The other side of don’t get too comfortable, Hutson.

So this quarterback controversy? meme is a thing, I guess.

If I might offer a “whoa, hoss!” before it goes scampering off in the sunset, consider the following:

• The defense, while no great shakes, isn’t any worse than it was last year.
• Special teams, the other great black hole of 2013, have improved and to the extent that other teams are having to game plan around Georgia’s return game.
• Even with an anemic passing attack, Georgia is scoring at a pace better than eight points a game more than last season and is eighth in the country in scoring offense.

Put that all together and what have you got?  You’ve got a remaining schedule for which ESPN projects Georgia will be favored in every game for the rest of the regular season.  That’s not a situation where you say screw it, let’s get one of the back up quarterbacks ready for next year.

Hutson Mason had a bad game… check that, Mason had a bad half.  You don’t toss him to the side on such a slight body of work.  You work to get his game fixed.  If it can’t be fixed, well, then, it’s not like the back ups are going anywhere this season.  But the idea that a change needs to happen now, damn it?  In the immortal words of Mike Tyson, that’s ludicwus.

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Dave Brandon’s finally found something to energize Michigan students about the football program.

Unfortunately for him, it’s Dave Brandon.

A new way to pay for four hot dogs and four cokes

Of course Georgia Tech is doing this.  At least it’ll give all those game-playing kids something to spend their virtual earnings on.  And on Tech’s end, I’m sure everything will be just Chantastic.

The Mumme Poll sheds a few pounds and reports for duty.

Yep.

We’re back.  Tidefan and I have a new Mumme Poll for you.  We’ve outlasted the relevancy of the Coaches Poll.  Now we’re going toe-to-toe with the playoff selection committee.  We’re taking your votes to compile a four-team playoff pool.

The new ballot process is even simpler than the old one.  All you have to do is pick the eight best college football teams in America.  No rankings.  No tiebreakers.  That’s it.

Besides that, there are only the three same old rules to live by:

1. Registration. To cast a ballot, you’ll need to register at the Mumme Poll site.  Registration for the 2014 season will be open until midnight, October 10th.
2. Voting period. In most weeks, balloting takes place at any time between 9:00 A.M. on the Sunday after the games and 9:00 P.M. on the following Monday.  On those rare weeks when a Sunday game is played, the voting will be pushed back 24 hours.
3. The one commandment. Don’t try to game the system. Don’t subvert the vote by submitting a ballot with your favorite school and the seven worst teams in D-1, for example.  The ballots are monitored and if something questionable comes up, a voter will be given a chance to explain.  If we’re convinced there’s a deliberate effort to muck things up, we’ll toss the ballot and the voter.

To make life even easier, Tidefan preserved all previous users, so if a voter had an account before, he/she can use it again. There is a “Forgot my Password” function if anyone needs to re-up.

We’re mid-week, so we’ll use Week Six voting as a test run, to make sure there aren’t any kinks on our end or yours.  Please sign up and take part.  Tell your college football fan friends about it.  The more, the merrier.

If you have any questions, let us know in the comments.

 

If I’m gonna go down, you’re gonna come with me.

As I wrote in one of my Power Poll ballots, meet the new offensive coordinator, same as the old offensive coordinator.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. On Tuesday, Florida offensive coordinator Kurt Roper said he and Will Muschamp are on the same page. Despite looking horrendous offensively against Alabama two weeks ago, Roper and Muschamp are standing arm in arm. As a matter of historical context, I’d refer you to this story from late last season where Brent Pease said essentially the same thing. A week later he was fired. Now I’m not saying Roper is going to suffer the same fate, nor should he. But isn’t this too early for votes of confidence and closing of the ranks? Much like the product on the field, it’s not a good look for the Gators.

Boom can’t do offense.  That’s not a good characteristic for a Florida head coach.

Finally, some Florida ticket news

I notice that some of you keep wondering when the cutoff scores for Florida tickets will be announced.  Well, wonder no more.

Georgia versus Florida (determined 9/30)

• Club Level: All donors who ordered with 62,001 priority points or higher will receive tickets.

• Regular: All donors who ordered with 9,633 priority points or higher will receive tickets.

• Florida tickets will mail by Monday, October 6th

A banner month

As far as traffic goes, two things sell really well around here:  happy times and coordinator changes.  Last September was the first time GTP cracked the half million hits/month barrier; second best month at the blog was this past January, when… well, you know what.

Since Pruitt’s still here, I guess this past month has to qualify as more happy times, as GTP celebrates a new traffic record:  564,621.  That’s almost 19,000 hits a day.  I used to go entire months without seeing that much traffic.

Thanks to all the regulars and not-so-regulars for dropping in.  Hope you’ll stick with it.  And I hope the program has more happy times in store for us.

Don’t get too comfortable, Hutson.

Your head coach is being coy.

This week, however, Richt isn’t ruling out using a backup quarterback to spell Hutson Mason. He’s not ruling it in either. His comments are rather oblique.

Asked Tuesday whether there was any plan to play Brice Ramsey in Saturday’s game, Richt answered: “A plan to? I don’t know. We’re just practicing everybody as usual and we’ll figure that out Thursday night as we talk.”

A night earlier, Richt answered a fan question about a quarterback rotation by saying: “That’s been done before. And there’s always the possibility for that.”

The most notable time it was done before was when David Greene was the starter and D.J. Shockley his top backup. It was mostly a success, and not done because Greene was struggling. Greene was actually very consistently good, but Shockley was a skilled talent as well and it was a way to get him experience.

“I was used to doing it at Florida State and then when I got here we did it with Shock because that’s kind of what I was used to doing,” Richt said. “But I don’t think Mike (Bobo) felt quite as strong about it so we kind of got away from it. But it’s not a bad thing to do.”

And the guy who’s game planning against you this week doesn’t think you’re any better than the true freshman he’s been trotting out – the one who went 8-of-25 for 85 yards with three interceptions in his last start and currently sports a passer rating of 74.04.

Those are not the sounds of people who are wowed by your performance to date.

The continuing saga of settling it on the field

I don’t know if this is a matter of semantics, or if these guys are serious about the distinction, but the selection committee continues its weekly mission of making me scratch my head.

In wide-ranging interviews with four committee members last week — Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long, Clemson athletic director Dan Radakovich, Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez and former NCAA executive vice president Tom Jernstedt — none cared to compare conferences.

“At this point in the process, I don’t think in terms of conference strength,” Long said. “I think at the end of the day that’s something we’ll look back on and say [how relevant conference strength was.] … The balloting process we do will compare teams against each other and who they’ve played, and I think that’s less about conference than it is who they’ve played, even within a conference.”

Jernstedt agreed.

“I don’t think there’s any need to make a judgment as to this conference is better than that conference,” he said. “You sit there and evaluate this team versus that team. Our obligation is to select the four best teams.”

If the SEC West plays out as the meat grinder it appears to be and those schools eat each other while continuing to destroy outside competition (no SEC West team has a loss outside the division yet), how is the strength of the conference not relevant to the selection committee’s deliberations?

Well, if the committee members are concerned about something other than spreading the wealth around to the power conferences, that is.

Vanderbilt: second key

It ain’t rocket science.

#Vandy's Mason: "You can't let Gurley beat you. You've got to let their QB beat you."

— Adam Sparks (@AdamSparks) September 30, 2014

That doesn’t mean he’s going to succeed, either.