And Mark Richt leads the way.
… Last week, he had his guys singing “Rocky Top” before Tennessee’s game with South Carolina. This week, could he be sneaking off to learn how to “Call the Hogs” to help Arkansas get a win over South Carolina Saturday?
“I gotta learn how to do that,” Richt said. “I was trying to do it. I know it has something to do with [saying] “sooie,” but I gotta learn how to do that right. If I do, I might try to get the boys to be ready to cheer on Saturday night.”
Filed under Georgia Football
Weis is seriously bummed out. Not so much by the four-game losing streak, because some of that’s understandable.
“I thought the rest of that Alabama game (second half without QB John Brantley) was going to be a bit of a struggle,” Weis said. “And going into LSU I thought that would be a bit of a struggle, especially when young Jacoby (Brissett) was dialed up after he hadn’t had a snap, I thought that would have been a bit of a struggle. I thought that if we were going to win the game it would have to be a low scoring game and it didn’t play out that way…”
Nah, it’s because for the life of him, he can’t figure out how his decided schematic advantage could have flopped against… well, let’s use his words:
“… I’m probably most disappointed – I’m disappointed when you lose to anybody – but I’m most disappointed that in the last two weeks, we didn’t’ make enough plays on offense to win the last two games.
“I think that’s probably my biggest disappointment,” he added. “They were two games that you can’t say were mismatched opponents. That’s the thing I’m discouraged about the most.”
Keep in mind, he’s speaking about his offense against opponents’ defenses. Now I’m not going to get into his point about Ted Roof and Auburn, but looking at Georgia, you tell me if there’s a mismatch.
Georgia Defense (SEC ranking)
Florida Offense (SEC ranking)
There isn’t a single category listed there where Florida’s offense ranks higher in the conference than Georgia’s defense does in its statistical counterpart. So, yeah, I’d say they’re mismatched. It’s as good reason as any why Weis’ offense was held to 32 total yards and a single first down in the second half Saturday.
Filed under Charlie Weis Is A Big Fat..., Georgia Football, Stats Geek!
Rank Team Votes (Top pick) 1 LSU 96 (78) 2 Alabama 96 (14) 3 Oklahoma State 96 (3) 4 Stanford 94 (1) 5 Oregon 92 (0) 6 Boise State 90 (0) 6 Oklahoma 90 (0) 8 Arkansas 76 (0) 9 Nebraska 62 (0) 10 Clemson 41 (0) 11 South Carolina 32 (0) 12 Houston 31 (0) 13 Penn State 22 (0) 14 Virginia Tech 16 (0) 15 Michigan 11 (0) 16 Georgia 7 (0) 17 Wisconsin 3 (0) 18 Georgia Tech 2 (0) 18 Kansas State 2 (0) 20 Texas 1 (0)
COMMENTS
Filed under Mumme Poll
“There was a period of time when Walsh was knocking them out of the end zone like three or four games like every time,” junior Shawn Williams said. “I guess they got relaxed expecting him to knock it out of the end zone and they weren’t quite running, busting it down field. That plays a part in it, too.”
Williams, if you recall, is the starter who pulled a player off the kickoff coverage team earlier this year to go in and cover himself. I guess we now know why.
(And by the way, Williams is right about one other thing. What’s happened to Blair Walsh’s leg on kickoffs?)
Filed under Georgia Football
I heard more than a few questions like this raised yesterday after the news about the suspended running backs was released. Can’t say I’m much surprised by that; it’s the nature of the world we live in these days. And I certainly don’t have any direct knowledge to say whether questions like that are justified on this occasion.
But there are a couple of things I do wonder about in response to that concern.
First, if Richt was going to manipulate the situation, wouldn’t it have been cleaner to do it by timing the test so that the results weren’t produced until after the Florida game as opposed to timing the release of the bad news? That way, he’s got plausible deniability in spades as opposed to taking the risk of covering up knowledge beforehand.
Second, for all those hinting at Richt’s supposed perfidy here, isn’t it worth considering that this kerfuffle would be a total non-issue at more than fifty schools which don’t suspend players the first time they flunk a drug test?
Just askin’.
Filed under Georgia Football
John Pennington has a ratings system based on plays per miscue in SEC games. You can argue about its subjectivity and relevance to wins and losses, I suppose, but two Georgia-related stats jump out at me from this post:
How weird is it that Bobo’s goal to use the hurry-up offense has worked out more reliably than Blair Walsh?
Filed under Georgia Football, SEC Football, Stats Geek!
This USA Today piece exploring how much influence ESPN has over the dizzying pace of conference realignment got a fair amount of attention yesterday. There’s a little something for everyone in it, regardless of what side of the debate you line up on. This was my favorite part:
… In lower-echelon conferences, there’s a different kind of discomfort.
Weber spent 15 years as president at San Diego State, many of them chafing at the BCS and a format that separates college football’s haves from have-nots.
Football’s six marquee leagues — the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC — automatically place their champions into a BCS bowl game, where the payouts to conferences of affiliated teams reach as high as $26 million-plus.
The five lower-echelon leagues in the NCAA’s bowl subdivision must hope one or two of their teams meet minimum-ranking criteria to qualify for a BCS bowl. San Diego State and the Mountain West Conference fall among the non-automatic qualifiers (or non-AQs).
That dividing line is based partly on the leagues’ and their member schools’ historical performance on the field — and partly on their attractiveness to TV.
San Diego State and others in non-AQ leagues are effectively branded as second-class, Weber says, raising the question of “the role that ESPN plays in the general positioning of your university.”
He prefers to scrap the BCS and set up a major-college football playoff to which all leagues have access, something the Mountain West has formally proposed.
Weber regards ESPN as “a co-conspirator” with the BCS in frustrating previous efforts in that regard.
He says the network fears the exorbitant rights fees a major-college football playoff could fetch and the possibility of losing such prime property to a higher-bidding rival.
Yes, we all know that everyone is dying to see much more San Diego State football. It’s just that those bastards at the WWL are holding them back!
I haven’t noticed that ESPN has lost many sports properties that it wants lately. Besides, to some extent, those playoff broadcast rights fees would be offset by a decline in what the WWL would have to pay for what would become less valuable regular season broadcast rights fees. Nobody at Disney would be missing any meals over the situation.
But this isn’t about what ESPN would have to pay. It’s really about what San Diego State thinks it should be paid because it fields a football program. And never mind what the marketplace says about that.
The buffet, having passed its drug test, is open for business.
A thought crossed my mind last night: given the way the officiating crew called the Cocktail Party, is it possible that Muschamp’s sideline antics have irritated SEC referees more than Georgia’s 2007 end zone shuffle has?
Filed under Gators, Gators..., Georgia Football, SEC Football
Get The Picture 