Granted, Ole Miss does have a helluva punt team. But how bad are things for the Nuttster to be getting patronized by a guy who used to coach Iowa State for a living?
(h/t Jason Kirk)
Daily Archives: October 25, 2011
Derek Dooley: Tyler Bray did not sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Tyler Bray gets Urnge Nation all in a tizzy by tweeting “Thanks to volnation for all your support ill be back soon maybe sooner than everyone thinks…” to which his head coach diplomatically responds:
“It’s going the same as we always thought,” Dooley said of Bray’s rehab. “I mean, it’s really hard to tell because he’s in a cast. Somebody said he tweeted something. He’s not a doctor, he’s a 19-year-old guy, for lack of a word I could use.”
Moron? Dumbass? Idiot? Derek’s got a big vocabulary, so I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface here.
Filed under Because Nothing Sucks Like A Big Orange
Dan Wetzel hates college football.
Now this is some spectacularly constipated reasoning:
… It’s a fine, overdue and appropriately polite start. It’s also unlikely to be enough, which is why the next step – for college football players in particular – is to consider a far bolder, impossible to ignore and historic move.
Get together and boycott a minor bowl game.
Nothing will rock college athletics like players refusing to play. And nothing will get the attention of people more powerful than university presidents than a canceled nationally televised game. It will be a bomb blast to the system – grabbing the attention of non-sports media, local and national politicians, and reformers of all kinds. A bowl boycott will get everyone talking, immediately.
Suddenly, university presidents who’ve spent decades dragging their feet on reform might be forced to act. It’s been an embarrassing series of scandals that’s helped shame college leaders into proposing a small $2,000 per year stipend ($38.46 a week) to cover some living expenses.
Pressure works with these people.
A lower-grade bowl game is essentially useless anyway.
It’s too much to ask a player to sit out a Final Four or a BCS title game – as has been plotted before. Even regular season games are difficult. Players want to play. They work too hard for the chance to compete. Having guys give up a shot at a championship isn’t realistic. No one wants to let down coaches and teammates.
Calling off some minor bowl – where the bowl executive is still pocketing $400,000-plus – isn’t such a sacrifice. It is, however, high profile enough to rock the system.
No one will remember who won the game anyway. The team that sits out for more equitable treatment will be hailed both immediately and forever – books will be written, documentaries will be filmed, history will lionize.
In other words, go ahead and boycott a game nobody cares about, because then they’ll care about it. Except they really won’t. Or something like that.
Wetzel’s already on record as wanting a 16-team playoff with representation from every skanky conference in America. Now he thinks the next best thing for the sport would be a player strike. They have a term for your ideal world, Dan. It’s called “the NFL”. Games are played on Sundays; check it out some time.
(By the way, it’s unrelated, but if in the comments you want to turn your snark guns on a Georgia Tech player who feels underpaid – “The things we go through, the hours we put in, what our bodies go through, we deserve some sort of (results),” Georgia Tech defensive end Denzel McCoy told the Associated Press. “College football is a billion-dollar industry.” – I’m not gonna stop you.)
Filed under College Football, Media Punditry/Foibles
Why 3-18?
No, it ain’t the weather. And it ain’t the travel, either. It’s what’s in their heads that’s mattered. And it sounds like Mike Bobo will need to earn his keep this week – as a quarterbacks coach.
… As Murray watched video of last year’s performance against the Gators — about eight times during the week following the game, another seven to 12 in the offseason — he hardly saw the good things he did: 313 yards passing, three touchdown passes, the two-point conversion run that tied the game at 24; he saw the mistakes, over and over.
Bobo worried for a while that Murray was obsessing over the game.
“Usually kids bounce back pretty easy,” Bobo said. “They’re ready to go, ready to get out there and play again, while coaches sometimes dwell on the past and think, ‘We could have done this, could have done that.’
“But he couldn’t let that game go. He kept watching and kept watching. I was saying, ‘Hey, you got to let it go.’ He was, ‘I just want to learn so I don’t make those same mistakes again.'”
Such diligence is good to a point, Bobo said.
“He can’t let last year haunt him,” Bobo said. “He can’t worry that he’s got to be perfect. He’s got to go out and play and react to what happens in the game.”
One year too amped. The next year too tight. That’s been the real curse in Jacksonville.
Maybe Murray needs to spend some time talking to John Jenkins.
John Jenkins grew up in Connecticut, where he never heard much about how badly Georgia fans wanted to beat Florida. Then he played junior college football in Mississippi, where he still didn’t hear how Florida was the most important game on Georgia’s schedule every year.
Now the Georgia nose tackle has been brought up to speed.
“I hear it’s probably the biggest rivalry game or such. ‘Cocktail Party,’ I guess that’s what they call it,” he said, adding later, “From the intel I’m getting, it’s a big game.”
That’s some pretty laid back intel. But you know, maybe that’s the attitude the Dawgs need this Saturday.
*****************************************************************************
UPDATE: Maybe Aaron’s more relaxed than I thought. Natty Light, though? Ugh.
*****************************************************************************
UPDATE #2: This ignorance is bliss thing may be spreading.
… Lots of talk about the one-sided nature of the series again. Many of the players aren’t aware of the history of Florida’s dominance of late.
“Is it really 18 of 21? That’s crazy,” redshirt freshman receiver Michael Bennett said. “I didn’t know that. Man, we’ve got to start winning I guess.”
Filed under Georgia Football
Tuesday morning buffet
It’s not as good as a breakfast at T-Rays, but it’ll have to do.
- If Paul Johnson is the genius Mark Bradley insists he is, then this should be no problem.
- Jarvis Jones is a semifinalist for the Butkus Award. Good to see that somebody’s paying attention.
- Mark Emmert suggests a $2000 increase in student-athlete scholarship amounts, but Boise State’s Bob Kustra isn’t impressed: ” … Go back and examine the life of a student athlete in intercollegiate sports in America today, and see how privileged they are to be where they are and the opportunities they have.” Lazy bums!
- Meanwhile, there’s a bunch of college administrators who don’t think Emmert’s gone far enough with his proposals.
- Spurrier’s ban on Ron Morris-attended pressers? His-tor-ee.
- This may be the consummate Pat Dooley header.
- Georgia 26, Florida 20. (I would take that in a heartbeat.)
- “Defense,” coach Turner Gill acknowledged, “is the area we haven’t made the best improvement.” No shit.
- If you’ve been looking for Mudcat’s car, it seems to have turned up in Eugene, Oregon.
My Week Eight Mumme Poll ballot
Man, weekends like the last one must suck for those anti-BCS zealots who spend the first half of the season wishing for a train wreck. I figure they’re getting close to the tipping point where they stop predicting that there will be too many undefeated teams left at the end and switch to rooting for all the top ten schools to lose. Oh yeah, and Boise State, bitches!
Meanwhile, I have but one simple question: can anybody in the Big 12 play defense?
This week’s ballot:
- Alabama
- Arkansas
- Boise State
- Clemson
- Kansas State
- LSU*
- Oklahoma
- Oklahoma State
- Oregon
- Stanford
COMMENTS
- Goodbye, Wisconsin. When you play a schedule like that, you don’t get the benefit of the doubt from a last-second road loss against a ranked team. Sorry.
- Hello, Kansas State. The Wildcats are the Big 12 bookend to Oklahoma State. Somehow, though, I doubt they’ll both be on my last regular season ballot.
- There’s something reassuring about LSU and Alabama, isn’t there.
- I thought about ditching Arkansas in light of the struggle with Ole Miss, but that win over Texas A&M looks better each week.
- On the outside, still looking in: Houston and Michigan State.
- This ballot took the least amount of time to compose of any so far. I was in and out in less than 20 minutes.
Filed under Mumme Poll
Sometimes a nickname does tell the whole story.
I hope they’ve got a killer training table at Western Kentucky.
Filed under The Body Is A Temple
Get The Picture 