Dream Team: A football team of movie characters

At some point last season, no doubt with help from my friend alcohol, I started working on football lineup made up only of movie characters. I stumbled across it recently, and, voila.

Please note: These characters have to be human, at least in the movie sense. You start putting Superman at running back and the Rancor monster at defensive end and this whole exercise gets ridiculous.

OFFENSE

Quarterback: Capt. James T. Kirk. Fearless. Leader. Bangs green chicks. So he's got the arm and the intangibles. Back up quarterback: John Wayne, for when we run the option.

Running back: Indiana Jones. He may not be the fastest guy on the field, but he's undefeated versus Nazis, may be immortal, seldom fumbles and is damn sure hard to tackle. You could also go with Han Solo here. I understand he made the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs.

Fullback: John Rambo. A kid on a tricycle could run behind him.

Flanker (WR): A.J. Green. I'm sure he'll be in a movie eventually. Also, I think the Batman movies are loosely based on his life.

Split End (WR): Roger Moore's James Bond. Deceptive speed/dry wit. Nobody does it better. When we go three-wide, I bring in Capt. Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. He is the Wes Welker of movie characters, if Wes Welker was an insane nonexistent pirate. Point is, the guy gets open.

Tight End: Liam Neeson's character from Taken. As an aside, have you noticed that Liam Neeson's entire career these days is based on killing people/wolves with his bare hands? What ever happened to Schindler's List? Also, dude's like 6' 4".

Left Tackle: Any Steven Segal character. They're all the same, they're always knocking people down and, these days, the guy weighs like 300 pounds. Second stinger when fat boy tires out: Jaws. He'd probably start, except I feel like his tendency to bite people to death would lead to penalties.

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.

Grantham v. Franklin: What really happened

It amazes me that a confrontation can play out on national(ish) television, the parties involved can be interviewed about it and no one will just say "here's why we were yelling at each other."

But finally we have word from a Nashville T.V. station with video footage: James Franklin thought Georgia was rubbing Vandy's face in a loss, and he used that to draw attention to his program.

Why it was so hard to get this hashed out from the beginning instead of everyone spending three days saying, well things got a little hot and we want to be gentlemen, is beyond me.

The Senator lays it out. Case freaking closed.

I guarantee that's not how you Dooley

It's not that there are no words, it's that there are way too many.



Hat tip: Silver Britches.

The optimism chart needs a new name

Perhaps you remember this attempt to graph my expectations for the coming season. Three months later the update looks like heart monitor hooked up to a cadaver.























There is some good news, though. Check out Dan up there expecting a 9-3ish season.

"We will be good enough to beat almost everyone," he said. "But because of the O-line we won't be able to get past the best teams."

I judged that to be somewhere between reasonable expectation and irrational optimism, but at this point my judgment is essentially worthless.

Then there's Huff, who asked to be placed "somewhere below the actual chart in the 'We are f*****' area."

Joe was essentially unchartable:

"I recently dropped from my February 'unreasonably high expectations' to something closer to this," he said. "That represents one day."

We can be a sad, sorry and confused group of people in the summer.

Charting our way to August optimism

Do you remember, by chance, a brief discussion earlier this month about the interplay of off-season worry versus optimism?

Well, with this story comparing John Jenkins' potential impact at Georgia to Terrence Cody's actual impact at Alabama, I think we're moving quickly from the former to the latter.

In fact, I've charted this progress, and included a projection of my future expectations, based on past experience.



















Note the tendency to blow past reasonableness on the way to irrational extremes.

UGA AA: Don't drop ball on the big screen, Florida

Marc Weiszer reports that the UGA Athletic Association Board of Directors will take up two items today: replacing the jumbotron in Sanford Stadium and raising Florida ticket prices by $10.

The big screen probably needs to be replaced. It looked pixelated during the past season, with some sections distractingly lighter than others. It wasn't like that in previous years, so something's probably wrong with it.

According to Weiszer, we installed that screen in 2005. I hope when we install this next multi-million-dollar television, we get one that lasts longer than five years. Arkansas' far superior screen, for example, was installed in 2000. So it can be done.

As for the Florida tickets; yeah, please make me pay $10 extra to watch the most profitable program in the SEC (and No. 2 in the nation) get reamed by the University of Florida.

Update: Weiszer says the board voted to delay the Florida increase to 2012, and to spend $1.4 million on a video board upgrade. They're sticking with the same company that did the current board, though, Daktronics. Here's hoping it gives us a better result this time.

Auburn University: "incredibly well read"

The Register Guard, a newspaper in Eugene, Ore., ran a piece this weekend to try to explain Auburn to area Oregonians. They interviewed a local author who went to Auburn and based quite a bit of the article on her.

“People are incredibly well read," she told the paper. "I don’t associate rednecks with Auburn in any way.”

Right.

Beginning of the end at NCAA HQ?

After 12 years in newspapers, I can tell you that this rule of thumb almost never lets you down: When people feel the need to respond to critics with a lengthy clarifying statement like this, someone's going down, and they're not named Cam Newton.

Usually it's the person who put out the statement, but surely NCAA President Mark Emmert, hired in April, is too new for the ax to fall on him. But people who get out-flanked by Cecil Newton shouldn't keep their jobs. And this line, seemingly from Kevin Lennon in the gray sidebar on Emmert's statement, has an air of defensiveness that seldom springs from or engenders job security:

While comparisons may be human nature, they should at least be made based on the facts.

Translation: It's not me, it's all of you. Good luck with that attitude.

As usual, The Senator asks the appropriate questions:

If Emmert thinks the amateurism rules need strengthening, whose fault is that?

... somehow, I’m supposed to believe that Cecil Newton is smart enough to game the system to confound two of the shrewder groups of people on the planet, but not smart enough to profit from it. Does that makes sense to anyone not named Mark Emmert or Mike Slive?

let's try to say fewer foolish things

Folks, very few things in this world are "so far over the line that it can’t even be debated."

And when you start using that kind of language to describe a hand gesture in a football game, you discount your own opinion.

SEC Fan: PAC-10 is "sissy football"

Listen to this phone call into some California radio station.

There is almost no part of it that I don't love, and that includes the part where the guy says SEC teams are better than the NFL.

Washaun runs this state into parked car

From The Banner-Herald:

Georgia running back Washaun Ealey, the Bulldogs’ leading rusher last season, is in the Clarke County Jail this morning after he was arrested on misdemeanor charges of hit-and-run of a parked vehicle and driving on a suspended license.

Well that sounds like a multiple-game suspension, doesn't it?

Dontavius Jackson, he of the recent transfer, would have had to sit six games for his version of the hit and run. Washaun's cases doesn't include any alcohol charges, almost magically, it would seem, since the incident happened after 3 a.m. But if the facts as known now hold up, it's almost a no-brainer that we won't see him on the field in Columbia, and we probably won't see him in September.

Carlton Thomas and Ken Malcome, come on down.

Also, at my last job I had to show proof of a valid driver's license once a year or so. Can we not get some kind of program like that at Butts Mehre?

Because we have really got to stop going down for dumb shit.

Update: Seth Emerson reports that Washaun also has an outstanding warrant for failure to appear on a speeding ticket. So the dumb just gets dumber.

Update: It looks like Washaun may only be suspended for one game, which is surprising, but I'm not complaining.

Jordan Love and the UGA cops: What the what?

This Jordan Love arrest is just chock full of unnecessary stupid.

The report says Love couldn't or wouldn't spell his middle name. And yet, there it is, on the same report (download from The Red & Black). It's Lawrence. Yet the chief of police acts like it's some family secret.

The report says Love wouldn't give his date of birth, and it's not on the report at all. Does this young man not have a drivers license? At some point in the training process for UGA cops, do they not say "Ask people for their drivers licenses?"

Officer Kevin Thompson confiscated a lighter and at least one firework from Love and took them into evidence, but Love wasn't charged with shooting fireworks, just this obstruction thing. Now Love's family has hired not just one, but two attorneys (8th paragraph)?

And who the hell calls the cops because someone's lighting off fireworks at 9:40 p.m. on July 5?

Apparently, a guy named Stephen C. Rogers who, interestingly, spells his middle name "Christophe."

Update: The AJC reports that this case is moving forward. If I'm Love's attorneys I think exhibit A for me is one of the numerous newspaper articles where the chief of police basically said there was no case.

Sword weilding bin Laden hunter booked for Letterman tonight

From The L.A. Times:

Gary Faulkner, the American detained in Pakistan while on his self-imposed mission to kill Osama bin Laden, will appear on the “Late Show with David Letterman.”

Joe: He's my new favorite American.

Come on, Kentucky

You've probably seen this Touchdown-Jesus-struck-by-lightning story on the interwebs.

Elaine Spencer, our Ohio Valley bureau chief, notes that the statue, visible from Interstate 75, is near Big Bone Lick State Park in Kentucky.

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.

The 2010 Dawgs: Zoom

Yeah, I know. There's just no way. But let me dream, would you, and think of the 2010 Dawgs as somebody's PlayStation team.

From UGA, via David Hale:

40-Yard Dash
Skill Positions (Time)
Cuff, V. 4.24
Sailors, B. 4.28
Green, AJ 4.37
King, T. 4.37
Rambo, B. 4.37
Smith, B. 4.37
Commings, S. 4.38
Williams, S. 4.38
Wooten, R. 4.38
Harton, Brandon 4.40

Big Skill (Time)
Washington, C. 4.29
Dowtin, M. 4.40
Gray, L. 4.48
Murray, A. 4.50
Robinson, C. 4.53
White, C. 4.53
Dent, A. 4.63
Chapas, S. 4.71
Walsh, B. 4.71
Houston, J. 4.75

Linemen (Time)
Wood, B. 4.71
Dobbs, D. 4.81
Glenn, C. 4.81
Tyson, D. 4.81
Lott, D. 4.84
DeGenova, M. 4.85
Jones, A. 4.97
Houston, K. 5.00
Franks, N. 5.10
Burnette, C. 5.13

Gas for the dumpster fire at quarterback

I want someone to explain to me how the University of Georgia football program has gotten to the point where the possibility of Logan Gray transferring worries me.

Getting solid play from a redshirt freshman, who can't get hurt, is plans A through Z for the 2010 season. Brilliant.

Joe: Tennesseesque.

The Peanut Butter Kid, a Georgia Bulldog

I can't decide if this is awesome, or a debacle.

The above link is to ESPN. This is rom Deadspin:

Why this kid would cover himself in PB became crystal clear as the seconds on the clocked ticked down and UGA was about to wrap up its first win vs. a top 10 team at home since the Jim Harrick era. The students were reminded to NOT rush the court. ... As he rushed the court there wasn't a security guard or police officer willing to go anywhere near this kid.

...

Mohs: "It's like that t-shirt you had years ago: 'Producing the best educated alcoholics since 1785.'"

Georgia tech: Crazy for Swayze

The bike rack, the rain and the moving at 70 mph make it a little hard to tell, but, yes, that is a tire cover that says "Crazy for Swayze." And that is a Georgia tech license plate.