First, let me eat the well-deserved crow. I wasn’t as bad as some, but I still talked smack about the Gators. I thought, especially after that LSU game, that’d we’d be winning that elusive second Cocktail game in a row. I was wrong. So very wrong. Any Gator fans that feel the need to flame, try to keep it civil as possible please, but I’ll accept it all graciously. The entire Bulldog Nation are yours to abuse for a week. Enjoy it.

Now, let’s break this down. The Interweb has been awash with Bulldog apologists, blaming everything from Penn Wagers and his crew to Global Warming for the loss. I’m big enough to admit that the Gators opened the whole truck of whoop ass on us Saturday. And that they’ll play Bama for the SEC title. And that we should have been ready for this after last year. But, in an effort to stop the self-loathing for all the fans out there I’m going to break this thing down (and probably renew a rant I never should have abandoned).

4 things happened Saturday: Lady Luck gave us the ol’ Rochambeau, the officials blew some Bush-league calls, them damn Gators played a superb game, and we left our heart back in Athens. Much as I wish it could be blamed on the first 3, the last one was what really did us in.

First about the officials – yes, they blew some atrocious calls. But the worst ones weren’t seen by most. The hands to the face call that nullified the interception should have been a holding call to begin with. On Stafford’s first INT, while you could have called interference or holding, it didn’t really matter since the defender actually kept AJ CLOSER to the poorly under-thrown pass. The offensive interference call that wasn’t – did it really matter at that point? I think we already started warming up the bus by then. But the ones that really killed me were questionably late hits on Stafford that weren’t called, and the blatant holds on UF’s O line that were let go. I know that holding is part of the game, but DAMN! The challenge that everybody KNEW was good, but that replays couldn’t PROVE was right by letter of the law, but I believe it changed the spirit of replay for some time to come.

Surely the staff has finally managed to edit the tape that they send (every week) to the SEC office to about an hour. Will we get a few more favorable calls against UK and Auburn? Probably. As long as Penn Wagers’ crew isn’t on the field. Say what you want, but those guys get their revenge too. And I grew up thinking that he ran a pretty tight crew, but that has changed in the past few years. However, at the end of the day, you can’t blame the officials.

The Gators played a superb offensive game, taking every advantage we gave them and exploiting it for 49 points. Granted, we gave them a short field most of the time (which is why we outgained them by an order of magnitude or so), but that’s what good teams do. And it doesn’t help that we never, not one time, showed any testicular fortitude and tried to take the momentum away. I still say that their defense is suspect. They outmatched us up front (just like Bama did) and were able to stop the run and let us beat ourselves the rest of the way. 7 days out of 7, I’ll take LSU’s secondary over UF’s. We didn’t kill ourselves in Baton Rouge. We committed Hiri Kiri in Jacksonville. read this entry »

Okay guys, this is going to be a new thing I’m trying with the Live Blog portion. If it works for me and nobody tells me it sucks too bad, I’ll keep it going. Give me your feedback and we’ll see what happens.

And there is whining coming from here, too. I’ll at least try to justify mine with a little bit of logic. Everybody who’s listened to me talk about college football knows that I am no fan of the BCS. I refuse to accept the apology that, “it’s the best we’ve got, so we have to deal with it.” I think that it’s a huge conspiracy from the powers that be (Presidents, ADs and League Commissioners) of the BCS conferences to hog an even bigger piece of the college football money pie. But that’s all for some other time. One that I’ll probably get into later in the season as my frustration with the “system” grows. What I want to cover right now is the first poll and just what I think of the “B-no-C-S.”

I have no complaints about the first 2 teams. Texas and Bama have proven it on the field and deserve their positions. Texas has run an incredible gauntlet and acquitted themselves very well, and they’re led by the Heisman Trophy front runner (Colt McCoy). I’m tired of hearing that they’re playing teams that aren’t that good or that the Big 12 isn’t as great a conference that popular opinion says it is. Guys, it is. No doubt whatsoever. I have, and still do, maintained that the Big 12 is the second toughest conference in CFB and that it’s the only conference that belongs on the same field with the SEC. History has proven that it’s certainly not the Big Ten (those last 2 NC games have spelled that out well enough). And here’s the thing about both of these teams – they will have to win their conference championship crowns on the field. So they’ll have to play their way into the NC game. read this entry »

And mine, excuses that is, probably stink too. I was out of town all last week, arriving home late Thursday evening. I was at a conference in Savannah and made exactly no time to actually update anything on the site. I fully admit it – I was drunk on the job. At least most of the time.

There wasn’t anything truly remarkable about Savannah, aside from the fact that I actually took the time to relax and enjoy myself. I learned a lot of cool stuff during the day, but unfortunately can’t put much of it into action at work because we’re broke. I’d love to figure out some way to virtualize my data center, and will some day, but I’m not competing for any money with other projects or departments – there ISN’T any to compete for. So, the class part was good for information gathering only.

But spending my evenings eating great food and drinking good, cheap beer was just what the doctor ordered. I even managed to sneak away to play golf at a course called Crosswinds Golf Club, which was a beautiful meeting of golf and technology. I can’t find it on the site, but the carts have these cool LCD Heads Up Displays that display yardages from where you are on the course, where other carts are, keeps score and has some OnStar-type features. They even shut your cart down when you try to drive on the fairway on the Cart Path Only holes. Pretty cool.

Anyway, I got back Thursday night and got some pretty good news – the Goon made straight A’s on his report card. The only thing about this is, while I’ve told him that my expectations are A’s and B’s, straight A’s will net something cool. So, when I picked him up on Friday we had to fulfill the coolness prophecy. It came down to him getting a new game for his XBOX and eating at McDonald’s, so that worked out on the cheap for me. But we spent the weekend just hanging out before I skipped town again.

Saturday, I dozed through the Georgia – Vandy game, catching most of the second half. It wasn’t worth running a live blog for a rather unspectacular second half. I’m concerned about playing LSU and Florida in the next 2 weeks because we were so unspectacular. But all that’s for another post later.

I’ll do my best to get them all in this week, but no promises. Sunday I flew up to Pennsylvania for yet another conference. This one purportedly has open bars. Lots of open bars. With top shelf liquor. But the experience thus far is worth a post and I have several posts that are almost wrapped up and ready to go out as well. So, I’m going to head out to the first meet and greet and see how much fun this will be. With any luck, it’ll be lots of fun but end early enough for me to get some work done and recover for the next day…..

Sorry for missing the first series – I was handling some arrangements for a business trip next week. Things went awry at the last minute, but that’s my life.

1st Quarter

- Nice stop on UT, liked the pass rush there.
- WOW! Did you see Knowshon lower his shoulder and hit that safety? What injury??
- I’m a little concerned with the passing game right now. Stafford appears to have a case of the nerves right now, but I guess I’d be a little apprehensive too. After last week, and he’s 0 – 2 against UT. Big 4th down coming up.
- Well done. First down. Rolling a little bit here, let’s see if we can keep this long, grinding drive going.
- Here come the hankies again. Guys, we just can’t keep this up. Even False Start is too much today.
- A beautifully run screen pass. And it looks like Chapas is getting motivated now that Southerland is back.
- TD, UGA: 7 – 0. Speaking of Mr. Southerland, welcome back. And that’s the first rushing TD against an allegedly good UT defense. I’m sorry, I don’t buy all the hype about a team or one of their units until they face competition. Speaking of that, how about that super duper Chokelahoma defense that gave up 45 in a losing effort in the Red River Shootout? Uh huh.
- I’m seeing good aggression, but uncontrolled. We should have put Crompton on his ass on that play. That’s okay, that comes with time. And we’re owning the passing lanes on this drive.
- I hate my server. I just lost about 10 lines of content because the update puked. Stupid server. I made comments about the nice tribute CBS did to Munson, and that we’re seeing some inspired football by Georgia right now.
- Another WOW moment there – AJ dropped a pass. Maybe he was surprised at how open he was.
- Knowshon takes a 2 yard loss and gains 4. I love that kid.
- Well, I could make a case for holding or pass interference on either guy there. Let’s get the 3 and head back to the sidelines.
- FG, UGA: 10 – 0. I think this Walsh kid is going to be another Georgia kicking legend. Good leg, just needs to work on long distance accuracy. He’s a freshman, he’ll be fine.
- Error Correct here – I thought Crompton got the start at QB for UT today, but I’m wrong. The youngster Stevens (sp?) is on the field.
- Another sack for the defense. Like I said, inspired football. Granted, UT hasn’t found their offense all season, but we’re taking out some aggression on UT.
- Okay, what is all this happy, fancy shit? Coach Bobo, all we need to do is line up and attack them. It’s worked for the last 2 drives, just keep it going. I know, it’s setting things up for later but we won’t need to worry about later if we score 2 or 3 more times. I don’t think their young QB can lead a comeback.
End of the quarter. UGA 10, UT 0. read this entry »