You’ve won the SEC East. Be vewy, vewy careful.

Mark Bradley wraps up one of his patented “Click on me, son of Jor-El!” pieces about Georgia and Georgia Tech fans with this nugget:

Tech is Georgia’s biggest game only when Georgia fans are scared they might lose. This isn’t such a year. Georgia has won its division and is going to play LSU or Alabama for the SEC title next week. Georgia has, to borrow another Johnson line, bigger fish to fry. Which is the primary reason Georgia fans should be wary of Johnson and his team.

Paul Johnson, you wily devil, you.  You clever fox, you’re lying in the weeds, ready to pounce, aren’t you?  Everybody knows that Georgia never gets focused for Tech when it’s going to the Dome the following we… wait, what?

• 2002:  Georgia 51, Georgia Tech 7
• 2003:  Georgia 34, Georgia Tech 17
• 2005:  Georgia 14, Georgia Tech 7

Average margin of victory:  23 points.

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GATA

Here’s a video I’d like to see:

… The thing that’s a little bit different with our guys in their relationship to Erk Russell is that we invited him to come my first year. He spoke to the team, but he also spoke to the defense. There was a time where not only that group got to hear him, but we kept the video of it. From time to time we would show it to the defense, more so than the offense, because he was really talking about what he did with the defense. Our guys knew who Erk Russell was. They might not have been sitting in the room when he was there in person, but just about every defensive player that has come through here has seen the video. I don’t remember the last time we have seen it, but it’s probably time to pull the thing out…

Probably time to pull it out?  Hells yeah, it is.

Perceptions, Georgia Tech and Occam’s Razor

Gosh, Paul Johnson’s right – if you don’t count the top of the SEC (which holds down the first three slots in the BCS standings, last time I looked), compared to the ACC, the conference is nothing special.

“Personally, I think the conference thing is way overblown. How are you going to evaluate? Are you looking at the top two teams in the conference or are you going to take the conference as a whole? There’s four SEC-ACC games Saturday. Let’s see what happens. Who’s favored in the Clemson-South Carolina game? Who’s favored in the Florida-Florida State game? Wake-Vandy? I don’t know. But you see what I mean? Now, if we’re just talking about Alabama and LSU, that’s different.”

Johnson makes a point. While you can make a case that the SEC is the nation’s superior conference, the strength at the top – and certainly five consecutive BCS titles – exaggerates the differences between conferences from top to bottom…

This is truly silly stuff coming from both Johnson and Schultz (who should know better).  Like it or not, Alabama, Arkansas and LSU all get to cash the checks they receive from the SEC office, just like Ole Miss does.  Do either of the two really want to make a case that any of those three programs wouldn’t rip the ACC a new one, if that’s where any of ’em played for a season?  And does it occur to Johnson or Schultz that a reason the bottom of the SEC looks weaker this year might be because of the havoc the top three have wreaked against it?

Now I get what this really boils down to is Johnson’s insistence that Georgia doesn’t present a special challenge because Tech’s seen other good programs and other good players this season.  But here’s the thing:  if it’s not about the toughness of the two conferences, if it’s not about overall talent or special players and if it’s not about annual distractions (there was only one NCAA inquiry, right?), then how has Tech lost two games to the weakest teams Mark Richt has fielded in his tenure at Georgia?  It couldn’t be coaching, could it?

Checking out the “double positives” in Georgia’s season

At the risk of incurring further gentle chiding from Michael Elkon, I wanted to take one more look at a subject I explored last week in this post about what Iowa State’s offensive coordinator calls the “double positive” – winning the turnover margin and explosive plays stats – and how that might relate to Georgia’s current surge/streak/extended period of loss-avoidance (feel free to insert your preferred euphemism here).

Here’s what I noted about turnover margin:

Turnover margin was the easy part to run down.  This season, the Dawgs are undefeated in the six games in which they have a positive turnover margin and they’ve lost the only game with a negative one (which leaves them 2-1 in games with a balanced margin).

To update that, Georgia’s turnover margin against Kentucky was zero, so the Dawgs are now 3-1 in games with a balanced margin.

The reason I’m back so quickly to continue the discussion is because Marty at cfbstats.com, being the mensch that he is, forwarded me a game-by-game breakdown of explosive plays for all of this season’s D-1 games.  I’ve taken his data and compiled a spreadsheet of Georgia’s season to date:

EXPLOSIVE PLAYS CHART
GAME	OREP	OPEP	TOEP	DREP	DPEP	TDEP	NET EP
BSU	3	3	6	4	1	5	1
SC	8	4	12	7	3	10	2
CC	5	4	9	1	0	1	8
MISS	8	3	11	2	2	4	7
MSU	5	1	6	4	0	4	2
UT	5	2	7	1	1	2	5
VANDY	5	4	9	10	3	13	-4
UF	5	1	6	1	4	5	1
NMSU	7	4	11	3	4	7	4
AUB	12	5	17	2	2	4	13
KENT	4	1	5	2	1	3	2

[KEY:  OREP = offense run explosive plays (+10 yards); OPEP = offense pass explosive plays (+20 yards); TOEP = total offense explosive plays; DREP = defense run explosive plays (+10); DPEP = defense pass explosive plays (+20); TDEP = total defense explosive plays; NET EP = net explosive plays]

The first thing to note from the chart is that Georgia won the explosive plays battle in every game this season except against Vanderbilt.  The Dawgs’ saving grace in that game was that they turned in their best turnover margin number of the season (that, and a certain tackle by Drew Butler).  Conversely, while Georgia’s net in explosive plays against South Carolina was positive, that was Georgia’s only game of the season in which it lost the turnover margin fight.

The anomaly, then, if you want to call it that, was the opener against Boise State.  The Dawgs were +1 in explosive plays and even on turnovers, yet lost convincingly.  (I’d say that’s another reason to acknowledge Boise State played a dominant game that night.)

But the rest of the data indicates, at least with regard to Georgia’s season, that Tom Herman’s on to something.  After the opener, Georgia hasn’t lost a game in which it’s come out ahead in explosive plays and not finished behind in turnovers.  Given Georgia Tech’s undeniable prowess in explosive plays (now there’s something for you to fixate on, Yellow Jacket stat freaks), focusing on those may very well be job one for Bobo and Grantham.

Wednesday morning buffet

Don’t fill up too much; save room for tomorrow.

• Bruce Feldman lists his top ten fast-rising assistant coaches here.  Todd Grantham isn’t mentioned.  Hmmm.
• Are the long knives starting to come out for Ted Roof?
• Aaron Murray has trouble keeping track of all the running backs he’s handed off to.  Understandably so.
• Florida, mediocre?  Not when it comes to excuse making.
• Good Lord, not another college football scandal.
• West Virginia’s Oliver Luck delivers the Big East’s eulogy succinctly:  “If the goal is to go to a BCS game, it’s better to play in one of the power conferences.”
• JoePa and that legacy thing?  “The amount of people that dislike him puts him on par with the likes of Jerry Springer, Kim Kardashian, Mike Tyson and Lindsay Lohan.”
• Houston Nutt to Memphis?
• Between being on the field for all 92 plays, getting chop blocked like crazy and finishing with 16 tackles apiece, Abry Jones and DeAngelo Tyson have a right to be proud for surviving last year’s game with Georgia Tech.
• WAC, if you want help, first you’d better help yourself.

I think we’ve got our fan of the week now.

Paul Johnson haz a funny… and then apologizes.

Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson, whose oft-unfettered tongue and unwillingness to back down to rival Georgia have earned him the admiration of Tech fans, apologized for a poor choice of words on his radio show Tuesday night.

Near the end of his show, a caller, presumably a Georgia Bulldogs fan, came on the air and said, “Hello? Hello?” and then began barking before either hanging up or being cut off. Johnson responded, “Hello? Hello? He just got off from Walmart.”

Johnson, who earlier in the day had commented how most Georgia fans he encounters are cordial, said, “Anybody who calls into a radio show and barks is either retarded or doesn’t have a life.”

After the show, Johnson said he meant his response as a joke, “but it was a poor choice of words on my part and I sincerely apologize. It was not my intention to offend anyone.”

Advocates for people with mental disabilities have campaigned to stop the use of the word “retard” or “retarded” as a slur, calling it hurtful and dehumanizing.

I hope he has to waste time this week dealing with the PC hordes.  And look at the bright side, Jacket faithful:  if your team loses, you can blame it on your coach being distracted by that.