As you’ll see, it’s never too early to assess the 2015 season.
- The most eloquent argument against the CFP you’ll read today: “To the speaker, I just want to point out I said there are going to be some things that we agree on…”. Gah.
- If Obama really wants to worry about doing right by college athletics, he ought to start by reading this.
- Jerry Palm is bummed that the postseason field won’t be bigger soon.
- The NCAA is thwarted in its attempt to get its hot little hands on the Penn State penalty money. Again.
- Georgia finishes ninth in the AP and Coaches Polls. And sixth in the Massey Football Ranking Composite. Hey, realists, does that make the 2014 Dawgs the worst top ten team of all time?
- ESPN’s “experts” project the 2015 playoff field. (David Hale shows a little Dawg love.)
- Team Speed Kills shows you where SEC recruiting stands a month out from signing day.
- Speaking of signing day, it sounds like the Conference Commissioners Association is close to recommending an early signing day for college football, probably in mid-December.
- ESPN’s first SEC Power Rankings of 2015 have the Dawgs on top.
- And on the seventh day, ESPN rested: “Ohio State’s 42-20 victory over Oregon at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas – generated a 18.5 overnight rating, the highest metered market ever for ESPN according to Nielsen.“
- If you’re still interested in this kind of stuff, here’s Mark Schlabach’s first crack at a top 25 for 2015.
- Loran Smith, of all people, asks the obvious about player compensation: “If the institutions are greedy and their coaches are greedy, why shouldn’t the players be?”
- Non-football, but Benjamin Franklin wanted to do something about farting. Really.
Get The Picture 
back-to-back posts with fart references?? cheeky!
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I like to make sure my readership knows which way the wind is blowing. 😉
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The answer my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, the answer is blowin’ in the wind …
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In regards to farting,flatulence and Beano I have ask myself ,”What would Howie say?”
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You’ve been holding that one in your back pocket
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I guess I qualify as a realist. It makes them the biggest underachiever of Richt’s tenure. They had the second best (possibly best) team in the SEC this year and failed to even win their division. I do not agree with your assessment that this season needs to be judged based on what happens the next couple of years. Whether they move backward or forward in the years to come, this season was a wasted opportunity.
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Bigger than the 2008 team? Not in my book.
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Any time you lose to Tech qualifies as a grossly underwhelming under-achiever.
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For all the hype, I don’t think the 2008 team was as good as this one.
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Are you kidding me? The 2008 team had better talent across the board (except running back and maybe the offensive line) than this team did. The problem was it had the village idiot as defensive coordinator in Willie Martinez.
Stafford > Mason
Moreno, King, Samuel Conley, Bennett, Mitchell
2008 o-line 2014 d-line
Curran, Dent, Battle, Houston = Floyd, Carter, Jenkins, Herrera, Wilson
2008 secondary (except for Evans) > 2014 secondary (significantly improved during the year)
Walsh Barber
Prince Miller, Asher Allen = McKenzie
Ramarcus Brown < Gurley, McKenzie, Michel
The talent at QB by itself makes the 2008 team better on offense. I could make the case the defenses were similar, but I give the edge to the 2008 talent. If Jeremy Pruitt coached the 2008 talent, that defense would have been off the charts.. Special teams were a wash.
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This year’s offensive line was significantly better than the 2008 offensive line. The skill talent at QB and receiver were better in 2008, and that’s about it. I’d call the defensive talent roughly a wash. And I do not think Stafford was a good enough player to say that his presence alone made that offense better.
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The NFL guys would beg to differ about Stafford. He was a much better QB overall than Mason. If Stafford had the 2014 line with some type of relief for Moreno, that offense would have been absolutely explosive.
Also, remember Trinton Sturdivant blew out his knee the 2nd practice of the fall and never was the same player. That line suffered because Stafford didn’t have him protecting the blind side.
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Also, special teams was vastly superior last year, and they had good turnover luck.
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The stats really are a wash on special teams other than returns for scores. If you start at #1, appear on the cover of SI and finish around #10 with 3 face-plant losses, your team is the biggest underachiever.
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Agree to an extent. 2008 team never played to its gifts, whereas 2014 one did so in most of the games. Maybe 2014 team’s losses trump the 2008 losses – particularly with the returning talent on 2008’s offense. Nothing close to CUM Gators in the 2014 SECE though.
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Both teams lost to GT. And the other two losses in ’08 were blow outs.
Considering the wealth of talent, especially on offense, it was a very disappointing season in which Georgia was a preseason #1.
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+1, Senator
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Jeez, this is like debating the smell of chicken shit to turkey shit. It really doesn’t matter….they both stink.
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If you want to see underachieving look at 1999 and 2000. That’s underachieving. Luckily it’s in the past. Some of us remember pre-cmr days and it wasn’t pretty.
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This. Richt-coached teams have disappointed us plenty but we’re usually surprised to be disappointed by them. We expected to be disappointed prior to his arrival in Athens.
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Partisan and political considerations always intrude when government “fixes” any problem.
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In other news, the sun rose in the east this morning.
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True. But folks always want government fixes.
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Well there’s always the invisible hand of the market to fix things…damned if you do…
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except in regard to health care
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Alot of love for Auburn in that 2015 CFP poll. I don’t get it either.
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It’s the “Boom!” effect.
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Agreed. Total head scratcher.
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Yeah, a good idea there:
Let’s tip at least 20% of the Gross Revenues to the players.
Bottom line – What the NCAA wants is an exemption for illegal actions. Sheesh
In all the world, the only people who don’t own their own signature are kids and Muslim women.
And the University President’s offices are supposed to be Bastions of higher thought and service to to the young next generation.
Like my dear old Dad used to say – If you screw with the laws of Physicas or Human Nature – You are the one who ends up getting screwed. The whole sordid truth is the simply the GREED of the University Presidents.
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Can someone explain why the Championship game was not played on Friday night? ESPN would probably get 25% more viewers.
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Because no one watches TV on a Friday night? I watch more TV than most, but I haven’t watched it on a Friday in years.
BTW, I heard on the radio that the CFP broadcast was the highest rated cable broadcast ever, topping the final episode of the Sopranos.
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I would watch the National Championship game on Friday night….and might even be able to stay awake the entire game.
Other than sports, I rarely watch anything live anyways. DVR is a wonderful thing.
I agree, the Monday date absolutely sucks for watching, travel, etc…
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This is an eye opener! Look at FLorida’s D and look at ours.
Offense wins games? I hope Bobo left CBS a box of crayons. Just in case.
http://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/sec-football/sec-teams-ranked-by-defensive-points-per-possession/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
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Maybe I’m missing something here, but I don’t get why being 29th nationally should put us in panic mode. Sure, I’d like to see improvement over that next season, but it’s not exactly awful.
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Clemson gets 5 votes? I closed the page when I noticed that one.
You could put a poll up among GTP posters (take the most prolific 30 for instance) and ask who will be in the playoffs. It would be more honest and accurate than that one is.
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Why is Clemson getting into the playoff such a crazy proposition? The 2014 team was pretty dang good. They gave Georgia all we wanted in the first game through about three and a half quarters in the opener on a hot night in Athens. They went to overtime in Tallahassee and lost to the same Georgia Tech team we did. They also absolutely throttled Oklahoma in a bowl game without Deshaun Watson. They were 10-3 this year and all three losses came on the road against teams ranked in the Top Ten in the final AP Poll.
They’ll probably have the best quarterback in the ACC and they get Georgia Tech, Florida State, and Notre Dame at home. Their only tough road games are at South Carolina and at Louisville… and who knows how tough those games will actually be? Other than that, it’s the weak ACC. They’ve got a great chance to be a double digit win team in 2015.
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I agree with you. I think Clemson with Watson is a strong team. Hopefully for their sake with Morris gone they won’t line up in Shotgun with 4 WRs to run the ball on 4th and 1 like they did against FSU.
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I think they will be the best in the ACC based on what we know at this point, but I don’t see them being among the 6-7 best teams in the country. Of course you don’t have to be since there is a vote to squeeze five champions down to fit the four spots. We saw that in the ACC this year, I don’t think FSU was among the Top 10 in 2014 but they managed to go unbeaten. Clemson could do that next year, still wouldn’t make them an elite team.
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UGA also finished 3 spots higher than their preseason ranking.
Any season where we beat Auburn is a good one for me.
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any season we lose to tech is a disaster
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Wow, Patrick Hruby, kicking ass and attributing…course he’s just a blogger, so its not real journalism, which is dead. 🙂
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The Coalition of the Willing to Save Management gets out of the boat because if a most deserving to look at sport like women’s volleyball can’t be saved by President Carebear, Agent Orange and the evildoers in Congress, at least the groundwork can be laid to save it under the next Administration
https://mobile.twitter.com/billmon1/status/554771591838851072/photo/1
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Since sports ranking is a heavy theme this morning, what is the NCAA’s record in federal court?
Not very good?
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I saw that Alabama finished number 1 in four of the computer indices. Count it as another national championship for Nick Saban! 🙂
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I would not be a bit surprised to see that happen years down the road when this season is a distant memory.
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Pretty sure that is AU’s M.O, not UA’s.
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No, actually. Bama claims 5 NC’s that are not legit or by some revisionist poll. Don’t know why they feel the need to do this because they still have 10 titles that are some combination of AP, UPI, or BCS. Finebaum actually needles them for claiming one in a year they didn’t even win the SEC. Now, as usual, little brother is trying to keep up by forming a committee to ” study” the possibility of awarding themselves a few revisionist titles. What’s hilarious is the barn wants to claim a title for 1993, when they were on probation and not SEC or bowl eligible, then turn around and claim 2004 by reason of USC later being put on probation for that season.
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Right. Bama started it. Auburn caught it from Bama.
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I consider our #9 ranking a dubious honor since we didn’t even win our division. Are we the worst top 10 team of all time? It just gives the impression we must have been in a tough division, which is the opposite of the truth.
On the good side, the recruiting couldn’t be going much better than it is. Several already in school!
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That opening paragraph is startling, even for some in this group, must have been an attempt at humor. You may want to go back and review a few of those and see how feeble a shot that was. We weren’t even close to the worst in this year’s Top 10, much less others. Headline readers, in this case W/L record, can be an extremely misleading.
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I guess I wasn’t clear. Bluto’s question was “Are we the worst top 10 team of all time?”. I’d answer NO. But this final ranking is just another Miss Congeniality award for a candidate that didn’t win her own state’s pageant.
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I did misread that, and the answer is a resounding “no” to that question. Not the worst this year, and certainly not “of all time”. The years are filled with badly ranked football teams. Just follow the ebb and flow of teams shooting up and down the chart as each week unfolded this past season. These pollsters are the most over reactive followers in all of CFB. How many times did we see teams rocket up or get “elite” accolades from the press to see them crash and burn in this season alone. Truth is, there is rarely a clearly defined “best” in CFB, and this year proves it in spades. Look at that Top 10 and show me someone that could have walked in the other guys’ cleats for the season and not seen different results. I can cite many inconsistent results for over half of the teams ranked there, including UGA, Ohio, Bama, FSU, etc.
Fans get so much in a twit over rankings, but a couple of plays either way for all those teams and we would have totally different results. It was a pretty good year for us, and we had some disappointments, but this wasn’t a bad team at all, it was a dangerous team that had flaws and missed out on execution on a couple of plays or the mood would be totally different. Most years see similar things happen.
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The founding college of UGA was the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. After reading Mr. Franklin you can understand why the founders of UGA named it after him, makes you proud to be a Dawg.
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I thought the founders did it because Ben rocked several pseudonyms and a lot of ladies
http://mentalfloss.com/article/29762/10-ben-franklins-lesser-known-feats-awesomeness
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I have a copy of that treatise written by Dr. Ben. The title was “On Farting” and it was written seriously as a scientific endeavor. The only progress we’ve had since then is a new bathroom deodorizer called “Poofume”.
My idea for poo fumes is to make it smell like booze. Not by consumption as much as packing a mini-still into the intestines: Consume a pill packed with good flora you would use to make yogurt; next consume a half quart of yogurt and milk laced with one cup of sugar and one block of yeast ; eat two soy burgers and two hotdogs packed with cole slaw plus one bowl of cherries fermented in cognac. Distillation is rather immediate and the first products will be gas and alcohol that will build up over a couple of hours. Please be prepared for the gas to pass thru the flatulent stages of cheesesqeaker; churchsneaker ; rip; roar; rattle and tear-ass (I particularly have fun with the last stages of flatulence by moving to the porch swing, letting the curious rubber-necking chickens gather by the screen and erupting with a big one to watch the chickens leap cackeling and screaming in imitation of a quail-flush horror show).
Stoke the reaction by drinking (at 15-min intervals) a few dark yeoman beers that you can obtain from Trader Joes. If your ears can take it, you can begin the process with a lava tiva or a colon cleansing. That provides more space for flatulence such that sometimes you could swear there is an echo. It most certainly will bring tears to your eyes. The smell is reminiscent of walking within 100yds of an undiscovered corn liquor still. And if any of you ever went exploring in the country in So Ga, you know what that smell is like.
Even the hair on your tongue hurts the next day. Forget-me-nots keep exiting next day that smell strongly of barroom carpeting after a big UGA celebration. Perhaps someday we can get them to smell like lilacs, but if its all the same to you, using sweet-smelling “Poofumes” just make them sickening. I’ve installed larger bathroom fans. Plus sleeping on the porch and waking up to the chickens for two days is an added hardship to making farts smell better.
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That’s gold, Cojones.
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Seems these preseason picks are the kiss of death. I’m guessing you can count on TCU and USC not being there. Funny that Schlabach put TCU and Baylor in there with no SEC team.
Aschoff should be put on probation for putting ND in there. Hale on the other hand is brilliant.
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Franklin also wanted the American national symbol to be a turkey. He swung and missed on occasion.
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If he had succeeded, we would then enjoy eating eagle for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And they only have white meat on the neck and head. Then some marketing guru would run ospreys in on us as young eagles that have a lot of white meat.
Just when I was starting to get used to wiping my ass with spotted owls.
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I never understand which polls are ranking these teams (attempting to anyway) by: 1) who they feel are the best, 2.) how they feel they will be ranked in the AP/Coach’s Polls at the beginning of the season, 3) how they will be ranked when the final Committee ranking comes out or, 4) how they will finish after the bowls and playoff games are over. It makes a huge difference as to how you rank them, and even then it is not to be taken seriously once play begins.
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It helps in keeping your place up high in the rankings when you lose a game , especially to a higher-ranked team. Last year we fell and rose by 9 spaces at a time while the pundits tried to keep us in contention, knowing we had a good team. If you are up there at the beginning of these fake “rankings”, you don’t have as much ground to make up as when you are salted at #20 to begin with. If you ever give one iota of respectability to these preseason “rankings”, you are in for a big letdown. Did anyone notice that 42 out of 43 ESPN writers picked Bama over tOSU? And most picked Ore to win in the final game. They don’t know crap about these teams and they keep pushing the Oracle button like kids.
The only Oracle we know here at gtp is Cgpeltier.
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The one reply to the great article on the push by the NCAA for the government to help the poor downtrodden NCAA was telling. What about the schools that can’t afford to pay the players. Well maybe just maybe they should consider the UAB route and pull the plug. In reality football teams and basketball teams are now more for fund raising and alumni milking than they are about student athletics. The schools offer PE classes to help the bodies of the student body, only the Military Academies require participation in organized sports. Failing the interference by the Regents (see Alabama) the Alumni will either support a team or not. The market used to be the Alumni now it is ESPN, NBC and CBS, that my friends is a business not a not-for-profit university. Make the bastards pay taxes on their unrelated business income and have the IRS raise the issue of unreasonable compensation and listen to them scream.
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In regards to the recruiting rankings. Can anyone explain to me how UT has more commits,more 4 or 5 stars athletes,higher percentage of elite recruits but finishes behind us in the Eastern division rankings? Does mean the rest of the class is bunch of 1 or 2 star athletes?
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