Good morning. This is LEADOFF, today’s early buzz in Atlanta sports.
The College Football Playoff selection committee unveiled its first Top 25 rankings of the season Tuesday night, and there was no mention of any team from this state.
No surprise there, if you’ve been paying attention to this season.
So we sought out other sources — six computer formulas that used to be part of the now-defunct Bowl Championship Series standings — to see where Georgia and Georgia Tech rank.
Five of the six computer models rank the Yellow Jackets ahead of the Bulldogs this week.
Here goes:
The Sagarin ratings have Tech No. 47 in the nation and Georgia No. 55.
The Colley Matrix has Tech No. 42 and Georgia No. 57.
The Massey ratings have Tech No. 47 and Georgia No. 52.
The Billingsley Report has Georgia No. 42 and Tech No. 60.
The Anderson & Hester rankings have Tech No. 42 and Georgia No. 48.
And the Wolfe ratings have Tech No. 44 and Georgia No. 49.
All six computer rankings, by the way, agree with the playoff committee on Alabama as No. 1.
ICYMI: Playoff rankings: A surprise at No. 4
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Some cool numbers just in from the Mercedes-Benz Stadium folks, putting into perspective the massive size of the 360-degree, video halo board being built by South Dakota-based Daktronics as part of the new stadium's retractable-roof structure:
It will be approximately 58 feet tall by 1,075 feet around, a total of about 62,000 square feet of screen.
If rolled out and stood on end, it would be as tall as the 10th tallest building in the U.S. at 1,075 feet.
It will be 27 times larger than the Georgia Dome’s video board and almost three times larger than the NFL’s current largest video board (Jacksonville’s).
And it would require 5,800 60-inch TVs to cover the entire board.
You probably get the idea. It’s going to be big.
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Here's some suggested reading: this piece by Sports Illustrated's Steve Rushin on the 25th anniversary of the great 1991 World Series between the Braves and Twins.
Rushin writes that the passage of a quarter-century hasn’t changed the honorific he applied to that World Series in SI at the time: “the greatest that was ever played.”
He also reflects on just how long it has been:
“That national television audience (for Game 7 in 1991), not incidentally, was 50.3 million. The viewership for the last World Series Game 7, in 2014, was less than half that. The Series’ greatest star—Twins centerfielder Kirby Puckett, who forced Game 7 by winning Game 6 almost single-handedly—has been dead for 10 years now. The two stadiums in which the Series was played no longer exist. And the franchises involved, for most of ‘16, were the two worst teams in baseball. All of this was, in other words, a very long time ago.”
He quotes Kent Hrbek, the Twins’ first baseman in ’91, on the trip to Atlanta for Games 3, 4 and 5 after the famous/infamous Game 2 play at the Metrodome on which Hrbek appeared to pull the Braves’ Ron Gant off the base:
“I had a horrible three days in Atlanta,” Hrbek said, “with the death threats from the Gant play.”
LEADOFF appears Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings.
