you’re behind the wheel of a gold Chevy Impala.
- I guess soccer fans handle their beer better than college football fans do.
- This isn’t what it sounds like: “I look for this to be one of the weakest football seasons we’ve had in while.”
- This conclusion about strength of schedule – “the trend is essentially saying that the harder the schedule, the better a team’s expected performance” – sure seems counterintuitive to me.
- Though Kansas has a quarterback with the less than fortunate name of Pick, it’s worth noting that Vanderbilt’s backup quarterback is aptly named Funk.
- The latest victim of Negative Grohmentum is… Negative Grohmentum.
- Mike Hugenin’s quarterback rankings have Alabama at #20 and Florida at #21. I’m beginning to think that Greg McElroy is the Rodney Dangerfield of the SEC.
- Here’s something that Craig James and Mike Leach agree on. (h/t Coaches Hot Seat Blog)
- Chris Low predicts we’ll be putting the Mark Richt-on-the-hot-seat meme in our collective rear view mirrors after this season.
Get The Picture 
I think the issue with McElroy is that there were questions about him as a starter to begin the season, so his early success against bad defenses (Arkansas, North Texas, FIU) merely won people over to the “capable” description. Then, mid-season, he hit a slump and that became the feel for him. During that time, Mark Ingram’s Heisman campaign began to shoot through the roof. By the time that McElroy recovered (and actually had very-good-to-dominant performances against LSU, MSU, Auburn, and Florida) everyone’s attention was on Ingram — as in “sure he can complete almost 70% of his passes for over 13 yards per. Who can’t do that when they load the box on every down?”
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I remember eating at the Mayflower before games when I’d go to Athens with my grandfather when I was growing up. We’d leave the Mayflower, and we’d walk to the east campus gate to get to our seats at least an hour before kickoff.
The thing I remember most about it was how long the walk seemed to be to get to the gates and then to our seats. After I got to Athens for school, though, I realized that the walk wasn’t really that bad at all. Frankly, it was nothing compared to the walk wife and I had to make from the Varsity to the stadium on days that I had to work and couldn’t tailgate!
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Varsity to the stadium is a long walk indeed.
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Check out Chris Low’s Week 1 preview which is now up on ESPN.com, apparently Vanderbilt’s playing a double header this weekend.
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The Mayflower guy could use some cheese with that whine, maybe he’d rather the Dawgs didn’t play in Athens at all.
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CTG’s “fine him” was priceless. I bet he is happier now that he can make them run.
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Just to reply to the comment on my ‘conclusion’ on strength of schedule: it was counterintuitive to me too (as I stated in the sentence that followed it). Basically what it’s saying is that the better teams play harder schedules – the harder schedules don’t make the teams better.
The reason why that trend shows up is because it’s a very weak correlation. Meaning SOS is not all that important if you’re tying to predict how a team will do or explain why a team performed the way it did.
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Didn’t read the entire post on scheduling and success, but I do think it’s worth noting that the dominant teams of past decades played big time inter-regional games routinely.
70s: Bama, USC, Notre Dame, Oklahoma
80s: Miami, Notre Dame, Oklahoma
90s: FSU, Miami
00s: USC
The teams above all played huge games across country during their heyday, and they paid off. It’s almost like the theory that talking to dictators is a bad idea, because when you do it puts you on the same level as them. It only benefits the team with less to lose–but when you routinely schedule big games, it keeps you from ever slipping past that level. It’s only when they are rare, that you concern yourself about losing to a slightly weaker major program and diminishing your program’s reputation as a result.
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