The Junkyard Blawg has moved!
Along with the other ajc.com blogs, the Junkyard Blawg has moved over to WordPress, where the blogging and commenting experience promises to be better. Join us over at the new WordPress version of the Junkyard Blawg by clicking on the link below.
AJC > Sports > UGA > Blog > Archives > 2007 > September > 12
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Who do we play next?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Western Whatever.”
That’s what I answered recently when my daughter asked who the Bulldogs were playing after South Carolina. For a moment there, I couldn’t remember if it was Western Carolina or Western Kentucky.
That’s how much this week’s game means to me. And at least I’ll be there. A lot of folks with season tickets skip out on these mean-nothing schedule-filler games against minor nonconference opponents with directional names. Sometimes they give their tickets away to folks who just want to experience a college football game, even if it’s one that nobody’s very excited about. Oftentimes the seats remain empty. But it’s still a sellout, of course, because the seat has been paid for. So attendance officially will be 92,746 (actually, 93,000 is the real count now), but nowhere near that number will actually be in the stands.
I can understand why some people skip these games. Getting up a tailgate and lead-footing it to Athens can be a lot of trouble, but it’s worth it when Georgia is playing an SEC game or a nonconference team worth seeing. Oklahoma State packed the house. A lot of folks got really excited about seeing Ralphie the bison last year when Colorado came calling.
But when the opponent is, let’s face it, a designated loser just there for the payday, it’s hard to work up much interest. Obviously, from the way the Dawgs generally play in these games (flatter than week-old Coke), it’s difficult for the players and coaches to generate much enthusiasm for them, too. (No offense meant to Western Carolina or any other such school we play; if we were in their league or vice versa, I’m sure we’d get excited about it. But they’re not and we don’t.)
At Georgia under Mark Richt, we don’t even get to see our team run up some ridiculous score like they do at Florida or Oklahoma or other major schools that pile on the points while dispatching a minor opponent. No, UGA usually piddles around, looks embarassingly disinterested for a half or so and then finally puts the game safely away, while keeping the score within gentlemanly boundaries.
What’s the fun in that?
I know the argument for these “breather” games; the conference schedule is so tough, plus we have the Yellow Jackets every year. The schedule has been upgraded somewhat in recent years with intersectional foes lined up for one of the open spots. This year, Okie State. Of course, the trade-off is that we’ll have to go visit those schools in return, reducing the number of cash-cow home games some years (like 2008, when we’ll travel to Arizona State, meaning only six home games, one of which isn’t lined up yet). So the Western Whatevers and Eastern Thingumyjigs and Louisiana-Something-or-Others fill out the other nonconference home spots, usually including homecoming.
This year that spot goes to Troy.
Oh boy.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? So let me get this straight. After one loss, UGA has been written off, while the sports writers and polls have annointed the Jackets a hot team on the rise after … what? Beating an unranked team (albeit one with a big “name”) and pounding on a 1-AA team that probably would have a hard time beating some metro Atlanta high school teams. Let’s face it, Notre Dame normally makes the Top 15 just by showing up; the fact that they BEGAN the season unranked showed that everyone knew they were terrible this year. And running up the score on a 1-AA team is hardly the stuff rankings should be made of. Meanwhile, after convincingly beating Oklahoma State, a team that in the pre-season all the media types were hyping, Georgia loses a game it could have won to a fairly evenly matched conference opponent and almost drops out of the Top 25. (And the same folks who a week earlier were telling us how great the Bulldogs were are now gleefully detailing their decline. How quickly they turn.) OK, the Dawgs are 1-1 and there are a lot of 2-0 teams out there. Do you rank a 1-1 team over a 2-0 team? Happens all the time. Many of those 2-0 teams’ victories are over designated patsies on a par with Samford. Of course, it shows you how ridiculous and volatile the college football polls are that Michigan began the season an overhyped No. 5 and then dropped completely out of the Top 25 after one loss. The BCS poll has it right by not even getting cranked up until a month or so into the season.
THIS WAS PREDICTABLE: One win and that classy guy Steve Spurrier already is trying to work his psychological head games on Georgia, belitting the Dawgs and pointing out how many consecutive SEC East teams they’ve lost to OVER TWO SEASONS. I’m sure he thinks that if he can work his mojo he’ll have the Dawgs psyched out like they have been the past decade and a half in Jacksonville. Only one problem. He’s not at Florida any more. It’s South Carolina. Nobody gets psyched out by a loss to South Carolina. You fix what you did wrong and you move on.
