Southerland's Recruiting Visit and Other Random Thoughts From Week 5

While Doug was thinking of Office Space lines during our extremely underwhelming win over mighty Ole Miss on Saturday night, I was thinking about how Brannan Southerland was suddenly the centerpiece of our offense. I can only imagine his recruiting trip a few years back, as he, his parents, coach Garner and coach Richt sat in the Southerland family living room over sweet tea and peach cobbler...

I envision Richt telling young Brannan that he wants him to come to Georgia because in a few years, if he can get shaky enough play from the QB position and receivers who drop lots of passes, he would like to make the fullback the centerpiece of the offense. The parents look skeptical, but Richt insists in his wholehearted, honest way. Southerland says he's interested because he would like to go somewhere that features the FB prominently, like Navy or Air Force or even Georgia Southern. Richt confidently looks him in the eye and says "they may all give you the ball on obvious short yardage situations and in the goal line offense, just as we will. But when they come to this very living room next week, son, I want you to ask them: will they also run draw plays to you on 3rd and 18? Because that is what we are trying to do, son, and we would like you to be a part of it." Fast forward a few years to last Saturday night and I bet his parents were sitting on the couch chuckling "Damn if he wasn't true to his word. Good man, coach Richt."


Centerpiece of our offense

At least we had Uncle Ron, who was class as usual. How class? Well in addition to the usual top shelf announcing, he called a game of his alma mater, a massive underdog who was actually hanging with a top 10 team at home, and getting some pretty poor officiating decisions going against them, yet unless you already knew he was an Ole Miss guy you never would have known until late in the 4th where they showed his yearbook picture. I imagine that the toughest thing for an announcer to do is to remain unbiased and objective during a game involving a team that he has any emotional attachment to, but Franklin pulled it off. Contrast this to Herbstreit doing an Ohio State game and you appreciate uncle Ron even more.

Georgia just isn't that good. The defense is really good and the offense is really bad. After 5 weeks the suprise thusfar is how well we played against South Carolina. Are we the worst 5-0 team in the country? I don't know, but even if we are it's better than being the best 3-2 team in the country. That being said it looks entirely possible that we could lose to all 4 of our big rivals this year (UT, UF, Aub, GT). I think at this point I would be extremely happy with a split against those 4 and holding serve against the Kentucky's and Vandy's of the world to finish 10-2. At this point, 9-3 or 8-4 look like more of a possibility if you look at it realistically. Although I still think Joe T can do the job if he can remain healthy and the coaches actually give him a chance to succeed.

Other random thoughts from Saturday:

Did anyone else catch NCAA president Myles Brand getting interviewed on the sidelines of one of the early games (I think it was Mizzou-Colorado, but I'm not 100%, as I was keeping up with 4 games on 2 TVs at the time)? The sideline reporter asked him about the new rule change involving the clock and speeding up play, and he said something like

we've heard from some coaches who don't like it, but as far as the fans we don't know how they feel about it. At the end of the year we'll look at it blah blah blah

That is as close to a paraphrase as I can recall but he definitely said that they did not know how fans felt about it. So what universe does he live in where he thinks there is even a possibility that fans would be anything other than not pleased about each and every football game containing 10-15% less football while fundamentally altering the game? What a douchebag.

Bowl season started early this year as Saturday had The Ineptitude Bowl presented by The US Plan for Postwar Iraq. John L. Smith's Michigan State achieved a new level of embarrassment, which is saying alot considering their various and sundry epic meltdowns over the past few years, by losing to The Zooker. As 26 point favorites. At home. Some racking of the brain could not come up with a matchup of 2 current coaches that could match these two in terms of haplessness. What about an all-time matchup? Goff-Zook maybe? It would be pretty hard to beat 1990 Ray Goff Georgia vs. 2005 Ron Zook Illinois.


"Well, Loran, our boys showed a lot of character" and
"We just got taken behind the woodshed, today, Loran"
will forever be stuck in my brain.


I still cannot believe this genius went 2-1 against Georgia.

What the hell is going on with the Gator Chomp? A few weeks back I saw the Iowa fans doing it en masse during the Iowa-Iowa State game, then on Saturday I saw the Washington State fans doing it during the WSU-USC game. The Gator chomp has what, exactly, to do with a Hawkeye or Cougar? Don't make no sense...

After 2 down weeks, this week brings a festivus of good games (on paper at least) our way. Joe T's ankle cannot heal fast enough.