Spurrier calls it.

Yup.

Spurrier, who spent 23 of his 26 years as a head coach in the SEC coaching for Florida and then South Carolina, thinks his Gators are going to take down the No. 1 Georgia Bulldogs at TIAA Bank Field on Saturday.

“I’m going to pick our Gators in a big upset,” Spurrier said during an appearance on “Inside the Huddle” on WRUF.

Spurrier adds that it’s going to take a complete game by Florida to have a chance against the Bulldogs. It might take a few mistakes by Georgia, too.

“If we’re to beat them, we’ve got to play the entire game, and play well,” Spurrier adds. “I think we’re certainly capable of doing that.”

With that kind of deep analysis, who am I to argue?  Scoff maybe, but not argue.

Life without Bowers

A couple of SEC coaches tell Mark Schlabach it’s not good.

A longtime SEC assistant whose team faced the Bulldogs this season said there’s no question they’re going to miss having Bowers on the field. Another SEC assistant added, “Losing Bowers is going to hurt them.”

“Man, he was a huge piece,” one of the assistants said.

Then again, that’s why you have depth.

One head coach who played Georgia during the past three seasons said the Bulldogs have enough playmakers to compensate for Bowers’ absence. Georgia might have schemed 12 to 15 plays a game in which the ball was supposed to go to Bowers. He was a human cheat code for dictating coverages and often attracted more than one defender.

“I’ll be honest, sometimes when you lose a great player like that, you end up becoming a little better on offense because you’re just not always trying to get him the ball,” the coach said. “Now you’ve got to spread it out and you become a little more dynamic.”

In his Mailbag, Seth Emerson ($$) explores the topic of who’s likely to step up.  It probably won’t be the tight ends as much as the wideouts, but he mentions a couple of other areas that I think may be bigger factors.

… And with the way the offensive line has protected this year, the temptation will be to spread it out as much as possible and let Beck and the receivers do their thing.

• That said, Georgia’s running game is rounding into form. Kendall Milton has been able to practice, Daijun Edwards has been very good, and Bell has been effective in spurts out of the backfield. They may even be able to get something out of Roderick Robinson down the stretch, and getting Amarius Mims back either this game or soon after that will help the run blocking on the edges.

If the offensive line can continue their excellent work in pass protection and help the run game with better blocking (remember, they’re coming off their best game rushing all season), they should be able to withstand the short-term crunch of Bowers’ absence.

What’s the over/under on the number of times Brad and Gary mention Brock Saturday? It’s gotta be in drinking game territory, right?

Lanesplainin’

Why is college football so slow to adopt helmet technology that’s worked in the NFL for close to thirty years?  Junior explains:

As is often the case in the SEC, for the straight answer, one just has to ask Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin.

“That’s come up for a lot of years and it seems to get shot down every time, so I really haven’t given much thought to it,” Kiffin said on the SEC teleconference. “I guess it’s a problem. I mean, we basically do everything the NFL does first, and then we eventually catch up. It’s probably a longtime overdue.

“There was financial concerns for smaller schools. That was a long time ago. I sound old now. I’ve been around the league meetings a long time. … I don’t know the answer as to why it hasn’t gone through. I’m sure now there’s a glaring story about something now, though, reacting to it.”

I suspect he’s right about that.  Which makes this funnier:

On Wednesday, all but three of the 14 SEC head football coaches vocalized, at minimum, an openness to a helmet receiver being placed into one player’s helmet on each side of the ball (Kiffin, Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz and Mississippi State’s Zach Arnett).

Sea of teal

Amusing Twitter thread about the Cocktail Party here.  My favorite part, which is more inspiring than funny:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever, or at least until next year’s game.

“We don’t talk about that; you guys talk about that.”

Shot.

• Georgia is on a school-record 24-game win streak that began with the win over Michigan in the Orange Bowl on Dec. 31, 2021.
• Georgia is in the midst of a school-record 34-game regular-season win streak; that one started with a home win over Mississippi State on Nov. 21, 2020.
• Georgia recently matched its record for SEC regular-season wins in a row at 23.
• Georgia has spent 19 consecutive weeks as the No. 1 team in the Associated Press Top 25 poll. Starting Oct. 9, 2022, that is the longest in SEC history and the third longest overall behind Southern Cal’s streak of 33 (2003-05) and Miami’s 21 (2001-02).

Chaser.

Florida, it must be pointed out, is the last regular-season opponent to defeat Georgia. That came Nov. 7, 2020, when it beat the Bulldogs 44-28 in Jacksonville.

Keep streaking, Dawgs.

Meanwhile, in Ann Arbor

Shit appears to be getting realer.

The sign-stealing investigation threatening to disrupt Michigan’s football season began after an outside investigative firm approached the NCAA with documents and videos the firm said it had obtained from computer drives maintained and accessed by multiple Michigan coaches, according to two people familiar with the matter, evidence that suggests the scandal’s impact could broaden beyond the suspension of one low-level assistant.

Um, evidence, you say?

Among the pieces of evidence the firm presented, these people said, was a detailed schedule of Michigan’s planned sign-stealing travel for the rest of this season, listing opponents’ schedules, which games Michigan scouts would attend, and how much money was budgeted for travel and tickets to scout each team.

That’s very obliging of them.  Kinda reminds me of…

… except Michigan doesn’t have a Stringer Bell slapping heads.

Oh, and one more thing —

The opponents targeted the most on this schedule, these people said, were not surprising. Atop the list was Ohio State, Michigan’s top rival in the Big Ten, and scouts planned to attend as many as eight games, costing more than $3,000 in travel and tickets. Next on the list was Georgia, a potential Michigan opponent in the College Football Playoff, with four or five games scheduled for in-person scouting and video-recording, also costing more than $3,000 in travel and tickets.

Can’t wait to hear Kirby’s response to that.

“OK, when can we see more football?”

Four suggestions on ways to make college football games “more efficient”, without sacrificing actual football, from Seth Emerson ($$):

1. More in-game commercials
2. Less replay review time
3. Helmet technology
4. Shrink halftime

And my thoughts on each…

1. According to Seth, advertisers object to the concept, and, of course, if they’re not paying, the regular ads are staying.  Conceptually, I don’t have a problem with it — there’s plenty of dead time between plays to sell Buicks and beer — but my big fear is that they run with this, but never cut down on the commercial breaks.
2. OH HELLS YEAH!  (I’ll let you guess what the road block is here:  “On less clear reviews, Shaw said they’ve told officials that any review that hits the two-minute mark should be wrapped up, and if by two minutes you don’t have indisputable evidence, just let the call stand.Yet 18.6 percent of reviews go over two minutes.”
3. I don’t think this is as much of a time saver as Seth suggests, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.  Of course, the NCAA has had almost 30 years to convince itself that the technology is a valid option, so…
4. Viscerally, I’m not a fan of this suggestion, but Seth notes that it’s rare for a visiting band to take the field at halftime these days, which leads to more dead time than we used to see, so maybe I’m overreacting.

What do y’all think?

Musical palate cleanser, shut ‘yo mouth edition

Sigh.  Another figure from my youth, gone.

Richard Roundtree, the actor who redefined African American masculinity in the movies when he played the title role in “Shaft,” one of the first Black action heroes, died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 81.

His manager, Patrick McMinn, said the cause was pancreatic cancer, which had been diagnosed two months ago.

“Shaft,” which was released in 1971, was among the first of the so-called blaxploitation movies, and it made Mr. Roundtree a star at 29.

The character John Shaft is his own man, a private detective who jaywalks confidently through moving Times Square traffic in a handsome brown leather coat with the collar turned up; sports a robust, dark mustache somewhere between walrus-style and a downturned handlebar; and keeps a pearl-handled revolver in the fridge in his Greenwich Village duplex apartment.

As Mr. Roundtree observed in a 1972 article in The New York Times, he is “a Black man who is for once a winner.”

There’s only one way to honor the man here.

Feel free to recite the song’s lyrics in the comments.  And RIP, brother.