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Army out, Gardner-Webb in
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
And now for the Tuesday Countdown:
10: Congratulations, Georgia Tech fans. Your tax dollars went to Gardner-Webb.
9: Tech plays 1-AA Gardner-Webb this week. Why? Because Army - maybe just the grunts on KP duty - decided to increase the wimp factor on its schedule and bought its way out of this week’s scheduled home game against Tech. Army refunded Tech $125,000 for its contracted share of the gate. So the way I figure it, tax dollars went from us to Army to Tech and then to Gardner-Webb, which had to be paid to come here.
8: I hesitate to criticize anybody in the armed forces. But this is weak. Tech and Army had a home-and-home deal. Each would get $125,000 to play in the other team’s stadium. But before last year’s game at Bobby Dodd, Army athletic director Kevin Anderson approached Tech AD Dan Radakovich. “He came up to me and said, ‘We’re changing our scheduling philosophy,’” Radakovich recalled. “Then he hands me a letter saying they are pulling out of the game and there’s a check for $125,000 [as the forfeiture fee] in the envelope. I was a little stunned. I thought it was going to be a typical pre-game athletic director greeting.”
7: Understand something: Teams seldom pull out of these deals without warning, let alone give up a home game. Tech gets hurt in the process. It’s nearly impossible to negotiate a home-and-home deal with another 1-A school so late in the process because schedules are made far in advance. The next opening in a Jackets’ schedule wasn’t until 2012. To bring a 1-A school for one year is cost prohibitive ($600,000 to $800,000). So …
6: Tech was left with bringing in little G-W (at a cost of $300,000). The Jackets have already played 1-AA Jacksonville State. So this dents their credibility. But Radakovich declined to take a shot at Anderson, other then to say, “A lot of our people were disappointed because they were looking forward to going [to West Point].” Just wondering how military guys feel about their schedule being stuffed with set-ups.
5: And now for something completely different: With franchises struggling all over North America, the NHL decided to open the season in Prague and Stockholm. The yutz factor just went up again.
4: Once again, this time with feeling: It’s not sad and pathetic that people still support Michael Vick. It is sad and pathetic that people use that support as an excuse for race-baiting and Matt Ryan-bashing. I wrote a column on Ryan off the Green Bay game, never typed the words, “Michael Vick,” and yet reader responses mutated into another pro-Vick/anti-Vick grenade toss. Please. Everybody just take a breath.
3: Just guessing here, but if John McCain dumps Sarah Palin and adds Tina Fey as his running mate, he could probably get the swing votes.
2: The Thrashers open the season Friday night. I’m not sure how many tickets have been sold. But I know this: I went to Ticketmaster on the guise of wanting to buy 10 tickets. They were on the first level, Row T, on the faceoff circle.
1: Army plays host to Eastern Michigan Saturday. It’s homecoming.
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Ryan calmly leading the charge
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Green Bay, Wis. — During warm-ups before his first game in the most storied stadium in NFL history, Matt Ryan reacted with something less than a meltdown.
“This is pretty cool,” he said to his coach.
Now, most of us can’t relate to what a young starting quarterback must be thinking the first time he walks into Lambeau Field. But if it’s similar to a young starting pitcher walking to the mound at Yankee Stadium or a young starting soprano walking to center stage at The Met, then most would not expect what happened Sunday.
Calm. Followed by a 37-yard pass to Roddy White on the first play of the game.
Calm. Followed by the Falcons’ first touchdown in a road game this season.
Calm. Followed by three scores in the team’s first four possessions.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Todd McClure, the veteran center. “His composure in the huddle is amazing.
“There are some times like today when I tried to ask him during a TV timeout, ‘What’s the next play?’ and he just snapped, ‘Just wait! Hold on a second!’ So we had to rag him about that a little bit. But he takes charge. That’s how you have to be as a quarterback.”
Five games into the season, the Falcons are in a place few expected them to be: not last. They are 3-2 and getting better.
We have learned it’s dangerous to assume too much about the future with this franchise. Particularly at quarterback. But the manner in which Ryan jump-started the Falcons to a 27-24 upset over Green Bay in his fifth NFL game certainly would lead most to view the future with, well, calm.
In the first half, when the Falcons took a 17-7 lead, Ryan completed 13-of-18 passes for 154 yards and two touchdowns. Here is a breakdown of the five incompletions: two drops; one spike to stop the clock; one wise flip out of bounds as he scrambled to avoid a certain sack and lost yardage; one short toss to Roddy White that was broken up by a Packers’ defender.
No misfires.
He wasn’t perfect Sunday. Early in the fourth quarter, after his 17-yard run and later a personal foul on the Packers helped set up the Falcons at the Green Bay 12, Ryan had tight end Ben Hartstock ridiculously open in the end zone, only to underthrow him and have the pass intercepted. (Green Bay then drove to a tying score.)
But the way he reacted was rare for a rookie quarterback.
“Nothing,” McClure said. “I didn’t hear him say anything.”
“He just came over to the sideline and looked at me,” coach Mike Smith said. “I said, ‘Hey, we’re going to get an opportunity to get another one.’ And we did that.”
The Falcons drove to a field goal and a touchdown on their next two possessions. Ryan didn’t have to do a lot: the field goal was mostly set up by a long kickoff return by Jerious Norwood; the touchdown that made it 27-17 followed an interception at the Packers’ 19.
But he functioned. He ran the team. Players react to their quarterback.
“Obviously I was a little frustrated [after the interception],” Ryan said. “I guess that’s part of the learning curve.”
Small curve.
He completed his first six passes of the game. He ran a perfect bootleg pass on fourth-and-goal from the one on the opening possession, hitting tight end Justin Peelle in the end zone. He perfectly ran a no-huddle offense for four plays in the second quarter against the befuddled Packers’ defense, finishing with a 22-yard touchdown to Roddy White.
There was significant debate following the draft about whether the Falcons made the right decision to select Ryan over LSU defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey. Time ultimately will provide the answer. But Ryan showed something special in a stadium that has seen its share of greatness.
Asked later about Lambeau, he said, “It has an aura about it. The coolest thing for me was when you’re able to walk down that tunnel, and all of a sudden you’re out there. It’s Lambeau Field.”
The awe ended shortly thereafter.
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High School football in Valdosta is a different game
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Valdosta — The old football coach is sitting in his usual seat on the 50. Funny thing about old football coaches. Twenty years into retirement and they still sound like an old football coach.
“I’m worried about this one,” Joe Wilson says as he watches Northside from Warner Robins go through warm-ups. “What are they — like 35-0? I’m worried.”
As he speaks, more than 13,000 fans are squeezing into a stadium for a high school football game. There is tailgating in the parking lot. There is national media coverage.
There is a school, Lowndes — once the gum under Valdosta’s shoe and now with five state titles and 5,000 season-ticket holders — preparing to play a game billed as one of the biggest in the history of Georgia high school football.
“It’s come a long way in the last 30 years,” said Wilson, the former Lowndes coach who started all this with a state championship in 1980. “When I got here this stadium was like a band box. But now, look.”
Yes, look.
High school football is different in Valdosta. Always has been. Buck Belue, the former Georgia quarterback who grew up here and starred at Valdosta High, tried to explain earlier in the day: “I can just tell you what it was like when I was 9 or 10 years old, looking forward to going to the game every Friday night. It was like going to a town hall meeting every Friday.”
Yes, look.
Somebody is going to need a bigger room.
Lowndes will need at least a couple of decades to catch Valdosta’s record of 23 state titles. But the Vikings certainly look on track for a sixth title after Friday’s 24-7 victory against Northside, which had a 35-game winning streak.
If nothing else, Northside cheerleaders took pre-game smack talk to a new level. They held up a banner reading, “Hey Lowndes. The Real State champs are ‘N’ town.”
Northside players ran through the banner.
Then Lowndes ran through Northside.
High school football in Valdosta used to be big because of one school. Now it’s big because of two. Valdosta High built a powerhouse under the late Wright Bazemore, who won 14 state titles (of the school’s 23). The tradition and the atmosphere merely were squared when Lowndes, mocked as “Plowboys” for their location in the relative country, rose to power under Wilson.
It’s with some irony that Wilson, a former Valdosta player and assistant coach, was the one who helped create this. He left Valdosta not long after being spurned for the opening there when Bazemore retired. He left the school where players sang the lampooning tune: “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Plowboys.” The country bumpkins morphed into a power, winning the first of five state titles in 1980.
But the game everybody remembers was in 1977, when Lowndes defeated Valdosta for the first time, 7-2.
Wilson points down to the field, near the 30-yard line.
“Right down there is where we tore Buck Belue’s jersey off,” he said.
They talk about that game like it was last week, not 31 years ago. Belue is no different.
“I had to play the rest of the game with a different number,” he said. “After the game, I remember sitting on that yellow school bus and all the Lowndes kids are around the bus chanting, ‘7-2, we beat you.’ We were devastated.”
David Parker smiles.
“I was in the stands,” he said. “I was in the eighth grade.”
Three years later, he was Valdosta’s starting quarterback, when Lowndes won its first state title. It’s still a painful memory. He went on to play at Princeton and attended medical school there. When he returned to the area, he and wife moved into the Lowndes’ district, one mile from the Valdosta dividing line.
Parker has two children at Lowndes. But he wore a Georgia red shirt to game, standing out among the mostly maroon-clad Lowndes crowd.
“I still can’t wear maroon,” he said. “I’m just now getting to the point where I can say ‘we’ when I’m talking about Lowndes.”
Yes, look. Valdosta recently was named as “Titletown USA” by ESPN. Even Parker called the designation “a little hokey.”
But the city was only in the hokey discussion because of high school football. Valdosta High put the city on the map. Lowndes has changed the landscape.
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Time warp: This isn’t Falcons-Packers ‘03
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The last time the Falcons were in Green Bay, Michael Vick outplayed Brett Favre in a playoff game.
It was such a significant moment in their respective careers that Vick is now in prison and Favre is now a New York Jet, and I think we would all agree that Vick got the better of that deal, because one day he’ll be free and Favre will always be an ex-Jet.
The Packers are going through their own transition problems.
They have lost two straight, Aaron Rodgers can’t lift his arm, and the defense looks like the Scarecrow after he was visited by flying apes (lacerated spleen, torn biceps). Also, fans apparently are trying to blow themselves up.
A man from Mukwonago, Wis., was arrested after turning himself into a walking brat roaster. His SUV was running low on gas. So he tried to siphon some from a parked van. It was dark. He couldn’t see well. He had a lighter.
You know where this is going? Boom.
He survived. At least he didn’t burn any brain cells. But he had the same stunned look on his face that Wile E. Coyote did after realizing the Acme dynamite was wired to his big toe. Sort of like how the Packers might look Sunday.
The Falcons are 0-2 on the road and haven’t scored a touchdown. This didn’t figure to be opportunity week.
But Rodgers is doubtful, and the Packers’ defense has been wrecked by injuries. Key matchup: Michael Turner vs. the No. 26 run defense.
Can’t believe I’m doing this. Must be the fumes.
Upset revisited.
Almost Famous
— Georgia: Blacked out.
— Duke at Tech: The Jackets received votes in the AP poll. That puts them ahead of Clemson. The Blue Devils received a vote in the coaches’ poll. That puts them ahead of Tennessee. Can we all just stop and take a picture?
Tech covers 14.
— Florida State at Miami: And you wonder why the ACC has an identity problem. I had to stop to think before deciding which game was more important, FSU-Miami or Tech-Duke. Actually, I’m still not sure.
‘Canes cover 2 1/2.
— Florida at Arkansas: Bobby Petrino has been outscored 101-24 in the past two games, during which time his offense has scored two touchdowns and allowed three (on interception returns). But the good news: After the Florida and Auburn games, the athletics department should be eligible for a government bailout.
Gators cover 241/2.
— South Carolina at Mississippi: The afterglow from beating Wofford and UAB the past two weeks will wear off as soon as Steve Spurrier realizes his team is Mississippi’s homecoming opponent. Assuming the Rebels avoid a post-Florida nosedive:
They win 9-2.
— Kentucky at Alabama: Are they really making ‘Bama play the rest of the season, because I keep getting these e-mails asking if there’s any Cracker Barrels in Miami?
Tide wins but won’t cover the 16 1/2.
— Auburn at Vanderbilt: The Commodores are 4-0. The next thing you know, every school in the SEC is going to fold its athletics department, hire a I-AA coach and make players study. Naaaaah.
Tigers cover 4 on the road.
NFL Five-Pack
— Bengals at Cowboys: Possible matchup of the week: Chris Henry, coming off five arrests and a drug suspension, running routes against Adam “Pacman” Jones. The two haven’t met since the wild-card game between Attica and Leavenworth. I don’t like giving 17 in the NFL, but Cincinnati’s not really in the league.
Dallas covers.
— Redskins at Eagles: Washington hasn’t made the playoffs in the past three election years. I’m not sure what that means, but wouldn’t either ticket take Jim Zorn as a running mate right about now?
Eagles win, but give me the Skins and 5 1/2.
— Colts at Texans: Not sure how much better Indianapolis will be after a week off. But given Peyton Manning (73.1) is sandwiched between Marc Bulger and Gus Frerotte in quarterback rating, there needs to be a market correction or it’s a sign we’re all going down.
Colts cover 3.
— Titans at Ravens: Kerry Collins is 3-0 with one interception and one sack. Now Vince Young is really crying.
Tennessee covers 3.
— Chargers at Dolphins: Ricky Williams was tempted to get high during the bye week. But he said he passed. He also mentioned something about time being relative.
San Diego covers the 6 1/2.
Sub-prime results
(Hey, where’d everybody go? I was just kidding last week, honest!)
— Last week: 5-4 straight up, 3-6 against the line.
— Bottom lines: 30-17 straight up, 21-25-1 against the line.
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Not buying the Hawks quite yet
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The shining light of Atlanta pro sports opens training camp today, and amazingly that would be the Hawks.
When you are the only team coming off a playoff season — look it up, it won’t take long — you cease being the most-lampooned target in the city. Unless, of course, things go wrong again.
“Everybody’s smiling and motivated around here, because there’s probably a lot of other teams that think it was a fluke that we made the playoffs last year,” Josh Smith said. “So I feel like we have a lot to prove.”
That is the problem with this particular shining light. It’s way too early to assume stability. Maybe even direction.
Think of a bulb: There is no warning when it goes out.
Think of the Hawks: We saw both ends of the spectrum last season. We don’t know which end is reality and which is the aberration.
Are they the team that upset the Boston Celtics in three home playoff games, or the one that backed into the post-season with 37 wins and not only lost four playoff games in Boston but didn’t even compete?
Do you feel good about this team?
“Ask me that in January,” said Rick Sund, the new general manager.
Sund’s biggest concern: The schedule is not designed for early success: 10 of the first 16 games are on the road, where the team went 12-29 last season, and there’s no certainty how this team would deal with a bad start.
Success in sports often is less about talent (which the Hawks have) than it is about resolve and maturity. We just can’t know if this team is there yet.
“You go out 2-8 or you go out 8-2, things get blown out of proportion,” Sund said. “People think, ‘You’re there.’ ‘You’re not there.’ That’s my concern. We can’t get too high or too low. Detroit can lose three games out of the box, or they can win their first five. It won’t affect them either way. We have to understand the season is a marathon and not a sprint.”
General managers always have a Plan B. If things go south early, the question is what Sund does and how quickly he does it.
This is too important of a season for the Hawks for management to allow things to spin out of control. Much of the positive vibe that built during in the playoffs dissipated when Josh Childress bolted for Greece — unprecedented for an NBA regular — and ownership signed Mike Woodson to a two-year extension.
There were obvious arguments on both sides of the Woodson issue. Keep him: He made the playoffs. Fire him: He is 106-222 in four years.
But here’s the most important thing to keep in mind: a two-year deal does not represent an overwhelming vote of confidence. A one-year deal would have screamed, “He’s a goner” and undermined Woodson’s authority with the players. A three-year deal would have been a vote of confidence.
Two years says: “We’re not sure yet.” For those wondering whether the Hawks can take the next step, the question really is: “Can Woodson take them there?”
Give Woodson this much. He isn’t deluded. He understands that 37 wins and a first-round loss probably won’t cut it this season.
“Once you make the playoffs everything becomes higher in terms of expectations,” he said. “I look at our team now as a team that’s had a taste of playoffs. The players are hungry to get back. I know from a coaching standpoint that I’m hungry. We have something to build on. The schedule is what it is. We can’t run from it.”
They made the playoffs last year and now have a chance to be better. That puts them ahead of everybody else. If you’re the Hawks, you embrace that while you can.
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Latest comments
It isn’t the grunts that canceled the game, it was the officers. If they let grunts play, Army would be a good team.... read the full comment by jarrodmon | Comment on Army out, Gardner-Webb in Read Army out, Gardner-Webb in
The only reason Tech scheduled Gardner Webb is because Agnes Scott was already booked this weekend and The Georgia Academy for the Blind does not field a team. Of course either school would have been tougher than the average ACC team.... read the full comment by I Hate Tech | Comment on Army out, Gardner-Webb in Read Army out, Gardner-Webb in
To kaye who said she supported Vick….I am sure a lot of creditors will accept your support. Just write them a check or better yet send them cash. Vick is the past and no sense in beating a dead horse lady. He will never play another down in Atlanta.... read the full comment by Randy | Comment on Army out, Gardner-Webb in Read Army out, Gardner-Webb in
Hey get your facts straight. Army does not use tax payer dollars to fund its athletic program. That money comes from private donations from alumni like me and friends of AOG. The new AD and the coach are trying to gain more attendance from the local... read the full comment by GetSome2 | Comment on Army out, Gardner-Webb in Read Army out, Gardner-Webb in