Don’t ever change, Booch.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s asking to be mocked.

Jones on this senior class: "They’ve won the biggest championship – that’s the championship of life”

— Rocky Top Insider (@rockytopinsider) November 21, 2016

As I just tweeted, he’s like Mark Richt without the SEC championships.

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Get ‘yer Hate Week on, day one.

It’s Georgia Tech time, peeps.  I don’t have time for any of you weenies who express the thought that this rivalry’s time has passed.  Beating the Jackets has never lost its spice for me and if it ever did, that would be the time to plant my sorry ass in the ground.

In the meantime, to get things started, I’ll have a daily refresher on why my point of view about the game is the only proper one for a Georgia fan to have.

Today’s reminder is about the sorriest aspect of the genius’ offense.

The Bulldogs again are preparing for Tech’s triple-option offense, and all those cut blocks that come with it.

“I’m definitely not excited about playing against cut-blocking,” Bulldogs junior outside linebacker Davin Bellamy said after Saturday’s 35-21 victory against Louisiana-Lafayette. “Playing this offense is going to take a lot of discipline.”

The Bulldogs and Yellow Jackets are both 7-4 this season, with Georgia having won three straight games and Georgia Tech two.

Before their game two years ago in Athens, then-Bulldogs defensive lineman Ray Drew said he liked cut-blocking “as much as a cat likes a tub of water…”

They ain’t wrong.  Neither was Jordan Jenkins.

“As a defensive player you can’t really get up and get excited to play a team like Georgia Tech,” Jenkins said. “That offense sucks for you. There’s a chance you might get hurt. There’s a chance you’re going to be bruised up, banged up afterward. It’s not a type of offense you get excited to play. That’s why it attributes to the hate a lot of Georgia players have for Tech.”

While you’re getting in the right mood, never forget charming moments like this one.

The meaning of meaningless

I’ve got a follow up to my posts last week about the inevitability of postseason expansion.  Some of the comments I read in response harped on how the regular season is already meaningless for many football teams, so it’s irrelevant to argue that a larger playoff will render college football’s regular season less meaningful.

I say this with a total lack of snark:  I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Yes, the typical Sun Belt team enters each season with vastly different hopes and goals than Alabama does.  And that couldn’t be less relevant to the point I made.

What is relevant is the example set by Louisville’s loss to Houston last week.  In the BCS world, of course, that game wouldn’t have had an impact on the championship picture because Petrino’s team would have already played its way out.  It was a relevant game in a four-team playoff setting.  In a run towards an eight-team playoff, it would have left Louisville gasping for air and hoping for a little help.  In a sixteen-team playoff world, it wouldn’t have had the slightest impact on Louisville’s playoff hopes.

When I talk about playoff expansion devaluing the regular season, that’s exactly what I mean.  Troy entering the top 25 isn’t.

The reason this matters to me and should matter to you is because of one simple matter.  There is less parity in college football than in any other major organized team sport in America.  The professional leagues have drafts and salary caps that serve to restrain talent accumulation.  Men’s collegiate basketball teams are relatively small in size; that, plus the one-and-done rule serve to spread the talent around, although not to the extent you see in the pros (because there are a lot more college basketball teams than NBA squads).

But college football, with its huge resources gap between the haves and have-nots, its recruiting wars and its 85-scholarship rosters, is structured in a completely different way from the rest.  The absence of parity is a big deal.  That’s why we don’t care about a MAC team’s chances to win the national title.  It’s a waste of time to be concerned.  It’s why college football, more than any other organized sport, should be focused on a playoff format that is constructed to deliver its very best teams, and those teams only, in a national playoff setting.  It’s also why comparing the size of CFB’s postseason field relative to the total number of participating teams to those in other sports is a complete red herring.

The reality is in any given college football season there are not very many teams worthy of playing for the national championship.  Outside of 2007, I can’t point to a year in the BCS era where there were more than five or six who legitimately deserved to be included in the discussion, and in many of those years, it was a stretch to get past four, or even to four.

That’s why playoff expansion shouldn’t be welcomed.  In that regard, college football isn’t on a level playing field and hasn’t ever been.  All the brackets and Cinderellas of the world won’t change that, either.

If you’re motivated by a desire to see more teams have a chance to win it all, expanding the playoffs isn’t the answer.  Sharply reducing the number of scholarships a D-1 football program can offer is.  The irony is that when postseason expansion really gets rolling and college football teams face a sixteen or seventeen-game season on a routine basis, you’ll hear coaches demanding larger scholarship limits.  The more things change…

Irish tradition

The most “just sayin'” tweet you’ll see today.

Brian Kelly is 15-14 in the past 29 games at Notre Dame.

Charlie Weis was 15-14 in his final 29 games at Notre Dame.

— Irish Illustrated (@PeteSampson_) November 20, 2016

To be fair, Notre Dame no longer operates with a decided schematic advantage on offense these days.

Observations from the 35, Georgia – ULaLa edition

Saturday was not one of those days when you could cut the tension with a knife.  A bit of a letdown was inevitable after the team left everything it had on the field against Auburn and subdued was the tone set for the day.  Not even black jerseys could save things.

Bullet points coming at you now:

• The crowd was um… let’s say not into it for the most part.  Lots of empty seats and only a few moments when they really got pumped up and into things.  Not that it stopped the playing of “Seven Nation Army” on the stadium PA about a thousand times.
• In the first half, the Dawgs scored a touchdown on the first offensive play of the game, McKenzie returned a punt for a touchdown, the defense garnered three interceptions… all of which added up to a less than the sum of its parts 21-7 halftime lead.  Meh.
• Part of the problem was that they were only able to convert one of those turnovers into a score.  The first interception led to a punt from the ULL 30-yard line.  Meh squared.  (At least it was at a point on the field where a Georgia punter could do some real damage.)
• McKenzie’s first score came as a result of a really nifty play design that showed a flow to the left, but a toss to the right.  McKenzie’s speed did the rest, but he had plenty of space to operate.  Nicely done.
• It’s a real shame that Eason didn’t have the same consistency on the deep ball against ULL that he displayed against Auburn, because he had receivers open downfield quite often.  The wind may have played a part in that, although it didn’t seem to affect that gorgeous throw he made to McKenzie on the first scoring drive of the second half.
• If you want to understand why Georgia is starting a true freshman quarterback this season, compare the 60-yard toss Eason made to Godwin towards the end of the first half with Lambert’s sideline throw late in the game.  The lack of velocity on the latter pass was literally startling by comparison.
• It’s also nice to see Eason slow down when he realizes he’s got pass protection and work through his progressions, as was the case with his touchdown pass to Chubb.
• On the other hand, he still forces things a little too much for his own good.  The interception was off a pass he tried to force in to Nauta, who was covered, when he had Ridley wide open on the play.
• Good to see an effort made to get Terry Godwin the ball, although I wish they might have taken a shot or two with him downfield.
• They ran that meshuggeh short-yardage play with McKenzie lined up behind Chubb in the I again, but at least this time the ball was handed to the right guy.
• It’s heartening to see another solid game out of Chubb, who looks more and more like he’s got his speed back.  It wasn’t one of Sony’s better games, so let’s hope he got it out of his system.
• I hate to keep saying it, but Payne simply hasn’t been the consistent blocker he was at the start of the season.  Don’t know what’s up with that.
• The line did some good things — no sacks were nice — but they’re not a bunch you can count on for power blocking in short yardage situations.
• Special teams again wound up as contributors, even if Blankenship wasn’t the player of the game.  He dealt with the wind on kickoffs as best he could, and was aided by what may have been the best coverage work of the season.  Reggie Davis had a nice kickoff return.  And McKenzie, of course.  The blocking on that was excellent, but there was also a little juke he put on mid-play that made the return.  I have to admit Beamer isn’t ticking me off as much as he was earlier this year.
• The defense was a little disappointing, to be honest.  The good work we watched against Auburn — no third down conversions and no gashing with outside runs in the second half — largely dissipated, as ULL was able to convert a number of third downs and had a good bit of success with perimeter runs.  Gap integrity and assignment football kind of came and went.  On a positive note, the defense bowed up on fourth down, shutting down all three conversion attempts.  That and the turnovers are what saved the day on that side of the ball.
• Pass defense was, for the most part, good.  I’m not sure how much of that was due to the defensive effort and how much to Jennings’ erratic day throwing.  It’s fair to say, though, that all the interceptions came off athletic plays by the DBs.  Parrish’s pick was the most intriguing of them, in that it seemed he baited Jennings into the throw by letting the receiver get a little distance between them.
• Trent Thompson is a beast.  That is all.
• As far as the coordinators went, it was a day for vanilla game plans and an uninspiring atmosphere.  They weren’t great, but it could have been a whole helluva lot worse than it was.  That being said, Chaney’s play calling during the last two minutes of the first half flat out sucked.

In the end, a win’s a win.  And in the year of close calls and disappointing losses, you could do a lot worse.  Then again, maybe Kirby’s plan all along was to demythologize Georgia’s black jerseys by pairing them with a ho-hum game.  If so, he succeeded admirably.  On to Hate Week.

SEC Power Poll, Week 12

Alabama versus Florida in the SECCG.  Gee, where have we heard that one before?  Sure makes for something of an anticlimactic last week of the regular season.  Except, you know, rivalries.

1. Alabama.  You know beating Chattanooga is one of Saban’s favorite kind of wins:  nobody cares it was tight in the first half except for Saban.  (And his players, this week.)
2. Auburn.  What kind of quarterback does Auburn need to win the Iron Bowl?
3. Florida.  As Year2 put it, “The SEC East may be a dumpster fire, but it’s OUR dumpster fire, and we won it.”
4. LSU.  Not a good look for the résumé, Coach O.
5. Tennessee.  Next year Booch will be bragging about the Vols bagging their seventh win after they fail to capture the East again.
6. Texas A&M.  It’s hard to rate the Aggies higher when you consider they lost to the same Ole Miss team that Vanderbilt just whipped.
7. Ole Miss.  They have to win the Egg Bowl simply to become bowl eligible.
8. Arkansas.  Every year people think the Hogs are about to turn the corner and every year they come up short.
9. Georgia.  Nothing like following up a shaky ten-win season with a shaky (possible) nine-win season.
10. Vanderbilt.  Given up for dead, this team has played credibly down the stretch. If they beat Tennessee, they become bowl eligible, something that seemed improbable a month ago.
11. Kentucky.  I know the ‘Cats wound up winning by a comfortable margin, but any team down by 13 in the second quarter to a winless FCS squad is no great shakes.
12. Mississippi State.  Two four million dollar a year coaches face off to see which of their teams escape the SEC West cellar this week.  That’s some real bang for the buck, baby.
13. South Carolina.  Believe it or not, strictly on the basis of point spread, SC’s most lopsided loss this season is to Georgia.
14. Missouri.  It takes a real gift to rack up 740 yards of offense and still lose by 26.

Musical palate cleanser, he’s not dead edition

Good news!  Randy Newman is set to release his first album in about a decade sometime early next year.  That’s worth celebrating. Here’s a taste of what’s to come.

Here’s a video dedicated to a great world leader. I hope all of you like it. I know he will. —Randy Newman

Fabris Pool results, Week 12

In the regular season’s penultimate week, there’s no tiebreaker in the pick ’em.

STANDINGS for WEEK 12

Rank	Selection Name	Standings Adjustment	W-L	Pts	Tie Breaker Game 16-10
1	Gravidy Picks	Adj	9-1	9	21-31

It’s a good thing, too. There were 18 people tied at 8-2. Congrats to Gravidy.

As for the seasonal race,

SEASON STANDINGS through Week 12

Rank	You	Selection Name	W-L	Pts
1		Gravidy Picks	75-44	75
2		wilcodawg	71-48	71
3		Chapindawg	67-52	67
3		Ga92grad	67-52	67
3		Boomshakalaka	67-52	67

It’s starting to look like Gravidy’s year. Hope he put some money where his mouth’s been.