If Tavarres King were a poll…

Georgia could claim a national title… or something.

“I think we were No. 1,” King said. “Georgia was about to win the SEC championship. The clock just ran out on us.

“I think we were the No. 1 team in the nation. I feel like we could play with anybody on any day at any time, and I feel like we showed that.

“Hats off to Alabama for winning the national title, but I feel like Georgia was right there. I feel like in the years to come, Georgia will be back in that position to win that game.”

The least they could do is display that crystal football in a couple of Georgia Walmarts.

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Happy Valley

I don’t know about you, but Oliver Stone would have been my first pick for this project.  Some paranoid conspiracy vibes could add just the right touch to the story.  Plus, football is a familiar subject for Stone and Pacino.

On the other hand, the movie gives De Palma the chance to bring an entirely new context to the phrase “say hello to my little friend“.

A-minus

We haven’t had a reader poll in a while, so I thought this Chris Low summary of Georgia’s season might serve as the inspiration for one:

If not for the no-show at South Carolina, this would be a solid A, even with some of the issues on defense. After all, the Bulldogs were a tipped pass away from playing for the national championship. It was their first 12-win season since 2002, and they won for the second straight year over Florida — the first time that’s happened since Georgia won three in a row over the Gators in 1987-89. Yes, it’s frustrating to get so close to playing for college football’s top prize and only have a Capital One Bowl trophy to show for it. And, yes, some Georgia fans (a loud minority) remain convinced that Mark Richt isn’t the answer. But when you win 12 games, play in the SEC championship game, finish in the top 5 in the polls and beat your most heated rival, the season is a success by any standard. GRADE: A-

Quite simply, agree or disagree?  Flesh out your opinion in the comments.

Another bullet for the pistol

Georgia incorporated the pistol set into its offense last season and one thing Aaron Murray said he wants to work on this offseason is his running.  Both are good reasons to take a look at this interview with Chris Ault, the father of the pistol (h/t Chase Stuart), about the success San Francisco is having with the pistol this season using Ault’s former quarterback, Colin Caepernick Kaepernick.

Tell me this doesn’t sound like something Bobo could cobble together with existing personnel:

… Everybody thinks the pistol is just a read, but the pistol is a formation. And from that formation, if you’re a power offense, you can run the power. If you’re a counter offense, you can run the counter. It’s not just a read offense. I think the read offers another dimension to it, but it’s really a versatile formation.

Q: How similar is what you did at Nevada to what Chip Kelly is doing at Oregon?

Ault: Chip and those guys, they have the back offset. He’s not behind the quarterback. So their first base play is an outside zone play, a sweep-type action. Whereas our first base play is an inside zone and that sets up the read and the play-action pass off it. Really two different offenses, Chip’s and ours.

Ault believes a little bit of read goes a long way towards helping the play-action, and vice versa.

… I’m not here to tell you that the 49ers should run the read 16, 17 times a game. You can’t do that in the NFL. But I think by running the read play, it’s in your offensive system and you’re going to run it five times, nine times a game, it’s one more thing you’ve got to defend. And then when you throw the play-action pass off it, that’s another thing. So it’s not just one dimension that you’ve got to look at, it’s a couple of things. You see Kaep run that 56-yard touchdown, and you say, great, that’s the read option. And it is great. But I think one of the things that set that up was a couple of the play-action passes out of the pistol.

Gurshall and Murray on the read option three or four times a game.  Tantalizing, no?

Team 117

Every recent Tennessee head coach has (or had) a schtick:  Junior had a plan to be the biggest dick on the block; SOD, with the snappy pants and emphasis on shower hygiene, was into personal grooming; and Butch Jones seems to have a thing for cryptic slogans.

In case you missed, the 2013 version of the Tennessee Vols football team is Team 117.

Or, in Twitter parlance, #Team117.

Players started promoting the slogan shortly after an initial team meeting last week. After some initial confusion, the meaning was clear: This is the 117th installment of Tennessee football.

Glad they cleared that up.  The players probably thought it was a reference to last year’s defensive ranking.  Alas, that would have meant calling the Vols Team 110.