The Friday Random Ten+5 is expecting delays.

Baby sis is currently in the midst of a blog hiatus that is scheduled to last until January 1, so I guess it's up to me to tell the story of what happened to her this past week.

Sis spent last week in London, visiting some friends she met during the semester she spent abroad during her sophomore year at UGA. She got a (relatively) cheap ticket on Air Canada from Atlanta to Heathrow with a stop in Toronto; she flew back Sunday, and when she landed in Toronto at about noon, there was a foot of snow on the ground. Her flight to Atlanta at about 5:30: cancelled. The last flight to Atlanta that night: also cancelled. She spent the night in the airport, and the next morning was told by the Air Canada folks that they couldn't put her on a plane until Tuesday. So she said eff that and spent an additional two hundred bucks to get one of the last two tickets on a Delta flight leaving for Atlanta at 5:30. At about 8 or 8:30 Monday night, she finally touched down on American soil, having spent about 30 hours in the Toronto airport and an additional 11 hours or so in the air.

In honor of baby sis's great misadventure, this week's +5 is my Five Worst Airport Experiences Ever, though you'd probably have to take any two of them and put them together to make something as bad as what she went through.



Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson-Whatever, June 2006
Expounded upon here. Basically, I got to the gate about 25 minutes before my flight to White Plains was supposed to leave, sat there, waited, and without so much as a "last call" the plane left without me. One minute I'm sitting there screwing with my iPod, the next minute I look up and they're changing the board from "White Plains 12:09 p.m." to "Myrtle Beach 2:00 p.m." After a very Twilight Zone-ish 30 minutes or so, AirTran put me on the next flight to White Plains, which brings us to . . .



White Plains, June 2006
My flight to Westchester County actually ended up getting off the ground at about 7 o'clock, and we had to circle the airport about three times because of bad weather in the New York area. We finally land a little before 10, and when we pull off the runway, the captain says we have to just sit there for a little while because there have been lightning strikes in the area and they don't want to send the ground crew out in those conditions. That's right: They'll let a plane with 100 people on it land in those conditions, but the ground crew, who is apparently made of sugar, can't go out there. We sit there for about an hour, then finally pull into the gate, and it takes another 45 minutes for our bags to start showing up on the carousel. I then take a cab, followed by the Metro-North Railroad, followed by the N Train, to my friend's house in Queens.

You're probably asking yourself, "Why the fuck did you fly into White Plains instead of an airport that's actually in New York City?" Well, I got a cheap ticket on AirTran for seventy bucks. But when you add the cab fare, the train ticket, and the subway pass, it probably ended up costing me about the same as a ticket to LaGuardia would have. Never mind that I didn't get to Astoria until 1:30 in the morning, which -- given that I'd left Birmingham for the Atlanta airport at about 7 that morning -- means I probably could've driven to New York and gotten there sooner. (In fact, Mapquest confirms that yes, I could've done that.) Lesson learned: The $70 ticket to Westchester County is a bitch goddess who cannot be trusted.



Atlanta, sometime in 1997 or so
Not much to tell about this one, other than I was on a four o'clock flight to Dulles that didn't end up leaving until after 1 a.m. and I finally got to Washington about three in the morning. Again, I could've driven and probably saved myself some time.



Washington-Dulles, sometime in the summer of 2003
Due to some tricky logistics, I ended up having to take the latest flight from Atlanta to Washington and then spend the night in the airport before somebody could come pick me up and drive me out to my grandparents' house in West Virginia the next morning. It was the first time I'd ever spent the night in an airport, but obviously I'd been stuck in airports for almost that long during the day on previous occasions, so I didn't think it was any big deal. I set up shop in a lounge in the main terminal and tried to sleep as much as I could, but when I looked down I saw rats. Rats, in the primary international gateway to the capital of the free world. They weren't New York subway rats, size-wise, but they were close. Suffice to say you're not getting much sleep when you know those bastards are scurrying around within a few feet of you, in an airport or anyplace else.



Venice, Italy, May 2005
This wasn't the airport's fault, but again, I had to spend the night there, and this time I had to spend it with a bad head cold I'd contracted in Florence a few nights prior. With the cold being intensified by the changes in air pressure on three separate flights between Venice and home, I pretty much wanted to die by the time I got back to Georgia, and between my illness and the fact that I'd been wearing more or less the same clothes for 36 hours, they had to handle me wearing hazmat suits.

Anyway, welcome home, sis . . . you know, if you'd stayed in Toronto just a few hours more, you would've qualified for Canadian citizenship. And now the Ten:

1. Pet Shop Boys, "It's Alright" (10" version)
2. David Cross, "My Child Is Enthralling, Especially When It Says Something Unexpectedly Precocious Even Though It Doesn't Understand What It Just Said!"
3. Patton Oswalt, "A Brief History of Shitty Comedy"
4. The Clash, "The Guns of Brixton"
5. Ice Cube, "Say Hi to the Bad Guy"
6. The Beastie Boys, "The Sounds of Science"
7. A Tribe Called Quest, "What Really Goes On"
8. BT, "Nocturnal Transmission"
9. Patton Oswalt, "The Best Baby in the Universe"
10. King Floyd, "Groove Me"

Feel free to share your own Tens and/or airport horror stories in the comments.

The 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era, #12:"Sean Jones all the way!"

#5 Georgia 41, #13 Tennessee 14
Knoxville, Tennessee, October 11, 2003

T 3-G G01 Casey Clausen rush to the UGA08, fumble by Casey Clausen recovered by UGA Sean Jones at the UGA08, Sean Jones for 92 yards to the UT0, TOUCHDOWN, clock 00:00.
----------- 11 plays, 87 yards, TOP 03:19 -----------

Billy Bennett kick attempt good.

=======================
GEORGIA 20, TENNESSEE 7
=======================

G 1-G G35 End of half, clock 00:00.

I've only been to Knoxville once for a game in my entire life, and I may never be able to go again -- the 2003 experience pretty much ruined me forever.

I met up with Mark, Kristen, and Matt in Knoxvegas and we stayed at the apartment of my friend Darren, a fellow Georgia grad who'd somehow ended up with a job covering Tennessee sports for the Chattanooga paper. Saturday afternoon, we ventured into downtown, raided our bank accounts, and went in search of tickets; we ended up buying four for $125 apiece from a guy on a street corner right at the edge of campus. "I can't believe we just handed five hundred dollars over to a complete stranger," Kristen said as we walked toward the stadium. "These tickets had better be real. And it had better be a good fucking game."

The tickets were real, and they actually weren't terrible -- lower deck, northeast corner of the end zone, and fairly close to the Georgia band so that we'd have something to drown out the sound of "Rocky Top" being played every 30 seconds. The game wasn't bad, either. Georgia put a quick FG on the board after a Tennessee fumble, then got a TD at the very beginning of the second quarter; the Vols scored a TD on their next drive, though, when Mark Jones grabbed what should have been an interception out of Decory Bryant's hands and, with Decory flat on the ground, booked 90 yards for a touchdown. As the first half drew to a close, Georgia was still ahead 13-7 but Tennessee, aided by a couple dumb Georgia penalties, was driving deep into Georgia territory. After two rushes on goal-to-go failed to score, the Vols called a time out with seven seconds left, then lined up to throw Jabari Davis at the goal line one more time.

But Casey Clausen got bumped by the fullback as he stepped back to make the handoff, and the ball ended up on the turf. Clausen and Thomas Jones Davis got to the ball at the same time and the ball squirted away from them -- right into the path of strong safety Sean Jones, who scooped it off the ground and started running like he stole something, which he kind of had. Jones ended up with five or six blockers running behind him, but it wasn't long before those teammates stopped being "blockers" and really became more of an entourage escorting Jones down the field; Tennessee's players, still tangled up in the scrum at the goal line, never got anywhere near him. Ninety-two yards, all along a bonkers Georgia sideline, until the refs were signaling touchdown in the opposite end zone.

Now, the four of us were sitting in the exact opposite corner of the stadium from where all this madness had started, so Sean was probably at about the Tennessee 40 before we figured out what was going on. But it wasn't long before the TD had gone up on the scoreboard and the stadium, supposedly one of the loudest in the country, had gone quieter than a mausoleum. Well, the UT fans, at least.


God, I love this picture.

A completely different, by which I mean "deliciously demoralized," Tennessee team took the field in the second half. Starting with the second-half kickoff, the game went as follows: Tennessee punt, Georgia touchdown, Clausen interception, Georgia touchdown, another Clausen interception, another Georgia touchdown . . . you get the idea. And in the Georgia section -- which remained full and rowdy even as the rest of the stadium cleared out -- it was an all-you-can-eat Schadenfreude buffet. Clausen, of course, was the dickwad who'd missed the previous year's Georgia-Tennessee game due to a shoulder injury and later said, "I think most definitely if I'd played in that game, we would have won by at least a couple of touchdowns. I could've played on one arm and we probably could have definitely beat Georgia, but they didn't want to risk it." As it turned out, even two arms wasn't enough for the Iceman, who wound up completing as many passes to Georgia players as he did to his own in the second half and suffered the ignominy of getting pulled for backup C.J. Leak about halfway through the fourth quarter. By that time, of course, the only sound in the stadium was the sound of us Bulldogs in the corner chanting "CAAAA-SEY, CAAAA-SEY." It. Was. Glorious.

That win sent Clausen out with an oh-fer lifetime record against Georgia, but more importantly, it helped propel a Georgia team with a brand-new offensive line and linebacking corps to their second straight SEC East title. And Sean Jones, God bless him, helped ensure that I wouldn't have "Rocky Top" running through my head for the rest of the freaking weekend.

The 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era, #13:Tim Wansley smashes the streak.

#19 Georgia 31, #21 Georgia Tech 17
Atlanta, Georgia, November 24, 2001

G 3-3 G27 George Godsey pass intercepted by Tim Wansley at the GT28, Tim Wansley return 28 yards to the GT0, TOUCHDOWN, clock 08:49.
------------ 3 plays, 7 yards, TOP 00:52 ------------

Billy Bennett kick attempt good.

===========================
GEORGIA 28, GEORGIA TECH 17
===========================

Years from now, I'm going to be sitting around the fire with my grandkids after a hearty Thanksgiving dinner, and I'm going to tell them a story. "You know, kids, a long time ago, back before any of you were born, even before your granny Melissa and I got married, Georgia Tech was actually better than Georgia for a little while. It's true!" I'll tell them, as their eyes grow wide and they whisper "No way" in disbelief. "Three years in a row, starting with my senior year at UGA, they actually beat us. Now, the first two times the refs basically handed the game to Tech -- I guess they felt sorry for them or something -- but the third time they put a bunch of ineligible athletes on the field and just straight-up whupped us. Back in 2001, Georgia Tech actually went into the season as a possible sleeper pick for the national-championship game, and Georgia wasn't even ranked! Now, can you believe that?

"Anyway, Tech pissed that away in a hurry -- whoops, your mom's not listening, is she? -- 'cause they lost to Clemson and Maryland early in the season, and then they lost to a lousy Virginia team on this crazy hook-and-ladder play at the very end of the game. But they were still ranked in the top 25 toward the end of the season and were favored over us by about a field goal or so when we went in to play them the Saturday after Thanksgiving. You know that coach Mark Richt I always talk about -- the one whose picture we have up over the mantle? That's right, Mary Ann, the one I named your daddy after! Well, that was his very first year as coach. He'd struggled a little bit here and there, but we knew he was gonna turn out to be something special.

"Anyway, he did a good job in that game -- Tech had this supposedly fantastic offense that we held to just 118 yards in the first half, and meanwhile, we were moving the ball pretty well. Only problem was, we couldn't get it into the end zone. Billy Bennett kicked five field goals before we finally got a touchdown toward the end of the third quarter. So after all that, we were still only ahead by four points. On our next drive we got down to the Tech 34 but couldn't get a first down, so we had to punt. Your ol' granddad was pretty nervous, because there was still plenty of time for Tech to come back.

"Tech ran two plays and ended up with a third-and-3 from their own 27. On their next play, Godsey dropped back and threw kind of a wobbly pass into the right flat, and guess what happened? Tim Wansley, our senior cornerback, jumped right in front of that pass, picked it off, and ran it right back into the end zone without even being touched. It was beautiful, and you've never heard your granddad holler so -- what's that, Champ? Yup, somebody did something completely stupid in a Georgia Tech game and it wasn't Reggie Ball! I know! That's weird, isn't it? But that game was before Reggie Ball even went to Georgia Tech.

"Anyway, that was pretty much that. Tech fumbled on their next drive, and Billy Bennett kicked another field goal, and Tech didn't score again for the rest of the game. We had broken that losing streak to Tech, and it was Tim Wansley's interception that closed the door on them.

"And Tech never beat Georgia again. The end."

Oh, Catholic League, it's like I don't even know you anymore!

Despite being Catholic, I'm not a big fan of either the Catholic League or its president, William Donohue. The guy never met a TV camera he wouldn't leap in front of as if he was trying to take a bullet for it, and when he does, it's never over any issue that Jesus actually preached about -- it's always some TV show presenting gay people in too positive a light or something stupid like that.

So anyway, you can probably imagine the thud sound my jaw made when it hit the floor after I read this:

The opening seconds of [Mike] Hucakabee's Christmas spot features the candidate seated in front of a window pane which appears to form the shape of the Christian cross. Speaking in the ad, the former Arkansas governor tells viewers that "sometimes it's nice to pull aside" from politics and "remember that what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ and being with our family and our friends."

Donahue, the president of the Catholic League and an ardent defender of Christmas in what he believes is a secular "war" against the holiday, told hosts of the Fox and Friends morning program that the ad had gone too far.

"The whole idea is to give the appearance of a cross," he said, "and this is just injecting religion into politics even too far for guys like me."

Asked if the ad was "too much," Donahue said it was.

"Because there's a pattern here," he added. "Every other word out of [Huckabee's] mouth is that 'I'm Christian.' He's calling into question Romney's Mormonism . . . let people talk about there [sic] faith, but don't sell it on your sleeve."

Don't sell it on your sleeve. This from the guy who said in 2004 that for a Catholic to vote for John Kerry was "to cooperate in evil" and spent the entire election year attacking Kerry's faith. From the guy who threw a huge stink over the Bushes putting "Holidays" instead of "Christmas" in the White House greeting cards.

Well, guess what, Bill? You made this bed, and now the Republicans are making you lie in it. You spent an entire year hammering Kerry for not being Catholic enough to suit your tastes, and you blow an O-ring every time some artist or comedian does something you think is disrespectful of Christianity; don't be surprised now when guys like Huckabee feel like they have to go on TV and show the world what awesome Christians they are. They're doing it for you, Bill.

The weird thing is, though, that isn't the first time Donohue has said something completely out of character regarding a current presidential candidate. A few months before criticizing Huckabee for being too God Squad-y, he basically told pro-lifers not to be so hung up on Rudy Giuliani's pro-choice stance:

"The problem with the pro-life movement is that some people are purist, and as far as I'm concerned, they're detrimental to the cause," Donohue said. "It's important to be principled, but it's also important to be prudential."

Whaaaa? The guy who accused Catholic Kerry supporters of "cooperating in evil," now saying we shouldn't be such "purists" about the issue? I wonder if it's any coincidence that Donohue's startlingly laid-back attitude was expressed in late April, just days after three major polls showed Giuliani with double-digit leads over the rest of the field of Republican presidential candidates. Thus I also have to wonder whether Donohue didn't jump on that bandwagon a little early, figuring the writing was on the wall as far as the GOP nomination was concerned, and is now feeling a little heat as that faith-on-his-sleeve Bible-beater Huckabee edges past Rudy in some of the national polling. Rest assured that if Huck wins an early primary or two and starts looking like he's rolling toward the nomination, Donohue will pop right up to tell us what a nice, upstanding guy he is compared to Hillary/Obama/Edwards, who supports abortion and wants to put naked Jesus statues made of poop in our public libraries.

Let's call a spade a spade here: For all their talk about adhering to Catholic teachings, Donohue and the Catholic League depart completely from the church's official stance on the death penalty and the Iraq war (and even lied about the Pope's position on the latter), and are willing to be "prudential" about the abortion issue as long as the candidate in question is a Republican. The League is not a Catholic civil rights organization but rather an independent Catholic arm of the Republican Party, designed to manufacture outrage over alleged slights in Hollywood and the "liberal media" and then spin that outrage into votes for the GOP. It's a nifty little racket, one that worked out quite nicely for the Republicans in 2004 -- but let's be clear, it's no more grounded in actual Catholic theology than it is in the teachings of Immanuel Kant or Papa Smurf.

Then again, I still haven't seen "The Passion of the Christ," so in Donohue's mind I'm probably not a true Catholic in the first place. So don't listen to me.

The 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era, #14:The world's shortest pick-six.

#9 Georgia 13, South Carolina 7
Columbia, South Carolina, September 14, 2002


Play starts at about 0.42.

S 2-7 S07 Corey Jenkins pass intercepted by David Pollack at the SC0, David Pollack return 0 yards to the SC0, TOUCHDOWN, clock 13:58.
------------ 2 plays, 3 yards, TOP 00:46 ------------

Billy Bennett kick attempt good.

============================
GEORGIA 10, SOUTH CAROLINA 0
============================

Of course we all remember 2002 as the season when "the lid came off" and we won our first SEC title in 20 years, but before the title, before 51-7 and the big play at Auburn, before even the "Man Enough" game, we played some games that were -- how to put this gently? -- aesthetically less than pleasing. We escaped Clemson by the skin of our teeth in the opener and let New Mexico State jump on us 7-0 before finally waking up in the second quarter, and in between those two games we went to Columbia and played one of the weirdest games I've ever seen.

The weirdness started early -- about five minutes into the game, with Georgia leading 3-0, the game was halted for nearly an hour due to lightning strikes in the area. Whatever offensive momentum we'd established on our speedy opening drive apparently dribbled away during the lengthy break; we punted on the next drive, South Carolina muffed it, and on our very next play we fumbled it right back to them. When the fourth quarter started, we were still clinging to that 3-0 lead, and even that we were lucky to have, given that the Gamecocks had fumbled the ball away at the Georgia 2 a few minutes before halftime.

We started the fourth quarter by pinning SC deep with a punt, and on the Cocks' second play from scrimmage, Corey Jenkins received the shotgun snap in his own end zone. Jenkins scooted right and met up with David Pollack careening around the line, and just as it looked like Pollack was about to level him, Jenkins launched the pass -- but the second it left his hand, it hit Pollack's. And somehow, in spite of the fact that he'd just been rushing toward Jenkins at full speed, Pollack had the werewithal to grab the ball as it rolled down Jenkins's back. Jenkins was still looking quizzically into the sky wondering where the hell his pass had gone when Pollack hit the end-zone turf, the ball cradled safely in his arms. Touchdown, Georgia.

I watched that game on TV back in 2002 and have vivid memories of it, and I still had to go back and watch the YouTube of that play six or seven times to piece together what actually happened. But Jenkins's arm was moving forward, the ball left his hand, and Pollack did indeed catch the "pass" before it hit the ground -- so yes, it was an interception, not a fumble recovery, and it did end up being a touchdown, so it met the dictionary definition of what the kids these days are calling a "pick-six." Even if it did cover, uh, exactly 0 yards.

And boy, did we need it. Consider the ensuing sequence of events: On their very next drive, the 'Cocks went down the field for a quick score that cut Georgia's lead to 10-7, and then with just under three minutes left in the game, Georgia got bottled up inside the South Carolina 10 and had to settle for a field goal. Had Pollack not recovered the ball on the end-zone play, we would've been behind 7-3 at that point and probably would've had to go for it; even if Pollack's play had somehow turned into a safety, we only would've been ahead 8-7 after kicking the late field goal. Which meant that when South Carolina got all the way down inside the Georgia 5 on their last drive of the game, they could've simply kicked a field goal to win it.

Instead, facing a 13-7 deficit, they had to go for the touchdown. And on fourth-and-goal from the 1, South Carolina ran a toss sweep, and tailback Andrew Pinnock mishandled the pitch from Jenkins. Thomas Davis pounced on the ball at the 4, and the game was finally, mercifully over. In her postgame interview with Mark Richt, Jill Arrington specifically mentioned Pollack's interception -- and in the process mispronounced his last name as "Polack," as in someone who hails from the glorious nation of Poland. Richt, to his credit, took the trouble of correcting her on-air; if anyone has a YouTube of that, you gotta send it to me.

We didn't know it at the time, of course, but that win was integral to Georgia winning the SEC East that season for the first time ever; we lose that one and we watch Florida go to the Georgia Dome for the 539th time. That was also the play that turned David Pollack from a promising young recruit to a frickin' legend, one who would go on to win SEC Player of the Year honors that year, followed by two first-team All-SEC and three first-team All-America honors, SEC Defensive Player of the Year, two Ted Hendricks Awards, the Rotary Lombardi Award, the Chuck Bednarik Award, and the Ronnie Lott Trophy, and then get picked in the first round of the '05 draft. Sadly, Pollack's NFL career basically ended with a serious spinal injury suffered in the second game of the 2006 season, but he's alive and well and running a successful nonprofit for at-risk kids in Cincinnati -- and I think it's safe to say he'll never have to buy another meal in Athens again.

The 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era, #15:Touchdown Massaquoi!

Georgia 15, #15 Georgia Tech 12
Athens, Georgia, November 25, 2006

G 3-G T04 Matt Stafford pass complete to Mohamed Massaquoi for 4 yards to the GT0, TOUCHDOWN, clock 01:45.
Matt Stafford pass attempt to Mohamed Massaquoi good.

===========================
GEORGIA TECH 12, GEORGIA 15
===========================

----------- 12 plays, 64 yards, TOP 07:05 -----------

OK, so the previous year's UGA-GT game had been the most nerve-wracking game in recorded history, but 2006 was awful close. And if anything, the opportunity for failure was that much greater, since for the first time in five years, Georgia was coming in as the underdog. Whereas we were unranked and had only just pulled ourselves out of our 1-4 midseason tailspin, Tech was rocking right along with a 9-2 record, a top-15 ranking, and a ticket to the ACC championship game already punched. Think about that for a second: Tech, not Georgia, was in danger of looking ahead to a conference-title game. It became a cliché, but if ever there was a year for Tech to finally snap their streak against the Dawgs, this was it.

Despite an absolutely horrendous performance by Reggie Ball -- 6-of-22 for 42 yards, no TDs, and two picks -- it actually looked like they might pull it off. After killing several promising drives with sacks or dumbass penalties and handing Tech a freebie FG by losing a fumble deep in their own territory, Georgia went into halftime scoreless for the fourth time that year; a mind-blowingly heads-up fumble recovery by Tony Taylor finally put some points on the board for Georgia in the third quarter, but Tech rode the legs of Tashard Choice back into a 12-7 lead in the fourth.

Unbeknownst to anyone, though, Mike Bobo had been handed the reigns to the offense by Mark Richt before the game, and he proceeded to call a drive that will surely earn a paragraph or two in the Georgia history books. Starting at the 8:50 mark, Georgia got a couple pretty first-down passes from Matt Stafford, then powered down into the red zone behind Danny Ware; all told, we wiped more than seven minutes off the clock. It was an incredibly tense seven minutes, though, because I was sitting at the Tent City watching the game on the satellite, and the brief tape delay meant that the crowd at the game would react to plays a couple of seconds before we actually got to see them; if we heard a huge cheer from Sanford Stadium just a little ways down the street, it meant something cool was about to happen, but if the crowd was silent for too long, it meant trouble. And the silence was positively leaden as Danny Ware pounded ahead twice from the 4 yard line, only to be stopped for no gain.

But on third-and-goal, the crowd erupted into the loudest roar I'd heard all night -- and a couple seconds later, I got to watch Matt Stafford drop back, completely fool the Tech defense with a pump fake, and then drop one right over the middle to a by then wide-open Mohamed Massaquoi. Just for good measure, he also hit MoMass for the two-point conversion that put us up by a full field goal. When Reggie Ball threw into triple-coverage and got picked off by Paul Oliver on the next drive, it was almost academic; based on the day Ball was having and his epic career-long parade of brain flatulence against Georgia, you would've been surprised if he hadn't found a way to screw this one up, too. By the time the clock hit zero, I was literally jumping around in the street.

Calling the 2006 team the worst team of Mark Richt's tenure at Georgia is kind of insulting to a very resilient group of guys who managed to beat South Carolina and Auburn and finish 9-4, but there's no doubt they had weathered the worst stretch of Richt's career -- and even that team managed to knock off what was easily Tech's best team since the Joe Hamilton years. You can't demoralize a hated in-state rival much more thoroughly than that. The Dawgs' win streak against the Yellow Jackets remained intact, Game Ball finished his career 0-4 against UGA, and after a couple of very frustrating months, Georgia was able to finish the season on the highest of high notes.

The 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era, #16:Tim Jennings makes Reggie Ball look stupid. Again.

#13 Georgia 14, #20 Georgia Tech 7
Atlanta, Georgia, November 26, 2005

T 1-10 G11 Reggie Ball pass intercepted by Tim Jennings at the UGA05, Tim Jennings return 29 yards to the UGA34.
------------ 6 plays, 63 yards, TOP 02:07 ------------

Most. Nerve-wracking. Game. Ever.

Even more so than the fourth quarter of Georgia-Auburn '02, I think. The Jackets and Dawgs traded touchdowns early in the first half and then settled into a grueling trench battle for the next 45 minutes of game time; there were moments, sitting there in a pretty equally divided room at Manuel's Tavern in Atlanta, when I was openly pondering the possibility that we'd be walking out of there getting taunted by victorious Techies for the first time in five years. I probably aged myself an extra 10 years in those four hours alone, though in all fairness, the near-constant alcohol drip probably didn't help.

Fortunately, a familiar pattern began to emerge late in the third quarter as the game became a classic field-position battle: Georgia would go nowhere and punt, Tech would go nowhere and punt, but each time Thomas Flowers' punt returns would inch us just a little bit closer to Tech territory. Finally, with less than six minutes left in the game, Flowers returned a punt 33 yards to set us up at the Tech 39, and five plays later, D.J. Shockley dropped a beautiful TD pass right into Bryan McClendon's hands to give us our first lead of the game.

There were still three minutes left, though, and Tech made pretty good use of them -- Reggie Ball executed what was probably the greatest play he ever made against Georgia when he scrambled for 30 yards down to the Georgia 22. Three plays later, Greg Blue had to save a touchdown by mugging Calvin Johnson at the goal line, but the resulting pass-interference penalty positioned the Jackets at the Georgia 11.

And then Tim Jennings, God bless him, went to work. Or maybe it was Reggie Ball going to work, because both of them did exactly what you would expect them to do in a situation like that one: Reggie threw into coverage, and Timmy leaped in front of Damarius Bilbo and grabbed the ball right out of the sky. It was so perfect you had to wonder whether it hadn't been prophesied thousands of years ago in some Biblical passage. Jennings ran it back to the 34, and Georgia only had to run out a little over a minute's worth of clock before they'd officially clinched their fifth straight win over the Jackets.

Hey, at least Reggie didn't have a chance to get the downs wrong.

The 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era, #17:The ballsiest onside kick ever.

Georgia 31, #14 Virginia Tech 24
Atlanta, Georgia, December 30, 2006


Play starts at 0.40.

===========================
VIRGINIA TECH 21, GEORGIA 6
===========================

Brian Mimbs kickoff 13 yards to the UGA48, on-side kick, recovered by UGA Brian Mimbs at the UGA48.

G 1-10 G48 GEORGIA drive start at 06:10 (3rd).

As Georgia came off of a 1-4 midseason slump in 2006 that included the now-infamous losses to Vandy and Kentucky, there was some question as to whether we'd be invited to a bowl at all. When we pulled our collective heads out of our asses and beat ranked Auburn and Georgia Tech teams to close out the regular season, we were fortunate to earn an invite to the Peach Bowl -- nope, still not gonna call it the "Chick-Fil-A Bowl" -- but considering that we were going up against the top-ranked defense in the country, few pundits were giving us a chance of scoring, much less winning.

At halftime, it looked like they might've been right. After marching down the field on our first drive to kick a field goal, Georgia gained all of two yards from scrimmage for the remainder of the half; meanwhile, VT piled on three rapid-fire touchdowns in the second quarter. The Tech fans (including my aunt and uncle) watching the game at Jocks 'n' Jills at the CNN Center, where we'd retreated to after a futile (and cold, and wet) search for tickets under $100, were obviously pretty excited about this. As for myself, I was just hoping we'd keep the Hokies' final margin of victory within 20 at that point.

On Georgia's second drive of the second half, we marched down to the Tech 24, where Stafford got sacked for a nine-yard loss, and Brandon Coutu nailed a 51-yard field goal. The exact wording of the text message I got from my friend Kristen at that moment was, "Coutu can not kick us out of this shitpickle!" Fortunately, he didn't have to.

On the ensuing kickoff, Georgia lined up in their usual formation, the only difference being that it was Brian Mimbs, not Andy Bailey, kicking the ball. But when Mimbs connected, instead of soaring through the air, the ball just sort of dribbled off the tee toward midfield. Onside kick!!!1!!1!!11! Mimbs executed the kick almost perfectly, and only one Hokie player was anywhere near the ball when it had finally hopped the required 10 yards. Mimbs pounced on his own kick, right in front of a clearly disgusted Frank Beamer, and Georgia got the ball right back just shy of midfield.

The Bulldog contingent both at Jocks 'n' Jills and inside the Georgia Dome were completely jacked up after that, and evidently, so was the team. The next drive culminated in a touchdown pass to Martrez Milner, and after a Tony Taylor interception to start the fourth quarter, we shot right down the field again and tied the game. That was the first of four consecutive VT drives that would end in Sean Glennon turnovers, and when the smoke cleared, Georgia had scored 28 straight points and beaten the 14th-ranked Hokies 31-24.

Like the third-quarter deep ball in this year's Auburn game, it was one of those plays where you could see the "momentum needle" jump from one side to the other right before your very eyes -- and looking back on it, this may actually have been the first glimpse of what would later come to be known as Evil Richt. The team was fighting back from a sizable deficit, they'd chipped into the lead a little bit, but Richt decided it was time to throw that comeback effort into a higher gear -- and did so with a defiant display of unabashed balls that his team had no choice but to be inspired by. (And it also apparently put the fear of God into the Hokies, particularly their offense.)

Losing to a ranked opponent in a bowl game wouldn't have been the end of the world, but it would've been a bit of a downer after the flourish with which we finished the regular season, particularly if we'd lost as bad as we looked like we were going to at halftime. Instead, we came out of probably the most miserable month of Richt's entire Georgia tenure to knock off three straight ranked teams for, as far as I know, the first time in program history. Here's hoping we see a lot more of that kind of guts in 2008.

The 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era, #18:Joe and Martrez save the day.

#10 Georgia 14, Colorado 13
Athens, Georgia, September 23, 2006

G 3-5 C20 Joe Cox pass complete to Martrez Milner for 20 yards to the CU0, TOUCHDOWN, clock 00:46.
Brandon Coutu kick attempt good.

=======================
COLORADO 13, GEORGIA 14
=======================

------------ 5 plays, 43 yards, TOP 01:43 ------------

Or, as it has come to be known, the Toaster Game. After consecutive barely-even-challenged blowouts of South Carolina and UAB, I'm sure all of us Georgia fans were expecting another beatdown -- if not a third straight shutout, considering that the Buffaloes had scored all of 23 points in their first three games and had the 114th-ranked offense in the country at the time. The Buffs, however, had other ideas. They threw the home crowd for a loop by charging right down the field on their first two drives of the game, and with Bernard Jackson and Hugh Charles running right past our defenders time and time again, held an unfathomable 13-0 lead just a few minutes into the second half. (Just for the record, the Stafford fumble that led to Colorado's last field goal was what prompted me to throw the chair in my kitchen; it wasn't until Danny Ware fumbled on Georgia's next drive that I threw the toaster. Just wanted to make sure everyone had their facts straight.)

After one more ineffective drive, a three-and-out in which Stafford also got dinged for an illegal forward pass penalty, Richt decided the writing was on the wall and pulled him (final tally for the day, 8-of-16 for 76 yards, no TDs, obviously). In went Joe Cox, the redshirt freshman who had been lurking just behind Stafford and Joe Tereshinski in the QB competition that had taken place over the previous summer. Cox wasted little time in getting the offense moving -- on his first drive, Georgia went all the way down to the Colorado 10 but fell just short of converting on a 4th-and-4; second drive, he piloted the offense 58 yards in under a minute and a half, with Brannan Southerland scoring Georgia's first points on a thrilling 23-yard catch-and-run.

On the next drive, however, the Dawgs once again failed to convert a 4th-and-4 deep inside Colorado territory, and Cox got the ball back at the Colorado 43 with two and a half minutes and two time-outs to get the winning touchdown. Needless to say, my sister and I -- who had astutely come home from Loco's Pub at halftime so that we could rage, curse, and throw things in relative privacy -- were close to soiling ourselves at this point. The Dawgs shot right down the field, but after Kregg Lumpkin was thrown for a 1-yard loss on second-and-4, I had horrible visions in my head of Georgia hitting the trifecta of fourth-down failures deep inside the Colorado red zone and losing to an 0-3 team.

But on the next play, Cox calmly sat back in the pocket and found 6'4" tight end Martrez Milner over the middle for the go-ahead TD. I think it's safe to say that Milner had maybe the most frustrating Bulldog career of anyone since Jasper Sanks, but on that day, he was a hero, all right. Once the massive dogpile in the end zone had cleared out, Georgia got right back to work on defense, and when Tony Taylor picked off a long Bernard Jackson pass at midfield, the Sanford Stadium crowd could put away their cyanide capsules and breathe easily, having dodged not just a bullet but an ICBM.

Obviously a top-10 team needing to sneak by a team that would end up finishing the season 2-10 was embarrassing enough, but I'm sure I don't need to describe to anyone how horrible it would've been if we'd actually lost. In actuality, of course, we were only staving off the humiliation for a couple more weeks, as we soon fell into a 1-4 stretch that included losses to Vanderbilt and Kentucky; had we fallen to Colorado, though, it's fair to wonder whether our midseason slump would've been 1-6 and sent us into a tailspin from which we'd still be trying to recover today. Joe, Trez, thanks for saving our asses. And to toaster ovens everywhere, I've lived every moment since then carrying the guilt of what I did that day, and I hope that you can forgive me.

The 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era, #19:Stafford to Bailey on Blackout Saturday.

#10 Georgia 45, #18 Auburn 20
Athens, Georgia, November 10, 2007


Specific play starts at about 3.10 . . . but of course you want to watch the whole thing.

G 2-13 G29 Matt Stafford pass complete to Sean Bailey for 45 yards to the AU26, 1ST DOWN UGA, out-of-bounds (Patrick Lee).

Again, full recap of the game here; this game had some roller-coaster dips every bit as dramatic as the Alabama game six weeks prior, but perhaps the momentum swings were a lot more simplified. To wit: Georgia stunned pretty much everybody -- I think even us Bulldog fans -- by pouncing on Auburn to the tune of a 17-3 lead early in the second quarter, but Auburn scored a touchdown shortly thereafter and, with the help of a Stafford pick and a three-and-out to start the second half, took a 20-17 lead with six and a half minutes left to go in the third.

As jubilant as I'd been through Georgia's fast start, I was every bit as demoralized, if not more so, as Auburn came back and took the lead. We'd blacked out the stadium beautifully, made everyone go bananas by coming out in the black jerseys, and for a while looked as though we didn't care one bit that we weren't supposed to beat Auburn at home -- but now, in the second half, we were crawling right back into our shells and playing not to lose. The crowd was getting jittery and the momentum needle was clearly pinned to the Auburn side, and it was going to take something close to heroic to push it back the other way.

One heroic play, coming right up. Despite having done an excellent job of strafing Auburn's so-so secondary for most of the first half, we'd dug ourselves into a hole by pulling back and trying a bunch of short screen stuff that didn't work at all, but when Wes Byrum kicked Auburn's go-ahead field goal, a light went on above somebody's head that apparently inspired them to start going long again. Starting from our own 32 after the Byrum FG, Moreno got thrown for a loss of three yards, an incomplete pass was wiped out due to off-settling penalties, and then Stafford launched one. With all day to throw, he dropped a 45-yard pass into Sean Bailey's hands so expertly that you'd have thought it was guided by the same systems we use to target our Tomahawk cruise missiles. Two plays later, Knowshon Moreno faked Auburn out of an entire team's worth of jocks -- watch Zac Etheridge and Jerraud Powers run into each other and ask yourself whether Knowshon hadn't been planning that from the moment he touched the ball -- and went 24 yards for the TD that retook the lead.

I don't know that I've ever personally witnessed such a rapid, dramatic reversal of fortune a football game; it was the Bugatti-Veyron-handbrake-turn-at-120-miles-an-hour of momentum shifts. The discombobulated Tiger defense proceeded to offer up three more TDs, while their offense, with the pressure to score suddenly ratcheted up, collapsed even more emphatically -- after Moreno's TD, they had as many interceptions as first downs, and one of those firsts was thanks to a defensive holding penalty by the Dawgs. By the time the clock hit 00:00 and the band struck up "Back in Black" for the final time, Auburn had been handed an even bigger blowout than the previous year, and Georgia had scored 40 points in three consecutive games for the first time since World War II.

The adjustment in the offensive play-calling -- and, of course, the ability of Stafford and Bailey to execute it -- made it happen. Whether it was the crowd, the black jerseys, or whatever, they were able to mentally toss out all the trends that pointed against a Georgia victory (we never beat Auburn at home, we hadn't beaten Auburn and Florida in the same season since 1982) and make the big play that opened the floodgates for an old-fashioned ass-whuppin'.

Man, that game was fun -- too much for just one YouTube. Vern, Gary, it's time to crank dat.

The Friday Random Ten+5 is done with you.

As we head into the heart of the holiday season, our thoughts naturally turn to Christmas giving and receiving, but they also turn to the new year and our hopes for the future. Personally, one of my biggest hopes for 2008 is that the rest of society will stop annoying me so much. With that in mind, this week's +5 is Five People I Hope To See A Lot Less Of In 2008.



Tony Romo
I don't care that he's one of the top-rated passers in the NFL. Don't care that his replica jersey is suddenly the league's most popular (so was Michael Vick's, for a while). Unlike Peter King, I certainly don't care that he "leads the league in smiling." He's a Cowboy, which means that by definition, he's overexposed. And despite signing an unbelievably fat contract and being the leader of the top team in the NFC, he apparently still couldn't sack up and ask Jessica Simpson out on a date himself, he had to wait until her dad made the first move. That's right, her dad. Quick tip, Romes, if you're still waiting for chicks' dads to set you up on dates, you're probably not man enough to win a Super Bowl. But hey, uh, keep smilin', I guess.



Heidi Montag (and pretty much anyone else on "The Hills")
Earlier this year, Heidi Montag got a lot of publicity for getting breast implants. For all the attention this received, I figured these implants granted wishes or had solved America's dependence on foreign oil or something, but nope, they're just your garden-variety C-cups. So I tried to figure out why this was such a big deal, but then I realized I didn't know who the hell Heidi Montag was in the first place. Turns out she's on some show called "The Hills," which is not a show about her implants but rather a reality show about a bunch of rich girls in Los Angeles who . . . go to work and date and go shopping and whatnot. Seriously, that's it. They don't operate an organized-crime ring or fight terrorists or play sports or anything like that, they work and date and go shopping. I can't even fathom why anybody would watch something like this; I mean, say what you will about Paris Hilton having no reason whatsoever to be famous, but at least she went through the trouble of making a sex tape.



Glenn Beck
People like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are major-league cocksuckers, no two ways about it, but at least they're brazen and aggressive in their douchebaggery. Glenn Beck, who hosts a nightly talk/rant/whatever show on Headline News, is like Hannity Lite: He holds the same asshat opinions but without the true venom to back them up, much less a creative way of expressing them, and thus he comes across as just another whiny white guy who's fuming that the guy at the counter at Dunkin' Donuts doesn't speak English all that well; imagine Les Nessman reading from the Bill O'Reilly songbook and you've pretty much got it. His show is bad enough, but what's worse is when they let him break into the news programs on HN to spew his impotent rage unchallenged; not only do they have no outlet for a comparable liberal viewpoint, but he's also taking away screen time from Robin Meade, which is like cutting away from the Victoria's Secret fashion show on CBS to air a rerun of "Dateline." The biggest head-scratcher is that he continues to be given this platform despite uniformly terrible ratings, to the point where even some of his fellow conservatives think CNN should pull the plug already. But hey, comparing Al Gore to Goebbels is certainly an incisive, well-thought-out viewpoint. You can't get stuff like that just anywhere.



Britney Spears
This one's pretty obvious. There was a certain morbid fascination to her descent into boozed-out whoredom for a while, but even I can only watch car wrecks for so long before I start wondering what's on the other channel. So no, I don't want to hear about her anymore, don't want to know which club she stumbled out of at 6 a.m., don't want to know whose car she ran into, don't want to know which C-list actor/singer/producer she's been banging while the court-appointed parenting supervisor watches "Dora the Explorer" videos with the kids in the next room. Take her kids away, give her one last chance to cowboy up and get sober, and if that doesn't take then just let her slink off into gin-soaked, pasty-thighed oblivion. (And you know what? The thing is, I actually used to think pink wigs were sexy. Thanks for fucking nothing, Spears.)



Fall Out Boy
I realize I'm only stealing a joke from Brian Posehn here, but Fall Out Boy finally made me give some credence to the argument that music can inspire violence in kids: I've never wanted to kill another human being more than I did after hearing their cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart." (Safe for work, but not safe for anyone with any kind of taste in music.) Clearly this is a band that has "flash in the pan" written all over it, but some flashes last longer than others; if theirs hasn't burned out by the end of '08, I'm going to be very upset.

And now the Ten:

1. Radio 4, "Certain Tragedy"
2. Bananarama, "Cruel Summer"
3. Groove Armada, "A Private Interlude"
4. David Holmes, "Slip Your Skin"
5. BT, "Loving You More"
6. Orbital, "The Box"
7. David Holmes, "69 Police"
8. Nouvelle Vague, "Dancing With Myself"
9. Pet Shop Boys, "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing"
10. The Beastie Boys, "Girls"

And now: How are you doing? Whom do you hope to be much less annoyed by in the coming year? Leave your answers (and your Tens) in the comments.

The 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era, #20:"One and done, baby!"

#22 Georgia 26, #16 Alabama 23 (OT)
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, September 22, 2007

G 1-10 A25 GEORGIA drive start at 15:00.
G 1-10 A25 Matt Stafford pass complete to Mikey Henderson for 25 yards to the UA0, TOUCHDOWN, clock 15:00.

======================
GEORGIA 26, ALABAMA 23
======================

------------ 1 play, 25 yards, TOP 00:00 ------------

=====FINAL SCORE======
GEORGIA 26, ALABAMA 23
======================

The full recap of the game is here, but the condensed USA Today version is this: The 2007 Georgia-Alabama game was one of the wildest roller-coaster rides I've ever been on at a Georgia football game. We screened the Crimson Tide to death on the way to a touchdown on our first drive and allowed Bama's offense to do basically nothing for the first half until a last-second field goal made the score 10-3 at the break; when we started off the second half by recovering a muffed kickoff return within drink-throwing distance of the Bama red zone, it looked like the knife was in deep and we were about to give it a nice, painful twist.

But we went nowhere after recovering the KO fumble, Brandon Coutu missed a 50-yard field goal, and on Georgia's next drive Stafford threw an interception that Tripp Chandler didn't go up high enough for, and three plays later John Parker Wilson burrowed into the end zone to tie the game. It was a repeat of the third-quarter narcolepsy we'd committed numerous times during our 2006 mid-season slump, and it certainly looked like the momentum was swinging in the other direction, but Georgia grabbed it right back with a TD on their next drive and tacked on a field goal for good measure early in the fourth.

A 20-10 lead, pretty safe against an offense that had broken exactly one big play the entire night, right? Nope. Bama got down to the Georgia 5 on their next drive and kicked a field goal, held the Dawgs to a three-and-out, then went right back down and scored the tying touchdown. Georgia made a valiant effort at driving back down in just over a minute's time to try and kick the winning field goal, but Coutu missed just left and Georgia was headed into overtime for the first time since the 2003 Capital One Bowl.

From up in the northeast corner of the stadium, right behind the Georgia band, things did not look good, at least to me. Georgia's record in overtime was a respectable 3-2, but it was hard to say Alabama didn't have the momentum at that point, and the Bryant-Denny crowd -- which I still maintain is the loudest I've ever heard away from Sanford Stadium -- was out for blood.

Fortunately, so was our defense. Alabama was held to no gain on their OT possession and had to kick a field goal, and then Mike Bobo decided he wanted to end Georgia's OT possession just as emphatically as the defense had ended Bama's. He rang up a play called 142-Z-Takeoff, a flag route to Mikey Henderson in the corner of the end zone -- little 5'10", 156-pound #27, who had two catches for 11 yards up to that point in the game -- and let Stafford rip. Stafford faked to Brown and launched an absolutely perfect TD pass to Mikey -- seriously, any more or less mojo on the ball and it would've been either an incompletion or a game-ending pick -- and it was game over. Cue Scott Howard going apeshit in the booth and a pile of Dawgs in the end zone that nearly compacted Henderson into a diamond. Or as Mikey himself tells it:

The image that kept going through Henderson’s head, the one he thought for a moment would be his last, was of a cartoon in which a falling person makes a body-shaped indention in the Earth.

“My head was stuck on the ground and all I could see was [OL Chester Adams’] legs, his number and lower body,” Henderson said. “I thought I was in quicksand for a minute. I felt like I was sinking into the ground as more guys got on top, but I guess I was just sinking into my pads.”

As with the win in Knoxville in 2003, we stayed in the stadium for almost an hour afterward, and I know there were people who stayed even longer than that and probably had to get kicked out by the security guards.

Obviously the win had lost a little bit of its luster by the time Alabama had lost late in the year to UL-Monroe and finished the regular season on a four-game skid, but I think it's safe to say that the Bama team we faced that night was considerably different from the one that packed it in against Mississippi State and ULM -- and I don't care who you are, a win over a ranked team in Tuscaloosa at night is something to be cherished. It was a nice way to breathe some life back into the team after a frustrating loss to the Gamecocks and a who-cares outing against Western Carolina, and whether Nick Saban ends up Alabama's savior or every bit as much of a footnote as the last few guys have been, the history books will still remember that his first loss as coach of the Tide was dealt to him by the Dawgs.

Et tu, Pig Sooie?

Yayyyy! Go Hogs! Becky, get Michigan's AD on the phone.

I'm really only a casual fan of the Atlanta Falcons; regular readers know my true allegiance lies with the Redskins. But that meant that when Bobby Petrino dumped the Falcons for the Arkansas job yesterday, I could at least sympathize with the Atlanta faithful: Outstanding college coach with questionable people skills, comes to the NFL expecting to impose his will on the pro ranks just as he did in the NCAA, fails utterly, bitches out before his commitment is up -- where have I heard that one before?

The difference, of course, is that Spurrier didn't even have another job waiting for him when he called it quits. But now, as with Spurrier's departure, I'm left with a dilemma: If I'm glad that he's gone, can I still be pissed at him for leaving?


Ugghhh, it's all coming back to me, so real . . .

Make no mistake -- Petrino, like Spurrier before him, was by all accounts a shitty NFL coach, though for different reasons. Spurrier thought he could just plunk the Fun-'n'-Gun into the NFL without working any harder at it -- he even made fun of the NFL coaches who worked longer hours than he apparently planned to -- and quit once he found out that fielding his own real-life fantasy team full of former Gators wasn't actually going to win any games. Petrino was handed a much less workable situation in Atlanta, where he'd only set up shop for six months before his star QB got indicted on federal charges, but based on reports of his godawful rapport with his players, you have to wonder whether he could've been successful even if he and Bill Belichick swapped teams for a season.

I thought Petrino was a bad hire for the Falcons, just like I thought Spurrier was a bad hire for my 'Skins, and nothing he did over the ensuing 11 months made me believe otherwise. So on the one hand, yes, the Falcons are much better off in the long run that he's gone. But that doesn't mean I can't be gobsmacked by the classlessness with which he left.

I mean, leaving after only season would've looked bad, but leaving after only thirteen games? After you'd told the team owner to his face that you weren't going anywhere? It all feeds into the image of Petrino as an inveterate job-hopper who, with 13 new employers in a 25-year coaching career, makes Nick Saban look like a rock of stability and loyalty. Petrino never met a job he wouldn't diss for something bigger; sure, everyone knows about that furtive (and ultimately fruitless) meeting on Bobby Lowder's private jet back in 2003, but he threw his name into the mix for the LSU and Ole Miss jobs in 2004 and for the Oakland Raiders job in 2005. He's that douchebag you meet at a party and try to start a conversation with, and the whole time he's looking over your shoulder to see if there's someone more important in the room that he could be talking to.


Kind of like the Lumbergh of coaches, in other words.

(And yes, I know I pimped Petrino hard-core for the Alabama job about this time last year, but c'mon -- a coach who can't stop taking new jobs, at a school that can't stop relieving coaches of theirs? It would've been a shotgun wedding, for sure, but one made in heaven.)

So anyway, it's all spilled milk now, but there is some valuable advice Arkansas would do well to heed right about now -- as the old saying goes, "A man who marries his mistress leaves an opening at that position." Hogs fans, enjoy whatever success Pignocchio affords you the next three or four years, just don't bank on it being any longer than that.

As for the Falcons, I wholeheartedly agree with the counsel of the very wise Mark Bradley: Gather up as much money as it takes and go after Bill Cowher. This franchise is a federal disaster area at the moment, and Cowher may be the only guy out there with the toughness, determination, and integrity to get it cleaned up. If you do get him, though, give him as much time as he needs. Part of the reason Cowher did so well in Pittsburgh was because he stayed for fifteen seasons, an entire geologic era by today's NFL standards; he set up a system, got it established, got the players to buy in, and ran it for 10 playoff appearances and a Super Bowl title. If you're so offended by Petrino's lack of loyalty -- as well you should be -- then show the next guy more.


Besides, how can you not love this face?

The 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era, #21:Jasper Sanks's fateful run up the middle.

#24 Auburn 24, #19 Georgia 17
Athens, Georgia, November 10, 2001


The intended result of Richt's call . . . and now the reality:

G 1-G A01 Jasper Sanks rush for no gain to the AU01 (Spencer Johnson).
G 2-G A01 End of 2nd half, clock 00:00.
------------ 5 plays, 44 yards, TOP 01:10 ------------

======FINAL SCORE=====
AUBURN 24, GEORGIA 17
======================

For obvious reasons, most of the plays on this list were positive for Georgia. For reasons that should be just as obvious, this one wasn't, but it had just as important an effect on the program and, in particular, its coach as many of the others did.

The situation: Georgia had taken a 14-7 halftime lead over Auburn, only to see it devolve into a 24-17 deficit in the waning minutes of the game. We had plenty of chances, too -- our first drive of the second half ended with an interception in Auburn territory; the next drive ended with a blocked field goal; with two and a half minutes left we got down to the Auburn 9 but couldn't punch it in. Fortunately we held Auburn to a three-and-out on their next drive, so with 70 seconds left and no time-outs, we started from the Auburn 45 for what would hopefully be the tying score.

It was a pretty sweet drive, actually. David Greene scrambled for three yards, then threw a perfect out pattern to Terrence Edwards, who got out of bounds to stop the clock; on the ensuing third-and-1, Jasper Sanks busted off a 13-yard rush. On the next play, Greene pitched a long one to Edwards, who looked like he just might make it, but he was brought down by Donnay Young just short of the goal line.

If memory serves, there were 13 seconds left when first-year head coach Richt made the fateful call: Send Sanks -- who had four rushes for 24 yards up to that point -- up the middle one more time. Whether it was overconfidence in Sanks's ability to punch it in or ignorance of the clock rules that initially inspired this decision, nobody knows, but either way, the light did eventually go on over Richt's head, as he was frantically waving at Greene to spike the ball even as it was being snapped. But Greene took the ball, the handoff to Sanks was made, and Sanks plowed into the line only to get stacked up for no gain. The Dawgs tried frantically to line up for one more shot, but it was too late -- the clock ticked to 00:00 and the Tigers had escaped with a win. I happened to be watching this drama from the very end zone Sanks was trying to barrel into, and . . . to what can I compare that particular sensation? It was like making out with a Victoria's Secret catalogue model, and right as you've both gotten your clothes off, she says, "You know, I've changed my mind" and leaves.

It was easily the most boneheaded coaching decision made by Richt up to that point, and probably still the dumbest thing he's done in his entire tenure at Georgia. But he wasted no time in acknowledging and taking responsibility for the blunder, and if Georgia's ensuing seasons are any indication, he learned from it. Learning experiences like that are important for a rookie head coach, and while it was certainly embarrassing to get punked at the goal line on national TV like that, if that's what it took to mature Richt into a coach who would go on to win 44 games and two SEC titles in his next four years, then it was worth it.

As for Tommy Tuberville, who condescendingly suggested the day after the game that Richt had to learn that "One of the things you've got to do is run the football to be successful in this league," he proceeded to drop his next two games against the Dawgs (and four of the next six), including a 2003 matchup in which he had Ronnie Brown and Cadillac Williams in his backfield in which he only gave them 13 carries combined and ended up losing 26-7. Apparently, Richt actually learned more from the 2001 game than Tubbs did.

The 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era, #22:Robert Geathers says NSFMF.

#11 Georgia 30, Clemson 0
Clemson, South Carolina, August 30, 2003

C 4-2 G04 Duane Coleman pass incomplete to Charlie Whitehurst (Robert Geathers).

Winning an SEC championship in 2002 was a lot of fun, of course, but everybody was waiting to see how the Bulldogs would follow it up. Our first task of the 2003 season was to go into Death Valley to play a Clemson team that had nearly punked us in the 2002 opener and that was being touted as a possible sleeper team in the ACC. And in addition to all the stars we'd lost to graduation the previous year, we were without defensive end Will Thompson (lost for the year with a knee injury) and eight other players who were suspended for various team rules violations.

Maybe that was the reason the defense only played that much harder. On Clemson's first drive, they stacked the Tigers up at the Georgia 41; second drive, they recovered a Charlie Whitehurst field goal near midfield that the offense turned into a field goal; third drive, a three-and-out; fourth drive, Arnold Harrison forced a fumble that Sean Jones returned inside Clemson's red zone. Down 13-0 just a few minutes into the second quarter, Clemson already looked like they were getting a little desperate.

So maybe that was why Tommy Bowden decided to call a goofy trick play when the Tigers faced fourth-and-2 at the Georgia 4, their deepest penetration of the night: a throwback play by tailback Duane Coleman to the quarterback Whitehurst. It actually wasn't a bad pass, but defensive end Robert Geathers -- ironically, the guy who was filling in for Will Thompson -- jumped at just the right time and batted the ball away. Some Clemson fans howled interference, and there was some contact between Geathers's arm and Whitehurst's, but Geathers was pretty obviously going for the ball and possession went over to Georgia on downs.

Thus what could've been a very dicey shootout for a defensively depleted Georgia squad turned into one of the most emphatic defensive performances by any Bulldog team ever. The Dawgs, who had only been favored by three going into the game, notched their first shutout of Richt's coaching tenure and made a pretty clear statement that they weren't going to pack it in after just one SEC championship.

Someone's not high on the Hog.

As all the world surely knows, Tim Tebow won the Heisman Trophy with 462 first-place votes. But I found an interesting Web site where one can view the individual ballots of a whole bunch of the voters, and some of them were awfully interesting.

There were the usual homer shenanigans -- a guy from the Topeka newspaper voting Kansas wideout Jordy Nelson #3 and omitting Tebow entirely, a guy from SignOnSanDiego.com voting the QB from D-IAA University of San Diego ahead of Chase Daniel and Colt Brennan -- but I think the thing that actually jumped out at me the most was Steve Spurrier's ballot. He put Tebow #1, to nobody's surprise, but put Colt Brennan #2 and Daniel #3, leaving out Darren McFadden entirely.

Now, Spurrier wasn't the only one to leave McFadden off his ballot -- though those folks were definitely in the minority -- but it was striking considering that if anyone should be able to testify to McFadden's worthiness, it's the Ol' Ballcoach. After all, he did have a front-row seat to McFadden's 321-yard performance in a 48-36 win over his own Gamecocks about a month ago.

I don't know. Maybe Spur Dog only votes for QBs, and was thus unimpressed at McFadden only throwing one pass the entire game. Maybe he's just cranky at being stuck home for the holidays. Either way, though, it sounds like a dick move to me.


The future #1 draft pick of the Miami Dolphins kindly asks that you raise up off his nuts, Steve.

The 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era, #23:You don't start a land war in Asia, you don't wear white after Labor Day . . .

#5 Georgia 27, #7 Tennessee 14
Knoxville, Tennessee, October 8, 2005


Play starts at about 1:07; apologies for the "Rammer Jammer" stuff.

T 4-3 T08 Britton Colquitt punt 46 yards to the UGA46, Thomas Flowers return 54 yards to the UT0, TOUCHDOWN, clock 08:50.

Brandon Coutu kick attempt good.

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GEORGIA 20, TENNESSEE 7

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. . . and you don't kick to Thomas Flowers.

I had to miss part of this game, too, because a co-worker of mine was getting married in Anniston that afternoon; I couldn't get too mad at him, though, because it was the first time in at least a decade that both Alabama and Auburn had a bye on the same weekend, so everybody in Alabama and his brother was getting married that day. I watched the first half at a bar in Anniston and hightailed it to the wedding, which -- being a Baptist wedding -- ended just in time for me to go inside for the reception and catch up with the game on the big-screen with a couple minutes left in the third quarter.

It was a nerve-wracking few minutes after that -- Shockley fumbled right as we were getting into Tennessee's red zone, Rick Clausen completed a pass to near midfield only to have his receiver cough it up, Georgia went nowhere on their next possession -- but Gordon Ely-Kelso's punt pinned Tennessee back at their own 1, and after a three-and-out, Britton Colquitt punted it into the waiting arms of Thomas Flowers. Tommy streaked right up the gut, leaving a host of bewildered Tennessee cover guys in his dust, then broke right, juking right between Tennessee's last two guys; I held my breath wondering which one of them was going to be the one to pull him down just short of the goal line. The first guy managed to get a piece of his jersey, the second guy managed to get him by the shoelaces, but it was too late -- Flowers tumbled forward into the end zone, and the Dawgs had doubled their lead.

I had been jawing back and forth with a woman at the wedding named Ann whose daughter was a close friend of the bride's and a Tennessee alum; she kept cheering for the Vols even after the Flowers touchdown, but the look on her face told me that she didn't really expect anything to come of it. Toward the end of the game, I asked her if her daughter had been one of the bridesmaids, and she said, "Oh, she's not even here -- she's at the game. When she found out that Ashley had picked today as her wedding date, she said, 'I'm sorry, but this is one of the biggest games of the year, I'm not missing it.' "

Cool lady. She still asks about me sometimes.

Anyway, the cachet of this win dwindled considerably when Tennessee finished the season 5-6 and bowl-less for the first time in 17 years, but I think the Tennessee team we faced at the beginning of October was considerably different from the one we would've faced had we played them in November, i.e. when they clearly had already packed it in for the season. Going up to Knoxville and getting a win is a difficult thing regardless -- just ask the guys who went up there this year -- and whipping the Vols gave us plenty of momentum as we headed toward our second SEC title in four years.

The 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era, #24:Less than three minutes in, Decory Bryant beats the Razorbacks.

#4 Georgia 30, #22 Arkansas 3
Atlanta, Georgia, December 7, 2002

A 4-12 A19 Richie Butler punt BLOCKED, recovered by UGA Thomas Davis at the AR09, Thomas Davis for 7 yards to the AR02 (blocked by Decory Bryant).

Sadly, a lot of people currently remember cornerback Decory Bryant more for the lawsuit he filed against the Georgia athletic department for dropping the ball on his insurance policy right than for his exploits on the field. But those exploits were considerable -- before getting hurt, he was an integral part of a lockdown defense that limited opponents to only 277 total yards a game on the way to 11-3 and an SEC East title in 2003. And he made the play that permanently shifted the momentum of the SEC championship game in 2002 -- well, as much as you can shift momentum when you haven't even been playing three minutes yet.

Arkansas got the ball first in the 2002 title game, and after a four-yard rush by Matt Jones, an incomplete pass, and a six-yard sack by Boss Bailey, they were facing 4th-and-12 at their own 19. So it was a pretty great defensive series already, but it was about to get better. On the next play, as the Razorbacks snapped the ball back to punter Richie Butler, Bryant flew completely untouched around the right side of the Arkansas line and knocked the ball right off the end of Butler's foot. I was watching the game with a bunch of fellow Dawgs at my friend Kristen's apartment in Midtown, and we were jumping around like hyperactive five-year-olds on the jungle gym after Bryant's block. I was almost a little worried that we'd done lasting structural damage to the place.

Thomas Davis picked the ball up and took it down to the two, and one play later Musa Smith went in for the first six points of the game. By the end of the first quarter, the Dawgs led 17-0; at halftime, they were ahead 23-0; and by the time the clock hit 00:00, they had won their first SEC title in 20 years (and notched the second-biggest blowout ever in an SEC championship game). It was a beautiful night all around, and it started with Decory's big play. If anyone has any info on what he's doing now, let me know -- he had a promising NFL career ahead of him before he got hurt, and all acrimony with the athletic department aside, I hope he's doing well.

The 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era, #25:Tony Milton ices the Vols.

#6 Georgia 18, #9 Tennessee 13
Athens, Georgia, October 12, 2002

G 4-2 T35 Tony Milton rush for 25 yards to the UT10, 1ST DOWN UGA, out-of-bounds (K. Washington; Shannon Benton).

Quick back story that may be of interest only to me: In the fall of 2002, I was in the process of atoning for seven years of feckless heathenhood and re-entering the Catholic church, and one of the requirements was to go to confession. It so happened that the church I attended at the time only had confession at 4 p.m. on Saturdays, and while I did consider putting it off for a week so that I could see the Georgia-Tennessee game, I quickly decided that to do so would just be asking for God to punish my insolence by dealing the Bulldogs a season-killing loss. So I confessed my sins, was welcomed with open arms back into the fold, and missed the first half. ("Offer it up," as my mom always says.)

When I got home, Georgia was somehow leading 8-0 at intermission, and pushed that lead to 18-0 before taking their foot off the gas and letting Tennessee -- who, with Casey Clausen planted on the sideline due to a shoulder injury, was reduced to just throwing backup QBs at us hoping one of them would stick -- back into the game. With three and a half minutes left, wideout Derrick Tinsley tossed a TD pass to Jason Witten to bring the Vols within five, and all of a sudden a game that looked like a sure thing at the start of the fourth quarter was getting just a wee bit more nerve-wracking; Georgia recovered Tennessee's on-side kick at the UT43, but ended up facing fourth-and-2 at the Tennessee 35 with 1:43 remaining. By comparison, Tennessee's first touchdown drive had taken only 78 seconds.

A 52-yard field goal would've been dicey; a punt would've probably put the Vols at the 20 and more than enough time to go 80 yards for the winning TD. Tennessee burned a time-out to leave themselves as much time as possible, but that time-out also gave Mark Richt just enough time to grow a pair of stainless-steel balls and send Tony Milton around the left side to try to pick up the first. And sure enough, the O-line walled off Milton's route so well that Tony got all the way down to the Vols' 10 before being driven out of bounds. Three kneeldowns later, Georgia had their third straight win over Tennessee and had established themselves as the make-no-mistake team to beat in the SEC.

Had Milton not made the first down, Tennessee would've still had to beat the clock to come up with a go-ahead touchdown, but Richt's gutsy call enabled Georgia to build on the momentum of their "man enough" win over Alabama a week earlier and continue rolling toward a dream season. And the bullish confidence that Richt expressed in his guy -- the backup tailback, it should be pointed out -- was an example of the play-to-win attitude that enabled Georgia to finally "knock the lid off" the program and start winning SEC titles again. It wouldn't be the last time that confidence was demonstrated in a big way.

(By the way: If anyone has photos or YouTubes of any of these plays that they'd like to add to these, your contributions are always welcome -- just e-mail a JPEG or a link to me at heyjennyslater [dot] blog [at] gmail [dot] com. Mazel.)