The crowd was in an ugly mood.

The Vandy game time has been set.

UGA-Vanderbilt will be a night game on Sept. 22, kicking off at 7:45 p.m. and being televised by ESPN2, the SEC has announced.

— Dawgs247 (@Dawgs247) September 10, 2012

All day tailgating and James Franklin’s first trip to Athens.  What could possibly go wrong with that combination?

If the SEC really wants to guarantee a special evening, I’d suggest assigning Penn Wagers’ crew to the game.

Advertisement

George Will: “Progressives saw football as training managers for the modern regulatory state.”

I wish I were shitting you here, but sadly, I’m not.

College football became a national phenomenon because it supposedly served the values of progressivism, in two ways. It exemplified specialization, expertise and scientific management. And it would reconcile the public to the transformation of universities, especially public universities, into something progressivism desired but the public found alien. Replicating industrialism’s division of labor, universities introduced the fragmentation of the old curriculum of moral instruction into increasingly specialized and arcane disciplines. These included the recently founded social sciences — economics, sociology, political science — that were supposed to supply progressive governments with the expertise to manage the complexities of the modern economy and the simplicities of the uninstructed masses.

Football taught the progressive virtue of subordinating the individual to the collectivity. Inevitably, this led to the cult of one individual, the coach. Today, in almost every state, at least one public university football coach is paid more than the governor.

And Babe Ruth was famously paid more than the President of the United States, George.

This is some bizarre stuff.  For one thing, as Jonathan Chait notes, it’s not exactly like college football thrives in progressive hot beds.  In fact, the reality is pretty much the opposite of that.  For another, if you want to talk about sports and the modern regulatory state, you would find a better example of that with Will’s beloved professional baseball, which is chock full of examples such as public financial support of stadiums, a sweeping antitrust exemption and the Supreme Court-supported reserve clause (now discarded).  Not to mention that whole Red Sox-Yankees thing.

Face it, George Will thinks you’re all a bunch of pinkos for reading this blog.

(h/t Ed Kilgore)

In a shocking development…

Jarvis Jones is named the SEC Defensive Player of the Week.

In his last sixteen games, he is averaging more than a sack a game and one and a half TFLs per game.  That’s dominance.

Does Marshall Morgan have a girl friend?

If not, maybe given this, Mark Richt should be paying more attention to this comment:

“The extra point I just went really fast, didn’t want to get it blocked. Last week I had a slower get-off time. So my, Adam Erickson my holder, Ty Frix my snapper, we were working on speeding up my get-off time. My 52-yarder, my get-off time I felt good about it. I guess I got off too fast on my extra points. Then I was very happy to make that 41-yarder.”

By the way, if you haven’t heard, it appears Blair Walsh isn’t having woman problems in Minnesota.

Monday morning buffet

College football nourishment to start your week.

• Reading between the lines, it seems that CBS is less enthused about the SEC’s new TV deals than Mike Slive is.
• Never give up, Mark Bradley.  Never.
• Good on ‘ya, Troy Calhoun.  Every coach voting should be doing that.
• No, this isn’t the header for a Bleacher Report post.  But it feels like one.
• Some Georgia fans are worried that Missouri fans may be too nice for the SEC.
• The Big Ten’s bad week is summarized here.
• Arkansas fans know whom to blame for the disastrous loss to UL-M.
• A study suggests that any school that sees a jump of five wins or more in a season from its football program reaps big gains in donations and the quality of incoming students.
• Noted truth teller Chuck Oliver suggests that the Auburn coaches have settled on a strategy of letting Kiehl Frazier take his lumps in hopes of getting better.  Occam’s Razor suggests that Clint Moseley’s shoulder problems are very, very severe.
• More touchback percentage data.
• Erk Russell to the big screen.  I wonder how they tell the part about Georgia screwing up his hire after Dooley resigned.

Fabris Invitational results, Week 2

Congrats to rossoglesby, who ripped a 9-1 record this week to stand alone at the top of the pick ’em mountain.

Standings for Week 2
Rank	Selection	Adj Scores	Picks Edit	W-L	Pts	Tie Breaker WA – LSU 3 – 41	Tie Breaker Winner
1	rossoglesby’s picks			9-1	9	7-45
2	weasom’s picks			8-2	8	12-43
2	beussetd’s picks			8-2	8	14-45
2	Tnt2010’s picks			8-2	8	3-35
2	By Georgia we did it’s picks			8-2	8	10-35
2	carchasingdawg’s picks			8-2	8	10-48

There’s a nine-way tie in the cumulative standings.

Overall Standings Through Week 2
Rank	Selection	W-L	Pts	Tie Breaker Winner
1	reipar’s picks	13-7	13
1	wncdawg’s picks	13-7	13
1	monteithdawg’s picks	13-7	13
1	rossoglesby’s picks	13-7	13
1	Tnt2010’s picks	13-7	13
1	By Georgia we did it’s picks	13-7	13
1	carchasingdawg’s picks	13-7	13
1	jadams4148’s picks	13-7	13
1	rosey1’s picks	13-7	13

And, no, you don’t need to ask me how my week went. I’m just laying low for now.

My SEC Power Poll ballot, Week 2

I learned a fair amount about the SEC this past weekend – more than I expected, to be honest.

1. Alabama.  Can a crushing be workmanlike?
2. LSU.  Seal-clubbed Washington.  Can we just skip to November 3rd and be done with it?
3. Georgia.  You can explain most of the gap between the Dawgs and the two teams in front of them in two words:  offensive lines.
4. South Carolina.  Gamecocks score on a 51-yard touchdown pass with 54 seconds left in the game to win by 38.  That’s my Spurrier!
5. Tennessee.  It looks like the annual meteor game with the Gators is setting up nicely.
6. Florida.  I’ve still got questions about the offense, but the defense put on a clinic on how to shut down an Air Raid attack in the second half.
7. Mississippi State.  I thought about ranking them higher, but I’m beginning to think that beating Auburn may not be much of an accomplishment this year.
8. Missouri.  Clearly showed they were competitive, but if the Tigers can’t fix things on the offensive line, it’s going to be a rougher year than they expected.
9. Texas A&M.  Yep, the good teams play defense for four quarters in the SEC, Aggies.
10. Arkansas.  Arkansas’ poor defense wasn’t a surprise.  Letting Tyler Wilson get pounded by a Sun Belt defense was.  Have fun with the boys from Tuscaloosa this week, fellas.
11. Auburn.  The reason I rank them lower than Arkansas?   Neither has a defense, but at least the Hogs have a quarterback.
12. Vanderbilt.  It’s starting to look like a one step forward, two steps back kind of year for the Commodores.
13. Ole Miss.  Can you guess who leads the SEC in total offense after two games?  Guess who won’t by the end of the year.
14. Kentucky.  Thank heaven for out of conference games.