Your blogosphere at work

The University of Maryland hired a PR firm to influence public acceptance of its move to the Big Ten, in part by planting comments on message boards and blogs favoring the decision.

(h/t EDSBS)

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Damian Swann lays out the most succinct analysis of this year’s Georgia defense you’ll ever hear.

“Before we knew what we can do, it had started to become too late,” Swann said.

Pretty much sums things up to date, no?

Thursday morning buffet

The bits just keep on coming.

• “It’s a funky situation,” Mason said.
• Another players selling stuff story.
• Damian Swann admits his play has been affected by worrying about his surrounding secondary cast.
• Texas, TAMU just isn’t into you anymore.
• Honestly, I don’t get the Jeff Long love.
• Bill Connelly’s advanced stat breakdown of the Georgia-Florida game is interesting in a couple of ways.  Based on S&P+, Florida steadily declined while the game went on, but the Gators got back in the game because the bottom fell out for the Dawgs in the third quarter.  But check out how well Georgia played on third downs (unlike last year).
• Is this the best regular season Thursday night in college football history?  And, if so, is that by design or accident?

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“That’s part of coaching.”

Some of you are just gonna love this assessment.

Georgia isn’t ranked right now after coming within one play of reaching last season’s BCS championship game, but the Bulldogs have been anything but disappointing in the eyes of one NFL team’s scouting director.

The scouting director, who requested anonymity, believes the 5-3 Bulldogs have overachieved.

“They don’t have the draft-eligible players this year,” the scout said, “and when you actually look at it, it’s a credit to what their coaching staff has done. Their coaching staff lost nine guys on defense who are in the NFL, and they lost a couple of players on offense and then had all these injuries on offense, yet they’ve still gone out and won ball games. They haven’t won them all, but they’re winning games.

“I think the coaching staff has done a fantastic job there, and I see Georgia and LSU as having two of the best coaching jobs in the country considering all the players they lost in the draft.”

Of course, how can you take an anonymous opinion like that seriously?  It’s not like somebody posting a comment to a blog post.

Upon further review, Georgia-Florida

I finally got around to watching the replay last night.  A few things caught my eye:

• Wow, I didn’t realize how dominant the offensive line was in the first quarter.  Lee got much praise from Danielson, but I was impressed with Theus, who had some crushing blocks in the run game and generally held up in pass protection.  I think it’s safe to say the Kolton Houston experiment at right tackle is at an end, barring injury.
• I sensed as the second half wore on that Grantham dialed up more blitzes, but in retrospect he was blitzing pretty much out of the gate and on almost every play.  Yeah, he got burned on it a couple of times, most notably the two-point conversion, but you can’t say he wasn’t trying to bring pressure as much as he could.  Given the amount of time his defense was on the field in the second half, and how well his players did on Florida’s last series, maybe strength and conditioning isn’t quite the issue some of us think it is.
• Also, overall that may have been the most substituting Georgia’s done on defense all season.
• His final numbers may not show it, but Murray was sharp all game.  Drops, bobbles and receivers not always running the correct routes cost him.
• I have to admit the replay official did well.  I wouldn’t have overturned the Wooten bobble or the Lynch lateral either.  Not because the calls on the field were spot on – I think Wooten secured the ball with his left hand while still in bounds and I don’t see how the line judge had the proper angle to make the lateral call – but because they were so close and there really wasn’t anything clear on the replay to overturn the on-field rulings.  I wonder how the reviews would have been decided if the initial calls had gone the other way.
• Todd Gurley really gutted it out for his team in the fourth quarter.
• Those three key personal fouls on Florida looked even dumber on TV than they did live.  Solomon Patton must have been saving up all year since he got taken out of last year’s Cocktail Party with the busted arm.
• For all the flagging that officials do, it really amazes me how much holding by offensive linemen is tolerated these days.  At one point, Drew had each of his arms held out wide by two Florida players and… crickets.
• I thought Verne and Gary did okay.  Sure, they made some mistakes – although the most egregious of the day came from the production crew with the stat about the series leader – but they corrected most of those and overall did a good job tracking the ebb and flow of the game.  Danielson did a very good job showing what Georgia’s offensive line was doing well and both did nicely sending some deserved love McGowan’s way on that last drive.
• Boy, those Morgan field goal kicks looked solid.