Big Trouble in a Small Paradise

As a self-proclaimed Diaspora Dawg, it seemed appropriate that I watched the Georgia-Florida game in the strangest place yet: the small but beautiful Caribbean island of St. Kitts, where I was attending a wedding on Friday.

Since both bride and groom were from Georgia, a big chunk of the hungover wedding party was interested in a different Cocktail Party.  We were going to watch the game in the hotel bar, but extremely loud steel drum music made audio impossible.  So we piled into one hotel room, fortified with food, local rum and beer, and Tennessee sipping whiskey. 

Our actual game experience probably wasn't that different from yours, aside from the slight dissociation involved in looking away from the disaster on the screen and seeing blue waves and green mountains.  About half our group were knowledgeable enough to understand the early, familiar portends of a bad Dawg Day: the red zone ineptitude, the key dropped passes, the missed field goals, the beatdown of Stafford, the stupid penalties, the once-too-often predictable playcalling.  The other half drank, looked at wedding photos, and gradually drifted off to the beach. 

All in all, it was environment that encouraged philosophical shoulder-shrugging rather than angry teeth-grinding.  But personally, I found myself watching the Texas Tech-Texas game, in an effort to reinstitute some sort of experience of good college football.  It was probably a better choice than my first impulse, which was to wander down to the casino and engage in a few hours of masochistic losses at the blackjack table. 

From a philosophical shoulder-shrugging point of view, I told a few of my fellow Dawg fans that maybe next year was intended to be Our Year after all, given the exceptional youth of the team, the folks who will be back from injury, and the increasing probability that Stafford and Moreno won't have the sort of season that guarantee immediate NFL riches.  But we all got seduced by the preseason number one ranking, and even down in the hazy and illusory atmosphere of a small Caribbean paradise, the illusions died quickly.