Confession time

I want to have Jarvis Jones’ baby.

Last Tango in Athens

Senior Day is here.  It’s always bittersweet knowing you’re heading up to the last home game of the season, but maybe it’s a bit more so this year, because of the head of steam that’s been built up over the past few weeks.

I wouldn’t mind if there were a few more home games left.  (Unlike some of the students, sad to say.)

Anyway, there is the sweet part.  Unlike their immediate predecessors, these seniors have something big left to play for.  And you can only hope it’s not a one-off experience.  No senior class from this program should ever lack the experience of having played in an SECCG.

As for a game preview, five minutes spent wallowing in conference stats will tell you that it’s going to be an uphill climb for Kentucky to make a game of it today.  Which isn’t the same thing as neglecting to note the recent history of the series, which has certainly had its ups and downs from a Georgia standpoint.  But Kentucky lacks the playmakers it had to make a tough showing like it did in some of those matches.

Which isn’t to say that Joe T shouldn’t be getting all medieval on their asses about making sure their minds aren’t right.  No repeat of this low point is necessary.

Consider this your game day thread.

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Today, in I Blame Bobo…

Here’s something that should wake you up this morning:  did you know this season that Georgia is running more plays per game than Oregon?

On the other hand, this may be the least surprising stat you’ll see today.

… Some teams tend to wing the ball around quite a bit on standard downs but grow much more conservative on passing downs.

USC (105th in Run Percentage on Standard Downs, 43rd on Passing Downs).
Georgia (55th on Standard Downs, seventh on Passing Downs).
Alabama (56th on Standard Downs, 14th on Passing Downs).
California (81st on Standard Downs, 46th on Passing Downs).

Teams with this approach almost end up with artificially inflated passing numbers; they are going to throw the ball rather efficiently, but they do not necessarily trust their passing game to make a play when they need it.

“There’s a lot of stuff being thrown at the wall.”

And so we enter the end game about what the powers-that-be want to do with college football’s postseason.  To what should be no one’s great surprise, that involves making sure the powers-that-be stay in firm control of college football’s postseason revenue stream.

… According to sources with direct knowledge of meetings held in San Francisco earlier this week, the suggested change calls for the BCS to sever its direct ties with the so-called BCS bowls — the Allstate Sugar Bowl, Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, Discover Orange Bowl and Rose Bowl Game presented by Vizio — and concentrate solely on arranging a No. 1 vs. No. 2 national championship matchup.

In addition, the BCS title game could potentially be bidded out to nontraditional sites, such as Jerry Jones’ Cowboys Stadium.

The proposal also would eliminate automatic BCS bowl qualifying status currently given to the six major conferences. All conferences would be free to make their own deals with the 34 other existing bowls.

The reconfigured BCS would undergo significant change relative to its present revenue sharing system, too.

If you’re having trouble sorting out what that means and who the winners and losers would be, this should clear things up for you:

The source of one college football postseason idea pitched this week shouldn’t be surprising.

According to a person in the room at Monday’s BCS meeting, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany pitched a model whereby only the No. 1 and No. 2 teams would be matched in the postseason. That would basically eliminate the other BCS bowl tie-ins in the 14-year-old system.

The proposal essentially is a roll back to the old Bowl Alliance that was in effect from 1995-97. On its face, the proposal seemingly benefits the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12 and Pac-12 the most.

It’s not like he didn’t warn you before, small fry.

With all the conference rejiggering, this was simply inevitable.  If you’re a school that’s not able to latch on to one of the major conferences – and as the Big East is sadly learning, that’s not the same thing as being in one of the current BCS AQ conferences – it’s not going to be pretty.  And the thing is, by returning the system to more of an every-bowl-for-itself arrangement, it’ll have the effect of making things more impervious to an anti-trust challenge.

All this proves once again is that it’s not a winning strategy to screw with Jim Delany.

“… I don’t call it trash talk. I call it being competitive.”

If you’re an eighteen-year old kid who’s used to running his mouth on the field a little bit – or maybe more than a little bit – do you really want to play for a soulless robot like Nick Saban…

“We have a rule on our team that our players are not allowed to talk to players on the other team,” the Alabama coach said. “We have guys who violate that occasionally, but by having the rule probably minimizes it. We haven’t had a whole lot of it.”

Talk takes away from focus, Saban said.

… or somebody who’s a little more flexible?

Georgia’s Mark Richt: “Some of it’s kind of funny. Football is a very physical game. There’s a lot of hand-to-hand combat. … Every time the ball’s snapped, somebody’s winning a battle. Sometimes feelings get hurt. Sometimes guys get mad and they’ll say this or that and another guy will come back and say something back. If he thinks he’s getting into somebody’s head by talking a little trash to him and getting him out of his game, that’s all part of it. Now, if it’s really foul … There’s some truly unsportsmanlike trash talk – I guess the term ‘trash talk’ makes it bad as it is – but I don’t think it’s awful. It’s almost inevitable that guys are going to say things to each other and try to get in their heads. I don’t worry too much about it. But if a guy’s also doing that and putting your finger in somebody’s face or doing something stupid with it, I don’t think it’s very good. If it keeps a guy from staying focused, that’s not good either. But I can’t sit here and say that I would ever have some kind of rule to say you can never talk to the opponent during the game.”

Just sayin’.

Maybe a rematch is God’s will.

How else to explain this?