You're not fooling anyone with that mask, Joe Cox

People, this product doesn't need to exist.













Ginger Batman? Click to enlarge, weep.


We certainly don't need it available from "The Official Online Store of the Georgia Bulldogs" for $41.95. You want to dress like a Bulldog super hero, put on a Jarvis Jones jersey.

Come off it Bradley, ESPN. The BCS doesn't render the SEC anything

This is just an awful column, Mark Bradley.

I don't want to overstate things. Obviously there is a shit-ton amount of drivel on the Internet. And granted a small amount of it comes from The AJC's sports writers, all most of whom are talented.

I know I'm going to turn on ESPN and hear Rod Gilmore whine about Alabama getting a "bye" while LSU has to play "another game" 36 days before the BCS championship.

But do I have to hear it out of Atlanta, too?

I get that people don't like the BCS. I get that they're using this SEC Championship Game won't factor into who plays in the BCS championship situation as an argument against the BCS.

I get that these people don't, I guess, like that the BCS and the SEC are separate, if partnering, systems. But that doesn't change the fact that they are different things.

That it's already obvious LSU and Alabama are the best two teams in the country does not render the SEC Title Game "moot." That they will meet in the BCS Championship Game means the BCS actually worked this year, despite needing to be replaced.

None of this makes the SEC Championship "just an exhibition game." They give a big ass trophy. The game generates tens of millions of dollars. They will keep a record of who wins it, probably for just about as long as there are people living in southeastern United States.

You don't have to exaggerate to make your argument. The BCS sucks. We get it.

That makes the SEC Championship more important, not less.

Update: Groo makes a point that derails the "meaningless championship meme" even more effectively:

Can we expect a similar column the next time the ACC and SEC basketball tournaments come to Atlanta? ... There is no greater set of moot exhibition games than during conference championship week in March.

LSU: If it bleeds, we can kill it

In this video metaphor, I am Billy, the normally unafraid Indian tracker. The unseen alien enemy is LSU, embodied by any number of individuals on that team, some of whom may in fact be named Barkevious Mingo.



It is my sincere hope that Mark Richt and this 2011 Georgia team turn out to be Arnold Schwarzenegger. Because as bad ass as LSU clearly is, I promise you, they bleed.

tech over-matched, a puncher's chance v. LSU and hope for 2012

I am surprised how weak Georgia tech looked Saturday. I really thought they'd give us all we could handle, but they looked over-matched from the start. Their decision to repeatedly throw us the football instead of committing to the run merely hastened their doom.

I'm proud of this Georgia team, this program and this coaching staff for getting it done this year. A 10-2 season is impressive, even with a weak schedule. It takes something to reel off win after win in college football, I don't care who you're playing. See the last decade of Boise State football if you doubt that.

That said, I think any fair analysis of this upcoming game against LSU must predict something approaching a crushing. That's not a jab at us. It's recognition that this LSU team is phenomenal. Having 11 defensive starters likely to play in the NFL has that kind of effect, and the Tigers have firepower on offense, too.

We're not going to Atlanta just to get the shit kicked out of us, though. We have what you always have at kickoff: A chance.

This Georgia defense turned a little nasty this season, and it's not unreasonable to expect some turnovers. If we can bottle up the run and keep this a low-scoring affair, the game could turn on special teams play and steady contributions from our offense, which will face its biggest challenge of the season by far.

Of course, if Isaiah Crowell's not at 100 percent Saturday, it's hard to see us rising to that challenge. Nothing short of our best game of the season in all phases will even keep this thing close.

Win, and all questions are answered with a resounding WE ARE AWESOME NOW. Lose and the over-riding question for the coming off-season seems clear enough to me. Was this season the start of an upswing, or an outlier due to what was obviously a down year for the SEC east and Auburn, plus a generous schedule from the SEC West?

Has Richt got us going again or not? Personally, I think he has. And hopefully we'll draw a good bowl opponent, keep the momentum going and douse the easy-schedule meme going into next year. But I also think it's fair to be afraid that Coach Richt just caught an astounding confluence of scheduling breaks this season.

Seriously, review our schedule. Who was the best team we beat? I'm going to go with "none of them."

Look at the Florida game. That team is terrible, didn't have its best quarterback healthy against us, and we barely pulled it out. So, while I'm pretty damn optimistic about next year, what with the talent we have coming back, the defense's gains under Coach Grantham and the litany of recent examples that show how quickly teams can go from pathetic to mediocre to champions, I fear my optimism is misplaced.

Call it a gnawing fear, banished to one small corner of my stomach by a 10-game winning streak. Banished, but not fully uprooted.

It's simple: I want tech to fail. Always.

I've seen a few Dawg fans over the last week say they cheer for Georgia tech until we meet the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

The idea is that they cheer for all the state's teams, that they want the nation to take note of Georgia's football prowess in general, or they want the strength of schedule boost, or they just want to prove that the best tech teams still lose to Georgia.

Now, I'm all for taking as much from Georgia tech as we can. But the years we'll have a shot at ruining a techie National Title run are very few and very far between. So let's set that aside and try an exercise I typically find useful: Say it out loud.

As a Georgia fan I want Georgia tech's football program to do as well as possible, except when we play them, of course.

Does that really sound like a good idea? The top high school football talent in Georgia, you want them to have two legitimate in-state options? The national media attention that helps land recruits out of state, you want Georgia tech getting some of it?

No, I think one of our long-term goals should be forcing Georgia tech to end their football program and apologize to the state. Let's work toward that, and allow clean old fashioned hate to fester on its merits all year long.

Keith Marshall, come on down

From The AJC:

Richt seemed to be talking to Marshall directly when he spoke of Georgia’s need for more tailbacks on Wednesday.

“There’s a tremendous opportunity at the University of Georgia for running backs in this class to come to Georgia and make a big impact,” Richt said. “I hope that’s not breaking a rule, but there’s tremendous opportunity, I can say that. If I was a running back, if I was a great running back, I would want to come to Georgia. I would be so excited about my opportunity at Georgia.”

The message reached Marshall. He retweeted Richt’s comments after they were circulated on Twitter by reporters.

SEC Champ tickets cutoff: $12K

The Athletic Association just sent out point cutoffs for SEC Championship Game tickets:

Hartman Fund Contributor Tickets - in an attempt to provide tickets to as many Hartman Fund contributors as possible, the following ticket limits were implemented.

• 6 tickets: All contributors who ordered with a cumulative score of 100,000 and higher will receive up to 6 tickets.
• 4 tickets: All contributors who ordered with a cumulative score between 52,500-99,999 will receive up to 4 tickets.
• 2 tickets: All contributors who ordered with a cumulative score between 12,050-52,499 will receive up to 2 tickets.

Tickets will be mailed to Hartman Fund contributors on Wednesday, November 23 via USPS

I'd say that's fairly high demand.

Munson: For "old timers," tech our biggest rival

I got to interview Larry Munson in 2005 for The Macon Telegraph. It was pretty cool.

Q: Who is Georgia's biggest rival?

A: Oh, I would think that the real old timers, like me and my age, I'm not saying me, but the older fans, they would show more hatred toward Georgia Tech than anybody. But as far as a rival is concerned and the student body getting up, younger people, I don't know. They have so many, so many teams that they're blood rivals with. Florida would rule, would be very close to that. But Tennessee would be close to that, too, and so would Auburn.

When it comes to hating other universities over a football game, who you gonna listen to? Students, old timers, or Jeff Schultz?

Beat tech. Beat them on every down.

His middle name was Harry

What can you say about Larry Munson after, "He was the best?" What can I add to a 40-year love affair and a tradition that somehow grew as strong as the game itself?

Not much. There are few unturned stones along the path of Larry Munson's life. Reporters have been ringing him up for years, hoping to write their part to the gravely chorus of his life.

But maybe you don't already know he was from Minnesota, served in World War II and that his middle name was Harry. Lawrence Harry Munson.

One of a kind indeed.

ESPN leveraging Corso's F-bomb

The awesomeness of Lee Corso's "F it" moment yesterday was pretty clearly unscripted. But I notice ESPN doesn't seem to be making any effort to bring down pirated videos of the moment, which surely they can do under copyright laws.

No doubt the moment will inject a little more life into next week's broadcast, and the good folks at the Worldwide Leader realize that the more people who hear about Corso's outburst, the better.

In a related note: In my eyes, Corso just justified the last two years of his career, during which he's made impressive strides back from a stroke, but hasn't been his old self. I declare him interesting again.

What a season. Now beat tech relentlessly

Way to go, guys. Weak schedule or not, slow start or not, you won the SEC East, and that's a hell of an accomplishment after last season.

In other news:

YES, awesome, suck it, die. Metaphorically(ish), of course.

Not bad for a white boy

Put me in the "doesn't buy that Michael Bennett is 'white'" category.



















Image: Tenn. Sports for The Dawgbone.

Guy's a 6'3" freshman and he's got 4 touchdowns this year, two of which I specifically remember as being holy-shit-awesome.

That is one of several reasons to believe our receiving corps is in good hands for the future. Bennett, Conley, everyone's favorite playmaker Malcolm Mitchell ...

Herschel Walker Quiz

Which of these paragraphs about Herschel Walker, from this November Playboy profile, is the most awesome paragraph about Herschel Walker?

a. Said Michael Irvin: “When Herschel was the baddest motor scooter on earth, he’d say, ‘I want to fight Mike Tyson.’ I’d say, ‘Herschel, do you know what that guy does to people? Let’s just beat the Redskins next week.’ But he believed he could beat Tyson. MMA is par for the course for him.”

b. “You can order room service at your house,” says Walker, who a mile into the run speaks with the effortlessness of someone who could do this for hours. Indeed, it is only 7:30 on a summer morning, but he has been up since 5:30, already knocking out 2,000 sit-ups and 500 push-ups and then answering e-mails.

c. Today Walker’s company consists of two divisions, including a recently purchased hospitality unit, and employs 300 people. Corporate offices are in Georgia. From three plants in Arkansas he distributes chicken sliders, chicken wings, chicken breast fajita strips and a host of other food items to clients that include the MGM Grand, Caesars Palace, the Hard Rock Cafe and ­McDonald’s. Last year his sales topped $80 million.

d. If record keepers took into account his combined USFL and NFL yardage — 13,787 — he would be the fifth leading rusher in pro history, ahead of Jim Brown, O.J. Simpson, Eric Dickerson and Ricky Williams.

e. He believes he would have committed murder had he not seen a "smile, Jesus loves you" bumper sticker on the rear of his intended victim’s hauling van.

f. “By eighth grade I’d been beaten up 15 times,” he says. “On the last day of eighth grade I got beat up again. I went home and watched Gilligan’s Island and said, ‘That won’t happen to Herschel again.'

I have to go with f. Also acceptable: Holy shit, watch out for Herschel Walker.

Raise your hand if you thought we'd whup Auburn

Everyone but Coach Richt and Coach Grantham, put your hands down.

Well done, all around, Bulldogs.

Evil Richt Returns

Awesome.

Update: It sounds like the question asked was "Any suspensions that we need to know about?" Yeah. Because that would be ridiculous. Coach Richt may not have had a pleasant Wednesday.

Auburn hates America, and we got America's back

The source is lost to time and the Internet, but some years ago a Dawg fan described Auburn something like this:

"I'm pretty sure that, if a Kid Rock concert could take a shit, it'd be Auburn."

That is, I believe, roughly accurate. And yet, these people are not merely no-account losers, sleeping on their cousin's couch in a doublewide. They've been successful, largely due to to cheating.

But I digress.

We'd better bring everything on Saturday. We'd better come out focused, and throw every asset we have at this biggest game of the season. Because we're not a very good team, and Auburn isn't terrible.

Altogether, I am reminded of 1997. We beat Florida that year, albeit with a much better effort and without the special teams meltdown we saw 8 days ago in Jacksonville. We were headed in the right direction that year, then slammed into an orange-and-blue wall named Dameyune Craig.

Let's definitely not do that again.

Before the Auburn game in 1901, a sign hung in the Georgia locker room. It said, "Beat Auburn or quit the game."

The game ended in a 0-0 tie. So we did not beat Auburn, and we did not quit the game. The basic philosophy, though, is sound.

Beat Auburn, or this season hardly existed at all.

More black jerseys? No. That is a bad idea

OTA, I enjoy your blog, but any line of logic that includes "it would be similar to the way Notre Dame wears/wore the green jerseys" is a line of logic you should abandon.

Update from the comments:

I like the idea of only doing it against AU at night.

That is now official blog policy.