It’s Saturday in Athens!

Hell, even Charleston Southern deserves a game day post.

Feel free to say… something.

And then get ready to watch Missouri-Tennessee tonight along with everybody else.

Those of you going, have a fun day.  I’m out of here.

“I’m not sure that the Tech faithful quite understand it.”

Chantastic news!

Negotiations for an extension for Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson’s contract are underway, according to a representative for Johnson.

“We’re in discussions,” Atlanta-based attorney Jack Reale told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Friday. “We’ll see where they go.”

A major donor to the Tech athletics program and a friend of Johnson’s spoke with considerably more assurance about the likelihood of an extension.

“I’m confident that both sides are going to work together to get a deal in place that will keep Paul here well into the future, and he certainly deserves that,” Gregg Garrett said.

So does Georgia Tech.

And if the Tech faithful don’t understand it, trust me, that’s not a problem we in Dawgnation share.  We understand it just fine and couldn’t be happier for the genius.  Long may he run.

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The spirit of Jim Boeheim lives on in college football.

To what should be to no one’s surprises, plenty of college football coaches think that a four-team playoff isn’t big enough.  As soon as the playoffs expand to eight, they’ll be lobbying hard for sixteen (20% are already there, but it’s early).

Can you say job security?  I thought you could.

The WWL, taking sides?

Two ESPN talking heads get into a Twitter debate about evolution, but only one gets a suspension.  It’s the guy who defends the theory, which maybe isn’t such a surprise from the network that’s employed the likes of Lou Holtz and Craig James.  But you’d think it would make more sense to play it even-handed, no?

Best measuring stick evah

Introducing the Massey-Peabody Football rankings:

Each week, Cade Massey, from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, and Rufus Peabody, a Las Vegas sports analyst, rank all 128 college-football teams based off a mathematical model that takes only on-field performance into account. In other words, the model is purely objective and is stripped of outcome bias such as wins and losses, which are often the product of mere chance.  [Emphasis added.]

The model looks at four statistics to evaluate offenses and defenses—rushing, passing, scoring and how effectively the ball is advanced relative to down and distance. The data is adjusted for home field and game situation, and weighted by predictive ability. (For more information on their methodology, visit massey-peabody.com.)

Like the College Football Playoff committee’s rankings, the Massey-Peabody model factors in strength of schedule. Unlike the committee, the Massey-Peabody rankings also include preseason expectation, which has proven to have value when predicting team performance, even late in the season.

You know what happens when you strip wins and losses out of the equation?  Funny thing – Georgia comes out as the second-best team in the country.

Georgia ranks as the nation’s second-best team, according to Massey-Peabody, not Florida State. The model expects the Bulldogs (8-2) to beat the CFB average team by 25.5 points on a neutral field, and the Seminoles by slightly more than a field goal. To show just how well Georgia is playing, consider that last week they defeated the No. 9 Auburn, 34-7.

These guys could grow on me.