Dirty Dawgs?
I read the other day that some Tennessee players were quoted as saying the Georgia offensive line was dirty. I can’t find the article now to link to it, sorry. Anyhoo, I don’t want our guys to be dirty, but just to play hard and be tougher. Football can be a nasty game played by even nastier men, when it’s done right. Some people had questioned if the Dawgs were tough at all. Sounds like they are on the right track.
And look at which pot is calling the kettle black! lol
T-Minus Two Weeks and Counting
Signing Day is two weeks away and basically a free for all has ensued in SEC recruiting. Many fans are pulling their hair out. Between Alabama’s championship, Urban Meyer’s intermittent “health” issues, Lame Kiffin leaving Tennessee in the lurch, Derek Dooley trying to save the day, Georgia finally naming their DC, this two week home stretch promises to be one for the ages.
Remember the tag-line for the MTV show”Diary”,
You think you know, but you have no idea…
Hey, did you think two days ago, that Chan Gailey would be a head coach in the NFL this year? SEE? There is no alternative universe aka Bizarro World. We LIVE in the Bizarro world.
That’s why I’m concerned about commits like Da’Rick Rogers taking visits with his buddy Nash Nance to Tennessee and possibly Florida. The Gators have continued to clean up with commitment after commitment, with Urban Meyer’s future “up in the air”. How can that be? That is some “leave of absence” he’s got going on.
I am very concerned about Derek Dooley. He’s young and looks even younger. He’s a great communicator. He’s going to be a pain in our collective buttocks.
Then there is National Champion, Alabama. Winning will create additional recruiting momentum and they will be formidable for the forseeable future. I remember how 1980 led to some the most loaded teams UGA has ever seen.
Just now is new Georgia DC Todd Grantham able to hit the road. He has some catching up to do. New Defensive Backs Scott Lakatos apparently arrives in Athens today and hits the road tomorrow. On the surface it seems Coach Richt and company have kept our commits intact. The lone exception was a mutual parting it seems.
The roller coaster is leaving the platform, are you buckled in? Let’s see if you can ride this “Scream Machine” with no hands…
Go Dawgs!
Tennessee’s Upgrade is Dooley Noted
As a Georgia guy, I was surprised by the hiring of Derek Dooley at the University of Tennessee. Not because I don’t think he is worthy, but because he is unlike the other candidates mentioned. Troy Calhoun of Air Force, Houston’s Kevin Sumlin and David Cutcliffe who was a Tennessee guy for so long are all so different.
I know that some of the Tennessee faithful looked at the Dooley hire as settling for the sake of expediency, with signing day looming. I think Derek dispelled much of that concern in his introductory press conference. His combination of down home eloquence and understanding of the value of tradition had the press corp applauding at one point. Even Volunteers recognize class when they see it, it’s just been a while.
He is the anti-Kiffin…it was love at first bite.
Sound bite that is. A couple of reporters attempted to get Dooley to comment on Lane Kiffin, even if in a subtle way, and Derek would not stoop to that level. It was as if uttering the K-word would leave a bad taste in one’s mouth.
I hope Tennessee wins it’s share of games each year with losses to Georgia and Florida.
But I will not be cheering for the Big Urange!
That sounds perfect to me.
What say you?
Who wants Dominoes?
Well, you got’em! The first to fall was Jim Mora getting fired as head coach of the Seattle Seahawks. Before the door could even hit him in the butt, the Seahawks were on the phone with Pete Carroll. Captain Cool said yes and left the USC Trojans, the college football mecca of this decade, in his dust. After overtures to Oregon State’s Mike Riley and the Jacksonville Jaguar’s Jack Del Rio, the Trojans have settled, and I do mean settled, for Tennessee’s Lane Kiffin.
As of about midnight last night, the campus of the University of Tennessee became a reenactment of the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s with Lane Kiffin the only McCoy left to shoot. The air was filled with snuff spat in such anger that some kids thought it was raining.
Kiffin’s departure tips the next domino and creates a vacuum in SEC recruiting just three weeks from signing day. This could be great for Georgia if we can get our stuff together. There were several of those commits to UT that had Georgia high on their list.
The first replacement for Kiffin that came to mind was Peewee Herman, but I think I dreamed that. The next name was Duke’s David Cutcliffe. I’m sure that would be fine with Duke because Cutcliffe has been there two years, more than could be reasonably expected…..insert crickets chirping….I have always felt that Cutcliffe was the key to much of the Vols success in the 90′s.
It would be refreshing and just freakin’ awesome if he were to stay at Duke and continue building a competitive program there. I for one will not be holding my breath but, whether it’s him or another coach yet un-named, the dominoes will continue to fall.
Oh yeah, and all the kids can do is watch.
Kiffin Under the Gun Dismisses Players
Lane Kiffin might be a miserable person to hang around with but I am more and more impressed with him as a coach almost every day. Today it was announced he would not suspend but permanently dismiss Nu’Keese Richardson and Mike Edwards from the team. These two were the hold up men in an attempted armed robbery last week. Janzen Jackson was apparently the lookout man. Final disposition of his status on the team is still to come. The interesting thing is the “wildboys” stunt last recruiting season and the “punking” of the team panders to a kid on the edge, and has nothing to do with attracting character kids.
In honor of this latest development, Tennessee designed a new helmet to finish the year with. It will be a reminder to all who see it, that guns don’t rob people, people rob people.
On a Voluntary basis…
UGA vs. UT
I must admit, I’m a little concerned about today’s game. Sure, Tennessee is still struggling to reach the level of their glory years of the 90′s. But Georgia has yet to play a complete game either. This game could be a relative blow-out either way, or a six overtime marathon.
Pass the Maalox…again.
The best thing I heard all day was from a Tennessee student last night at the Marietta High School football game. Former AD Jeff Wheeler was there with his daughter who is a senior at UT.
She said that their offense was “inCrompetent”.
I thought that was beautiful. Let’s just hope that they don’t find their Crompetence today. All I keep thinking is complete game…complete game…complete game, we can do this.
I do believe it. Do you?
Are the Georgia Bulldogs Coached Up?
I was reading THE Bulldog’s Blog and one of David Hale’s readers used the term “coached down”. It’s not a very commonly used phrase, but very descriptive and it made me think….no comments please! Especially you Bernie! It reminded me of a conversation I had with one of Thomas Brown’s high school coaches several years ago. Thomas was probably a junior at UGA at the time.
He was expressing some frustration because he felt Thomas was having his natural running instincts and abilities “coached out” of him. He said Thomas had shown a game breaking ability that I am sure helped him get recruited and a scholarship offer. Why then would the Georgia running backs coach go against that grain?
It could be as simple as the coach wanting the backs to run north and south and not to go east and west. That’s a pretty common mantra, but sometimes you have to go east and west just a little. These days that hole that was supposed to be there just isn’t there. Some of our backs run there anyway and fall down.
One of my favorite books as a kid was Run to Daylight by Vince Lombardi
That’s some basic stuff, but do we do that? Seriously.
Here’s a question for you. Since when do we recruit running backs as projects? The comments from Coach Richt recently regarding Richard Samuel prove to me that he is an ongoing project at running back. The fact that he is “still learning the position” doesn’t ring true to me. He’s been on campus 18 months and still doesn’t know what to do or how to do it? How can that be? And he’s starting again this weekend vs. Tennessee.
Now I have an occasional reader that feels I dislike Richard Samuel. That’s not the case. I want Richard to be successful. It’s up to the coaches to give him a chance to be successful. I’m just not sure that running back is the spot. If this weekend is Richard’s coming out party, I will dance naked in the street and kiss him square on the mouth, I swear I don’t care.
To clarify, I will get dressed again before said kiss on the mouth.
I think the more likely scenario is it could be Washaun Ealey’s coming out party. A fractured jaw and concussion for Caleb King may have created that opportunity for Washaun. It took an injury to Thomas Brown in 2007 for Knowshon Moreno to get the numbers of carries that proved his true value.
Bottom line is, I want to win. I am very concerned about our ability to run and consistently stop the run. Monty Kiffin will have his defense ready. He will put the onus squarely on Joe Cox to win this game. Joe will be hit early and often if we can’t slow the Tennessee pass rush by running effectively.
This will need to be our best over-all game to win.
Let’s do it! Go Dawgs!
Georgia’s Biggest Rivals, Real or Imagined?
The pundits are always talking about how competitive SEC football is and how much natural rivalries play into the weekly grind. In looking at the new UGA Media Guide, I noticed some interesting tidbits. Some folks have handed it to the Dawgs, some series are competitve and some we dominate more than I realized.
Alabama has an eleven game lead in a series that until recently was very on again off again. In the olds days we rotated those teams that are now mostly SEC Western Division teams, except Auburn and Ole Miss who we played every year.
This is our record against our traditional rivals:
Alabama 25-36 -4
Auburn - 51- 53-8
Clemson-41-17-4(ACC)
Florida -47-38-2
Georgia Tech -59-37-5
Kentucky -49-11-2
LSU -12-14-1
Mississippi -30-12-1
Mississippi State -16-5-0
South Carolina - 45-14-2
Tennessee -16-20-2
Vanderbilt - 49-18-2
What jumped out at me and maybe you too is that as tough as the South Carolina series seems, it’s on par with our record against Vanderbilt. That blew me away. It’s the same way with Clemson, Kentucky and for many years Florida also. Games like this week with South Carolina always seem close, but we do dominate the Gamecocks.
The Dawgs have some work to do this week to beat South Carolina, but they can do it.
Go Dawgs!
Tennessee Fans, Is it just me or…
Have the University of Tennessee faithful been quieter than usual? Of course their new coach has said plenty, more than enough for most SEC fans. It just seems that the few Tennessee people I do interact with, are(to quote Elmer Fudd) vewy, vewy quiet. It’s a beautiful thing! I do try and keep my exposure to the hillbilly bunch to a minimum, but I used to work with one that had an excuse for any and every thing that happened in obKnoxville. Luckily I left that company, so much of what Coach Kiffin has uttered came after my departure. It’s hard to figure how anyone in that position could say the wrong thing so often. Seems like the taste of shoe leather would get old, but maybe not.
Kiffin has thrown out everything from accusations of cheating of other SEC coaches to tweaking Mark Richt about UGA’s recruiting in the State of Georgia. He’s seemingly trying to “tick off ” as many people as possible. Some goal. Why add fuel to the opposition’s competitive fire when you’re the Head Coach of a dieing ember. Heck, worry about your guys, or at least the ones who stay. If the trend continues, they will be filming WaterBoy 2 in Big Orange Country this fall. Bobby Boucher’s mother confirmed that they had been contacted.
Mrs. Boucher commented, “Dat Coitch Kibben is da Debil”!
And this week…From ajc.com…(Maxie)
Sometimes tweeting ain’t worth the twouble.
When Troup junior defensive end J.C. Copeland committed to Tennessee Tuesday, a comment appeared on coach Lane Kiffin’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. It read simply, “I was so excited to hear that J.C. Copeland committed to play for the Vols today!”
Unfortunately, the assistant who posted that to Kiffin’s accounts committed a minor recruiting violation by doing so, and Tennessee is going to report itself to the NCAA.
It’s a small thing, until you pile it on top of everything else. That’s why it’s good to keep a low profile, because “things happen”. But when you as the leader of the program are repeatedly the reason for the embarassment, you can’t point fingers, although he is likely to try.
Tennessee is attempting to nip this in the bud, realizing their Coach IS relatively young and inexperienced at this level.
A part of the on-going program was captured in the picture below.
Tell me what you really think!