"There's plenty more where that came from."

--Nuwanda, "Dead Poets Society".

Parents, don't let your children be (W)reckless

And go to Tech and wind up so feckless

To think they've engineered a pretty sight

At the epitome of urban blight

Wouldn't the world be better off if it was Techless?

***

"It's the MIT of the South" some may say,

Others, "the Caltech of the Southeast", hip-hip hooray,

But if not the Trade School on North Avenue

Or if the Joke by Coke just will not do,

I simply dub thee "Hogwarts-on-the-Highway"

***

My one trip to Lexington was fun...biggest high school stadium I've ever been in.

When a ref blows a call they all throw fits

Wouldn't know a holding call from a corner blitz

So when you see the fans of Big Blue

Pretend to watch the gridiron with you

Remember they'd rather watch sweaty hairy armpits.

***

To be a pigskin fan up at Kentucky

A masochist would feel very lucky.

They find it oh so very droll

If it's not a pick-and-roll

Year after year they just sucky.

***

With apologies to T.S. Eliot.

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter

It isn't just one of your pre-holiday games.

You may think at first that I'm Mad as the Hatter

When I tell you a Cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

First of all, there are the names the Auburn Family hold dear like a hug

Such as Pat Sullivan, Bo, or Lionel James

Such as Takeo or Cadillac, Rocker or Shug,

Most of them sensible, memorable names.

There are fancier names with which they hold court,

When they think of their exploits in yesterday's games,

Such as the Plainsmen, War Eagles, or Wartiglesmen for short,

Some of them sensible, but fanciful names.

But I tell you, a Cat needs a name, one that will make

A really good headline when one messes up

And they dredge up your pants from the bottom of a lake

Or set an unassailable record in the great Fulmer Cup

Of names of this kind, I can give you a bunch

Such as Lowder or Ramsey, Terry or Dye

A quarterback's knees, a Fairley sickening crunch

Names that will never sound like sugar falling out of the sky

But above and beyond, there's still one name left over

And that is the name the NCAA will never guess

The name that no investigative research will discover

BUT THE CAM CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess

When you notice that Cat in salary mediation

The reason I tell you is always the same

His mind is engaged in rapt calculation, of the thought, of the thought, of the thought

Of his Price Name

His ineffable, F'able, effin' inF'inable, and inscrutable, singular Price Name.

Woof.

I got poems...(no, not like the Diceman)

Each October we gear up for Vandy,

Hoping  a "W" would come in quite handy,

But beware of pigskin sloth

Just ask 1995 Ray Goff

If it's like separating a baby from candy.

Is a third Tiger team cause for worry?

If we pick up a team like Missouri

They're not in the South,

Or the East, (hush yer mouth)

I don't know why we're in such a hurry

It is Christmas morning once again in the Dawglicious household...what major award will the delivery man bring today?  Could it be a bowling alley, a beatdown that signifies the major award of marked improvement?  Or will it be a leg, the soft glow of electric sex that would be an SEC win?  Or, God forbid GIGGITY?

Toss aside the excelsior and dig into that wooden crate marked "Fra-gee-lay" to see what ol' Santa Dawg brings us today.  Hopefully, it's not a blue ball...

Mawnin', fellow Dawgs!  Hope springs eternal in this part of the Bulldog Nation, where in my mind I try to set aside the ugly trends of the past 5 seasons and look forward to immediate improvements on the field today, and just as important, on the scoreboard.  My consistent expectation in tune-up games like today's is that we see a final score of 70-0, or at worst, 63-3.  (It seems that all the top tier programs take care of business in this fashion against the cupcakes--why not us?) 

LIke I wrote last week, I want us to crush the cupcakes, pound the weak sisters, show up for the big gigs, and look good doing it.  I know that won't happen every week and every year, but I sure would like to see us try.  "Unbeaten, untied*, unscored upon" rolls off the tongue nicely, doesn't it?  

My feeling is this:  we're paying them several hundred thousand big ones to come and get their whuppin'...why not give them their money's worth?

Maybe if the Evil Richt comes out today, perhaps we'll see that same killer instinct in a big game that matters. However, nothing will bring me back to reality faster than a final score of 38-21, even if those opponent's points are mostly scored during trash-time.  Like Arlo Guthrie said a while back, "I wanna KILL..."

I also fervently hope and pray no one gets hurt today, with best wishes for Munson as well.

*If there's an alliterative (might have made that up!) way to change "untied", I'm all ears.  Maybe "un-OT'd?

Here's a little Happy Game Day poll to see where we stand:

Remember Frosty the Snowman? Whenever the kids put the magic hat on his head, he would magically awaken, throw his hands out wide, and exclaim, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" Every Bulldog gameday feels just like that for me, no matter what how the Dawgs are playing, who they are playing, or when…as long as it is a Georgia Football Saturday, I can expect my cell phone to light up with several "Happy Game Day!" messages from my buddy Dawgs. Sometimes I’ll add something to the greeting, like a key to the game or a Munson-esque worry. If it’s a big rival, a la UT, UF, AU or GT, a little snark might be involved.

I originally wrote this last weekend, but was unable to post due to lack of internets connectivity. Being "in some dark holler where the sun don't ever shine" in the North Georgia mountains last Saturday night helped me relive some past Bulldog Saturdays from my youth. This entailed sitting next to the radio on my parents' mountain cabin porch, holding the antenna just so with one hand, my V&T in the other, trying to keep the volume down (especially my own). Except for the Boykin run, this was not a problem.

Here's to Happy SEC Game Day! I hope we've got a shot at turning this thing around.

...and in the CMR Hot Seat Meme portion of the article,  Andy Staples writes that we have the talent in our fair state to win the MNC every six months!   Until now, I felt a bit unreasonable expecting to be in the hunt almost every year.  Even though he picks us to go 3-5 in the conference (which I imagine would be Vandy, KY, and Tennessee for the W's), he later hedges and says he could be "spectacularly wrong". 

Here's pulling for something spectacular this year.   Woof.

...as an amateur, winning the event with a birdie on the 72nd hole.  The Golf Channel commentator quipped that "Chris Hack must be doing something good" at UGA.  With Sept. 3rd still six weeks away, it did me some good to see a Dawg step up at the end and finish the drill for real. One shot down, English took a risk off the tee, cutting the goat-leg left and left himself about fifty paces, stuck it to ten feet out of the rough, then nailed the putt after watching the leader make bogey.  Woof.

re:  Ralph Friedgen headed to A-town to coach O-line.  I suggest loading up on barbecue stock (a financial instrument, not the derived nectar with which our purported new assistant apparently sautes everything...

But, all plus-sized kidding aside (and who am I to poke fun?)  This could be one of those great hires future championships are made of.  Could Crowell have caught wind of this development, thought about the vastly improved line he might be running behind in short order, and told Aw-barn to stick it?  We'll see. 

...but the Dawgs shot a cool 80% in the second half.  If we're gonna turn it over 20 times, we can't go 27-43 at the line. This game could have been put away early, but we had three starters in foul trouble, with Travis Leslie fouling out late.  Barnes needs to work on his FT touch (5-13 from the line, yuck.)  Overall, I like our quickness, especially that Robinson kid, and we rebounded well.  CU has a good team...they fought back from 17 down early to tie us up at the half.  It's still early...I'm finally excited about watching GA hoops this year.

...or my most hated, or both?  This has been a difficult question for me over the years. 

1)  Auburn has always been the biggest game for me due to the large number of WDE's in Southwest Georgia.  They hold a "Burn the Bulldog" bonfire every year where I'm told children throw stuffed Uga's onto the flames while the adults cheer them on. Next year, I hear they plan to stuff a big doll to look like our QB, let the kids helmet up and spear him in the back before they incinerate him. Cupcakes for every kid that separates vertabrae!

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Today, the Friday before GA/Fla, marks the 9th anniversary of my proposal to the Lady Dawglicious in the little chapel at Epworth-by-the-Sea on St. Simons.  As I told T. Kyle recently, I've had a lot of fun thinking about this since July when the call to submit Dawgographies went out.  I've enjoyed reading the others, and although I don't comment very often, I read this site every single day.  My hat's off to you fellow Dawgs...keep up the good work with your thoughtful commentary!

Recently, I was in Atlanta on business.  I had been thinking of T. Kyle's invitation to write a Dawgography, and I figured a little inspiration would be the ticket.  There was a particular photo that I had seen years before of a certain former Bulldog, part of a Georgia team photo that hung in Fuzzy's Place on N. Druid Hills Rd.  I dropped by to take a look.  Unfortunately, Fuzzy had passed away a few years back, and now his place was closed down, gutted for renovation.  Why did I go miles out of my way to check the photo out (other than Fuzzy's wonderful crawfish etouffe?)

Sometime in the fall of 1970 (or maybe '71), my parents attended a Georgia football game in Athens.  Someone Dad worked with gave them tickets...it was a short drive from Atlanta and the weather was nice.  They tell me they looked over the players' names in the program.  My mom pointed out a particular name to Dad and said something like, "I like that name."  That player's name was Kendall Keith, a lineman and offensive captain for the Dawgs, one of the team members I saw years later at Fuzzy's.  At my birth in December '71, I was given one of his names as my middle name.    I believe the adage holds true:  the name you give a child can either help or haunt him throughout their life. I've never met the man, nor seen his likeness except in that team photo.  However, he played a part in my choosing to bleed the red and black. 

In spite of this, my journey to Athenstown was not assured.  My folks were not diehard fans in the sense that their mood was affected by their respective alma maters' gridiron fortunes.  Especially Dad's...'cause he went to Emory.  Mom, on the other hand, is a product of FSU. (Before I was a full-fledged Dawg, I naturally hated Florida).  We lived in South Georgia, so it was easy to get down to Tallahassee.  My first college gameday experience was a 38-6 whuppin' Bobby's boys put on Navy.  Someone had kidnapped the Navy mascot...a goat.  Thought y'all would like to know that.

I had two big influences as a kid on my decision Dawgward, one my best friend growing up, the other, an aunt and uncle.  My best friend was a huge Dawg fan whose room was a veritable Butts-Mehre Hall.  He lived and died with the Dawgs...to this day, he counts as the number one moment in his life was being 8 years old and in the Superdome when Georgia won the 1980 national championship.  We also read every word that Lewis Grizzard ever printed or uttered in a concert.  (Ol' Lewis probably should count as influence #3!)  My aunt and uncle are big Bama fans, and they introduced me to the notion of lofty expectations.  One Thanksgiving, the family cabin at which we were gathered did not have a TV.  They invited me to roam the north GA mountains searching for a TV to watch the Alabama/Auburn game.  The first half we watched in a mom and pop grocery store.  The third quarter, in a laundromat.  Finally, we found a pizza joint in Hiawassee that had the game...when Van Tiffin kicked the winning field goal to beat Auburn, we were politely asked to leave.  I realized that this football thing was pretty fun.

As Munson would say, "DO YOU REALIZE" that by the time I graduated high school, I still had not attended one single UGA game, but had several FSU and Bama games under my belt?  The spring of my senior year, I had pretty much decided to go to Emory, but I made a fateful visit to Athens in the spring.  Within ten minutes, I saw more pretty girls jogging on Milledge than I saw in an entire weekend at Emory. Fortunately, my dad was understanding...I think.

My first Georgia game was the 18-17 last minute win against Alabama (CARSWELL SAVED OUR FANNY!).  Unfortunately, that was pretty much the highlight of the six falls I lived in Athens.  The brightest sports memories of my sojourn to graduation were solely due to the Atlanta Braves.  From the "worst to first", Bream's slide, to the '95 World Series win, my most joyous moments were reserved for the Bravos. As for the lows,  I was four rows behind the Georgia bench when Vanderbilt won our 1995 homecoming game.  My date, a real pistol of a girl, drunkenly berated the team late in the game.  I turned around to see my preacher from home sitting a few rows back, a stern look of disappointment that I hope was directed at the play on the field.  That was the absolute low point of my Georgia fandom.  It has been all better since, for the most part.  I want Georgia football to be hard-hitting on defense, stingy giving up points, and the offense to step on the gas and put the other team away.  I see the defense coming around, making improvements every week.  Tough defense is Georgia football, in my opinion. 

I have been blessed to be in attendance for the Hobnailed Boot and the 2002 SEC Championship.  Next week, I have the honor of taking my 7-year old daughter to her first UGA game vs. Idaho St. (gotta make sure it's a win!)  We're going to search for the brick I bought to commemorate the game at which I was introduced to my wife (the 2000 drought-breaker against Tennessee) and go see UGA VIII and the cheerleaders.  Then we'll hit the Greasy V after halftime for a naked dog and a frosted orange.

As for my vote for Ga's biggest games each year:  first would be Auburn, then Tech, then Florida, then Tennessee.  Everyone else I want to stomp and hold to 10 points or less, every time...because I suspect the computers have digital comtempt for teams that give up 20+ to Georgia Southern, and I would hate for that to hold us back from potential glory.

I leave you, my fellow Dawgs, with my in-season Saturday morning text message to my buddies:  HAPPY GAME DAY! Go Dawgs. Sic 'em. Woof.

Dawglicious

Allbenny, GA

Well, I for one am really gonna miss hearing Loran during the games.  Everyone knows that guy who can do the Munson calls (or tries to), attempting to imitate that gravelly voice.  I never could do Munson for more than a couple of sentences before my vocal cords bled, but I always felt like I did a pretty good Loran, which required only a squinting of the eyes, pitching the voice through the nasal cavity, and a couple of stiff vodka tonics.  Add the Loranisms that I detail below, and you have a recipe for a surreal audio experience that might be described thusly: Loran Smith gives sideline reports like Salvador Dali paints.

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