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Saturday, November 17, 2007
Dogs do owe Vandy something
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Athens — Go easy on Vanderbilt. The Commodores might have let Tennessee escape Saturday, but it wasn’t so long ago that the same Vandy was poised to send Georgia to 2-3 in conference play. And then the Bulldogs’ Reshad Jones grabbed Cassen Jackson-Garrison inside the 10, and Darryl Gamble stripped the ball, and Dannell Ellerbe fell on it, and five weeks later here Georgia sits, at worst the co-champion of the SEC East.
“It was definitely the play that changed the season,” said tackle Chester Adams, speaking of the fateful Vandy fumble. “Without it, we wouldn’t be here.”
So much has happened lately — the penalized celebration in Jacksonville, the organized Blackout against Auburn, and now Saturday’s workmanlike dismissal of Kentucky — that it’s easy to forget how unsteady this season once was. The Bulldogs lost their first two games against Eastern brethren and were 2 1/2 minutes from being 0-3. And then one play, followed by one clutch drive and one field goal at the horn, lit the fuse that has burned into at least a co-championship and maybe much more.
“The defining moment in this season,” receiver Sean Bailey called it. “Since then, Coach Richt’s motto has been, ‘Just one more time.’ He says it every Monday after practice: ‘Just one more time.’ “
Actually, that’s an old Bulldog saying, borrowed from the late Erk Russell, but we’ve seen these past few weeks that Mark Richt doesn’t mind grabbing ideas from anywhere. But none of it — the celebration and the Blackout, the emergence of Knowshon Moreno and the re-emergence of Georgia’s defense — would have mattered nearly so much had Vandy not put the ball on the ground.
“It’s amazing what’s happened since then,” Richt said. “They were getting ready to finish us off … From that fumble on, it’s been nothing but great for us.”
This marks the fourth time Richt has taken his team to the top of the tougher division in the toughest conference, but for pure improbability nothing — not even Greene-to-Johnson on fourth-and-15 that cold day at Auburn — can match this. The first thing Richt said when he briefed the media Saturday was, “I’m tired.” And then: “I haven’t slept much since the Florida game. I’ve been pretty excited. There’s a lot of adrenaline pumping, and I’ve about run out.”
Six weeks ago people were wondering if Richt had lost it. On Saturday he became the eighth coach in Division I-A history to win 70 games in his first seven years on the job. How’s that for a response? He and his players seized a season going wrong and have hammered it into something unforgettable.
Said Mike Bobo, the offensive coordinator: “You’ve got to keep playing. Everyone [among players] was kind of young, but we kept playing, and we’ve put ourselves in position to win the East.”
Having come so far, the Bulldogs will be disappointed if Tennessee wins again next week and bars Georgia from a Dome date with LSU. It will, however, be a fleeting sense of loss. (“At least we’re co-champions,” Richt said. “It’s awesome.”) This has been a season of recovery and rebirth, as giddy in its careening way as the landmark years 1980 and 2002. This has been the season when Georgia reminded everyone it’s still Georgia.
“Something was missing,” Richt said. “We weren’t playing hard; we weren’t enjoying it. Something had to happen to break the cycle.
That’s why he ordered up the celebration against Florida, and that little ploy left his team and his fan base transfigured. “Energy has been the difference in this season,” he said. “Confidence and energy and maturity all kind of came together.”
The Bulldogs again believe they can beat anyone anywhere, and only five weeks ago they were in imminent danger of losing to Vandy. But Dannell Ellerbe fell on a fumble in Nashville, and Georgia hasn’t fallen since and might not again for a good long while.
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Aaron remains the legitimate home-run king
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Moment by moment, with Barry Bonds edging closer to prison grays instead of road grays, he is sprinkling pixie dust on Hank Aaron’s already magical name. Even when Bonds ripped his way this summer past Aaron for most home runs in a career, the world ignored the other guy to hug the people’s choice even tighter.
Said Bud Selig, speaking over the phone from Milwaukee on Friday as baseball commissioner and the people’s choice’s friend of slightly less than forever, “There is no question in my mind that Hank Aaron has become an American icon.”
Not to correct the commissioner, but make that a global icon.
Thanks to the other guy.
Remember how Bonds spent early August at AT&T Park becoming just the secondary act in his own drama after he ripped his record 756th home run to top Aaron’s previous mark? As Bonds watched in awe with everybody else, the primary act was the bigger-than-life appearance of Aaron on the video board to congratulate the other guy for his accomplishment.
Aaron didn’t say much before, during or after Bonds’ home-run chase. That’s because he didn’t have to. Given Aaron’s reputation for classiness compared to however you wish to describe the frequently surly Bonds, all Aaron has to do is smile, wave and nod on occasion these days to remain the legitimate home-run king in the hearts of the masses.
Such is especially the case now, with Bonds facing more issues than whether somebody wishes to sign a 43-year-old slugger who still can swing but has trouble catching, throwing and running for long stretches. For instance: His indictment by the feds on four perjury counts and one count of obstructing justice. The charges were for his 2003 testimony before a grand jury involving the BALCO investigation on illegal steroids.
Now everybody has an opinion on Bonds that they wish to express. Well, nearly everybody. Since Aaron always takes the high road no matter what his destination at the moment, it wasn’t surprising he preferred to discuss other stuff during a recent conversation.
Local politics.
The dilapidated bridge near his southwest Atlanta home.
Anything but the other guy.
“No, I have no comment,” Aaron said with his distinctive chuckle. He wasn’t delivering a hidden statement on his thoughts on Bonds. He was reiterating his desire for a peaceful existence. He is a 73-year-old Hall of Famer who’d rather play with his grandchildren than flirt with controversy by expounding on Bonds’ legal situation before its conclusion.
No question, the highly compassionate Aaron bemoans the fact that Bonds is going through this mess, whether it was self-inflicted or not. That said, the best thing ever to happen to Aaron’s legacy of producing baseball royalty with the common touch was to have the good, the bad and the ugly of Bonds appear in full view during the past few years. The other guy has 762 career home runs compared to the people’s choice’s 755, which means Bonds technically is the all-time home-run leader. It’s just that, unlike Aaron, who slammed his way into legend from the early 1950s to the middle 1970s with adrenaline, the feds say they have proof that Bonds did so during his career with juice. Not apple, orange or cranberry, by the way.
That’s why somebody else prefers not to discuss the other guy. That somebody is Selig, who befriended Aaron when the slugger played for the Braves in Selig’s hometown of Milwaukee.
“I told this to Hank at the World Series this year, and that is that he is the same, nice person that I first met 50 years ago,” said Selig, speaking with emotion from his Milwaukee office. “He broke the most famous record in American sports. He’s done things that are remarkable, and yet, there is something so gracious about him, so decent. He’s just a wonderful human being, and he’s still the same. And, so, without commenting on [the other guy], Hank Aaron has become even more of a legendary figure, and well-deserved. I think that’s all that I have to say.”
Permalink | Comments (31) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Sadly, one team must lose
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Tell you this, Mark “Barnum & Bailey” Richt isn’t the only football coach who brings some trickery to the stadium. Chan Gailey came to Bobby Dodd Stadium on Saturday afternoon with a few tricks up his sleeve. His quarterback caught a pass for a touchdown. His running back threw a pass for a touchdown.
His backup quarterback, whose game is moving the ball on hoof, threw the first critical touchdown pass of his short career, and in the end, what had been a wild, unruly game between the college teams of two former NFL head coaches came down to a field-goal shootout. Georgia Tech won it, 27-25, over North Carolina. Whew!
Gailey once coached the Dallas Cowboys, and Butch Davis once coached the Cleveland Browns. Neither ever took part in a game like this, and not one of the 45,490 who came to watch could take an easy breath until the last field goal was blocked.
Frankly, neither of the teams gave anything akin to a classic performance. Between them, they fumbled seven times. An amazing statistic is that with all the fur and footballs flying, there wasn’t an interception. One special reason is that Hakeem Nicks, a Tar Heels receiver, caught seven passes for 162 yards, including a touchdown, and Greg Smith answered back for Georgia Tech with six catches for 155 yards and two touchdowns.
Davis introduced an unsuspected weapon for the Tar Heels. His running back, Greg Little, a freshman from Durham, N.C., had carried the ball only nine times this season. Saturday, he carried the load for the Tar Heels, 24 times for 89 yards. But we pause here to pay tribute to the man who carried the load for the Yellow Jackets. This was Tashard Choice’s day, and any way you slice it, the running back from Riverdale was the difference in this game. He carried the ball 33 times for 142 yards, threw a pass that the quarterback, Taylor Bennett, caught for Tech’s first score, and this for a fellow who has spent as much time under medical care lately as on the practice field.
Trying to capsulize this game is virtually impossible. It was sloppy, spectacular, exciting, dismaying to both sides, and in the end, like a prize fight in which both fighters keep going down and getting back up to fight some more. The Tar Heels trailed most of the day. Twice they were first-and-goal and didn’t score touchdowns. Finally, late in the fourth quarter, after they recovered a Bennett fumble at Tech’s 2-yard line, the backup running back, Anthony Elzy, punched the ball over, and the extra point finally gave them the lead, 25-24.
When Tech maneuvered into scoring position again, the “sure thing” failed. Travis Bell missed a field goal from 33 yards, and you could feel the air go out of Bobby Dodd Stadium and Grant Field both. But Bell would get a second chance, all set up by Choice’s persistent carries. This time, from 27 yards, Bell’s toe was accurate, and the final score was in.
Tough call to send him back out there? “If that’s a tough call, I need to get out. He has kicked too well too long,” Gailey said.
It was a tough one to lose, and Davis said so. “There was not one of them that left anything in the tank,” the Carolina coach said. “I tell you, I’m proud of the way they played.”
It was a shame that either of them had to lose. Not pretty, not something to be framed for posterity, but a good, solid portrait of what college football does best. It is whether you won or lost, and hearts were broken, but they will mend and rise again.
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Johnson learning to be NASCAR star
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Homestead, Fla. — It is one thing to rank among a sport’s elite. It’s another to become so dominant that it moves the sport’s perceived emperor to wave a white hanky at you in mock surrender, as Jeff Gordon did last week in victory lane.
Jimmie Johnson has won four consecutive races. Nothing short of 20 lug nuts popping off his Chevy at the start of today’s Ford 400 could prevent him from winning a second straight Nextel Cup title. He has won 10 more races than Gordon in the past four years. Johnson’s next win will give him 34 in only six seasons, passing “Fireball” Roberts on the all-time list.
There are certain absolutes in auto racing. One is: When you pass a guy named Fireball, you’re doing something right.
But has any sport ever had a more low-profile superstar?
Johnson is already teammates with Gordon, racing’s gold standard of crossover stars. Next year they will be joined by Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the Hendrick team.
Gordon and Earnhardt are Madison Avenue. Johnson is somewhere on Bleecker Street, even if he’s better than either one of them.
“I don’t think he obsesses over that at all,” John Lewensten, Johnson’s manager said. “Those things will come. I don’t think Jimmie really views himself as a superstar. He’s just like the guy next door, a good guy to sit back and have a beer with. I’m not sure he realizes where he is statistically or the magnitude of what he’s doing. He’s just worried about winning races.”
It’s not like Johnson is starved for endorsements. Or money. He’s doing fine, just not what you would expect for somebody so dominant, and it’s questionable whether he’ll ever achieve Gordon or Earnhardt status.
Lewensten believes being teammates with those two will help “open doors” for Johnson. But when somebody has 27 victories in four seasons (compared to Gordon’s 17), one would think he could open his own doors.
The whole idea of celebrity doesn’t seem to be high on Johnson’s agenda. It doesn’t make him nervous; it’s just a coat that hangs a little loose.
For the past several weeks, peers have lauded Johnson and his No. 48 Lowe’s team. Gordon made his mock surrender after Johnson’s win in Phoenix last week (enabling Johnson to secure the championship over Gordon today with any finish among the top 18, or top 19 if he leads one lap).
After Johnson won the pole Friday, Ryan Newman said: “He’s on a roll. No, actually, he’s the next step beyond a roll.” Johnson grimaced when asked about the attention.
“There is nothing comfortable about that,” he said. “Even Jeff walking in last week with the flag and all that, I’m like, ‘This is really weird.’ It’s just not something I thrive on or that I expect or that, really, I’ve ever had in my career. Maybe that’s part of it. I’ve had a long, hard road to get to this spot in my career. So it’s not comfortable to be in an area of praise. I’m not complaining. I’ll take it. But I just want to strap my helmet on and go, leave it on the track, come back in and have a good time.”
The biggest winner in this is Rick Hendrick, who, in the incestuous world of NASCAR’s multiteam ownerships, has the Chase’s top two places locked up. “It’s like having two children go against each other in the state championship,” he said. “One is going to go home in the car with a trophy, and one will be all torn up.”
Gordon has only himself to blame. He’s the one who convinced Hendrick to sign Johnson, a fledgling driver in the lesser Busch Series. Gordon was a 50 percent investor. The two share information as teammates. Now Johnson has blown past him.
Gordon doesn’t think Johnson’s success would have been possible without the Hendrick team: “Not to take anything away from Jimmie, but Jimmie wasn’t spectacular. When we hired him, everybody was like, ‘Jimmie Johnson? Why would they hire Jimmie Johnson? He hasn’t set the world on fire in the Busch series.’ But I just saw something in him.”
Now he sees Johnson’s rear bumper, maybe more often than we see the man on a marquee.
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