Taking my act on the road

I’m heading out for the Cocktail Party this morning, which means that posting, like my sobriety, will be sporadic at best.

Whether you’ll be down there with me, or watching the game from home, enjoy yourselves.  Injuries, mediocre records or whatever, it’s still one of the crown jewels of college football and we’re lucky enough to claim it for our own.

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A tale of two injury reports

Going down…

Last week Georgia’s injury report included 24 players, including 13 who had started at least one game. After Wednesday’s practice it was down to 12 players, five of whom have started at least one game.

And you have to be somewhat encouraged by this little stat:  “Harvey-Clemons and Matthews have only been on the field together for three games, the wins over South Carolina, North Texas and LSU.”

Meanwhile, Florida will have eight starters out with injuries.

“I think people like having one division.”

When it comes to giving the big schools more say in how they spend their money, “autonomy” is the new black.

It really doesn’t matter what kind of package they choose.  As Dennis Dodd sums it up, “Those [power] schools aren’t breaking away. They’re just not taking any more B.S. from Towson and Iona.”

Rip and run.

It’s thinking like this, that… well, gets you intercepted three times in a half.

“Let it rip, and give a guy a chance to make a play,” Bobo said. “If they make it they make it, if they don’t they don’t, we’ll line up and play the next play.”

Much of the reason for the conservative offense at Vanderbilt was the attrition at receiver. Quarterback Aaron Murray admitted before the game he was still developing a “trust” with the receivers now thrust into the rotation, and the trust still wasn’t there at Vanderbilt.

Of course, the receivers didn’t do a great job of getting open either. Still, Bobo appeared to be putting the onus on Murray, even if it means some gambling.

“We’ve gotta trust our guys running our routes, and we’ve gotta throw the ball with confidence,” Bobo said. “We can’t be afraid to make mistakes. It’s one thing I’ve been preaching the last week-and-a-half. I want us to let it rip. I don’t want to be afraid of making a mistake.”

That’s even against Florida’s talented secondary, which leads the SEC passing yards allowed, third-down defense, pass efficiency defense.

“We’re gonna have to be committed, and make plays. Believe in the plan, and cut it loose,” Bobo said. “And (Florida) is gonna make some (plays). But we can’t get discouraged, we’ve gotta keep playing.”

I’m the first to agree that the playcalling against Vandy was constipated, but there’s such a thing as overcompensating.  Then again, this could be Bobo’s way of playing mind games with the Gator defense.

In either event, I sure hope Todd Gurley has a helluva game.

Cast a wider net.

Georgia’s opened up the competition at punt snapper again.

Trent Frix and Nathan Theus are competing this week for the gig after punter Collin Barber couldn’t handle a high snap from Frix in the loss at Vanderbilt on a costly special teams blunder.

“We’ve kind of opened the competition back up and really analyzed what both those guys are doing,” said assistant coach John Lilly, who oversees the unit and makes the decision. “That’s the great thing about an open week. It gives you a little bit more time to work on some of those things. I think we’ve cleaned up maybe some of the techniques things that maybe could cause something to go awry. We’ll find out as we play the rest of the season.”

I don’t have a problem with competition, even this late in the season… but why stop at two?  If Tennessee could pull a place kicker in from a frat house, you’d think on a 30,000-plus person campus Lilly could find somebody to walk on and snap the ball.

Not such a bad place after all

Sounds like Mark Richt has gotten over his Jacksonville grudge:

“If you can’t get excited about playing Florida in that venue, you shouldn’t be a Bulldog. Period,” Richt said. “We all understand that. I think everybody is going to get their blood pumping for that.”

Some of us have said that all along.

I guess the weather and the travel don’t look as bad on the other side of 3-18.

More than meets the eye

Gregg Doyel has a good story about the 4-foot-9 player who got into a game for Rice last week.

(photo via Erick Williams/ Rice Sports Information)

He’s something of a freak – in a remarkably good way:

So does some other stuff. Like his dad, Jayson Carter is athletic enough to have excelled at three sports — football, baseball, track — at KIPP Charter School in Houston. He can bench press 315 pounds. He runs the 40-yard dash in 4.5 seconds. He has a 30-inch vertical leap.

His IQ is 169.

Read the whole thing.

It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you survive the game.

This is getting ridiculous.

Gators left tackle D.J. Humphries sprained the MCL in his left knee during Monday’s practice and will miss two to four weeks, coach Will Muschamp said Wednesday during the SEC teleconference.

Humphries, a 6-foot-5, 285-pound sophomore, started the season’s first six games, but was replaced in the starting lineup to open Florida Oct. 19 visit to Missouri following a poor performance a week earlier at LSU.

Nebraska transfer Tyler Moore, who has struggled this season, as well, will move from right tackle to left tackle to replace Humphries. Junior-college transfer Trenton Brown, who stands 6-foot-8 and weighs 361 pounds, will make his first college start at right tackle during Saturday’s matchup with Georgia.

Seriously, it’ll be worth applauding whatever kids are left standing on the field when the game’s over.

By the way, those of you concerned with a rash of trick plays and new schemes from the Gator offense should pay attention to the rest of the article.  Namely this:  “Quarterback Tyler Murphy has been sacked 10 times and hurried 13 times during losses at LSU and Missouri.”  Boom’s a lot more worried about keeping his quarterback upright than he is about installing that really neat halfback pass play.  Especially with two new/quasi-new faces on the offensive line, one of whom’s “struggled this season”.

This is shaping up to be one really ugly game.

Name that caption, heavy breathing edition

Via kleph, this is a beautiful thing to see.

Go get ’em, tigers.  Operators are waiting to receive your comments.

Conference expansion and game theory?

Jeebus, is there a more pompous twit in college athletics than Jim Delany?

During this relatively quiet time, the Big Ten began to analyze the college sports landscape and attempted to determine what was ahead of the curve that their rival conferences weren’t seeing. They played game theory and asked themselves what would be both the obvious and unintended consequences if they expanded again. They eventually came to the realization that there was far more risk in defending the status quo than being proactive and making a new acquisition. What might not have made a lot of sense fifteen years ago made imminent sense now. For the Big Ten, it became clear that it wasn’t a question of whether the conference should expand anymore, but rather what school they should add.

So that’s how you get to Maryland and Rutgers.