I know this is completely non UGA related but I was wondering how many people here might be interested in being in a NFL fantasy league this fall.  If there's a lot of interest I'll create a league and if not, no worries.  I just got to thinking about it today and wondered how many people on here like to do fantasy leagues.

Depending on the settings, an ESPN league can have 10 or up to 20 in a customizable league so be wary of that if there is a lot of demand here.

Just shoot a reply to this if you are interested, thanks.

Recently, a friend showed me this video (I guess made a few months ago?) that CBS sportsline did with the baseball team.  It is absolutely hilarious but I wanted to post this video to only FURTHER the conspiracy theory of these Nike bats.  At the 50 second mark you can see Gordon Beckham expressing his displeasure with the bats.  

Check out the PILE of broken bats in the corner of the locker room.   That has to be like what 20-30 bats just sitting there shattered?  This is absolutely ridiculous that our team has to put up with Nike and its crappy baseball bats.  I haven't played baseball since high school but I'm pretty sure it's a sign when no I knew on my team or the other team EVER used Nike bats.  Besides, I have only seen ONE shattered metal bat in my entire life let alone a pile of 20 or so.

I'm not saying let's dump Nike completely (I like our apparel just fine) but this crap they call bats is preposterous.  And while I'm ranting, I saw a commenter that said that Nike is still supplying our swim team's gear.  Has anyone been paying attention to the Olympic swimming trials lately?  See any Nike gear out there on Michael Phelps or ANY other top swimmer?

With tonight's evisceration of the nats, let me be to first to say congratulations to the Georgia Baseball team tonight.  I wrote what could probably be characterized as knee jerk reaction Friday evening after witnessing a four seed really beat the national #8 seed.  But the Dawgs hung tough until the avalanche erupted in the 7th inning of the Louisville game.  After Gordon's 3-run blast, the floodgates were opened and the Dawgs never looked back.

Hats off to that entire team for sticking in there and not giving up with their backs against the wall.  The crowd tonight was absolutely electric and IMO was probably one of the most fun baseball games I had ever been to.  The UGAAA needs to contact the owners of the green and brick houses above Kudzu Hill and thank them for their creative support for the Dawgs during the regional.  As I'm sure many of you have heard of by now, their hilarious signs along with their impressive speaker system loudly playing each Georgia player's walk up music really fired up the crowd tonight and really got under the skin of the jackets.

Congrats again Dawgs, but it's not over yet.  We gotta keep this going in to the weekend against the Wolfpack.

Funny/ ironic note: How appropriate that MaconDawg writes an article this morning enlisting the help of Knowshon highlights to help everyone make it through the day.  Well, guess who happened to be sitting 5 rows in front of me, front row above the UGA dugout this evening?  You bet, KM24 sporting his newly received Playboy Pre-Season All American Tshirt proudly.

If you would have asked me would the Dogs win if they scored 7 I would have said, "Only 7?".  With that said, the Dogs laid a huge egg today at Foley.  In my opinion Dodson looked like he was sleep walking out there today.  He had the hardest time keeping his pitches down and every time his control was off, Lipscomb made him pay.

A few of the hits were bloops and seeing eye singles but I don't care what team it is if you leave your pitches up, you are asking to get punished.

Who would have thought leaving the bases loaded in the first would come back and hurt so much? 

Other thoughts: I thought the hitters were not patient at all.  Most of the time, the Lipscomb pitchers were just throwing junk way out of the strike zone and a lot of our guys would swing trying to be a hero.  UGA needed to be patient and not try to all be heroes and hit HRs to tie the ball game back up.  More frustrating was the fact that today's SP for Lipscomb had a plus 5 ERA for the year and had given up 100 hits and 94 walks in 91 IP.  More frustration- One of Lipscomb's homers was by a guy that had a .213 average.

The Dogs just looked bad bad bad.  Very Mets-esque coming down the stretch from last year (well, I guess not.  At least the Dogs made the playoffs)

While the debate raged on all night about the BCS, I was busy watching the Georgia men's tennis team win its sixth National Championship defeating Texas.  This makes it back to back championships for the Dogs, and in the process they became the first team to repeat since the 1998 Stanford team did it.  The team lost the doubles and the first singles point but rallied for four straight singles victories to win the title, 4-2.

Nobody expected Coach Diaz to have his team in the tournament much less the championship match against the Longhorns, having lost #1 singles and doubles player (and veritable giant John Isner).  #4 UGA defeated #1 ranked UVA Monday in Tulsa to advance to tonight's championship match.

For having watched 0 college tennis in my life, the passion and emotion of collegiate athletics was at its best Tuesday evening.  I watch a good bit of pro tennis and needless to say, despite my bias, the tennis that was played tonight did not disappoint.  A truly exciting atmosphere and the drama of watching Georgia trying to win a NC made everything that much more incredible.

Hats off to the Dogs!

So, the F-bomb is paying up to the students Friday at Tate by shaving off his 'stache. http://onlineathens.com/stories/041608/mensbb_2008041600214.shtml

What is our official take here at DawgSports with the recent advocacy of as much facial hair as possible?

Is there a correlation between facial hair and basketball and facial hair and football?

UGA hired now former FSU tight end coach John Lilly to replace coach Johnson as the same position coach.  I have no idea how good he is but many seem very high on him and seems like he was always on the top of the list to replace Coach Johnson.  Hopefully this will not only improve future recruiting, but will lock up current TE recruit Dwayne Allen

So, we got screwed.  We're playing the boobie trap game of the year against Hawaii.  On one hand I am so worried about their offense but then I think wait  a second they play in the WAC, who have they played?  I just feel really confused about this game but at the same time I am really pissed off about this BCS system

I was able to watch a bit of CMR's press conference on tv during lunch today and the thing that interested me the most was when he said to the effect of (and I believe it was in response to a question about the team being as intense for the Troy game as they were against UF):

         You would want the guys to come out and be motivated as possible without waiting for the coaches to do something like get in their face or do something special like the celebration penalty in jax.  He realizes that they are human beings and can't be expected to be robots and come out like killing machines every week. But he said when the Dawg Walk was instituted when he came to UGA, it was created to help not only the players, but also the fans get jacked up for the game as well.  Also said that he wanted the fans to be there early and in their seats when the game started so the team can come out to a jacked up crowd and be ready for a very talented Troy team.

Now, I didn't know how to make words bold but those last few lines I saw as a challenge from CMR for us fans to get out there early and be loud.  I remember a few weeks back and I can't remember but i believe it was from paul westerdawg on GSB but it was basically something to the effect of our fans don't really care about these cupcake games or if the games start before 3:30.  As a student, I DEFINITELY see this where ppl in the 300s sections i sit in dont start really coming in until a few minutes after the kick because downing a few more beverages has more priority than helping getting the team jacked up.  Now, I'm all for consuming some beverages but I make my plans around the kick off time to be sure i get there early to watch warm ups.  I can not agree any more with CMR and i hope that everyone will be at the game well BEFORE kickoff because this team needs our support especially after a win where our team was firing on all cylinders for the most part.

Secondly and briefly i suppose, was the latest bowl projections released by ivan maisel and dawg alum mark schlabach via espn.com.  Where both writers have the dawgs in BCS bowls (fiesta and sugar)!  The confusing thing though is that they both have LSU in BCS bowls (sugar and BCS NC game) as well.  Does anyone want to explain how this might be possible bc at first look you would assume that they think that UGA will win the SECCG but having LSU in other BCS bowls as well confuses me.

Go Dawgs and see yall at the game (early)!

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."

Vanderbilt- 17 SCAR- 6

Tennessee- 17 Alabama- 41 (With 4+ minutes left in the 4th)

Hang in there Dawgs, it ain't over yet.  Let's just pray for a four overtime gasser between UF and UK and possibly we can find something to key on for next week's WLOCP.
Edit 5:25- Tashard Choice suffers possible season ending knee injury in first quarter of Army game. AJC article calls it, "sprained knee at best".

After a day of reflection, I remembered I read a Bill Simmons article last week about the sixteen levels of losing he created (16 being not bad and 1 being horrific. Link here: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/071001).  I went back to that article today and scrolled through the list to see where yesterday's loss registered and found my way to #9.  Appropriately named:

"Level IX: The Full-Fledged Butt-Kicking
Definition: Sometimes you can tell right away when it isn't your team's day. ... And that's the worst part, not just the epiphany but everything that follows -- every botched play; every turnover; every instance where someone on your team quits; every "deer in the headlights" look; every time an announcer says, "They can't get anything going"; every shot of the opponents celebrating; every time you look at the score and think to yourself, "Well, if we score here and force a turnover, maybe we'll get some momentum," but you know it's not going to happen, because you're already 30 points down. ... You just want it to end, and it won't end. ... But you can't look away. ... It's the sports fan's equivalent to a three-hour torture session."

I think that pretty much sums up all of my emotions from yesterday.  I don't quite think that this loss goes to level 8 which was the "this can't be happening" game.

With the loss, at least UGA picked the right weekend to get smoked so ESPN doesn't pick us apart analyzing how bad we are.

They will also probably talk about this for the next two weeks while assigning Shelley Smith to do in depth behind the scenes reporting of the Trojans psyche.  Meanwhile, John Clayton will report how the  loss affect Pete Carroll and Clayton will ask him every day for the next 4 months if he is taking the San Diego job.

This is from Senator Blutarsky at GTP.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=19154763

And for those that were concerned about lyrics, Sanford used an instrumental version sans lyrics. Maybe they can use the edited version next time.  I know one of the songs they use before kickoff is an edited version of a song by a Memphis, TN rap group called Three Six Mafia called "Doe Boy Fresh". If you really want to hear some bad language look up the lyrics. If you do not know which song I am referencing, it is the song they play during warmups with about 30 minutes till kickoff.  I can't remember exactly but I think it is played after, "In the air tonight".  If they can use that song in its edited version I don't see why Soulja Boy can't be used either.

A buddy at south carolina passed this along to me for appropriate smearing from the Dawg nation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAOkxgvboPk&NR=1

Choice is priceless don't get me wrong but the beginning part with one of their coaches stumbling to say, "You were the, uh...., coastal...divi- conference champions" is hilarity. Now doesn't that just sound stupid or is it just me? Additionally, I just noticed that Tech is starting to use what appears to be tiny "Buzz" stickers much like the way UGA uses bones. Look for them on the back of the helmets near the beginning of the video. How. Dumb. Is. That.