I’ve Been Baited

But it’s just so shiny that I can’t resist. Georgia played an ugly football game against South Carolina on Saturday, which is surprising to exactly no one who has ever watched Georgia stumble through this game in most of its recent incarnations. Gregg Doyel is so surprised by this occurrence that he thinks Georgia should fall five spots in the polls for winning a game in an ugly fashion against a mediocre opponent. For some perspective, let’s list a few Georgia-South Carolina outcomes and the end results of Georgia’s seasons:

• 2002: 13-7, Georgia. Season results: 13-1, SEC Championship, Sugar Bowl victory, no. 3 final ranking.
• 2004: 20-16, Georgia. Season results: 10-2, Capital One Bowl victory, no. 6 final ranking.
• 2005: 17-15, Georgia. Season results: 10-3, SEC Championship, Sugar Bowl loss, no. 10 final ranking.
• 2007: 16-12, South Carolina. Season results: 11-2, Sugar Bowl victory, no. 2 final ranking.

Perspective. The South Carolina game has been indicative of nothing during the Richt years. Now onto the column.

National ranking biggest issue for overrated Bulldogs

No, it’s the biggest issue for you regarding the Bulldogs. They were probably cool with being ranked second.

There’s a problem with Georgia, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed. That’s the good news.

That’s a relief.

The problem is more fundamental than Georgia’s bad group of receivers,

based on a sample size of one game.

bad pass coverage

Can’t really argue there.

and bad play-calling.

Based, again, on a one game sample.

Georgia is ranked No. 2 in the country. That’s the problem.

Oh, SNAP! Man, is my face red. I thought you were going one way, and you completely fucking flipped it on me. This is good sportswriting.

But it’s a fixable problem.

Phew.

It can be rectified as soon as Sunday night when coaches and media make their newest Top 25 polls and drop the Bulldogs like a left hook to the jaw. 

Seems like an overly violent simile there. I assume this is a boxing metaphor or something, so in the vein, considering your argument later that they should be dropped to seventh isn’t this kind of an overstatement? Seventh is not “out for the count” or whatever people say about boxing. Also, and forgive my ignorance as a non-fighter, but do left hooks always drop people?

South Carolina almost made it easy on pollsters by landing a haymaker of its own,

More boxing. Can’t we get some good war metaphors in here? That’s the norm for football after all.

but Georgia bobbed and weaved and avoided being knocked out of the BCS championship picture with a season-saving 14-7 victory Saturday at Williams-Brice Stadium.

That’s it. I’m creating a “boxing metaphors” tag. (RIROHG: Ripping off Fire Joe Morgan since its inception).

If Georgia’s victory was season-saving doesn’t that undercut your drop-in-the-polls-like-someone-hit-them-really-hard-in-the-jaw thing from earlier? Is it season-saving or season-killing? Does CBS employ anyone who can write down ideas in any sort of coherent manner?

Now it’s up to voters to do the right thing and smack Georgia in the mouth.

Again, this seems a touch on the ultraviolent side. Can’t they just give them a stern warning, or put them in timeout or something? I get the feeling that Gregg Doyel is a drunk and abusive husband and dad.

Say, by dropping the Bulldogs to somewhere like seventh.

Seventh? That’s a slap on the wrist, easily correctible later on. If you want to smack them in their metaphorical mouths you need to take them off of your ballot completely. That’ll teach them to play a shitty game early in the season. Much like a woman, they probably won’t learn though. Am I right, Gregg?

But there’s a problem with the polls, and it’s something that rarely gets fixed. That’s the bad news.

Nobody likes to admit they were wrong, certainly not until they have no other choice, and pollsters are no different.

Well, sure. Rational people also don’t change their minds about things based on small sample sizes.

Pollsters are notoriously slow to admit their mistakes, even though mistakes in the polls are so simple to make.

Sure, but these things have a way of working themselves out over the course of a season. Cal was mistakenly ranked second at one point last year. They played themselves out of that ranking by losing some games. These kinds of things happen every year.

Picking the preseason Top 25 is impossible to do with any accuracy, and everyone knows it, yet that initial poll sets the tone for the rest of the season.

Provided you win enough games to remain highly ranked. If you don’t, you drop.

Be lucky enough to be ranked higher than you deserve in August, and you’ll stay higher than you deserve most of the season.

If you start number one and lose one or none during the regular season, are you ranked higher than you deserve if you’re still in the first spot at the end, assuming you have a better record than other teams who played relatively similar competition?

Get screwed in the first poll, and you might as well get used to the feeling.

I’d love to see his example that proves this point. Auburn in 2004? Oklahoma and USC destroyed people all year and played for the title. Let it go.

Georgia was the preseason No. 1 team in the country. Voters swallowed enough pride a few weeks back when they dropped Georgia to No. 2 behind Southern California,

Based upon the very wrong idea that blowing out a bad Virginia team warranted such a change.

but based on history, that was as much pride as you’re going to see swallowed. And so that’s as far as the Bulldogs will drop. You watch.

I love how emphatically he makes this point. I can hear him grumbling, “You watch.” As it turned out, Georgia fell to third. Which I have no problem with, for the record. It’s the third week of the season. Things will change. I have a feeling we won’t see these kinds of columns written when Oklahoma and USC struggle with some average conference opponents later this year, though.

But did you watch this game?

Yes, every minute of it.

Georgia looked abysmal against South Carolina.

Abysmal is a bit strong. They controlled the game for three quarters but blew too many chances to put South Carolina away. The run defense was good, and the defense got stops when they had to late in the game. The offensive line and receivers had bad games. These things happen.

South Carolina’s defense is good, no question, but Georgia has alleged Heisman Trophy candidates at running back and quarterback, and Georgia managed just 252 yards.

See above comment about offensive line and receiver play. Blaming Stafford and Moreno is like blaming a pitcher for an unearned run.

South Carolina’s defense isn’t that good.

Probably not, but as I mentioned in the open, for whatever reason they manage to shut down Georgia’s offense nearly ever year.

South Carolina’s offense, meanwhile, isn’t any good. Tailback Mike Davis is a dime-a-dozen back notable only for fumbling at the goal line midway through the fourth quarter and for breaking into a locked refrigerator in the USC weight room in August and getting busted by a surveillance camera. Quarterback Chris Smelley has been jerked around by coach Steve Spurrier. Star receiver Kenny McKinley has been injured.

All of this is true. Points scored by this craptastic offense on Saturday: 7.

The Gamecocks have issues. And still Georgia couldn’t put them away. Couldn’t come close.

Well, they came close a few times. They twice blew touchdown opportunities and had to settle for field goals. A couple of other drives were killed by drops. Would 21-7 have been an impressive enough score to only fall to fourth or fifth?

The Bulldogs’ best player Saturday was their punter.

I’d give the nod to Rennie Curran who won SEC Defensive Player of the week honors for his play. Mimbs did have the best game of his career though.

Brian Mimbs launched kicks of 45, 51 and 77 yards in the fourth quarter when alleged Heisman candidate quarterback Matthew Stafford and alleged Heisman candidate tailback Knowshon Moreno were factually useless.

Yeah, fuck you guys for not blocking better on running plays, catching passes better or calling better plays.

Stafford and Moreno did have great moments earlier. Stafford darted 30 yards on a keeper, threaded a 39-yard needle to A.J. Green and stuck his head into the scrum as a lead blocker for Moreno. And Moreno’s touchdown was one of the prettiest 4-yard runs in the history of football.

Those moments didn’t actually affect the outcome of the game though. Results of the first three quarters are thrown out the window. Only the fourth matters.

But when it mattered, Stafford and Moreno didn’t.

Those shitheads. I bet they bagged it on purpose.

Stafford was 1-for-2 for eight yards in the quarter, and was sacked twice. Moreno had five carries for 16 yards. Coach Mark Richt didn’t help matters by calling strange plays throughout the quarter, running when he should pass and passing when he should run and generally doing nothing to showcase his two alleged Heisman candidates. And don’t get me started on the Georgia receiving corps, which dropped five passes and couldn’t be bothered to dive for a catchable ball on another throw.

First, Mark Richt no longer calls plays. Mike Bobo handles those duties now. The play was a little odd though. Second, wouldn’t the two sacks and 16 yards on five carries indicate that maybe the line was not doing its job? I don’t care what plays you call. When you don’t block, they don’t work. Third, I’m kind of annoyed by the receivers too, but they played like crap against South Carolina last year and got over it. It’s one game.

Richt blamed his team’s play on the steamy conditions. It was 92 degrees at kickoff.

“When you play in a hot, muggy, miserable day against the type of resistance we came up against,” Richt said, “you’re just not sharp.”

Sounds reasonable, but it also sounds ominous. Georgia plays in the SEC, and the ‘S’ isn’t for “Siberia.”

Ooh. Awesome joke man.

It gets hot in the South. It’ll stay hot in the South.

In perpetuity. It will be 92 degrees with 90% humidity on October 25, because the weahter never ever changes in the south.

If Georgia’s offense is capable of looking sharp only on those hot, muggy, miserable days when it’s facing Georgia Southern and Central Michigan, Georgia is in trouble.

And we should expect this to be the case, because they played a fairly bad game against South Carolina, much like they always do.

Unless the Bulldogs get the chance to hang 50 on Western Carolina and Eastern Illinois.

And these are two teams that Georgia does not play, which is fucking puzzling. What does this mean? Why is it here? Is it code? Is it shitty writing? It’s shitty writing isn’t it. I really overthought that.

The schedule isn’t cooperating.

I hate cantankerous schedules.

The schedule says Georgia still has a trip next week to Arizona State, where it won’t be snowing,

Nor will it be humid, because it’s in a fucking desert.

as well as SEC games against Alabama and Tennessee in Athens and visits to LSU, Jacksonville (to play Florida) and Auburn.

I will predict that by the Sept. 27 game against Alabama the temperatures will no longer be in the 90s.

Not a lot of polar bears in any of those places.

This is the dumbest bit of sarcasm I’ve ever read. The whole paragraph, start to finish. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Gregg Doyel : Sarcasm :: Carlos Mencia : Racial Humor

So there is time for this problem with Georgia to be corrected. If voters won’t do the right thing later this weekend and drop the Bulldogs behind any of a half-dozen superior teams —

Oh man. I love this list.

I’m thinking Southern California (fine), Oklahoma (cool), LSU (has played nobody), Florida (struggled mightily on offense against what is probably only an average Miami team) and possibly Missouri (secondary was a sieve against Illinois) or Alabama (struggled with Tulane) – then some of the teams on Georgia’s schedule will have to do it later.

Which makes me wonder, why the fuck are you writing this?

That’s one of the charms of the college football season. Sooner or later, mistakes in the polls get rectified. Even a mistake as glaring as the “No. 2″ next to the word “Georgia.”

Seriously, why?