UGA-GT faceoff: Let the hating commence!

It's the week before Thanksgiving, and you know what that means . . . well, maybe you don't know what that means other than turkey overdose and take-no-prisoners Christmas shopping, but if you attended Georgia or Georgia Tech you do: It's the week of Clean Old-Fashioned Hate, the now going-on-113-year-old UGA-GT rivalry. It may not be the nastiest rivalry in the country, it may not be the one most national-title-implication-fraught, but it's certainly one of the most interesting: Very few rivalries match up schools of such vastly different personalities. Sure, Georgia people talk mountains of shit to Tennessee kids, Auburn kids, Florida kids, etc. etc. etc., but when you get right down to it we're not all that different from them. Tech kids, though . . . yeah, there's a culture gap there. We Bulldogs live in a relatively small town about 60 miles into the east metro Atlanta hinterlands, yet we still do more partying on a Wednesday night than Techies do on a Saturday in the middle of Midtown freaking Atlanta. Our idea of a good night is a hard-liquor IV and dozens of the hottest coeds in the Western Hemisphere; theirs is World of Warcraft games played over the Internet with people who may not even be from this hemisphere. And so on and so forth. The jocks and cheerleaders from your high school are the kind of kids who go to Georgia; the awkward Dungeons & Dragons players off in a dark corner of the lunchroom are Tech material. Maybe it's not fair, but that's the way life is sometimes.


I really can't make it much clearer than this.

But anyway, it's a rivalry that's worth delving into further, which is why I approached Tech blog Ramblin' Racket about the possibility of doing a Q&A exchange so that the two sides could find out a little more about each other. You'll recall that I did something similar last year with Tech blogger Nathan Fowler, late of Golden Tornado and more recently of AOL Fanhouse. This year the stakes are ratcheted up even higher, as Tech is on their way to the ACC championship game while Georgia has struggled mightily for most of the season -- and Georgia is running a serious risk of sustaining its first loss to Tech of the Mark Richt era. First loss to Tech since the previous century!

What's on the mind of Tech Nation as they stand on the brink of maybe their best season since the national-title year of 1990? What, other than advanced calculus and a disturbingly thorough knowledge of obscure comic-book characters, makes the Tech man tick? You won't know unless you read, sucka.

(ADDED: My responses to Ramblin' Racket's questions right here.)

1. About 11 months ago, Georgia Tech had just gotten embarrassed by Utah in the Emerald Bowl, and a substantial portion of the Tech fanbase -- even people who had supported Chan Gailey in the past -- decided they might not piss on Gailey if he were on fire. Now Tech is 9-2 and has a very real shot at their first-ever BCS bowl. What's the prevailing opinion of Gailey at this point? Have the Chan-haters softened their opinion on him, or do they think he's only taken advantage of a weak ACC?


The Ned Flanders of college football would have a glass of warm milk before going to bed, but that's almost like doing drugs.

Most realistic Tech fans (read: very few Tech fans) recognize that the ACC is down, and while GT benefits, we still believe that this is a truly solid team which took Notre Dame to the wire and has had only two "off" games (Clemson and UNC).

The hardcore-est members of the "Can Chan" movement would probably never let up even if we won the BCS title game, but most Chan-haters are converted. A lot of them are a total knee-jerk group who went directly from hating Chan to loving him. These are the folks who would deny that this is a down year for the ACC, and will probably complain that whoever we play in a bowl game is unworthy . . . I guess better that than hating on the coach, though.

2. One thing Georgia fans constantly revel in is just how much attention Georgia football is paid by seething Tech fans. So how much attention did Tech Nation pay to Georgia's struggles this year? Which, in retrospect, was more satisfying: Whacking Virginia Tech, or hearing that Georgia had lost to Vandy?

I'll be the first one to admit GT's "little brother syndrome." In defense of it, though, imagine if -- IN ATHENS -- there was 20x as much Tech stuff on homes/cars/businesses/etc as UGA stuff. There would be much the same effect. The reason the Dawgs are always on our minds is because they're always in our faces.

That said, we always know how the 'Dawgs are doing, and we definitely enjoy the failures. The weekend of the Vandy loss was a bye week for Tech, so there wasn't even a distraction from loving it. I don't think I've ever said "How 'bout them Dawgs?" more times than that weekend. Beating VPI was more satisfying, though. Schadenfreude only goes so far, and up until Tech's loss at Clemson, I was still worried about y'all screwing up our strength of schedule . . . although the rest of the ACC would have already hosed it.

3. How do you think this year's Yellow Jacket squad stacks up to the better teams of the George O'Leary era?


O'Leary: Never been seen in the same room with Newt Gingrich.

My instinct was to say the GOL teams were better, but as I think it through and look at the numbers, I think this year's squad trumps them. Joe Hamilton offenses put up more points on average, but they lacked the stifling D of the Jon Tenuta era. In GT's 10-2/ACC co-champ season of 1998, the team allowed almost 25 points per game (compared with [about] 15 so far this year).

The down year for the ACC doesn't effect my opinion here; in the late '90s, the ACC was still trying to shed its perennial-cakewalk/"FSU and the Seven Dwarves" image, so the quality of opponents was probably not all that different.

4. How will Reggie Ball be remembered after he leaves Tech? Will that change substantially if he wins (or loses) an ACC title?

Honestly, I think Reggie's legacy falls to this game against Georgia. Even if we win the ACC, with a loss to UGA that would always be the proverbial asterisk in the conversation.

Two buddies talking Tech QBS: "Okay, Hamilton was awesome . . . Shawn Jones was a BAMF . . . Reggie Ball was sweet . . . " "Yeah, but he never beat Georgia." "Yeah, true, he sucked. Didn't he like throw the ball away on fourth down?"


I know what you're thinking. "Was that third down or only second?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself.

If Reggie beats UGA this weekend, he'll be remembered as a very good quarterback. If he beats Georgia and wins the ACC, he'll be remembered as a great quarterback.

5. Lightning round! I'll say a word or phrase and you respond with the first word or phrase that pops into your head. Ready? OK, here we go:

Chan Gailey: Underrated.

Mark Richt: Gentleman coach. I wish he sucked.

Uga VI: Ugh.

Reggie Ball: Calvin Johnson.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Sucks without Tony Barnhart.

Athens: Cheap booze and hot chicks.

UGA coeds: Brumby, "Nine Floors of Whores." (I actually cheated on this one, because the first several responses I thought of were inappropriate . . . but all true.)

[Judges? Yes, we will accept "Nine Floors of Whores." We would've also accepted "Virgin Vault." A good friend of mine peed off of the roof of it while he was in school there.]

6. From what I gather, Tech has had some pretty impressive successes on the recruiting trail this year; however, after this season they lose a considerable amount of experience at quarterback, and could also lose a once-in-a-generation playmaker if Calvin Johnson busts tracks for the NFL. Particularly with regard to the UGA-GT rivalry, is the general sense among Tech fans that this was their "breakthrough year" setting them up for a return to national prominence, or that 2006 was just a one-year window for success that will start closing again once Ball and Johnson are gone?

Really a little bit of both. We expect a little fall-off next year (especially if Calvin leaves), but also a return to perennial contention for the conference title, much like Georgia since '02.

Tech has not gotten this year's level of media exposure since Joe Hamilton was on the Flats. (It really helps that some Calvin Johnson highlight is in 80% of ESPN's college football commercials.) Getting the team into the national consciousness helps recruiting, and that has obviously paid off with the incoming class you mentioned. If Tech can squeeze potential out of 4-star recruits the same way we have 2- and 3-stars, the program should be in great shape. (For an example of Tech getting the most out of its players, realize that P.J. Daniels started out a 7th-string walk-on, then led the ACC in rushing in 2004.)

7. Last question: A mysterious man shows up at your doorstep one day and offers you your choice of three wishes -- but you can pick only one: You can trade coaches with Georgia, trade female student populations with Georgia, or trade Travis Bell for a framed, limited-edition "Lord of the Rings" poster signed by every member of the cast. Which one do you choose?

That's damn tough. Even though I covet him, I've learned to hate Mark Richt, so no coach trade. And even though I covet the hotties, I wouldn't want to trade the womenfolk. One of Tech's greatest traditions is bitching about how much harder it was when you were there, and how kids now have it too easy (e.g. "Java!? I programmed on a PUNCHCARD, kid!" "We never had any fancy waterslide. And we only had a swimming pool for drownproofing." "Back in my day, east campus smelled like shit. And there were NO girls.") If the students ever had a female population like Georgia, I would be really angry and bitter about how much better they have it.

So, unfortunately, I would take the "Lord of the Rings" poster. I would sell it, if that makes it any less shameful a choice, but I would probably sell it at DragonCon, so the shame just rolls right back in.


Heh heh. I knew you couldn't refuse.

Thanks to Ramblin' Racket for having enough faith in the literacy of Georgia alums to participate in this little back-and-forth. Good luck Saturday (though not so much in the "hope you play a great game" sense as in the "hope none of your guys get seriously injured" sense). I'm looking forward to a great game and, dare I hope, 365 more days of holding it over you guys' heads.

Blogpoll ballot #13, and some other crap.

Take a bow, Buckeyes.

With no Georgia football this weekend to entertain (or horrify) me, it was a relatively relaxing Saturday, one I spent on the couch polishing off a half rack of Dreamland ribs whilst flipping back and forth between the Iron Bowl and the Ohio State-Michigan game. Both underdogs scored first, only to see the favorites storm back for a win; I probably felt sorrier for the Alabama fans, if for no other reason than because I know what it feels like to have Auburn fans relentlessly bugging the shit out of you (though they won't be doing much of that to me for the next 12 months, heh heh). But I also felt a little bad for the Michigan folks, in an "I wish both teams could've won" kind of way, as wishy-washy as that sounds. I mean, a classic like that, where both teams are so clearly playing their asses off . . . hate the fact that anybody has to lose at all, is what I'm saying.

Partly for that reason, my top two teams remain the same from last week's Blogpoll ballot to this week's: Ohio State is still #1 and Michigan is still #2. I could've dropped the Wolverines, and I'm sure plenty of people did, but unlike most times when a top team loses, I didn't think dropping them was a necessity in this case. Can you confidently say that any other team in the country -- Southern Cal, Louisville, Florida, whoever -- would've played Ohio State that close under those circumstances? One loss or no, is anybody better than Michigan right now other than Ohio State? I played out a bunch of different scenarios in my head and couldn't find any -- and apparently both the sportswriters and the computers agree with me.

But, and here's the paradox: I don't want to see a rematch of this game. Michigan may still be the second-best team in the country, but the fact is they had their chance, they lost (even if it was close), and that, to my mind, is that. Michigan was +3 in turnovers, they scored 39 points, and still didn't get the W; I think Ohio State's superiority has been conclusively established here. So it's time to give someone else a chance for the national-title game. I've got ideas about who I think that someone should be and who it shouldn't, but I don't want a rematch.

Anyway. Here are my rankings.

Games watched: Part of Ball State-Toledo (it was Tuesday, I was bored), West Virginia-Pittsburgh, parts of Boston College-Maryland, flipped back and forth between Auburn-Alabama and Ohio State-Michigan, rotated randomly through USC-California, Virginia Tech-Wake Forest, Washington-Washington State, and Cincinnati-Rutgers.

1. Ohio State (1)

2. Michigan (2)

3. Southern California (6)

4. Arkansas (3)
Not exactly a world-afire-setting performance against Mississippi State, though it's not like they needed one. I didn't drop them a spot because of that; I think my guilt over having them above a team that dropped 50 points on them finally caught up with me.

5. Florida (4)

6. Louisville (9)

7. West Virginia (10)

8. Wisconsin (12)
The Badgers have to be pissed about the rule saying a conference can't put more than two teams in the BCS. Instead they get to play in the Capital One Bowl again.

9. Notre Dame (8)

10. LSU (7)
Unlike Arkansas, I did drop LSU for a lousy performance in a win. Good God, what are you doing getting taken to OT by Ole Miss? In Tiger Stadium?

11. Texas (11)

12. Oklahoma (13)

13. Boise State (18)

14. Rutgers (5)
I understand about letdowns, guys, but there's get-played-close-all-game-long-and-get-punked-at-the-end letdowns and then there's never-in-the-game-for-even-a-second letdowns, and this was the latter. And it doesn't get any easier next week, because even Syracuse is good enough to beat them if they're looking ahead to West Virginia.

15. Boston College (20)

16. Tennessee (15)

17. Auburn (17)

18. California (16)

19. Georgia Tech (19)

20. Virginia Tech (23)
Very nice win against Wake Forest. The Hokies will be dangerous next year.

21. Brigham Young (21)

22. Wake Forest (14)

23. Nebraska (24)

24. Clemson (25)

25. Texas Christian (NR)

The next five: Texas A&M, Penn State, Maryland, Hawaii, Georgia.

Dropped out: Maryland (22).

Sunday morning coming down:

· Kirk Herbstreit is one of my favorite guys in sports, but when I heard that the former Ohio State QB was going to be in the booth for the OSU-Michigan game, I smelled a rat and poised my finger over the "shenanigans" button. But I'll say this for Herbie: He did a great job of keeping whatever biases he might've had bottled up and calling a very clean game. He praised Michigan when they did something good, and (perhaps to a lesser extent) he criticized Ohio State when they screwed up. So props to him for that. I still think it's pretty sketchy when former players or other alums of a school are in the booth for a game that school is playing in, but Herbstreit showed how to do it right. Class act.


Plus the ladies love him.

· Wish the same could be said for some of Ohio State's fans. I know I'm not the first one to ask it and I know I won't be the last, but what is it about a win like this that makes certain people think, "You know, the best possible way to celebrate this victory is to turn over a car and set some stuff on fire"? I'm not going to sit here and say Georgia fans are as pure as the driven snow, but the worst we've done of late is trying to rush the field too early when we finally beat Tennessee back in 2000. For even the biggest games -- winning the SEC title back in 2002, finally beating Florida in '04 -- we participated in very little that would qualify as "vandalism," much less "arson."

· So here's what it looks like in the Big East: Everybody has at least one loss. Louisville has Pittsburgh and UConn left, both of whom they should beat without much trouble. Rutgers has Syracuse, whom they should, and West Virginia has South Florida at home before RU and WVU meet up on December 2. So if everybody beats whom they should beat before then, and WVU wins, then Rutgers has two losses, Louisville has the tiebreaker over the Mountaineers, and Louisville is the Big East champion. If Rutgers wins, they have the tiebreaker over Louisville, and they're the Big East champion. I think. But apparently that means WVU is all but out of the race regardless. Weird.

· OMG SPURRIER TO MIAMI! True? Probably not, but that doesn't mean it ain't fun to watch the Gamecock fans squirm. And I gotta say Spurrier doesn't look like the happiest cat in the conference right now. At various points this season he's called out the refs (twice), his own players, even his own coaches, pretty much everybody but the grounds crew at Williams-Brice Stadium -- all in all a guy who's showing all the signs of being really upset at where his life's path has taken him.


When your job has you looking this Tom Coughlinesque, it's time to admit things didn't turn out the way you thought they would.

· Finally, Jason Campbell's line from his first start for the Washington Redskins: 19-of-34 for 196 yards, two TDs, no picks, and five rushes for 11 yards to boot. Efficiency rating for the game: 92.3. Yeah, they lost to Tampa Bay, but while the season may be a disaster, it's no longer a complete disaster. Kudos, Mr. Campbell, and I'm sorry I doubted you. Just please try and win, you know, maybe a couple games down the stretch.


I suppose I can get used to this.

Friday Random Ten: And on the twelfth weekend, I rested.

For the first time since August, Georgia is going an entire weekend without playing a game. Any other day I might be bummed about this, but after 11 straight weeks of probably the most tumultuous season of the Mark Richt era, I'm actually kind of glad for the breather. This weekend I can just kick back, polish off a few Stellas, and take in everybody else's thrill of victory/agony of defeat without having to get too emotionally involved myself.

I know the OMG Biggest Game Evar this weekend is Michigan-Ohio State, but with all due respect to a Buckeye-fan commenter I'll get to in a minute, down here in Alabama, we only just found out the Big Ten was in Division I-A a few years ago. And I wanted to share with you the experience of a very close friend of mine from college, who for reasons too complicated to explain went to the Wisconsin-Iowa game in Iowa City this past weekend. Based on this experience, she says she finally has empirical proof that the Big Ten has nothing on the SEC when it comes to tailgating or anything else. Our girl on the scene points out thusly:

· Iowa has two majorettes. One of them is a dude.

· Most of the music in the stadium was piped-in shit like at an NBA game, not the marching band. Which was probably fine because Wisconsin didn't bother to send their band, not like Iowa isn't about the closest school in the Big 10 from them. Still, I don't approve. If I wanted to hear multiple playings of the first 15 seconds of Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train," I'd go to a fucking Atlanta Braves game and wait for Chipper Jones to bat. This is supposed to be college football.

· Remember how we used to go to the Miss Georgia pageant every year and joke that the girls in the audience were all dressed as if, just in case, there would be an off chance that Miss Magnolia Midlands would, like, sprain an ankle or something and they'd have to pinch pageant? Full hair, full makeup, prom attire, the works? Ridiculous. Well, the same goes for Big 10 football. I know those lazy bastards don't find it necessary to dress or anything for a football game, so I was prepared to see a ton of people in sweatshirts. No biggie. I was wearing one myself -- when in Rome and all that. Here's what I was not prepared for: the number of people who were not just wearing sweatshirts, but sweatPANTS too, That's the kind of thing that doesn't show up on TV. Wow. All I can say is, wow.

· Iowa fans were booing after dropped pass No. 2. Unbelievable. First off, no Georgia fan would even NOTICE there was a dropped pass trend until about No. 5 or No. 6, that's how bad we are. And I'm not going to sit around and pretend Georgia fans never boo their own team, but people get really mad about it when that happens. Booing your own team is a total no-no in the SEC. (With one huge, orange-and-blue jean-shorts wearing exception in the University of Florida, whose fans are uncouth fistfuckers who aren't even Southern except in the geographical sense of the word and deserve all the booing they heap on their team. So they'll boo at the Swamp. But then again, no one likes them.)

· Neither team appeared to have a kickoff cheer (like "Go Dawgs, Sic 'Em" or "Roll Tide, Roll" or "War Eagle Hey"). . . . Wait, I take that back. When Iowa was receiving, but not kicking, the loudspeaker would play a few seconds of the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up." Which would be totally bitchin' if I was watching a commercial for Windows 95. But I complained already about the music, so now I'm just piling on.

· You know how on a big third down usually the defense will lift their arms as if to tell their fans, hey, you lazy fucks, how about standing up and cheering for us on this big third down, it's the least you can do while we're out here getting our faces pounded? And then everyone does stand up. Both Iowa and Wisconsin were doing that. Only students responded, though. And not even all of them.

So overall I was not impressed. I'm not saying the SEC experience is better, not by any means. All I'm saying is, I'm about done hearing Big 10 folks -- who have never been to a game in any other conference -- talk all day long about how they're the only ones who know how it's done. Shenanigans. That's what I'm calling. Shenanigans.

Wow. Harsh words, I know, but still, it makes me feel more assured in thinking that the biggest game of the weekend, at least in my little corner of Dixie heaven, is still Auburn-Alabama. Yeah, this game hasn't had national-title implications in years; lately the only implications it's had is which coach is going to need to be updating his résumé over Thanksgiving weekend. But be that as it may, when I walk into my office on Monday, half of the people there are going to be suicidally depressed and the other half are going to be the ones driving them to it, and Bama-Auburn is going to determine who's who.

Anyway, I've slagged on the Big Ten enough, and in all fairness, Michigan-Ohio State is a pretty big game (in case that fact wasn't drilled into your skull enough by ESPN over the past month and a half). I should probably show more gratitude than that, especially given that one of my commenters who is an avowed Buckeye fan threw in a contribution to the whole Scarlett-Johansson-in-a-Hooters-uniform thing, which appears to be very close to taking on a life of its own:



As Borat would say, great success. Kudos, Buckeye. Maybe we'll make this a weekly Photoshop contest like they do on Fark.com. What's next? Jenna Bush in a Playboy bunny costume? Sky's the limit.

Anyway, enough of that. The Ten:

1. The Clash, "Julie's in the Drug Squad"
2. Mint Royale, "From Rusholme With Love"
3. Gorillaz, "Dracula"
4. Cat Stevens, "There Goes My Baby"
5. Underworld, "Pearl's Girl" (Live at Benicassim 2005)
6. Fun Lovin' Criminals, "Love Unlimited"
7. U2, "Zoo Station"
8. Janet Jackson, "When I Think of You"
9. Dimitri from Paris, "Un World Mysteriouse"
10. Pet Shop Boys, "The Theatre"

Your Ten(s), big game predictions, off-color rants, and whatever else in the comments. Dzienkuje.

Thursday mystery meat.

Great success!

· After many weeks of anticipation, I finally saw "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" on Monday. Whoawhoaweewow! I laughed so hard I nearly had a stroke. Make that multiple strokes. I don't want to give away too much of what happened, but . . . I hope you like fat, naked, hairy men. Or at least think they're uproariously funny.

Next up for must-see viewing: "Casino Royale." No fat, naked, hairy men that I know of -- just two hours of pure uncut badassedness. And while I will confess to not being all that jazzed initially about the choice of Eva Green as the new Bond girl, I'm coming around.


"Vesper Lynd," though? No "Regina Frottage" or "Baroness Clitora LeBoeuf"?

· I don't want to seem like a corporate whore here, but I have to give a shout-out to Cingular Wireless. Recently I upgraded to a new phone (a Sony Ericsson V-something-or-other), and this past week, after having had it for less than a month, the speaker conked out. So basically the only way to hear people on the other end of the line was to put them on speakerphone, and I didn't want to do that if I was getting calls from any of my weed hookups or babymommas, you know what I'm sayin'? So I went down to the Cingular store to try and get a new phone, and I was prepared to raise holy hell if all they were going to do was swap out my old crappy phone for a new crappy phone that was the same make and model.

But when I asked if I could upgrade to an LG CU500, the sales associate, Greg, said that would be fine. Didn't have to pay any extra charges or penalties for the privilege, either. Since I couldn't carry over any of the games or ringtones I'd bought from the old phone to the new one, he said to simply call 611 and get them to credit all that stuff on my next bill. I did that, once again expecting a major bureaucratic hassle, but in spite of some computer problems on the operator's end she had the whole transaction taken care of in about five minutes.

So Cingular gets the official Hey Jenny Slater endorsement for kick-ass wireless company. If you're looking to switch services, I highly recommend them. And my new phone, as Peter Griffin would say, is frickin' sweet.


Check the new hottness.

· With a lame-duck Congress left to do nothing but play out the string and a lame-duck president left to do nothing but tremble in fear and wait for the Democrats to come crashing through his door, everything old is new again in Washington. John Bolton is getting coughed up again as Bush's nominee for UN ambassador, daddy's friends are coming back to try and save Dubya's ass (Bush 41 having to bail out his son? Why, that's a new one!), and Strom Thurmond Fan Club president-emeritus Trent Lott has clawed his way back into the Republican Senate leadership as the Senate Minority Whip. Which inspired the Quote of the Week, brought to you by Atrios:

Trent Lott selected as Senate Minority Whip, because if there's one thing that Trent Lott likes, it's whipping minorities.

· In case you hadn't heard, Britney Spears is getting a divorce. How's K-Fed taking it? Well, let's see:



Yep, ladies, the line forms to the right. Hope you like kids!

· You also might've heard that, after a few well-earned days of relaxation this weekend, the Dawgs will be gearing up to play in-state archrivals Georgia Tech in the 99th installment of Clean Old-Fashioned Hate. Over the next week and a half you can expect plenty of stuff on here pertaining to the subject of what knob jobs Techies are, including what is sure to be a highly snarktastic Q&A exchange with Tech blog Ramblin' Racket. Even though they have to get through Duke (snicker) before they face the Dawgs, RR has taken the liberty of getting the acrimony started early, and since we have the luxury of a bye this weekend, I see no reason why I shouldn't start doing the same. I'll start with this link, possibly the most concise explanation I've ever seen of the difference between Georgia people and Techies.

· Speaking of Georgia football, here are some more links fo' that ass -- I on Athens, the incredibly well-done Georgia blog by Columbus Ledger-Enquirer sportswriter David Ching, and The Hobnailed Boot, another eager member of what is rapidly becoming an unstoppable force majeure of independent Bulldog bloggers. I'm tellin' you, if it all came down to blogs, Georgia would be kicking the ass of every other team in the country (and the national-title game would probably become an annual Georgia-Michigan affair).

· And finally, in response to a particularly colorful metaphor from Tuesday's Blogpoll rountable recap, DCTrojan said he'd pony up a few hundred bucks if I could produce pictures of Scarlett Johansson in a Hooters uniform.

Well, courtesy of Baby Sis's almost frighteningly wicked awesome PhotoShop skillz . . . here you go, Trojan.



Oddly enough, I found this in my e-mail inbox whilst watching the "Raisins" episode of "South Park," which incidentally is the reason why I identify so closely with Butters.

But anyway, you're welcome. By the way, I do take personal checks.

Roundtable roundup.

Last week MGoBlog was kind enough to let me host the sixth Blogpoll roundtable of the season. Now it's time to put pencils down and see how everybody did.

1. We're just a few weeks away from the end of the regular season, so everybody should have a pretty good handle on how good their teams are and what sort of records they can expect to finish with. Looking back over the season, which was the game where your team really defined itself in 2006, for good or ill? Or to look at it another way, which game, win or loss, was most representative of your team's attitude and style of play this season?

You could really tell who was happy with their season and who wasn't by their answers to this question. Pumped-up Michigan fans variously selected their red-assed beatdown of Notre Dame or their avoidance of a prime letdown opportunity against Wisconsin; the Golden Domers at The House Rock Built and Rakes of Mallow picked Notre Dame's stirring comeback against Michigan State; Texas A&M & Baseball in No Particular Order chose the Aggies' upset win over surging Missouri. Ramblin' Racket came up with a great answer: Georgia Tech's comeback against Maryland.

Every year of the Chan Gailey era has gone as such: "Stop me if you've heard this one before -- a Georgia Tech team beats a ranked opponent, then loses to a middle-tier ACC team that they should have beaten." This year, GT has won all the "trap games" (so far).

And then there were the malcontents, people who picked out embarrassingly close wins or just plain embarrassing losses as signatures of seasons that hadn't gone quite like they'd planned. At the time, it didn't get malcontenter than at Georgia; I picked the pants-crappingly close game against Colorado as our signature game, while Kyle King went all the way back to Georgia's defensively challenged loss to West Virginia in last year's Sugar Bowl. 50-Yard Lion picked the shouldn't-have-gone-into-OT Penn State-Minnesota game as "a sign of things to come." Off Tackle declined to share in TAMBINPO's Aggie optimism, calling the weird TAMU-Army game most representative of A&M's fortunes in 2006. And then there were the real doomsayers -- two of them disgruntled Iowa fans (Kinnick North picked the loss to Vanderbilt-of-the-Big-Ten Indiana, The Bemusement Park said double-OT against Syracuse "was no fluke"), the third an Alabama diehard who can't get the stinky cologne of the Mississippi State loss out of his nostrils.

Finally, I have to give a shout-out to a truly intriguing bit of method acting on the part of Sunday Morning Quarterback, who decided he was as bored with his Southern Miss Golden Eagles as everybody else and took on the persona of a disgruntled Southern Cal fan instead:

USC, let's face it, sucks this year. Pete Carroll should be fired immediately. What kind of coach loses a game with the number-one recruit in the nation at every single position, especially to Oregon freakin' State, which doesn't even offer scholarships? We tried to tolerate it when Carroll failed last season to win the mythical championship with the Greatest Team of All Time (seriously, like, an NFL playoff team), we showed patience, but this is the last straw.

Hmmm. Are you sure you're a USC fan and not a fan of [insert SEC team here]? We've turned coach hatred into a fine art down here. Based on the speed with which we turn on our coaches -- even the good ones -- you'd have to conclude we would divorce Alessandra Ambrosio the very first time she comes to bed wearing granny panties.


Yecch! Plus I hear she chews really loud.

2. Are there any teams you think are still hugely overrated? What about underrated?

Almost a quarter of our respondents called Notre Dame overrated. Yikes! So whom do the Notre Dame fans think are overrated? Rakes of Mallow says Florida, while WVU is underrated "now that they've plummeted"; The House Rock Built comes up with one of the year's best quotes ("Ratedness is overrated") but says Texas has no business being ranked substantially higher than ND based on résumé, inadvertently agreeing with MGoBlog, which means the universe is now going to explode or something.

Apparently few people agreed with my assessment of Louisville, as they were a popular "underrated" choice; 50-Yard Lion said both Louisville and Rutgers were underrated, which was interesting. But apparently a lot of people agreed with me that Wisconsin was underrated, including Mountainlair, Westsider Ride, and, by implication, The Bemusement Park.


Badgers: You'll always get your props here.

Unique choices: Double Extra Point says fuck the defense, Hawaii should be getting more props for scoring 5,336 points a game. Off Tackle says WVU is overrated even after their loss to Louisville, an open invitation to the most heinous kind of couch arson imaginable. Sunday Morning QB quite presciently picked out Texas as cruisin' for a bruisin'. Ramblin' Racket hates on Tennessee and LSU Silky Johnson-style. But Kinnick North gets the prize for daring to call Auburn overrated. Fuck yeah they are (were)!

3. Did your team play any Division I-AA opponents this year? If so, do you think it benefited your team at all? If you were a coach or an NCAA official, what policy would you have toward scheduling D-IAAs?

The Michigan, Notre Dame, and Alabama fans are exempted from this question and may view the remaining responses from atop their no-IAA-playing high horses. As can Sunday Morning QB for as long as he remains a USC fan.

. . . USC definitely does not play I-AAs because USC is in the PAC Ten and the PAC Ten RULZ and plays the toughest out-of-conference schedules every year. USC took on Arkansas and won BIG, so every team in the entire SEC can shove it for the rest of eternity.

All righty then. Of the 11 bloggers whose teams played a D-IAA this season, all but four were suitably embarrassed by the practice; the dissenters included Double Extra Point, who didn't have a problem with the Cornhuskers playing Nicholls State (even if it wasn't exactly great preparation for USC the following week); TAMBINPO, who witnessed what had to be a thrilling TAMU-Citadel match but thinks there are plenty of D-IA scrubs who would have been just as bad; Ramblin' Racket, who thought Samford was a good pick-me-up bouquet after the disappointing loss to Notre Dame; and Kinnick North, who would like to send Montana a basket of mini-muffins for helping the Hawkeyes to get bowl-eligible.


Grizzlies, this one's for you.

Co-Hawkeye The Bemusement Park also appreciated Montana's gift, but would prefer not to see too many D-IAAs in the future:

I don't have a problem with I-A teams playing I-AA opponents, provided the I-A teams agree to play in frilly pink tutus and ballet slippers. As we are fond of saying around here, Competition creates competitors.

4. Which not-a-typical-national-powerhouse team (i.e. no Ohio States or USCs) has played well enough this year to set themselves up for a breakout season in '07?

Burnt Orange Nation says Oklahoma State is getting close, and Sunday Morning QB agrees. Roll Bama Roll goes out on a limb and says former C-USA doormats Tulsa and Houston. The M Zone goes out on a limb and says Illinois, coach [NAME REDACTED] and all.

But if you want in-your-face chutzpah, look no further than Aggie Nation, where TAMBINPO and Off Tackle both pick Texas A&M to be that breakout team: Bold! Mountainlair picks his own West Virginia Mountaineers: Also bold! Kinnick North, however, throws water on the 'Eers' parade (and asks for another burnt couch) by saying WVU and Louisville will fall off and all the traditional powers will hold on, meaning no true breakouts in '07.

MGoBlog took issue with me apparently not having figured out that Rutgers was already having a breakout year, which is a legit beef. I wasn't the only one -- Kyle at Dawg Sports agreed -- though he may have only done so as an excuse to post more Kristin Davis pictures. Fool me once, Kyle, shame on you; fool me twice . . . Double Extra Point picked Missouri unless Gary Pinkel finds a way to fuck it up (which, as 'Husker fans, they hope he does), and The House Rock Built picked Ole Miss, though apparently under duress . . .

Because the Orgeron is standing outside my window with a hunting knife mimicking that he will slash my throat if I don't give a shout out to the Wild Boyz. So there.

Fair enough.

5. Take a look at your team's bowl prospects this season. Which bowl(s) do you think you have a reasonable shot of ending up in? Of the teams you might likely face in a bowl, which team would you most want to play and why (maybe you've always wanted to see how your team would match up with them, maybe there's an old score you want to settle, or maybe you just want to finish the season with an easy win)? Conversely, which potential opponent would you really like to avoid in a bowl game?

All the Michigan bloggers are getting to enjoy the kind of season where if they fuck up they go to play USC in the Rose Bowl, so no real surprises there. The Irish fans want to go up against Florida's "knifewrench offense" in the Sugar. At Burnt Orange Nation, HornsFan is looking toward either the BCS title game (nope) or the Fiesta (maybe), as long as they don't have to face the undefeated Boise State Broncos:

I'd most like to play Notre Dame, for a multitude of reasons, and least like to play Boise State. Playing Boise State is a lose-lose proposition. If you blow 'em out, you were supposed to. If you win close, you were supposed to blow 'em out. If you lose, you suck. There's no happy ending.

Well, there is one -- punch them in the gut on the very first play, pick them off four times in the first half alone, and make Heismanpundit eat his words. You'll have to ask D.J. Shockley and Greg Blue about all that, of course.

Speaking of Georgia, 50-Yard Lion isn't nuts about possibly going to the Outhouse Outback Bowl, but if they have to go, he wants to play Georgia. Thanks, guys! But just in case that doesn't happen, Aggies Off Tackle and TAMBINPO would be happy to meet you in the Alamo (assuming they don't make it to the Holiday Bowl). Double Extra Point would like to go to the Holiday Bowl, only not if it means playing USC, and I can see why. That's OK, because recently minted USC fan Sunday Morning QB doesn't want to go there anyway.

Mountainlair would like a shot at Virginia Tech in the Gator Bowl assuming Notre Dame keeps their grubby Papist hands off it, while Ramblin' Racket, assuming a win in the ACC title game, would like to face Auburn in the Orange Bowl -- not surprising given Tech's recent history against the Tigers, and there's just something cozy and right about that matchup, which would fit into the Orange Bowl as snugly as Scarlett Johansson into a Hooters uniform. Speaking of uniforms, Kyle King wouldn't mind another old-skool rivalry being reinvigorated in the Peach Bowl -- Georgia vs. Clemson -- but he says leave the all-purple uniforms at home, k thx.


Look, if I could've found a picture of Scarlett Johansson in a Hooters uniform, I would've used a picture of Scarlett Johansson in a Hooters uniform. Instead, you get this.

Then you have the people who are out for revenge -- Kinnick North wants an Iowa-Missouri matchup in the Alamo, so as to punish Mizzou for bitching out on the Hawkeyes' sked earlier this year -- and, as always, the pessimists. Roll Bama Roll is hoping for Tulsa or Houston -- not coincidentally, his candidates for an '07 breakout season -- in the Liberty Bowl specifically because a Tide loss to either of those teams would be more likely to shake things up on the coaching staff. And while The Bemusement Park thinks Iowa could go to the Insight Bowl, he thinks there's at least a chance they'll end up in sunny Detroit for the Motor City Bowl, where he "doesn't like their chances against Central Michigan and their creepy brand of ninja football."

6. In a roundtable question during the off-season, we were asked whom you'd pick if your current coach fell deathly ill and you had to select another coach to lead your team to victory. Let's turn this around and imagine that you've somehow schemed your way onto the search committee to select your biggest rival's next head coach. Which rival would that be, and which coaching sooper genius would you try to stick them with?

So many awesome answers here -- lots of people wishing Chuck Amato, Ron Zook, or John L. Smith on various rivals, lots of Michigan fans simply hoping Bobby Wallace, Ty Willingham, and John Cooper will one day return to Michigan State, Notre Dame, and Ohio State, respectively. 50-Yard Lion would like to send Jay Paterno to Michigan State (are you listening, Bobby Bowden?); Kyle King, who hates Auburn, would like to send Jeff Bowden to the Plains but says Ray Goff might be even better. Sunday Morning QB says "Whoever the Guy Was Before Carroll" to Notre Dame.


For your information, that was Paul Hackett . . . and a great choice.

Only one team punted on this one, and that was an unusually conciliatory The House Rock Built: "I'm fine with our rivals being well-coached and successful teams, as long as the Irish also have a somewhat competent coach." That's sweet, but in the words of Homer Simpson to his daughter, "You're a liar, honey. A dirty, rotten liar."

Here are my favorites.

Third runner-up: Burnt Orange Nation digs up a coach who never seemed to lack for work no matter how many programs he'd laid waste to and asks, why not let him lay waste to another?

Well, let's see. I'm very pleased with Coach Fran's performance at A&M, so we'll leave him be. That leaves OU. Let's say Stoopsy heads to the NFL next season; who might we enjoy placing at the helm in his stead? How about John Mackovic? It's out of the realm of possibilities, but boy that would be deliriously funny.

Second runner-up: Roll Bama Roll proposes to use Bobby Lowder's Macchiavellian tactics against him.

I'd want to send a private jet from Auburn to pick up Dave Rader before letting [Tommy Tuberville] know.

First runner-up: Double Extra Point wants Lou Holtz coaching again, for all the right reasons:

The major reason is that this would remove him from his ESPN studio gig, which would allow me to once again enjoy their Saturday coverage. In addition, I like Colorado more when its program is shrouded in controversy, and let's face it -- when you hear Lou Holtz you obviously think "institutional control." Lastly, I just like the way Holtz says "Nebrathka."

Insert "J.D. Stokley"/"University of Auburn"/"Colorado could really make some noise in the Big Eight" joke here.

But the grand prize goes to GaTech blogger Ramblin' Racket, who would like to allow himself to nominate . . . himself.

I would make myself the head coach at the University [sic] of Georgia. I recently began coaching the Ellenwood Steelers flag football team, and I think I've developed my skills plenty enough to be the "CEO/Coach" that a modern head coach must be. I would bring with me my current staff (read: my dumbass friends), and we would spend most of our time scouting talent of the non-football player kind in downtown Athens.

If all went according to plan, the whole program would be a total shambles within two years or so, and although I'd get shit-canned quite promptly, hopefully I'd maintain the job just long enough to cripple it for a good while.

In case you couldn't gather just from the quote, the Georgia "talent" he's talking about is of the female variety, and I just can't get angry at someone with such similar interests to mine. Well met, Racket.


I find your taste in football teams disturbing, but otherwise your taste is unassailable.

In fact, well met everybody. Thanks for participating.

Blogpoll ballot #12: I'll be brief . . .

. . . because I'm still busy enjoying postcoital cigarettes from the Auburn game. But here goes anyway.

Games watched: Rutgers-Louisville, UTEP-UAB, Georgia-Auburn (w00t!), most of Florida-South Carolina, flipped back and forth between Arkansas-Tennessee and LSU-Alabama, caught the last few minutes of the KState-Texas upset.

1. Ohio State (last week: 1)

2. Michigan (2)

3. Arkansas (4)

4. Florida (7)
A three-slot rise is probably too much given the way they had to squeak by South Carolina, but lost in all the conversation about how crappy the Gator offense has looked over the past few weeks is the fact that their defense is downright terrifying. And it's on the basis of that that I think they'd beat the next few teams on a neutral field.

5. Rutgers (19)
I normally shy away from jacking a team up this many slots at once, but it's starting to look like I had Rutgers underrated for too long.

6. Southern California (9)

7. LSU (10)

8. Notre Dame (13)
Another team that probably rose more slots than they deserved, but a bunch of teams above them did lose, so . . .

9. Louisville (5)

10. West Virginia (12)

11. Texas (3)
Bad, bad loss to KState, and it's not like you can even blame it on Colt McCoy getting knocked out. What the hell happened to the Longhorns' defense? I know their secondary has been weathering some injuries of late, but 269 passing yards to a first-year starter?

12. Wisconsin (14)

13. Oklahoma (15)

14. Wake Forest (18)
The Deacs had their second string on the field and FSU still couldn't score. So allow me to reneg on my promise to be brief and diverge for a moment on the Bobby Bowden situation. Yes, I know he brought the program up from anonymity and he's done some incredible things in Tallahassee, and respect needs to be given, but there is absolutely no reason for him to be keeping his son as the offensive coordinator the way the 'Noles have been playing. And I think the school would be perfectly justified in throwing Bobby's past accomplishments out the window if he continues to let his loyalty to his son override his responsibility to the team; there's not a company in America where you wouldn't be fired if you held on to a blood relative this long in spite of their repeatedly demonstrated incompetence. Maybe I'm being overly harsh, but if I'm the university president or AD, I sit down with Bobby after the conclusion of this season and tell him, "Either Jeff goes or you both do." If Bobby's primary loyalty is to his son and not his school, then the school shouldn't get all hung up on any loyalty to him.

15. Tennessee (11)

16. California (8)

17. Auburn (6)
I don't like to drop a team by this many slots either, but they went up against a Georgia team at its lowest point in probably a decade and just got completely dominated. And they got dominated in ways that confirmed all the weaknesses people had been murmuring about pretty much since the South Carolina game.

18. Boise State (16)

19. Georgia Tech (17)
Seven whole points against a serious contender for the title of Worst Team in D-IA? I'm actually looking forward to the UGA-GT game now.

20. Boston College (20)

21. Brigham Young (NR/27)

22. Maryland (23)

23. Virginia Tech (21)

24. Nebraska (25)

25. Clemson (24)

The next five: Oregon, Kansas State, Texas A&M, Penn State, Hawaii.

Dropped out: Oregon (22).

I didn't get where I am today without getting in someone's way.

Toomer's Corner, Auburn, Alabama, in a state of nudity that is uncharacteristic, though preferable.

I've mentioned before that the Georgia-Auburn game is the one Georgia game I go to every year even if I can't make it to any of the others, and coming into this season I'd gone to nine straight. I almost didn't make it to the tenth. I had a ticket hookup through a good friend of mine who's an Auburn grad in good enough standing that he can pretty much get his hands on as many tickets as he wants on any given weekend, but given that Georgia was 6-4 coming into this weekend and had just found a way to lose to Kentucky, I was starting to wonder if my streak of Auburn-Georgia attendance was worth fifty bucks (and the spectacle of what seemed an almost certain ass-whipping) to maintain. In the end, I wussed out and left it up to my sister as to whether we would go or not -- we were both planning on going down to Auburn to tailgate with some friends of ours, but she hadn't expressed any particular interest in actually going to the game; I figured I'd offer her a shot at a ticket, and when she said no thanks, there was a better-than-good probability I'd turn mine down too and just stay at the tailgate with her.

But to my surprise, Ann said, "Yeah, I want a ticket -- I've just got a feeling about this game." So she anted up, and I did too. And pretty much because of her, I was treated to maybe the most inspired -- and inspiring -- performance I've seen from Georgia since, well, before this season, that's for damn sure.


Move, bitch, get out the way.

Matt Stafford? Eight picks in the previous three games, but an interception-less, cool-in-or-out-of-the-pocket surgeon on Saturday. Kregg Lumpkin? Not stoppable, only hope-to-be-containable. Our receivers? Passed on a case of the dropsies, which are apparently communicable, to some other poor bastards for a change. Our coaches? Maligned for months for not being charismatic or adaptable enough, adapted well enough that we held onto a halftime lead for once (though, I'll admit, 30-7 is pretty easy to hold onto) and kept punching for the full 60 minutes, the first time we've done that since maybe South Carolina.

And Tra Battle -- oh, poor, maligned, afflicted-with-Greg-Blue-syndrome Tra Battle. Want to know how acute the domination was Saturday? Tra Battle (3 rec, 69 yds, 1 TD) would've been Auburn's leading receiver if not for the minor technicality of him not playing for Auburn. In fact, our secondary had as many receptions on the day as Auburn's entire team did. I will never forget the Twilight Zone-caliber shock of looking up at the TigerVision screen looming over us at halftime and seeing that Auburn had a total of seven passing yards in the first half. "That's gotta be some kind of error," I distinctly remember saying at the time. But it wasn't.


But nothin' comes out when they move they lips, just a bunch a' gibberish, and muthafuckas act like they forgot about Tra.

The other thing I remember them putting up on the Jumbotron was I think a text-message-oriented poll question where they asked people what their favorite Georgia-Auburn game was, with the choices naturally being a rundown of Auburn's greatest hits; being the polite guest that I am, I yelled out "Where's 2002?" when the choices came up on the screen. But as we were walking out of the stadium, Ann said, "You know, as awesome as 2002 was [and she was there for that one, too], I think this was my favorite Georgia-Auburn game."

As delicious as this past weekend's game was, I don't know that I can put it up there with the sheer emotional awesomeness of watching 70-X-Takeoff clinch Georgia's first SEC title-game berth in history. But in some ways, this game was a lot like that one -- both games important for their own reasons, but still important; Georgia overcoming imposing odds to pull off a statement win; and, like any good Georgia-Auburn game, we ended up freezing our asses off. (This time around, it was because we got good and soaked by a sudden downpour in the third quarter, after which the temperature helpfully dropped from 67 into the high 40s.) And yet the '02 game has never seemed farther away than it did as we walked out of the stadium on Saturday, but not in a bad way. Rather, it's the kind of faraway viewpoint you can only have after you've watched your team reach the very pinnacle of achievement, stumble through a period that's about as bad as anything you can recall having witnessed, and then come out the other side of that misery (hopefully) reborn.

There were times this season -- and I'm sure it came through in some of the stuff you've read on here -- when a part of me really believed that Georgia's struggles were not an isolated bump in the road but a harbinger of prolonged misery to come. That some of the coaches really were at a loss to solve whatever was going on and that we were going to be remanded back to the tier of decent-but-never-all-that-noteworthy that we occupied during the Donnan era -- or worse, the tier of constantly-in-danger-of-getting-humiliated-by-supposedly-lesser-teams that we occupied before that. But Saturday served as a reminder that the people in charge do know what they're doing and that the Dawgs don't ever have to be completely hopeless. The spark was always there, waiting to get lit, and while I'm still scratching my head as to how it didn't get lit until now, that's old shit. And as Ted Stryker said in "Airplane II," we're not in the past anymore. This is the future.


Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

So what of the future, which as of now includes 1) the Georgia Tech game in two weeks and 2) a possibly not-even-all-that-shitty bowl game? Hell, I don't know. My predictions of where Georgia is headed have been remarkably wrong in the past, and I'm talking Rumsfeld wrong. But whatever else happens over the remainder of 2006, this much I'm pretty sure about: A team that can, at its lowest point in years, march into the house of the #5 team in the country and lay them out in the first 30 minutes has got reasons to be optimistic. Back in 2002, the guys who led Georgia to its first-ever appearance in the SEC title game talked about "blowing the lid off" the program; maybe in their own small way, the 2006 Dawgs blew the lid off this season, getting past the frustrations and mistakes and getting a taste of what it felt like to win again, and win big. If Georgia's capable of this kind of game even when they're young and reeling, the next three years are going to be a lot of fun.


Best sport ever.

Democrats retake control of Congress, Georgia annihilates a top-five Auburn team: We officially have a new frontrunner in the competition for Best Week of Doug Gillett's Life That Did Not Involve Sexual Intercourse. Sadly, the competition for that one is a lot more heated than the Sexual Intercourse division.

But oh well.

I just can't get enough:

· I know I'm supposed to be taking this opportunity to taunt Auburn for having gotten knocked tha f$#! out like that -- and I know I'm gonna hear about it from Platinum-Level Auburn hater Kyle King for not doing so -- but I want to tip my cap to Auburn and its fans, because Ann and I were treated extremely well on Saturday. Our tickets were right smack in the middle of thousands of highly disgruntled Auburn fans, but they were all very cordial and very complimentary of Georgia's performance afterward, rather than engaging in an expletive-filled tirade as I certainly would have been tempted to do. That's the thing I like about this rivalry: Unlike, say, Georgia-Tennessee, the fans seem to genuinely enjoy each other's company for the most part rather than merely imagining what each other would look like dismembered and throwin in a dumpster; I can actually have a conversation with my enemies and enjoy myself. Thanks to my homey Jim for the tickets, and to tailgating hosts Arlana, Jason, Sirena, and Chris for the hospitality . . . oh, and the booze. The delicious, delicious booze.


If you're soaking wet and wearing flip-flops and it's 45 degrees outside, this is your new best friend.

· OK, one quick taunt: Tommy Tuberville, if you're ever tempted to complain about getting jobbed out of a BCS title-game berth again . . . don't.

· My good friend Mark, a fellow Bulldog now living the good life out at the Associated Press's Honolulu bureau, called me out not long ago for not giving Hawaii enough props on here. So here it is: At least 60 points in their last three games? An average of 62 over their past five games, and 48.7 for the season? Yes, Virginia, the Warriors are very good. My question is this: Do they ever get tired of playing in the Hawaii Bowl? Do they ever have a really great season and then they're like, "Fuck it, I'm tired of staying so close to home, I wanna go someplace exotic like . . . Fort Worth"?


This never got a lot of play on the show, but Magnum, P.I.? Huge Warriors fan.

· Rutgers vs. Michigan in the national title game -- you know it, I know it, and the American people know it.

· And finally, because you knew it was coming:


Overtaken by forces you could not comprehend.

Yes, after two close escapes, the Cheerleader Curse lives. It's bigger than me; bigger than Georgia, than Auburn; bigger than all of us.

And boy, am I glad.

Friday Random Ten: Freedom on the march.

Now that I've spent the past few days discussing how the United States House and Senate have been wrested back from Republican control, it's time to address another reclamation project -- the Georgia Bulldogs, who at 6-4 are pretty much where the Democrats were around this time in 2004.

But there is hope.



This is Krista Klumpp (no relation to the Nutty Professor), cheerleader at Auburn University and SI.com's Cheerleader of the Week. In case you've been keeping up with Hey Jenny Slater's weekly CotW updates, the record so far for schools who've had a cheerleader selected by SI: Alabama, lost to Arkansas the very next week; Georgia, blown out by Tennessee; UCLA, whacked by Oregon; then Wisconsin and Ohio State, both taken to the brink by lowly Illinois. Fifth-ranked Auburn's opponent this weekend? The Georgia Bulldogs.

At the very least, we can cover a 13-point spread this weekend. Come on, guys! Karma is with you!

I'll be down at the game tomorrow morning, for the 10th year in a row, and I expect it's gonna feel a little weird witnessing Georgia-Auburn at an 11:30 a.m. kickoff rather than 2:30 or sometime after the sun has gone down and everybody's gotten good and hammered. But in spite of everything that's happened this season, I'll still have hope. If this past week has taught me anything, it's to have hope.

The Ten:

1. The Jesus & Mary Chain, "She"
2. The Cure, "Boys Don't Cry"
3. Pearl Jam, "Daughter"
4. Culture Club, "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me"
5. Yes, "Owner of a Lonely Heart"
6. The Streets, "It Was Supposed to Be So Easy"
7. Groove Armada, "I See You Baby" (Fatboy Slim mix)
8. Simon and Garfunkel, "The Only Living Boy in New York"
9. Pet Shop Boys, "E-Mail"
10. The Pretenders, "Middle of the Road"

Your Ten in the comments, and what the hell, your post-election gloating if you choose to participate in such.

The winners' to-do list.

Just because I'm a loving granny of six doesn't mean I won't smack you lopsided.

So, like, the election.

I could write some long, gloaty rant about the election results and rub the Republicans' sweet faces in all those smug quotes from right after the 2004 election about the "permanent majority" they were working toward. I'm sure I'll get around to mocking specific right-wingers eventually, but for right now, more than anything else, I'm just relieved. Relieved that something's finally going to be standing in the way of the Bush administration just basically doing whatever the hell it wants. Relieved that my voice finally matters again on Capitol Hill, or at least I can feel like it does.

Perhaps it's true that the Democrats didn't so much win this election as the Republicans lost it. But I don't want to let that overshadow two things: One, we had a terrific (and diverse) slate of candidates, and two, we finally had competent people running the show. The slate of candidates included men and women, different religions, different races, different stances on issues like abortion and gun control where the GOP has tried to paint us as rigid ideologues; the party really bolstered its reputation as being the "big tent" party this year.


Heath Shuler: gun owner, pro-lifer, Tennessee Volunteer . . . and as a Democrat, I only have a problem with one of those things.

And I have to give props to the people who were directing traffic, too. The Republicans tried to demonize Nancy Pelosi and all but come right out and say she'd be performing gay Muslim marriages in the House chamber, but she (and the voters) didn't let it stick. Howard Dean, too, is another person the Republicans have badly underestimated up to this point. Even while weathering lingering jokes about the "Dean scream," he put together a true 50-state strategy that fielded candidates and reached out to voters in districts the old-school running-scared DLC appeasement wing of the party had thought (wrongly) they could get away with ignoring. Get it, Republicans? While you were making fun of HoHo, he was busy grabbing seats out from under your nose in Arizona, Montana, Indiana, even Kansas. Disrespect him at your own peril.

Anyway, however they got it, the Democrats have been handed a golden opportunity to be everything the Republicans said they were going to be but failed miserably at: the party of ideas, the party of accountability, even the party of fiscal sanity and the party of better security policy. So I hope that whatever else Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and the rest of the presumptive leadership do between now and January, they don't spend a lot of time patting themselves on the back, because there's a lot of work to be done. President Bush boasted about all the "political capital" he had right after the '04 elections, and he squandered it in a hurry. We can't make the same mistake.

If you'll forgive me for reverting back into football metaphors for a second, the Democrats would do well right now to heed the lessons of football teams who have built a lead and then "played not to lose" -- they almost always lose anyway. (Just ask, uh, the Georgia Bulldogs right about now.) The Republicans got a bunch of power and it only took them 12 years to start playing only to keep that power, not to use it to make any kind of actual progress. Doing nothing: That's what they paid for this past Tuesday, and that's what the Democrats will be paying for two years from now if they do the same thing. And they'll deserve to.

Now that the Democrats actually have control of something for the first time in 12 years, it's time to break free of the timidity that has characterized the party ever since Bush got elected, and actually do something. Do things that will benefit the American people, rather than just the wealthiest 1 percent or the big corporations, and force Bush and the Republican minority to be against it. Raise the minimum wage. Show the world that fighting terrorism doesn't have to involve randomly invading other countries: Start paying attention to the security risks here at home that the Republicans have neglected. And don't be afraid to have a conversation about how we can make the health-care system better. Sure, there'll be people who start whipping out the old "socialized medicine" trope like they did back in 1993, but there will be many, many more people who will be glad that someone's finally addressing the problem.


As Ol' Dirty said, gotta get up and beeee-eeee somebody.

And don't just use the next two years as a get-back opportunity. Yes, investigations need to be held into intelligence failures and the like, but that can't be the only thing that the 110th Congress is about. This term isn't about 2000 and 2004, it's about 2008 and everything that comes after that. Give people a reason to believe what they already suspect deep down: That Democrats are the ones who know about, and who give a shit about, making the government run properly.

So let's do that, OK? Let's do the people's work. Unlike the Republicans, we're not so beholden to the radical Christian right that we have to waste a lot of time making fatuous shows over irrelevancies like gay marriage or flag-burning. Let's do the people's real work and do it fearlessly. Let's make intimidation from the right wing take a back seat to responsibility to the citizens. Let's put our heads together with the rest of Washington -- Republicans included -- and find a way out of the mess in Iraq.

And above all, let's prioritize all those things above hanging on to power. The Republicans didn't do that, and they got nailed for it. But now that we've seen their example, there's no reason we have to follow it.

Now go out and do good.

Added, just for curiosity's sake: Somebody answer me this -- why is it OK to slander Nancy Pelosi and her "San Francisco values," but dare to make an off-hand comment about Mississippi and you're all but marked for death? Anybody want to help me out on that one?

The results are (mostly) in.

I'll have more on the election later on today, but since I have to go to work in a bit, I'll keep it short for the time being . . .

Republicans say the darndest things.

I obviously don't have the energy to liveblog the election results, but I did see/read/hear two interesting things just now.

The first was RNC chair Ken Mehlman talking about how he didn't think Virginia Sen. George "Macaca" Allen was being trailed as closely by his Democratic opponent, Jim Webb, because Webb was strongest in the northern Virginia precincts and those had already been counted. According to CNN, here are only the counties/cities (because cities of a certain population are considered independent of their counties) in Virginia that hadn't yet finished counting at the time Mehlman said that: Arlington, city of Charlottesville, Fairfax, city of Fairfax, Gloucester, city of Harrisonburg, Isle of Wight, Loudoun, city of Martinsville, Prince Edward, city of Richmond, city of Virginia Beach, and city of Waynesboro.

I'll give you a second to click on the links and get acquainted with where those places are. Got all that? OK then.

The other thing I found whilst surfing around CNN.com was this story about an Ohio congresswoman basically absolving herself of responsibility for the mess in Iraq.

If I don't post again before tomorrow morning, good night, and good luck . . .

Entreaty.

I've been informed by a commenter that ever since I switched from blogging primarily about politics to blogging primarily about college football, the Democrats have been doing great while the Georgia Bulldogs have been sucking wind. So maybe I'm tempting fate by mentioning this at all, much less the day before the election, but I thought it was important to remind everyone the kind of mentality we're up against right now, just in case anyone was thinking of sleeping off the previous night's MD 20/20s or blowing their lunch break on a pedicure instead of voting.

I've taken ample opportunities to rag on the knobs from "Blogs for Bush," a bloggin' band of right-wing sycophants who have voluntarily buried their noses so far up Dubya's ass they'd need OnStar to find their way out. But earlier this week they put up something so obtuse I was literally speechless when I saw it, and y'all probably know I'm not speechless all that often. Chief knob jobs Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan have written a book called Caucus of Corruption, which, according to TBogg, purport to show how the Democrats have run amok with all that power they've been exercising as the minority in Congress for the past 12 years. If you're already snickering at the idea that the party that counted Bob Ney and Mark Foley among its ranks should be swooning over anyone else's so-called corruption, check this out:

* Who in the Democratic Party is connected to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff?
* How many have run afoul of campaign finance laws?
* Who are taking free trips, accepting bribes and lobbyist cash?

It's all in Caucus of Corruption!

Yes, they're blowing the lid off how the Democrats are tied to Jack Abramoff. I'll give you a moment to recover from that . . . still there? Good. Now it's time for the irony trifecta:

I'm excited to report that Caucus of Corruption has received its first endorsement! Our first endorsement comes from Rep. Tom DeLay, a great man and politician who found himself the number one target of Democrats in their phony ethics war.

We are pleased to present to you a portion of DeLay's endorsement.

"...Margolis and Noonan have cut through the smoke and mirrors to reveal what the liberals are really hiding - their complete lack of leadership and refusal to stand up for the values-based agenda most Americans are demanding. This book is a must read for all Americans looking for the unreported motivations behind the Left's political scene."

The true story has always been there, and we're pleased that we're able to tell it. Matt and I wish to thank Tom DeLay not only for his endorsement, but also for his service to our nation.

An endorsement for a book. A book about corruption. About the corruption of the Democrats' supposed ties to Jack Abramoff. And that endorsement came from Tom f'ing Delay. Kids, there's enough irony here to fill an entire Alanis Morrissette box set, and you'd still have enough left over for any number of O. Henry stories.

This is what we're up against in '06: People so separated from reality that they didn't realize how fucking asinine that is. People who consider themselves so completely above the law that their own transgressions never once crossed their minds as they posted that, or if they did, they didn't think it was that big a deal. So if you don't vote tomorrow, you're saying that you're OK with that kind of idiocy running the show in Washington. You're saying that while you could hold them accountable for all the crap they've pulled over the last decade-plus . . . ehhhh, you just don't really feel like it right now.

Are you completely OK with how things are being run in Iraq? Then vote Republican.

Are you completely OK with senators and congressmen who think they can take over and make medical decisions for your loved ones? Then vote Republican.

Are you completely OK with a $9-trillion national debt and the biggest increase in discretionary spending since the Great Depression? Then vote Republican.

Are you completely OK with the Speaker of the House remaining somebody who shields sexual predators? Then vote Republican.

Are you completely OK with your civil liberties -- not terrorists' civil liberties, yours -- being suspended until one guy in Washington decides he's bored reading your e-mails? Then vote Republican.

Otherwise . . . you know what to do. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the Democrats are going to save the world or even that they're going to be able to snap their fingers and clean up the Republican's mounting messes overnight. But sweet Christ on a saltine, they've got to be better than this.

Roundtable #6: This is my dance, y'all, Humpty Hump's my name.

Just grab 'em in the biscuits.

As a participant in the Blogpoll, I'm now eligible to start/host one of those roundtable thingies you've probably noticed on here from time to time. And after making the requisite checkup call to make sure I hadn't been incarcerated for destroying public property in the wake of Georgia's loss to Kentucky, Blogpoll founder Brian invited me to host one. So here are a handful of questions relating to the current almost-completely-baked 2006 season and some other stuff -- all you Blogpollsters out there, I'll be looking forward to your answers, and I'll have a roundup post of those answers on here sometime next week. Fair warning, anyone who makes fun of the Bulldogs' current struggles in any of those answers gets reported to the NSA for supporting Islamic terrorism through their blogs. OK then! Let me hear a little bit of that bass groove right here . . .

1. We're just a few weeks away from the end of the regular season, so everybody should have a pretty good handle on how good their teams are and what sort of records they can expect to finish with. Looking back over the season, which was the game where your team really defined itself in 2006, for good or ill? Or to look at it another way, which game, win or loss, was most representative of your team's attitude and style of play this season?

Embarrassingly, for Georgia I think it was the Colorado game on September 23, in which we entered the fourth quarter trailing one of the country's worst offenses 13-0 and had to engineer two late TD drives to escape with a win. At the time, a lot of people were hoping that it was just an early, isolated near-bedshitting, but it turned out to be humiliatingly portentous for a team that has fallen off dramatically from 2005's SEC-title-winning group. All the signatures of the Dawgs' later performances were visible against the Buffaloes -- looking terrible against supposedly easy opposition; giving only 30 minutes' worth of effort as opposed to the customary 60; Charmin softness on defense; an offense that looked spectacular at some moments and short-bus inept at plenty of others.

I've had discussions with more than one fellow Georgia fan speculating that it might actually have been better in the long term if Richt had just left the struggling Matt Stafford in that game (as opposed to yanking him for backup QB Joe Cox, who threw for both fourth-quarter TDs) and lost. For one thing, sticking with Stafford might've neutralized some of the QB controversy that arose when Joe Tereshinski returned from his injury; for another, it would've disabused us of any notion that we were a competitive team and possibly prepared us for subsequent losses to Vanderbilt and Kentucky. Conversely, it might've woken up our players (and coaches) to the point where they actually put away those teams. But I guess it's all spilt milk now.


Maybe shoulda just gone ahead and let Ralphie run over us.


2. Are there any teams you think are still hugely overrated? What about underrated?

Unlike the coaches, I'm not prepared to anoint Louisville a top-three team just yet -- I certainly don't see how you can say they're better than Texas at this point, win over WVU or no -- but I do have them ranked at number five in my own ballot, so maybe they're not that overrated. I'd say USC is probably still a little high at #7 in both polls, considering that they lost to unranked Oregon State and really don't hold any substantive evidence that they'd beat California at this point.

Underrated: Wisconsin. Their offense doesn't quite blow my skirt up, but their defense is as good as anything they had during the Barry Alvarez days, and they look like a very good candidate for finishing the season 11-1 and sneaking into an at-large BCS berth.


3. Did your team play any Division I-AA opponents this year? If so, do you think it benefited your team at all? If you were a coach or an NCAA official, what policy would you have toward scheduling D-IAAs?

Georgia played I-AA Western Kentucky for their season opener, something I wasn't all that thrilled about. On the one hand, we did get some early actual-game experience for our stable of wet-behind-the-ears QBs, but in the end I don't think it was that valuable, since a defense like WKU's really isn't any kind of useful yardstick and the game clearly didn't end up resolving the QB situation to any degree. Would it really have been all that difficult to get a I-A on the schedule, even somebody like Ball State or UNLV?

I kind of like the family reunions Georgia throws every few years with Georgia Southern -- it'd be especially fun now that our former DC, Brian VanGorder, is GSU's head coach -- but if the NCAA came out tomorrow and banned I-As from scheduling I-AAs altogether, I don't think I'd shed too many tears. If I was writing the rules I'd allow I-As to schedule one AA every five years, not to exceed two games in any given 10-year period, but that'd be it. Seriously, do coaches and ADs not feel even a little shame calling these guys up to get them on the schedule?


Only danger in bringing BVG back to Athens for a game is that many of us would be tempted to not let him leave.


4. Which not-a-typical-national-powerhouse team (i.e. no Ohio States or USCs) has played well enough this year to set themselves up for a breakout season in '07?

Rutgers and Missouri are the first two that pop into my mind -- both of them have achieved surprising success this year with teams that are much younger than a lot of people realize. Since Rutgers' success has been faster and more dramatic this season, I think I'd be a little cagier betting on them since they'll be that much more vulnerable to a potential letdown season, but they'll still be pretty good, I think. Missouri is not only a more balanced team than Rutgers but they also play in a very flaky division (the Big XII North) that they should be able to run through in 2007 if they play their cards right.

Another team that could be poised to regain past greatness in 2007: the stormin' Mormons of Brigham Young. They haven't lost since an OT defeat at Boston College on September 16 and, like Rutgers and Missouri, have done it with a relatively young team. Bronco Mendenhall is doing two things Lavell Edwards always did at BYU -- recruiting well and putting up big offensive numbers -- and since a Mountain West title is almost a slam-dunk for them at this point, that could set them up for potential BCS-buster status next year.


John Beck: You can call me your fool, I only wanna go to BYU.


5. Take a look at your team's bowl prospects this season. Which bowl(s) do you think you have a reasonable shot of ending up in? Of the teams you might likely face in a bowl, which team would you most want to play and why (maybe you've always wanted to see how your team would match up with them, maybe there's an old score you want to settle, or maybe you just want to finish the season with an easy win)? Conversely, which potential opponent would you really like to avoid in a bowl game?

Paul Westerdawg has done some terrific work analyzing Georgia's possible bowl scenarios this year (assuming we accept a bowl invite at all, which more than a few people are already recommending against). Now that we've lost to Kentucky and have no reason to expect anything better than a 6-6 finish, it looks like we're headed to either the Independence or the Liberty; an upset against Auburn or Georgia Tech might upgrade that slightly, but not enough to make a huge difference, not that I'd be counting on it in the first place.

If we went to the Independence Bowl, we'd play the #7 selection from the Big XII, which looks like it'd be either Texas Tech or Kansas State; in the Liberty Bowl, we'd play the Conference USA champion, which would probably be either Houston or Tulsa, since none of the Eastern Division teams really seem to pose much of a threat for the conference title. Given the struggles our secondary has been having for months now, I'd prefer not to have to face the passing attacks of TTU or Houston; if I could have my pick of any of those opponents, it'd probably be K-State. They're in a major conference, we might actually have a fighting chance against them, and a Georgia win would give Ian Cohen the opportunity to write another undoubtedly hilarious post slamming Ron Prince.


6. In a roundtable question during the off-season, we were asked whom you'd pick if your current coach fell deathly ill and you had to select another coach to lead your team to victory. Let's turn this around and imagine that you've somehow schemed your way onto the search committee to select your biggest rival's next head coach. Which rival would that be, and which coaching sooper genius would you try to stick them with?

Well, first of all the school would be Florida, obviously. And what better albatross to hang around the necks of a bunch of people still secretly pining for the return of Steve Spurrier than the homeless man's Steve Spurrier himself, New Mexico State head coach Hal Mumme? Mumme would probably stumble through a few completely defense-free campaigns in his first few years in Gainesville, but would get a reprieve from a Florida fan base that's just thrilled to be putting up 50 points per game again -- too thrilled to notice that he's playing fast and loose with NCAA bylaws and running off all the Muslim players. By the time they come to their senses, Mumme's pile-drived the program into four-win irrelevance, leaving nothing but a mountain of sweat-soaked neck towels to remember him by. Ron Zook will look like fucking Rockne after four or five years of the Mumme's Curse.


Tunnel screen trips right 989 zip left milk milk lemonade around the corner fudge is made, on three! And somebody get me another towel!