Saturday, November 3, 2007

College Game Day

I have decided that on Saturdays during the Nablopomo that I am going to post on Football. Caroline you have been warned. Avert your eyes. This is a huge month for college football every year. This is where the good teams rise to the top, and try to secure their place in the rankings. Upsets seem to be more common in November. I don't get why ESPN focuses on the Bowl games. I mean I like Bowl games too, but I also like the weekly matchups. What a great season 07 has been. Upsets all over the place. I think there will be more to come today. I am picking Wisconsin over the Buckeyes, Oregon over AState, and Florida state over BC. ESPN is picking Georgia to get upset by Troy. Malarky. I know Troy is a solid team, but the Dawgs won't overlook them. Richt has never lost to a non conference team in regular season, and it won't change today. I know Georgia has been inconsistent this year, but it looks like we have turned a corner. They have their sights set on SEC now. Any thoughts on upsets? Your picks? I want to take one more look back at last week, where the dawgs came out of the Cocktail Party with a W. There has been a lot of talk from the Gator Nation that Richt was classless for asking his team to get a celebration penalty, after the first score. Here is what happened:



He was trying to get the team pumped up, and he says he wasn't planning to have the whole team clear the bench. How high has the Florida Gators set the bar in class, when they hit Stafford while he is kneeling? Kinda hypocritical for the Gators to cry out for teams to be classy when they play football like this:



Stay classy Florida.

4 comments:

ManUtd17 said...

I like the idea of college football posts on Saturdays! Keep it up.

I would've been fine with the celebration call if Richt hadn't jumped up and down about what the UGA players did at Vandy 2 weeks earlier. Which is it? Classless? No. Hypocritical? Perhaps. I get that he wants to get the team fired up, but these are 19 and 20-year-old kids. When you give them permission to get a penalty like that, you set them up to do something stupid like what they did -- drawing a taunting penalty in addition to the unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. We are lucky that we did not see any fists fly. I know Richt wouldn't have wanted to see an outcome like that.

I thought the hit to Stafford was stupid because in college you can't advance the ball after your knee goes down, but I don't recall hearing a whistle blow before the hit and I don't know if the dude who hit him could see that Stafford's knee had actually hit the ground. Wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility for a fake kneel down -- especially in a game like this where Richt is so focused on getting his guys up for the game.

Bekah said...

The reason Richt jumped all over the players at Vandy was because they were celebrating on the vandy logo at midfield, which I don't think was intentional, but more where they kicked the field goal from. Richt was doing that to show that he didn't approve of his team rubbing it in to other teams after a victory. I think he is okay with celebration (it would be sad if he wasn't). The Florida thing was a different deal. He wanted his team to get excited and try to have the emotional edge. Here is what a Ga blogger said on this argument.

#1. The Vanderbilt logo is on Vanderbilt's home field. Richt was upset that we were showing up an opponent at their home stadium. Jacksonville, our record of the last 17 years notwithstanding, is NOT an away stadium. It is just as much ours as Florida's. The decision to celebrate, as much as anything else, dismantled the Gators' perceived home-field advantage. I repeat - Jacksonville is OUR stadium too. We can celebrate when and where we choose, without showing up or humiliating the opponent.

#2. Vanderbilt, recent successes notwithstanding, is Vanderbilt. We should never lose to Vanderbilt, in any stadium at any time. To celebrate a last minute victory over a historically bad team reinforces mediocrity and insults the great teams of a few years ago. Georgia doesn't do that because Georgia is much, much better than Vanderbilt.

#3. Richt's anger at Vanderbilt and emotion in Jacksonville are two sides of the same coin. Both lit a considerable fire under the players, both reinforced the high expectations this program should have every year. Both were acceptable.

I think he has a pretty valid argument. What do you think?

ManUtd17 said...

I appreciate the acknowledgment that Jax is a neutral location.

I think jumping on a visiting team's logo is wrong. We did it a few years ago at FSU in the pre-game. It started a fight and led to both teams losing players for the game. It's stupid.

If you knew that the kids were going to limit the celebration to 85 players jumping up and down like a mosh pit focusing only on themselves, then there'd be no harm in taking the 15-yarder. But -- as we saw -- that's not going to happen. I just think it was stupid to give those young kids approval to do that because they can't limit their enthusiasm. They start jawing with each other and/or taunting -- especially in a rivalry game like this with so much on the line. Still think we were lucky not to see a few of the boys throw down.

Anonymous said...

I love that we are the dugans downstairs...

but seriously i am not digging the football blogging ... i guess i will just suffer through it!

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