Man, oh, Mandel ($$).
Peach: No. 8 Cincinnati (+7) vs. No. 9 Georgia | Noon Friday (ESPN)
Kirby Smart will make sure Georgia doesn’t take this game lightly. I just think Cincinnati is the better team. The Bearcats’ defense was dominant all season, including against more explosive offenses than even JT Daniels-version Georgia. And we know the Bearcats will treat playing in the Peach Bowl like it’s the Super Bowl. Cincinnati 26, Georgia 23
I’m not sure we’ll see another pundit predict a motivated Georgia team loses this one.
Allow the Dude to retort.
Get The Picture 
Oh, okay. I mean, yeah, any game is losable. And Cincy is a good team. But if Georgia comes ready to play? Okay, Stewart.
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A motivated Georgia mops the floor with Cincy.
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How in God’s name can he say they’re a better team? Who have they played? If you use the same idiot logic Mandel has used to say how the Suckeyes “deserve” to be in the playoff because “everyone knows” how talented they are despite the fact that they struggled against the only two teams they played with a pulse all season, then isn’t Georgia by far the better team than Cincinnati because we “all know”?
Tangent: Why are almost all national CFB writers terrible? They’re almost all bad. They constantly contradict themselves. They’ll use one point to argue one thing and turn around and ignore that point when they want to argue something else. Almost all of them tried to get the season cancelled. Most of them don’t even seem to enjoy covering college football, like they’d rather be covering something “important.” And Mandel… he’s completely run The Athletic into the ground. Almost for this entire year they sold subs for $1 a month, 80% off their normal price because they had mass drop-outs from subscribers sick of writers there making the same idiot mistake that the WWL made. I wish I could’ve stuck around for Seth, Andy Staples, and Dave O’Brien who remained excellent throughout, but it’s just not worth it. Not even at $1 a month.
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Because just like “regular” news reporters, they’re all grinding their axes. There is very little true objectivity (thus “honor”) in reporting on almost every level.
What axe could a sports writer or pundit have?
Well, here’s one we’ve seen forever.
Dawgrading Georgia, in their minds, helps their favorite conference and team. They know that Georgia is bubbling to the top of the elite club and they seek to persuade everyone that “Georgia just isn’t all that”. Their nightmare is a two or even three SEC team playoff. If the committee were one hundred percent objective and honest (LMAO), that would happen from time to time.
(I could have just said “because they’re assholes” and saved a lot of typing)
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They are just like anyone else – trying to do their job, take care of their families, and advance their careers in a hyper competitive world. It’s a crowded marketplace and they have to cut through the noise, stand out, generate attention, and drive traffic. If someone is re-posting or talking about their schtick, they’ve done their job. Consumers have shown a preference to the brash, opinionated, emotional, sensational, and ridiculous so the producers respond accordingly. They are just awful when they don’t agree with you, is all.
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No, they’re awful, and if you go by The Athletic cutting their subscription price 80% for almost the entire year due to massive opt-outs on their auto-renew due to their one-sides headfirst slide into the same mistake ESPN made along with the majority of their CFB writers acting as cheerleaders and mouthpieces when he Big Ten and Pac-12 tried to get the season cancelled, I’m not the only person who thinks so.
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Pure as the driven snow, they are.
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Never said they were, and I called it a schtick because it is often disingenuous. Same goes for Mr. Montana as it does for Clay Travis, or Finebaum. They are pandering.
Per Upton Sinclair: “All this is not a question of the Life Force at all; it is a question of bread and butter.”
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We may disagree about politics and your rants about the offense but you have a point about the national writers. Stew and Feldman (who writes great books) have become a little dickish re the Dawgs. I think it is because it is smart for them to pump attention to the other conferences in order to remain “objective” and to hopefully stand out. But I believe that some of it is that they don’t have any good sources on Kirby’s staff so they have been somewhat frozen out.
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We probably agree more about “politics” than you realize, it’s just that people tend to only pay attention to the differences. But those details are best saved for the playpen.
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Sounds like me in the 1960’s telling everybody that my little league team was better than the Yankees of Mantle, Ford, etc. because we scored 10-12 runs every game and the Yankees only scored 4-6 runs. So we had to be better, right? Of course I was 9 years old.
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I think your 9-year old logic from 50+ years ago holds up better than Mandel’s.
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If we lose – he gets to pull the greatest I told you so, if we win, no one will remember nor care. He gets hot taek clicks either way.
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If we win, it’s up to us to make sure the asshat is reminded early and often.
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he doesnt care. he got a link on GTP, so already mission accomplished.
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If his mission was to get me to link to his piece, he’s got bigger issues than I thought. 😉
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Not you so much specifically, as getting people to talk and link. It worked. Doesnt change the fact he was fishing and doesnt care.
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Don’t underestimate yourself Senator. Yuz got the clicks my friend 😉
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Shut the fuck up, Donnie!
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lol. Just saw this 🤝
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So Mandel is this year’s Mark May. Duly noted.
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Never seen those two in the same room together.
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Shut the fuck up Donnie
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I don’t know…I feel like this team has played with a chip on its shoulder since the State game. The defense had their manhood called out and they responded well in what I think was the best all around effort against Missouri (let’s face it, USC was a shell of itself, so overlook that), both on offense and defense. Barring COVID issues, I think we peaked late and the pundits, not watching anything about us after the Florida loss, don’t realize that. We all heard going in to Missouri game that the Tigers were going to give Georgia all they could handle, and we saw the result…it was the Georgia team we expected to see at season’s start, and that’s missing pieces on both sides of the ball, to boot.
Tbh, I think that the national perspective of Kirbys Dawgs is that they will wilt against high quality teams, and that started with the LSU game in 2018, followed by another faceplant against Bama in the SECCG, then a repeat ass whipping against LSU in the 2019 SECCG. The Baylor game was proof to me what we could accomplish with a chip on our shoulder, and momentum and expectations of what could’ve been for 2020 was railroaded by COVID, Newman, lack of spring and fall practice time, etc. Unfortunately, the Bama and Florida games continued the perception of underperformance of Kirbys team, although I still think with a maturity of offensive game planning and a quality quarterback under center for the first games, we are controlling the 1 seed and facing Notre Dame in the Playoffs right now. It is what it is, though…but I think the spotlight and attention of the Dawgs in the last three games have gone largely unnoticed by your national folks because we dropped out of the narratives.
I am cautious, but confident, that we can handle business Friday.
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Shut the fuck up, Donny.
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Last time they faced a team with comparable talent to UGA, they lost by 42. Opt-outs and no homefield advantage will lesson the edge a bit, but not enough
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He’s a Cincinnati native and has to keep up his Dawgrading from the entire year. No surprise at all.
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I listened to the Barton and Bud podcast this morning regarding the playoff games and they were talking about which team would Alabama not want to play and they said that it was Florida out of Florida, Oklahoma, TAMU, and ND. I agree because we all just saw what Florida could do against that defense but (get ready for the most Georgia thing ever) the team (other than Clemson because Lawrence and Dabo voodoo) that they would most not want to play now is Georgia. If we can be that team against Cincinnatti then we will beat them by 20+. If we are a middling Georgia team then we should still cover. If we play like we played against Kentucky then they can beat us.
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I love this. The Dawgs are going to obliterate Cincy. Not that many key players have opted out. Obviously Monty and Stokes are going to be missed but Jordan Davis’ decision to play is huge. 48-24 Dawgs.
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