If you’re wondering how seriously the Dawgs are taking the Sugar Bowl, here’s a clue.
Here’s a bigger clue.
You think the seniors are going to let the underclassmen half-ass it?
Daily Archives: December 5, 2018
Adios, Mr. Tucker.
It’s official.
Congrats, sir. You’ve earned it here.
Now, let’s see what Kirby does, especially with signing day on the near horizon.
Filed under Georgia Football
Today, in dumpster fires
This is fine.
On the Plains? I wouldn’t be so sure of that.
You know, the story so long has simply been a case of SEC programs trying to emulate Saban’s success and flopping, for the most part. If the movers and shakers at Auburn are now feeling threatened by both Tuscaloosa and Athens, there’s no telling how crazy those folks might get.
Filed under Auburn's Cast of Thousands
“We’ve launched our last satellite.”
AT&T to its DIRECTV subscribers: Drop dead, eventually. (h/t)
What this country needs is somebody sincere about enforcing antitrust laws.
Filed under It's Just Bidness
It will just mean less.
In today’s Mailbag ($$), Stewart Mandel nails the point I often make about the impact an expanded CFP will have on the rest of college football’s season.
No, it would not ruin college football or the regular season. It would just be a lot different. Some games would become more important than they are now; others would see their value diminished.
Take, for example, last weekend’s extremely captivating SEC championship game. It became the sport’s most-watched regular-season game in seven years. I don’t believe the viewing audience would be quite that enormous if you went in knowing both teams would be safely in the Playoff regardless and that they were essentially playing for home-field advantage.
With an eight-team playoff field, winning the SEC will be reduced to a battle over seeding. Is that really what we want to see from the SECCG? Not that what we want makes any difference, of course.
Mandel doesn’t see that as ruining college football. His mileage varies from mine, obviously. An expanded playoff is just another inexplicable step the Jed Clampetts running college football will take to erode the unique aspects of the sport that have created a passionate fan base over many decades. The sad thing is that these people are confident they can manage a transition that will allow them to have their cake and eat it, too.
How anyone can think Larry Scott, for one, is a genius capable of accomplishing a neat trick like that — and no doubt Scott thinks he’s always one of the smartest people in the room — is beyond me. But what do I know?
Filed under BCS/Playoffs
“Tell them we ain’t going nowhere, Adam.”
I wrote this after Georgia lost the national title game last January:
Late in Ball Four, Jim Bouton’s iconic book about his 1969 journey to remake himself as a knuckleball pitcher, Bouton finds himself traded from an expansion team that never was comfortable with his new pitch to a pennant contender that suddenly thrust him into a start. Bouton went out and pitched ten innings, only to lose a heartbreaker as a result of a couple of fluke hits.
Alone, in the wee small hours of the morning, back in his hotel room after the loss, you might have expected Bouton to be crushed by the experience. Instead, he felt nothing but joy and elation. His belief in his course of action to remake his career was validated and that, for him, overcame any sadness over the immediate outcome.
I imagine that’s something of what Kirby Smart feels this morning. Certainly I feel something of that.
Yeah, the way things ended last night stings. But consider this: in its last two games of the season, Georgia took the best offensive team in college football, fronted by the Heisman Trophy winner, to overtime, won, and then, a week later, took the best defensive team in college football to overtime and barely lost. I can’t think of too many football programs that could have shown as well. Certainly that’s not something I would have expected from this team before the season started.
Nothing’s changed. In fact, if anything, I’m finding it easier to get over last Saturday’s loss than the one in January. Why? Allow me to outsource the answer.
It’s easy to gloss over in the wake of a second disappointing loss to ‘Bama, but damned if I don’t believe this program isn’t heading somewhere great, consistently great. Georgia has played the best team in the country over the last decade to a virtual draw the last two times they’ve faced each other, when the stakes were enormous. How many other schools in the country can make a similar claim?
I grant you the Dawgs spit the bit on both occasions, but I can’t shake the certainty I feel that there’s something substantial being built for the long haul. Consider this:
The Bulldogs again went toe-to-toe with Alabama with a championship on the line yet. As it turns out, they were still step-for-step with the Tide.
Yet this time it came about leaning on a playing rotation which went heavy on freshmen and sophomores. Those two classes comprised 52 percent of the Bulldogs who saw the field in the SEC championship game.
There were two redshirt freshmen, 12 true freshmen, 11 true sophomores and three redshirt sophomores listed on the official participation report. That means the majority of the Bulldog team could see two more trips to the SEC championship game stage.
How many of you are takers right now that won’t happen?
Those two losses came less than a year apart from each other. This is a program that came off a disappointing 8-5 season just a year before that. Step back to consider what a compressed time frame in which we’re judging Smart’s progress. Then consider how far it’s come in such a short time.
We’ve reached the point in a silly rush where much of the fan base is disappointed in a Sugar Bowl trip. Does anyone remember how excited we were when the Dawgs went to the Sugar Bowl in 2002?
Maybe this is as good as it gets. Maybe the commenter who opined the other day that the botched fake punt is proof there’s a ceiling on what Kirby can accomplish is right. That’s not where my head is at, but I would ask one question of anyone who honestly feels that way. Who’ve you got out there who can take Georgia to a higher level than it’s gone in 2018?
Filed under Georgia Football
The toughest job in sports
Believe it or not, even I feel a little sorry for Georgia Tech’s assistant coaches right now.
Things were bad enough when they were selling the genius.
Filed under Georgia Tech Football, Recruiting
“Two years ago, I was in the Nick Saban witness protection program…”
Only Maryland could be excited about hiring a head coach with a resume like this:
Locksley’s only other head coaching job ended disastrously when he was fired midseason from New Mexico after accumulating a 2-26 record in just more than two seasons. Locksley also had multiple off-the-field issues.
Before he coached a game at New Mexico, an administrative assistant filed an age and sex discrimination complaint against Locksley with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A few months later, in September 2009, during a coaches meeting following New Mexico’s loss to Air Force, Locksley was accused of punching assistant coach J.B. Gerald in the face. Gerald filed a lawsuit that also alleged New Mexico’s football program had a hostile work environment.
Locksley also had a run-in with a student reporter after the student wrote a column critical of the program. He allegedly confronted the student in an Albuquerque bar and yelled profanities. At the end of his stint at New Mexico, a 19-year-old friend of Locksley’s son was charged with suspicion of driving while intoxicated in a car that was registered to Locksley’s son and wife.
After he was fired by New Mexico in 2011, Locksley returned to Maryland as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. He went 1-5 as the Terrapins’ interim coach in 2015, bringing his career head coaching record to 3-31, but he was considered for the permanent job after the season concluded.
He’s a prolific recruiter in the DC area, so there’s that. When you add it all up, he’s Ron Zook with baggage.
Oh, and this should bode well for his boss:
According to multiple people with knowledge of the situation, the process created friction between Locksley and Evans, who was the athletic department’s second-in-command at the time. Evans faced pressure to hire Locksley this time, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the process.
Helluva joint you’re running there, Damon. On the bright side, at least there’s a distraction from the McNair disaster.
Filed under Big Ten Football
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