Why do the heathen rage?

Admittedly, I’ve been a little slack taking you guys through the fever swamps of opposing schools’ message boards lately, but I’ve got a couple of threads you may find amusing.

First from Vanderbilt’s Scout board, someone asks the musical question “Why do we hate UGA so much right now?”.  Honestly, I’m still trying to get over the concept of why they hate Georgia at all, but I digress.  Winning comment:  “Franklin stood up to them and they were offended. Add on the fact that he’s African American, and you’ve got a lot of hidden racism bubbling to the surface, although the largely white fan base would never admit it.”  Unlike, say, Vandy’s largely white fan base…

Okay, if that was surprising, there’s nothing like going home to Stingtalk, where you can always count on whatever amount of logic twisting is necessary to show that anything that happens in Athens is good for Georgia Tech.  So you can imagine the wisdom spewed forth over twelve pages in response to this:  “Anyone else like that GA SOUTHERN plays UGA the week before us?”.  The gist of why it’s good, I gather, is because it will give Paul Johnson a look at how Grantham defends the triple option.  It’s not until the seventh page of the thread that someone points out Johnson’s seen how Grantham defends the triple option twice already.

You gotta love ’em.

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“But a lot of times all a commitment does is identify who is the lead right now.”

I’ve been skeptical that the NCAA would ever adopt an early signing period for football.  But after reading Rodney Garner’s comments on the subject, I’m not so sure about that anymore.

“I think the NCAA is going to have to look at doing some things differently to put some sanity back into it, possibly an early signing day,” Garner said. “I am thinking if you could do something like have an early signing day on August 1 for those guys that are committed. At least you could get those guys locked in and you could focus on them. Because now really a commitment means nothing, it means absolutely nothing. We can say what we want to, ‘We have x number of players committed.’ But how many of them are actually committed? ‘I am committed but I am taking all five of my visits.’ Is that really committed?”

Garner’s certainly been around the recruiting block more than a few times, so I think we can agree that if he thinks things have changed, they probably have.  But let’s get real about this.  He’s not concerned about the kids.

“It is insane,” Garner said. “Just from a coaching standpoint — trying to plan some family time in the summer — you can plan on being out of town and then we have a kid coming in this weekend so you have to change your vacation. So there has to be something to put some sanity back into it. I think the NCAA will look at doing some things differently because of the calendar and the attention that is paid to recruiting. It will be interesting to see what transpires.”

I’m sure whatever that may be, it won’t be to favor the student-athlete.

And I’m still convinced that Andy Staples has the best suggestion for early signing.

A defense is a terrible thing to waste.

This story trips my bullshit detector.

The Arkansas safety was accustomed to serving as a defense in name only during the skeleton scrimmage portion of practice, a time when the offense had its way under former coach Bobby Petrino.

Then one night during an early August practice, Rasner’s instincts took over and he knocked the ball away from a receiver. Afterward, he paused and waited for criticism he said he had become used to in his three seasons under Petrino.

All he heard were cheers.

Is Petrino an offensive-minded coach.  Yeah.  Was he more focused on that side of the ball in practice?  No doubt.  Were there exercises in practice to work on timing and patterns that didn’t require disruption by defensive players?  I’m sure there were.  Was there constant criticism of defensive players for playing defense?  Schwiingg!  There goes the bullshit-o-meter.

But, hey, if that’s what he wants to believe, so be it.  All I know is that Petrino must have done something right.  And if the Hogs want to depart from that…

“The defensive guys aren’t afraid to make plays out there, where in the past you might lay off a receiver and not break up a pass because …” Rasner said, trailing off. “We were an offensive-minded team, there’s no doubt about that, but with coach Smith coming in … he’s a defensive coach, so there’s a definite change already.”

Five words of snark

So, what do you think is meant by this header?

Did somebody say Vince Dooley never had any overrated teams?

Georgia teams that don’t live up to the preseason hype – that’s a common complaint about Richt, I seem to recall a recent GTP comment that such things never happened under Dooley.

Au contraire, my friend.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Georgia’s highest preseason football rankings in program history:

AP RANK // YEAR // RECORD // (FINAL RANK)

No. 1 // 2008 // 10-3 // (No. 13)

No. 3 // 2004 // 10-2 // (No. 7)

No. 6 // 2012 // ?? // ??

No. 6 // 1967 // 7-4 // (Unranked)

No. 7 // 1982 // 11-1 // (No. 4)

No. 8 // 1969 // 5-5-1 // (Unranked)

Going from top ten to unranked is about as overrated as you can get.  Even Richt has managed to avoid that fate so far.

Name that caption: high five on the sideline

via Marc Weiszer

Maybe they’re congratulating themselves over this:

For the first time in their careers, inside linebackers Mike Gilliard and Christian Robinson go into a season with the same position coach they had the previous year.

Have at it in the comments.