SB Nation User Blog: donkeydawg

UGA/LSU Online?

donkeydawg — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:31:02 -0000

I've just discovered I am spending much of Saturday flying across the country to attend a funeral. Yes, that's more important than football, but I'd still like to watch some of the game if possible, and am pretty sure my cross-country flight has internet access (for a price, of course). But since the game is on CBS, the usual internet outlets for video (ESPN360, GeorgiaDogs, Yahoo) aren't available. Am I missing something? I'll still listen to the game via GeorgiaDogs, but video would be nice.

Leftovers: some additional observations on the Arky game

donkeydawg — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:20:51 -0000

Since I waste an inordinate amount of time reading post-game analyses, thought I should waste a bit more with some observations that I didn't much see anywhere else:

1) PBO (Penalties By Opponents): Like all Dawg fans, I'm disturbed by the persistence of our team's Plague O' Penalties this year (particularly by the O-Line in the Arky game). But after three games, it's worth noting that our opponents are getting flagged even more. The Dawgs have 32 penalties for 249 yards through three games. Dawg opponents have 39 penalties for 314 yards. On three straight occasions, teams playing Georgia have racked up more than 100 yards in zebra sanctions. That's a lot, and after a while, this stops being a coincidence and starts being a pattern. Is there something about Georgia's play, or the kind of games our play produces, that makes our opponents shoot themselves in the foot even more than we do? I dunno, but it bears watching.

2) Dropsies Gone?: In losses over the last three years, in the spring game, and in the Okie State game, our offensive struggles were significantly magnified by dropped catchable passes. Indeed, this has been a chronic complaint off and on about Georgia's receiver corps. The problem seemed to abate significantly against South Cacklalackey, and with the exception of one drop by Taverres King, I don't recall a single muffed catch by a Dawg receiver against Arky. Is this a coincidence, luck, player determination, or coaching? I dunno the answer to this one either, but it's a pretty big deal when you are in shootouts.

3) Opposing QB Heroics: We've now played back-to-back games in which the opposing QB had a breakout performance. As it happens, both these gents were VHT prospects who for various reasons never much got it done until they played the Dawgs. There are possible explanations other than Georgia defensive ineptitude or the shootout character of the games: the notoriously immobile Mallet gave up the chili-cheese-fries and lost about forty pounds, and Garcia seems to have, you know, grown up. If they go on to become big program-defining stars, then perhaps our defensive performances in these two games won't seem so damning. We'll have to wait and see.

4) Most Underrated Big Play: One very big play in the Arky game that I haven't seen anyone mention was when Richard Samuel snaked his arm underneath a ton of Hawgs to recover his own fumble deep in our territory in the fourth quarter. There was confusion, since it appeared originally that the refs were calling him down, but the replay showed he fumbled and somehow recovered. This was when we led 49-41, and right before the great Butler punt that led to our final FG. I submit this is was as big a recovery as Thomas' in the Cackalackey game after Cox got sacked and fumbled. Samuel, of courrse, shouldn't have fumbled in the first place, but I'm very glad he got it back.

If I missed any other little-mentioned factors, please add some in the comment thread.

Go Dawgs!

Identity Crisis: How Will We Remember the Richt Era?

donkeydawg — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:53:40 -0000

As it happens, I'm a blogger by trade, and just yesterday wrote five posts for three different national political sites. But I've been as nervous and excited as a prom-night teenager about the invitation to do a guest post here at Dawg Sports.

The obvious thing to write about today is the Senate hearing on the BCS' alleged antitrust violations. But that's too much like the day job, and frankly, the whole subject bores me to death. I'm sure the Senator himself will cover that story with the requisite skill and skepticism. Just wake me up when the whole issue is resolved.

Instead, I'd like to ask everyone a question that's been on my mind as we look forward to this most unpredictable of Georgia football seasons: after eight seasons under Mark Richt, has the Georgia program formed a clear identity? And if so, what are the characteristics of the Richt Era, beyond the Ws and Ls and the individual stars?

I don't know when, exactly, the identity of Georgia football formed during the Dooley Era, but it was indelibly clear by the early 1980s. It was summed up by two phenomena that we saw over and over on the field: the long, fourth-quarter drive that ate the clock, clinched the game and broke the spirit of many an opponent; and the defensive stand deep in Bulldog territory. With that identity came three deeply reassuring features of the program that fans of less stable regimes had to envy: Georgia rarely lost to inferior teams, rarely blew leads, and rarely played poorly at home. Yes, there were rare exceptions. I was in Athens in 1977, and suffered through the previously unimaginable ignominy of a 31-0 loss to the snooty Cavaliers of Virginia at homecoming. But soon Herschel arrived, and all was forgiven.

That's why the South Carolina game of September 30, 1989, so shockingly marked the end of the Dooley Era. That day the Dawgs lost at home to a second-half Gamecock surge, and ended the game with Georgia QB Greg Talley being sacked three consecutive times. It was deeply confusing; it wasn't Georgia Football; and it was a sign of very bad things to come.

So tell me, ye grey-headed Boomers who remember the Dooley Era, and ye pups who grew up with the depressing formlessness of the Goff and Donnen tenures. What's at the core of the identity of Georgia football under Mark Richt? Is it the remarkable road record? The offensive innovation? The dominant defensive line play epitomized by Pollack that briefly seemed to reemerge late in 2007? Will we most remember the brilliant All-Americans and the stunning individual wins from the Hobnail Boot to Evil Richt and the First Blackout?

I'm sure I don't know. But I do think the program's identity may hang in the balance this coming year. Richt's brilliant road record will be burnished or tarnished at Okie State, Arkansas, Tennessee and Tech. We'll soon know if the inspiring defensive performances so common under Van Gorder are a thing of the past. We'll find out if the Dawgs can excel without established superstars at the skill positions. And by December, we should have a much better idea whether Mark Richt is building a perennial powerhouse or just a very good if somewhat erratic program whose low points (Tennessee in 2006 and 2007, and last year's three losses) are offset by moments of greatness that will nourish our memories for many off-seasons to come.

Go Dawgs!

2009 Competition Improves

donkeydawg — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 08:03:18 -0000

I've been bullish about the Dawgs for 2009, but in an effort to curb my enthusiasm, I've been looking at the dark side, with some help from Phil Steele (though he is also relatively bullish about Georgia this year).

The thing that really jumps out at you when you survey the schedule is how many opponents are expected to be better than they were last year.

By Steele's assessment, no fewer than eight of our twelve opponents (Okie State, Arkansas, Arizona State, LSU, Tennessee, Florida, Auburn, and the Dirt Daubers) are likely to improve this year. Three (Arkansas, Tennessee and Auburn) make Phil's Most Improved Teams list. And LSU ranks eighth in Steele's Power Poll of the best teams (above Georgia, which ranks eleventh). This is probably why Steele rates our schedule--which is generally regarded as significantly easier than last year's, certainly once we leave Stillwater--as the seventh toughest in the country. Given the teams on last year's schedule who wound up more or less imploding--notably Arizona State, Tennessee and Auburn--this may actually be the toughest schedule the Dawgs have faced in a long while.

Moreover, one of the teams that isn't expected to improve--SC--has been a difficult team for GA since Spurrier arrived; just ask the 2007 Dawgs whose loss at home to SC ultimately cost us a national title shot, or the 2008 Dawgs who nearly lost in Columbia.

Yes, even an improved Arkansas on the road will be easier to beat than last year's Alabama team, and yes, the pace and home/road profile of the schedule are better than in 2008.

But the Dawgs really do need to step it up to beat an improved competition in and out of the SEC. In looking back at last year, there's a tendency to focus on the two blowout losses and the frustrating loss to the Daubers. But we also won three games (SC, KY, and Auburn) that could have easily gone the other way.

The 2009 schedule doesn't provide a lot of room for "letdowns;" the closest thing to an early gimme is Vandy in mid-October, and that's on the road where we damn near lost to the 'Dores in 2007.

So there's my one--and I hope, the last--expression of pessimism for 2009.

Grounds for (Limited) Optimism Against Gators

donkeydawg — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 01:09:56 -0000

I hope I'm not violating some sort of unspoken taboo against early discussion of some of the stuff in Phil Steele's new preview. In case there is, I'll avoid spoiling too many things for those who haven't gotten mitts on it yet, and limit this to one issue: are there any grounds for optimism in the 2009 Georgia-Florida game, given the Gators' scary return of talent from a championship team, and the results of that horrid contest last year?

There appear to be two, aside from Steele's positive assessment of Georgia's potential this year. One, of course, is the bye week before the Gator game; the Dawgs are 10-2 in regular season games after a bye week since 2002, and one of those games was the big win in Jax in 2007. The second is that Florida had a positive turnover margin of 22 last year. And as Steele always argues, such large margins, positive or negative, have a tendency to reverse in the next season. Given the role of turnovers in Florida's one loss last season, that's worth remembering.

As I've said here before, some of us old alumni remember when Georgia used to own Florida as much as Florida has owned us since the arrival of Spurrier. I have no superstitious awe of the Gators; just the realistic awe based on their performance last year and the players they have coming back.

Fan Base Questions

donkeydawg — Thu, 21 May 2009 01:54:06 -0000

Charlottedawg's post on in-state recruiting got me thinking about a related question: the health and breadth of UGA's fan base.

I recall hearing some Dawg brass worry twenty years ago that the distribution of alumni wasn't keeping up with Atlanta's explosive population growth. Then in the 90s the big leaps in admissions requirements at UGA created some talk that the school's small-town fan base might be affected, since lots of good ol' boys might be forced to go to Georgia Southern or Valdosta State.

I don't live in-state anymore, but I get the impression that Atlanta's a pretty big Bulldog town these days (and it really didn't use to be), while the few small Georgia towns I've visited lately are as red-and-black as ever.

Our out-of-state fan base has certainly grown by leaps and bounds, but are there any other trends worth knowing about?

Blogs Versus MSM--Sports Edition

donkeydawg — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:29:36 -0000

As we kill time before G-Day--which, in a rare inversion of the usual handicap of being a Dawg fan in California, I will get to enjoy over a late breakfast in my jammies--I have a basic and probably naive question that's been nagging at me: how big is the talent/cultural gap between sports blogs and what passes for MainStreamMedia sports coverage these days?

I'm a political blogger by trade (and no, I won't talk politics here), and am familiar with the many arguments between bloggers and MSM types in that arena. But as a relatively new consumer of sports blogs, I'm getting the impression that the divide is, if anything, larger in sports journalism and discussion. By and large, sports blogs seem to have more expertise, better writing, and a vastly greater sense of style and humor, than sports pages or electronic media, even though sports blogging, other than in media-sponsored sites, seems to be almost entirely uncompensated. And I also gather that print-based sportswriters are more likely to have completely atavistic attitudes towards this Internets Thing than their non-sports counterparts.

Yes, there's the WWLS with enough money to produce occasional nuggets (just as there's the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and the television networks in political news--though ESPN is sort of like a combination of all of them), and some of the better newspaper sportswriters do their better work online (viz. David Hale, whose writing makes you wonder how the Macon papers manage to keep him), which is also the case with most political reporters.

But by and large, conventional sports coverage is often so bad, and online sports coverage is often so good, that I really do wonder if the balance of power is about to shift in some fundamental way. I'm really interested to hear what other Dawg fans have to say on this subject.

A Heretical Thought About the BB Coaching Job

donkeydawg — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:37:19 -0000

Like most Dawg fans, my main interest in the NCAA basketball tournament has been the potential impact on our prospects for hiring a top-notch coach to revive our sadly depressed program. Now that the dominoes are finally beginning to fall in Lexington and Tuscaloosa, I, too, hope Damon Evans can land Jeff Capel or Mike Anderson, though I'm very skeptical that either will come to Athens or stay there for long.

So: if those easy calls fall through, it's time to back up and ask what we most need, and that's even easier: a strong recruiter (Felton's main shortcoming in this prospect-rich territory) who knows how to rebuild a fallen program, and who won't be looking around for an opening elsewhere after that first trip to the NCAAs.

And if you're objective about it, the very available coach who most fits that profile is--think about it before you scream--Billy Gillispie.

Yes, I know, you hate to resort to a fired coach from another SEC team, but even Gillispie's detractors in Lexington keep saying, accurately, that his main problem there was that he was a "poor fit" for that insane atmosphere. Stands to reason he might be a "good fit" somewhere else.

And it well might be in Athens. The man is without a doubt a great recruiter; his recruiting had a lot to do with Bill Self's success at Tulsa and Illinois, and he had nationally ranked recruiting classes at A&M and at Kentucky.

Gillispie also has one of the best "rebuilding" records around, getting a completely moribund UTEP program into the NCAAs in two years, and lifting one of the most consistently underperforming programs in the country, at Texas A&M, to consistent excellence. He was Big 12 Coach of the Year twice; think about the competition he had for that. Clearly UK was too hasty in hiring him (after stupidly running off Tubby), but it's not as though his record didn't merit it.

In terms of how he'd act in Athens: Gillispie is 49 years old, and would likely consider Georgia his last stop; he's just been humiliated by UK, and I suspect he'd love nothing more than the chance to coach at a competing SEC school. The factors that made him a "poor fit" at Kentucky--crazy expectations, and an imperious group of big donors--won't be an issue at all at UGA. His occasional over-zealousness as a recruiter worries me a bit, but he's never gotten a team on probation. And his work ethic is undoubted by anybody.

So think about it, Dawg BB fans. Yes, it's nice to hope that we can outbid other schools for the current Big Names, but if that doesn't work out, we could almost certainly hire someone without a lot of trouble whose Big Name may have gotten tarnished for reasons partially beyond his control, and for other reasons he can correct.

And as a bonus, it would be nice to have UK subsidize a basketball revival at Georgia with that buyout they are going to eat.

Just thought I'd throw this out for brainfood and as a conversation starter as we wait for the Spring Game.

Will Dawgs Give Up 1000?

donkeydawg — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:51:13 -0000

I follow women's basketball only sporadically, but did see that Pat Summit failed to get win #1000 at Oklahoma tonight. That means her next shot is at home, on Thursday, against Georgia.

Over at GSB, Paul Westerdawg has a good post alluding to the brilliant career Andy Landers would have had if not for Summit's virtual ownership of Georgia over the decades. It would be painfully fitting if he had to give up #1000 to her.

Maybe he'll pull off the upset as a late gesture of defiance. Sure would spoil a big party at Thompson-Boling, eh?

Can't Help It--Enjoyed the Sugar Bowl

donkeydawg — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 05:34:27 -0000

I know as a Georgia fan I'm supposed to support every SEC team in every bowl game. I know that the University of Alabama is not one of our Certified Rivals (though us older Dawgs have some residual resentment left over from the Bear Bryant years).

But still, during tonight's Sugar Bowl I found myself cheering for Utah. And upon examination, my attitude was based on how much I enjoyed watching Nick Saban's unhappiness on the sidelines, much as I enjoyed the Ball Coach's displeasure during his Iowa beatdown.

Saban's a great coach, to be sure. But he's one of those great coaches who is an admitted, outfront, unapologetic a-hole. One of the abiding pleasures of being a Georgia fan is that we haven't had this kind of coach, well, ever.

I also admit that I've been worried that Saban would have five straight #1 recruiting years and dominate college football for a long time on sheer talent.

Since Urban Meyer is another admitted, outfront, unapologetic a-hole who could easily dominate college football for a long time on sheer talent, by logic I should probably hope the Okies beat the Evil Gators in the MNC game. But I won't, since we're talking about the MNC, which needs to stay down South.

So my attitude is: win every game, a-hole SEC coaches, or accept the opprobrium you have earned from your regional landsmen.