Your 11.13.19 Playpen

I got nothing.  Really.  Discuss among yourselves.

Another long national nightmare is over.

BREAKING: The NCAA has concluded its review. #OhioState star DL Chase Young will sit one more game (against Rutgers) and then will return for the rest of the season.

— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) November 13, 2019

Good to see Ohio State’s suffering come to an end after **checks notes** playing the worst team in the conference.

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“First down, Cal.”

Jon Wilner makes a pretty good case that the ref who blew the hands to the face call in the Cal-Wazzu game simply had a brain fart.  And, you know, I get that.  We’re all human and the occasional brain fart is part of that.

What I don’t get is how completely broken down the rest of what happened was.

Why didn’t members of the officiating crew correct Richards?

Because he saw the penalty — it was his call.

Wires crossed in his head, he told the crew that No. 15 “on the receiving team” had committed the penalty, and they assumed that meant WSU.

When Richards walked off the yardage, the other officials had no reason to think he was doing so in error.

What about the replay official?

Why didn’t the replay booth or the command center in San Francisco get involved?

Because illegal hands-to-the-face, like holding, isn’t a reviewable play.

Reviewable plays involve the boundary, the goal-line, control of the ball, targeting, etc.

Richards realized his mistake almost immediately.

According to the conference statement Sunday evening, Richards informed the Cougars’ sideline of the mistake “after the next play was run.”

One play — why not fix an egregious error at that point?  It’s not like much happened in the interim.  The reason, I suspect, would be the precedent being set by such a decision.

College football needs some kind of mechanism in place to correct an obvious screw up like this — not a judgment call, such as whether a penalty had occurred, but a true factual error by an on-field official.  This really wasn’t fair.

Yes, I know I’m dreaming.  Bureaucrats prefer finality over accuracy.

“It may seem more weird next year.”

Don’t forget, Dawgnation.  Saturday marks the end of a certain era.

The college football series between Auburn and Georgia will forever be known as the “Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry.”

After this Saturday’s game at Jordan-Hare Stadium, however, it will no longer have the late-season impacts on the Eastern and Western division races within the Southeastern Conference. Next year, Auburn and Georgia will collide in the regular season outside of November for the first time since 1936, with the two scheduled to meet Oct. 10.

Malzahn and Smart kind of brush off the shuffle (if it’s no big deal, why was Gus pushing for it in the first place?), but it is going to change the flavor of the second half of Georgia’s schedule.

By having the contest against the Volunteers in November next season, Georgia will have a closing conference run of Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky, which certainly will provide a make-or-break fate in the East landscape.

It’s not quite Tennessee’s November, but it’s a lot closer to that than it’s been.

We must defend this athletic facility!

Saying the quiet part out loud:

The state Board of Regents has approved an $80 million renovation and expansion of the University of Georgia’s football facilities.

The nonprofit corporation that runs UGA’s NCAA sports programs, the UGA Athletic Association, would be responsible for the costs of the renovation and expansion project at UGA’s Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall and for operating costs once construction concludes.

The project’s first phase of 109,600 square feet would include a new football locker room and new offices and conference rooms for football coaches, new sports medicine areas and a new strength and conditioning room…

“The Building’s football facilities have fallen behind current standards in the highly competitive Southeastern Conference, resulting in a sense of urgency to deliver this project to enhance recruiting efforts and competitiveness,” according to an explanation of the project submitted to the Regents for Tuesday’s meeting.  [Emphasis added.]

Constantly chasing others is what you get when your athletic department is led by someone who cares more about sustaining a reserve fund than doing the hard work to put together a facilities master plan.  And if you think this development would have happened outside of Smart pushing for it, you’re in denial.  But, sure, something something Mark Richt, if that makes you feel better.

Taking advantage of your advantages

One more thing from that AL.com article I linked to in my previous post:

Georgia’s offense snaps the ball once every 30.3 seconds, which is 125th in the country. The Bulldogs also run the ball 56.5 percent of the time.

I think this is a faulty strategy for a team that ranks No. 3 in the 247Sports Talent Composite.

Georgia should be running as many plays as possible to take advantage of its talent and limit variance. Going that slow is a strategy for underdogs – 14 seeds in the NCAA Tournament or triple-option teams with talent disadvantages like Army.

Georgia is ninth in time of possession and tends to play with a lead. With two bye weeks for each team, the Bulldogs defense is as rested as any team in the country.

Not only that, but in general, every time we’ve seen Georgia go up-tempo on offense this season, it’s gotten good results.  When you’ve got the better talent and the greater depth, you should be strategizing to make other teams pay for that.

Today, in Vegas ain’t stupid

Behold, the efficiency of markets!

The posted total for Georgia-Auburn opened at 45.5 on Sunday at Circa Sports, and it hovered at 44 on Tuesday morning.

I was preparing to recommend a play on the under, but it got hammered to 40.5 on Tuesday afternoon.

TFW it just means less.

Here’s a sad, but oh-so-likely scenario heading down the turnpike.

Interesting note from CFP conference call tonight on ACC/Orange Bowl, if Clemson makes it to the playoff, the Orange Bowl is supposed to take "highest ranked ACC team not ranked in the top four", but they won't keep ranking teams even if there isn't another ACC team in top 25 pic.twitter.com/dtotCj7wwo

— michaelniziolek (@michaelniziolek) November 13, 2019

Before you laugh too hard, I’ve seen a few bowl projections putting Georgia in the Orange Bowl.  Sounds like we could be in for an epic face off if that’s the case.

They’re good Dawgs, Brent.

About our expectations for that Georgia offensive line… you can’t expect them to defy the laws of physics, man ($$).

“Everyone knows what they’re going to get when they line up and play us. We’re going to line up and run the ball,” Georgia offensive lineman Cade Mays said. “So definitely their gameplan is to put one more guy in the box than we can block. We’ve got to get our guys blocked that we can block, and then hopefully our back can make one miss.”

Hope may be the best of things, but it’s not the greatest of offensive schemes, fellas.

And don’t think the head coach isn’t aware of it.  He’s just stubborn about it.

“They’re not stacking (the box) any more than they have ever,” Smart said. “There’s not a whole lot of difference as far as that goes.”

Smart did acknowledge that Georgia now sees “hard boxes” — when the defense outnumbers the offense — more consistently. He indicated they see those perhaps 80 percent of the time, versus 70 percent last year.

It may be time to retire the phrase manball and go with the Fabris Offense in its place.  Obviously, Kirby likes a challenge and we just need to deal with it.

A couple of troubling trends for Saturday

I mentioned yesterday that Georgia tends to see Auburn’s best when the Tigers are still playing for bigger stakes, which, realistically speaking, they won’t be doing this year.  It seems only fair, however, to cite a couple of things that run in favor of the Gus Bus.

One is something you’ve probably heard about.

For what it’s worth, though, none of those wins have come against Georgia.

There’s also this.

Georgia perspective this weekend: In the last 20 years, there have been 10 Top 5 teams favored by a FG or less on the road vs a team ranked outside the Top 10. The 10 have gone 2-8. The only two to win – 2016 Ohio State at Oklahoma and 2009 Cincinnati at Pitt.

— Chris Fallica (@chrisfallica) November 12, 2019

Here’s the list of those:

Again, no Georgia there, although Auburn is on there twice, both way before Malzahn’s time.

Interesting stuff.  I don’t think any of it trumps Georgia being the team with more to play for Saturday.