Bama spring game: Kinda creepy, actually...
by DavetheDawg on Apr 19, 2009 9:41 AM EDT
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PrintI've been cooped up the last few days because of knee surgery...so naturally I proceeded to nothing differently this Saturday as I reclined on my couch and watched some Diamond Dawg baseball with the occasional flip to see if Cleveland would score 30 on the Yankees..and finally the Alabama Spring game.
Last week, Georgia drew about 42,00 fans to Sanford Stadium. Some folks felt this number reflected poorly on a game that was on national tv. I'd call this "healthy." In comparison, Alabama very nearly sold out Bryant-Denny stadium with the threat of tornadoes, large hail, urban flooding and halitosis. 42,000 at a scrimmage is healthy. 85,000 is fanatical. Having your head coach miked up and running around the field whilst shouting instructions in an ill-fitting suit that looks like a recent purchase from the Boy's Collection at Sears was, well for me anyway, a bit creepy. It came off as incredibly vain, at least to yours truly. "Hey...look at me! I have time for this shit." What a tool.
Is this a great conference or what?
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Have you heard the quote by Nick Saban when he compared Georgia’s spring game to Bama’s? He said something to the effect of: “I was in Georgia that week and they had their game advertised on every radio station. We didn’t advertise ours at all because we didn’t need to. People just came.”
I’m sorry but if I lived in Alabama, what the hell else would I be doing? It’s not like they have pro sports…..or anything else to do for that matter. That spring game is probably a huge weekend for them.
I guess Saban doesn't see beyond his football office
The Braves had home opening weekend and the 3rd round of the Masters was that weekend. Like you said, not a hell of a lot to do in Alabama.
http://hobnailboot.wordpress.com/
Moundville just ain't as happening as it used to be.
"Man with hole in pocket feeling cocky."
-Confucius
Easter had an affect on attendance, too
Braves’s opener and Augusta’s tee times were joined by Easter’s necessities on that G-day Saturday as well. I’m sure plenty of Dawg fans chose to stay home, watch the broadcast and prepare for what was for them an equally important or more important day. I talked to several who had to chose between special worship services late on Saturday or like many others as early as sunrise the next morning.
All those church-going Tide fans had to do was to manage missing regular sunday services on a day commonly called “Low Sunday” in many Christian traditions.
The better comparison will have to wait until December 5, 2009 or later.
Indeed...
…I was looking forward to taking my wife and two little boys to G-Day. The boys are 1 and 3, far too young for a fall game, but an easy-going spring game is just perfect. But no, it has to be on Easter weekend. My 3-year-old was much more interested in hunting for eggs and seeing the Easter bunny than a football game (hopefully that will change in a few years, though).
I hope that Evans and Richt will reconsider this kind of timing in the future.
It was all for TV...
… it won’t happen again, I’m sure. (Unless ESPN comes calling next year… which is unlikely, given that snooze-fest 6-3 score that stood until the final play.)
by vineyarddawg on Apr 23, 2009 5:23 PM EDT up reply actions
Too young???
Drag them to a game in the fall. I take an inappropriate amount of pride in the fact that I began going to games before I can remember them. Give them that!
I agree
You just have to pick your spots. Take ’em to Tennessee Tech and work your way up to a big game over the next few seasons (i.e., Division I-AA opponent; Division I-A non-conference opponent from outside the major conferences; Division I-A non-conference opponent of some stature but not a traditional rival; Vanderbilt or Kentucky; big-time rival).
Go 'Dawgs!
Perfect steps
Good plan, Kyle. I had to earn my way up from the “band day” and 4H appreciation games. I was into two digits before Dad saw fit to spend an Auburn ticket on one of his kids, and I was in high school before I ever set foot in Jordan-Hare. By that time, my older brothers had already matriculated at the Trade School, so I think Dad figured he’d better pull out some more stops for the last hope. It worked — well, the ball games and the realization that I didn’t want to regress in my social development.
Yeah . . .
Auburn’s commencement is the sole reason the RealTree camo folks have a graduation gown division. Of course their wedding dress department ships most of its products to the Knoxville area.
Did I mention we hate Auburn around here?
Why the Alabama hate?
I really admire Alabama, always liked them. I guess the difference between our “healthy” attitude and Bama’s “fanatical” attitude is they have 11 more National Championships and 9 more SEC crowns than we do.
NC = Us(1) Them (12)
SEC = Us (12) Them (21)
We have tradition as a Southern power and sometime National player.
They ARE Southern football history and ride shot-gun with Notre Dame nationally.
They put all of us on the map.
As Lewis Grizzard said, “You can’t be a Southerner and hate Bear Bryant.”
I question that national championship math
You seem to be crediting Alabama with every title they possibly could claim and crediting Georgia only with the one everyone acknowledges.
It ought to be either one or the other; either count ’em all (and credit us with 1927, 1942, 1946, 1968, et al.) or restrict it to the consensus crowns and throw out nonsense like the 1973 U.P.I. championship.
Of course, that gets you into somewhat dicey territory, since the Crimson Tide had a better claim to the 1966 national title they were denied than to some of the No. 1 rankings they claim.
The rest of your point is well taken, but I quibble with the national championship numbers. Georgia’s 1942 team has at least as good an argument as probably three or four of Alabama’s claimed championship clubs.
Go 'Dawgs!
You have a point.
I went back and looked, and it appears that ’61, ’64, ’65, ’78, ’79, ’92 are legit, modern AP titles. Of course they were totally robbed in ’66 because of politics and regional prejudice based on the civil rights violence.
I agree with you on our ’42 team….not sure what Ohio State or the AP thinks of that. I want to claim it, but deep down, I think only ’80 counts. So, based on that logic they have 6 and we have 1.
Do you really think the UPI was nonsense?
In 1973, yes, it was
That was the last year that the coaches voted for the national champion before the bowls were played. (The sportswriters had abandoned that practice a few years earlier.)
The U.P.I. voted Alabama No. 1 and Notre Dame No. 2. Both were undefeated. Alabama and Notre Dame then met in the Sugar Bowl. Notre Dame won. The A.P. poll, which waited until after the bowl games, voted Notre Dame No. 1 and Alabama No. 2.
The U.P.I. poll wasn’t nonsense in principle, or in most specific instances, but, when a poll says an 11-1 team was No. 1 and a 12-0 team was No. 2, and the No. 2 team beat the No. 1 team head-to-head in the last game of the year, it’s pretty hard to justify the No. 1 team claiming that national championship.
That, by the way, was all off the top of my head, so, if I flubbed a particular datum, I apologize, but the gist remains the same. The U.P.I. picked the team that lost over the team that won because they voted too soon. I’d be ashamed to try to claim a national championship on that basis, which is why I make no claim to Georgia’s 1968 national championship under one of the obscure polls the N.C.A.A. recognizes.
Go 'Dawgs!
UPI = nonsense?
The UPI poll was where the coaches poll started, so I wouldn’t say it’s any more nonsense than the Coaches’ poll is today.
Unlike, say… the Harris Poll.
If you really want your eyes to cross, go check out the Wikipedia entry on the college football national championship. They mention no less than 36 polls that have been used over the years (some of which were used retroactively) to name the “mythical national champion.”
Using this methodology of “someone, somewhere, at some time thought we were national champions” yields Alabama with 16 national championships, Georgia with 5, and the Golden Tornado with 6. (Yes, you read that correctly… 6.) Princeton and Yale currently hold the all-time lead in those standings, since the awards were retroactive to the first years of football, when the only teams playing were Ivy Leaguers (and Rutgers).
by vineyarddawg on Apr 27, 2009 5:00 PM EDT up reply actions
Just to clarify . . .
. . . I did not mean, and I do not believe I wrote, that the U.P.I. poll was nonsense as a general proposition. The phrase in question read, with emphasis added, “throw out nonsense like the 1973 U.P.I. championship.”
While the A.P. poll has produced results with which I am in agreement more often than has the coaches’ poll (in its various incarnations), I do not believe the coaches’ poll is inherently suspect. What I was denouncing as “nonsense” was the result of the final 1973 coaches’ poll specifically and exclusively. No indictment of the poll as a whole, or of the results of that poll in any other particular year besides 1973, was intended or, I believe, indicated.
Now that I’ve had time to get home and look it up, I would offer the following corrections and clarifications to my previous explanation: Alabama, at 11-0, was ranked No. 1 in the A.P. and U.P.I. polls on December 3. Notre Dame, at 10-0, was ranked third by the sportswriters and fourth by the coaches on that same date. This was the final regular-season poll for the Associated Press and the final poll, period, for the United Press International.
In the Sugar Bowl, the Fighting Irish beat the Crimson Tide, 24-23. In the final A.P. poll on January 3, Notre Dame, at 11-0, was ranked No. 1 and Alabama, at 11-1, was ranked No. 4. Because the coaches did not take another vote after the bowl games, Alabama claimed (and still claims) the 1973 U.P.I. national championship. This strikes me as supremely silly, somewhat akin to declaring the 2005 U.S.C. Trojans the greatest team of all time before they played Texas in the Rose Bowl.
Go 'Dawgs!
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