Hobnailed boots only carry you so far

We need new highlights, Bulldogs. Because every jerk-ass compilation video I see right now just pisses me off.

We were 6-7 last year. It's been 29 years since Herschel Walker was running over people. It's been 10 since we stomped on Tennessee's face with a hobnailed boot.

We don't have any highlights right now. And I damn sure don't want to see selective editing of the one good play we had during the 2009 black helmet debacle. We lost that game 41-17.

FORTY-ONE TO SEVENTEEN.

We lost to Colorado last year. We lost to Mississippi State. WE COULDN'T SCORE A TOUCHDOWN AGAINST CENTRAL FLORIDA.

You want some honest highlights from the last few years? How about these? Or these? Or this massive beating?

Take a look at this. And this. Why don't you watch Cam Newton celebrate beating us?

So shutdown iMovie. Quit editing the 16 good plays we had last year into a "hype" video. Quit splicing in Rocky speeches. Quit listening to "Here Comes the Boom" all day like we can tackle somebody.

Quit all that dumb shit and get mad. Because you have nothing to point to right now as a Georgia fan. You're a loser. And you should be frothing at the mouth over that between now and Sept. 3.

L.I. endorsed: The Cheddar Bo Biscuit

Those of you who've never been to eastern North Carolina are missing out on one of the world's great culinary wonders: The Cheddar Bo Biscuit from Bojangles.

It's just a biscuit made with cheddar cheese, but it is freaking fantastic. It's kind of like the cheese biscuits at Red Lobster, except with less garlic, a little more butter and I'd guess about 70 times more cheese. It looks like this:

**You can't get Cheddar Bo's west of Clinton, N.C. Believe me, I've tried.

This is because only franchises owned by Tands Inc. carry them.

The cheese biscuit is an eastern North Carolina delicacy, and pretty much unique to the region, at least in this part of the United States. I've had amazing cheese biscuits in gas stations and other quality establishments in several cities, and can tell you the Cheddar Bo is not the best cheese biscuit ever made, but it is consistent, available nearly 50 places and unstoppable.

A few weeks ago I was out with my fiancee, and we got to talking about what we'd like to name our children, should we be so blessed. I suggested that, if we have a boy, we name him "Cheddar Bo."

So ... yeah. Because Lucid Idiocy strives to provide utility, I contacted Bojangles' corporate office in Charlotte, then Tands Inc. in Kinston. They gave me a list of restaurant addresses where the Cheddar Bo Biscuit is available. And I give you the Cheddar Bo Biscuit locator map.

I suggest that, the next time you're cruising up I-95 through North Carolina and Virginia, you make time for a stop at Bojangles.



By the way, I made this map using MapAList, which I also endorse. I don't think you can turn a list of addresses into a Google map straight up, but MapAList made it easy.

**Update: There are a couple of reports of Cheddar Bo sightings west of Clinton in the comments. I don't doubt them, but I haven't confirmed them. A buddy of mine says you can get a Cheddar Bo in Athens, Georgia, now, and my brother says they're available at one Bojangles in Northwest metro Atlanta.

Old fashioned hate

There's lots to love in this post at About Them Dawgs! But a sentence like this:

Let me first add that in the 1893 game, the contest's umpire made several questionable calls against Georgia.

gets to the essence of rivalry.

The Vuvuzela calls for profanity-laced tirades

Note: There's a lot of profanity in this, and an angry indictment of an entire nation. But I did take out the parts about Mexican soccer fans and donkeys.

I need somebody to explain these fucking things to me.

I mean, what's the point here? Is it really to mess with opposing players' heads, or is to stand there with a pack of idiots and blow into a plastic tube like a dumbass?

I mean, I'm sitting here watching the World Cup and the noise from these things varies, but there's a constant loud din. How does that give either side an edge? I can see the advantage on a set piece, since verbal communication would be more important for the defense, but what's the deal the rest of the time?

Seriously, is there anyone out there who has sat in the stands blowing one of these things who will explain to me what the fuck you think you're accomplishing?

Because fucking fuck. It's not even the noise that bothers me, it's that the whole thing just seems stupid. That and I'm pissed off that I had to learn how to spell "vuvuzela" to write this.

I have a buddy, and he's one of the few people I know in this country who actually goes to soccer games from time to time. He and the other U.S. citizen who does that both deemed these things useless.

"Near as I can tell, the only decent use of a vuvuzela ever witnessed was during the 2007 Gold Cup," my friend said. "When cameras at some lesser match (like Honduras v. Canada or some shit) showed a guy sitting in the stands, with the end in his mouth, as two other guys dumped full beers into it, using it as a massive beer bong."

Look what the South African company selling these things says:

"Put your lips inside the mouthpiece and almost make a 'farting' sound. Relax your cheeks and let your lips vibrate inside the mouthpiece. As soon as you get that trumpeting sound, blow harder until you reach a ridiculously loud 'boogying blast.'

Congratulations Boogieblast. I hate your entire fucking country now and it's your fucking fault. That's right. I got over apartheid, and now I think South Africa sucks because of your stupid fucking plastic horns.

Wikipedia says that, though the horns are certainly most common in South Africa, they have "been used in Mexican stadiums since the 1970s."

Well, that sounds about right. Those urine-box toting fucks would have a hand in this.

So what are we left with?

“This is our culture,” Lucas Radebe, the captain of South Africa’s World Cup team in 1998 and 2002 told The New York Times. “This is how we create our national rhythm and dance.”

Then your national rhythm and dance suck, Lucas. They suck.

So this guy's just going to keep being Florida's head coach

If you'd have told me a week ago that I'd be finding new ways to hate Urban Meyer, I'd of asked you if he was going to stab my family.

Gator Country has at least a partial transcript up from Meyer's press conference today:

Q: Coach, you talked a lot about having gut feelings about things. In your gut do you think you’re going to be the coach of this football team come fall?

COACH URBAN MEYER: I probably knew that question was coming. I do in my gut believe that will happen.

Q: I just wanted to make sure I got this right in my head. Did the doctors ever specifically advise you that you need to step away from coaching?

COACH URBAN MEYER: I’d rather not get into that.

Q: There are reports that you had a heart attack. Did that ever happen?

COACH URBAN MEYER: No.

This son of a bitch did exactly what I was afraid he'd do. Billy Donovan. Jeremy Foley. Bernie Machen.

Joe: Why do you think he did this? Is he just jealous of Lane Kiffin?

Me: I don't know. Presumably he's got some health issue. But he doesn't strike me as indecisive.

Joe: Surely you don't do that on a whim. Just decide, "I'm going to resign after the Sugar Bowl."

Bottom line: Good for Georgia. And all that money Florida's raking in, Bernie Machen ain't no dummy.

118th in turnover margin, No. 1 in your heart

Our 97 rushing yards per game are significantly less than our national ranking in turnover margin, which is 118th.

We're also 118th in penalties.

A couple of weeks ago Dan joked that Coach Richt should whip up some red JELL-O the way Jim Donnan did a few years back against Kentucky.

That joke's not funny any more.

I used to think the football team had more problems than I could easily count. But now I'm afraid we only have one problem, and everything else is a visible shoot from the same buried root.

I don't like the obvious conclusions this line of thinking leads to. I do agree with Dawgs Online, which I always look to for reasoned analysis:

If the start to this season has made any difference in the way fans view the program, it’s that their dissatisfaction can no longer be put on a specific area or assistant. There is a program problem now, and it’s Richt’s problem to address.

And I agree with Paul Westerdawg:

The good news (is) all of this is fixable. And all of it is fixable by Mark Richt. ...

But not without introducing new personalities into the mix. Something will have to change on that front, and Richt will have to make moves in the off season to address the issues.

The question is, will Coach Richt see it that way?

The Tennessee game is the season

Beat Tennessee or quit the game.

Update: Well, that didn't go well.

Things I don't understand

I find myself unable to get over my anger following the Oklahoma State loss, which is new and disturbing territory for me. It's entirely possible I'm completely ridiculous.

If Caleb King was able to practice with "no limitations" on Sunday, why couldn't he be in Stillwater on Saturday?

If Logan Gray was shifty enough to return punts last year, how is Branden Smith the better option in the "Wildcat Formation" our coaches seem to have discovered approximately 3 years after it was popularized?

Can Branden Smith throw the football, or is the plan just to have him go that way, really fast, and if something gets in his way, turn? Because any snaps that could go to a backup quarterback right about now are pretty key snaps.

I agree with the senator wholeheartedly: What, indeed?

Coach Richt has coached two Heisman Trophy winners, the NCAA's all-time winningest quarterback and the most recent No. 1 NFL draft choice. Can someone explain to me why this man would ever find himself starting Joe Tereshinski III in a major college football game?

Michael Jackson is not dead

After years of thinking they're simply crazy, I finally understand the people who have believed for so long that Elvis is alive.

Because my generation's Elvis is dead. That he was quite likely a child molester, most certainly abused as a child himself and pretty clearly disturbed is sad, but not particularly relevant here.

It's like an immortal has died, and there's no explanation for that.

It actually seems more likely to me that he has faked his death. That the body that will be buried where ever it will be buried is some sort of human clone. Or that one of his children is a clone, and on June 25 he managed to transfer his soul into a new body.

It stretches the mind to think that Michael Jackson could go out on anything but his own terms, however deluded they might be.

And now I'm just another crazy person. Somewhere there's a younger generation, who thinks I'm just an aging fool.

UPDATE: The theory has nearly gone mainstream, as was inevitable. From The (UK) Telegraph:

"He was talking about the prospect of being cloned. He grabbed Uri by both arms and told him, 'I really want to do it Uri, and I don't care how much it costs'."

The "U" in UF stands for "under no circumstances will you ever beat us again"

When I heard on the radio this morning that the University of Florida softball team had been swept in the College World Series finals last night, it put a smile on my face. And this picture of the girls' faces, standing with their runner-up trophy, made me smile again.

So that's what it's come to. I'm 33 years old, and the fact that the University of Florida could only produce the second best women's softball team in the country is enough to kick in the schadenfreude.

I think it's time to admit that my soul is a wholly owned subsidiary of Florida Athletics Inc. I am presided over by Athletic Director Jeremy Foley and his evil enforcers, Tim Tebow, Urban Meyer and Billy Donovan.

Coach Richt, Coach Fox, Damon Evans, I'm begging you. I don't want to live like this.

Yellow is the color of... Larry Munson?

I was cleaning out some old boxes recently and came across one for a talking Larry Munson bobble head doll I bought a few years back.

You remember those; they are awesome and proceeds benefit a UGA scholarship fund named for the late Noah Harris, a UGA cheerleader and Army 1st Lt. killed in Iraq.

But on the bottom of the box was a curious string of words: Yellow, LLC Savannah, Georgia.

Wait a damn minute, I thought. How can a company named Yellow LLC be involved with something this important?

It turns out Yellow LLC is a company owned by Rob Ellis of Savannah, who came up with the idea for the bobble heads and has been marketing them for a couple of years now.

The Savannah Morning News wrote a nice article about Rob in 2008, identifying him as a Savannah insurance broker and 1980 UGA graduate.

So why would a National Championship year Georgia graduate name his company "Yellow?" As with all difficult questions, I got drunk and consulted my buddy Joe.

"Maybe he's got another company called 'is the color of piss,'" Joe said.


Sadly, this is not the case. Because of course I called Rob and pestered him about it.

He's a member of Leadership Georgia, which is one of those important people networking things. And they bring in this profiler who assesses everyone's personality and assigns it a color. Red is social, blue is logical, green is organized and yellow is creative.

ROB: And that's the origin of that. ... I am very, very yellow and creative. That's where Larry was birthed, this whole concept was birthed. ... You can buy them direct now: TalkingLarry.com.

ME: Talking Larrys - that's a better name for the company, don't you think?
ROB: Uh, if that was my only deal. And it's not. This is clearly not my (regular) business.

ME: So, according to Leadership Georgia, the Georgia Institute of Technology is creative.
ROB: I did not mention the evil empire on North Avenue.

ROB: At least it's not orange.
ME: It's not like either one's too good, man.
ROB: I'd rather be yellow than orange any day of the week. Orange is evil.

I don't quite know what to think about all this. But there are 365 talking Larry Munson bobble head dolls left, according to Rob's site. That's one for each day.

Florida: Trying to read from an upside-down script

There was some guy yelling at us near the beach on Sunday. And I really don't know what he said. Because a sentence into it, all I could think was, "I really don't care what this guy is saying."

Florida: We still don't care what you think. We're still glad it pissed you off. We're glad we're in your head. Go suck it.


Still Grant Blankenship. From The Telegraph.

“I’ve been giving away gator meat left and right"

I know it's Tennessee week. And we've got a ways to go before the first week in November. But, Florida, I haven't forgotten you.

Record alligator taken from the Flint River.












Image: The Cordele Dispatch.

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources' rules for alligator hunting are pretty interesting. From The Dispatch:

Regulations allow hunters to take only one alligator a season, and the reptiles must be at least 48 inches long and can be hunted only with hand-held ropes or snares, snatch hooks, harpoons, gigs or arrows with a restraining line attached. Legal alligators must be dispatched immediately upon capture by using a handgun or bangstick, or by severing the spinal cord with a sharp implement, according to information provided by the DNR.

As Joe and I were headed down to Jacksonville last year, we stopped at a gas station near the state line. And we had our Georgia stuff on, so this guy calls us over to his truck.

"Hey boys," he said, or something like that. "Take a look in the back."


"That's what we gon' do to those gators," he said.

Thank you, rest of the world

Rivals' story on The Knowshon Moreno Highlight Controversy is the top story on Yahoo! right now.



It's the same piece based out of Richt's teleconference, but surely we're going to hear, eventually, about this from Herbstreit, Corso, Fowler or some other top personality or official at ESPN.

What I would call the "main" YouTube of the highlight is up to more than 133,000 views.

UPDATE: Something I just said: "Baby, what is it about bourbon you think makes me forget where I put it?"

UPDATE 2: A buddy of mine, a huge Dawg fan who already has plans to go to Arizona State and Jacksonville, is facing the prospect of extended jury duty soon. Jury selection alone could take weeks, the judge said.

The idea of him being sequestered during The Historic Season of 2008 is just tragic enough to be hilarious. Said Silver*:

This one's gonna be a dozy either way. Either with me threatening a superior court judge, or missing the greatest football season of our time, when our running back is hurtling men.

*Due to Lucid Idiocy policy of changing some people's names to the school colors, this name has been changed to one of the school's colors.

Peace within four quarters

As cool as it is that Coach Richt and other college football head coaches are heading to the Middle East to visit the troops, Coach Richt ought to just leave the other chumps at home, skip the military bases and get involved in peace negotiations.

And if you think I'm kidding, you just don't know me.

Hat tip: The man.

That oh-so-mythical National Title

Over the years I've written a lot of things for this newspaper, and I've been proud to do it. But, last night, when our desk chief asked me to write a column about the Dawgs missing out on a National Title shot, to speak, in effect, for the Bulldog Nation on the front page of The Macon Telegraph... I don't know that I've ever been more honored to write anything.

I hope I did you proud. And, yes, I made fun of tech in there.

Someone's gonna steal a title.

Another thing: We cover Sunday shifts here at the paper on a rotation. That means I work one Sunday every four months or so. And yesterday was my day, making it mere happenstance that I was even here to write that column.

It's a little thing, I know. But, I tell ya, the Lord'll put you where you need to be. Even on the little things.

UPDATE: The link cycled off our site, so I'm pasting the original column from our archives. It's the ridiculous threat that Hawaiian morons took seriously that started it all:

SOMEONE'S GONNA STEAL A TITLE; WISH IT COULD BE US
Monday, December 3, 2007

By Travis Fain

Allow me to speak for the Bulldog Nation today: Darn it.

That, of course, is the family newspaper version.

It's not so much that we deserved a shot at the national title. It's that no one really did, and it could have been us. And that title, mythical as it may be, is magical too. An impossible moment of bliss and history. A riot in a trophy. A warm feeling in your gut that the other teams can never take away.

Just say it: "National Title.'' Goose bumps and stomach flips.

And they teased us with a chance at it. Then the voters took it all away.

Whammy.

I've said many times that, in most years, the national title game should pit the SEC champion against the second best team in the country. So I can't argue against Louisiana State making the championship game this year.

But Ohio State? Why are they the assumed No. 1? Does anyone really think Georgia, or a handful of other teams, wouldn't beat them?

The Buckeyes beat one team that ended the season ranked in the top 25: Wisconsin. They went 11-1 in a down year for the Big 10. They beat Kent State, Akron and Youngstown State, proving two things: That Ohio State is without a doubt the best college football team in Ohio, and that they're willing to schedule patsies to prove it.

But I digress. The bottom line is this: We should have taken care of business against South Carolina, or Tennessee, or both. And but for a timely Vanderbilt fumble, we might have lost to the less-than-mighty Commodores. Not even the most optimistic Georgia fan thought we had a national title team going into this season, and now we're going to the Sugar Bowl.

That's pretty good. I am very, very proud of this team. From "The Celebration" in Jacksonville, Fla., to "The Blackout" against Auburn this season was the most fun I've ever had as a Georgia fan, and I'm thankful.

Sure, if Kentucky or Vanderbilt could kick a field goal against Tennessee, or if Tennessee's quarterback didn't throw two inexplicable interceptions against LSU on Saturday, or if the voters who had us at No. 4 last week had shown some consistency, we'd of had a shot at this thing.

But "what if" is a game for Georgia Tech fans. By the way, enjoy the Humanitarian Bowl. Again. I hear the weather's great in Boise, Idaho, this time of year.

There's something that pretty much everyone knows about the BCS, and this isn't the first year to prove it: The system is ridiculous. Let's have some sort of a playoff. Not 16 teams, but four, or maybe even eight. But since I doubt the BCS is looking for my opinion, let me close with this: I want Colt Brennan's head on a stick. I want that pretty boy Hawaii quarterback driven through the Superdome turf. I want perfection in all phases of the game this New Year's Day.

Destroy Hawaii. And then let this be known across the land: The Georgia Bulldogs will be staying in the national title conversation for many years to come.

And if you're not with us, then you'd better start running.

Georgia - Georgia tech: Where one-yard runs can change your life.

No more talk of all the planets aligning so that Georgia can play for a National Title this year, no matter how alluring the subject is. We have business to attend to.

And besides, did you see USC whip Arizona State last night? I was across the country, sitting on my parents couch, and even I didn't feel safe from their defensive line.

We don't deserve a shot at the National Title this year. Of course, it hasn't been so long since I thought we didn't deserve a shot at the SEC Title.

In fact, after the debacle that was the Tennessee game, I may have said that, if we won the SEC Title, they should just stop having SEC Titles.

I would like to rescind that statement and apologize for it. Go Kentucky.

This Saturday we play Georgia tech. This Saturday is for hate. And, truth be told, if we won five National Titles in a row, that wouldn't be enough for me as a Georgia fan. Not until Georgia tech disbands its football program and apologizes to the state. That will be enough.

Barnhart did a thing on Georgia's top five wins over tech, including the "Drought-Breaker" of 1957.

For those of you who don't know that story, read it. We retired a fullback's number primarily because of his play in that one game.

The younger set may tell you tech's not a big deal. They are wrong. If you don't think the tech game matters, try losing one.

It burns like fear. It knots your stomach like acid and hate.