Game day thoughts, paint it black edition

Look, it’s a late season cupcake game. Louisiana-Lafayette is Sagarin’s 135th rated team.  They have a losing record against a weak schedule.  If Georgia is on an upward trend as the last couple of weeks seem to indicate, then this should be a relatively easy win.

Obvious rebuttal:  Nicholls.  Yeah.  So, there’s that.  Which makes this week’s key to the game also obvious.  Show up, please.

The one weird thing I can’t help but note is a couple of statistics where the two teams couldn’t be much closer:  rushing defense, where ULL is 20th nationally and Georgia is 21st, and red zone defense, where Georgia is 123rd and ULL is, somewhat amazingly, even worse at 125th.  Together, those stats would suggest a certain approach on offense to me, but then again, I don’t embrace the notion of a Fabrisian challenge in the way that Smart and Chaney seem to at times.

Other than that, try not to get injured, Dawgs.

Consider this your game day thread.  I have to go get ready to leave now.

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Damn, it’s early.

This is how we motivate fans in an era when TV calls the shots.

Get up! It's game day. pic.twitter.com/zuAXg0DV2d

— Eleven Warriors (@11W) November 19, 2016

Get up. Wear black. It's Game Day. pic.twitter.com/bLHda0vuKA

— Georgia Bulldogs (@UGAAthletics) November 19, 2016

Believe it or not, those were back-to-back in my Twitter feed this morning.

I think I’m gonna roll over and go back to sleep now.

Your weekly non-Dawg game day post, 11/19 edition

Another Saturday when college football seems to be catching its breath, as there aren’t a lot of marquee matchups.

#2Ohio State

Michigan State

12:00 PM

Before the season started, most folks saw this as one of the key games of the year.  Now it’s just another opportunity for OSU to run up the score.

#23Florida

#16LSU

1:00 PM

Butch Jones wants you to know he’s totally disinterested in the outcome of this game.  Totally.

#22Washington State

#10Colorado

3:30 PM

Speaking of the preseason, anyone who claims they knew back then that this game would be of significance is FOS.

Missouri

#19Tennessee

3:30 PM

Fun thought:  what if Florida and Tennessee both lose today?

#9Oklahoma

#14West Virginia

8:00 PM

And, this, friends, is the highest rated meeting of the day.  Who says the Big 12 isn’t relevant this season?

Feel free to seek your own version of relevance in the comments.

Come for the jerseys. Stay for the football.

Just shoot me.  Now.

The excitement for an early kickoff usually just isn’t the same as the energy level for a game that starts later in the day. However, don’t expect a typically dull environment when UGA takes on Lousiana-Lafayette, because there’s a chance that UGA’s decision to wear its alternate uniform — black jerseys with red helmets and silver britches — will make this game feel like the kind of event fans want to leave a tailgate to attend.

Sadly, I think McGarity’s totally fine with that.

Musical palate cleanser, no mas edition

C’mon, 2016.  Enough’s enough.

Sharon Jones, the soul singer and powerful voice of the band the Dap-Kings, died on Friday of pancreatic cancer that had been in remission but returned last year. She was 60.

Ms. Jones’s death was confirmed by Judy Miller Silverman, her publicist. She said Ms. Jones was surrounded by members of the Dap-Kings and other loved ones when she died.

She continued performing throughout the summer, even while undergoing chemotherapy that she said caused neuropathy in her feet and legs and restricted her movements onstage. But Ms. Jones remained undeterred.

“Getting out on that stage, that’s my therapy,” Ms. Jones said in a New York Times interview published in July. “You have to look at life the way it is. No one knows how long I have. But I have the strength now, and I want to continue.”

The summer tour promoted “I’m Still Here,” a single with the Dap-Kings that detailed Ms. Jones’s birth in a brutally segregated South, a childhood in the burned-out Bronx, and a career hampered by record executives who considered her “too short, too fat, too black and too old.”

Ms. Jones was that rare music star who found fame in middle age, when she was in her 40s.

In addition to working as a correction officer at Rikers Island and an armed guard for Wells Fargo, Ms. Jones, who had grown up singing gospel in church choirs, initially dabbled in professional music as a session singer and the vocalist in a wedding band, Good N Plenty.

My favorite of hers, “100 Days, 100 Nights”:

Sigh.  This dying shit’s for the birds.