My SEC Power Poll and BlogPoll ballots have been cast scrapped, and I have taken you lacked the will to take you around the SEC, but now it is time to buck up and look at the national games of interest. All right, Saturday stunk, but, as was pointed out in one of the comment threads, tomorrow is another day, so it’s time to climb off the mat and get back to being college football fans again.
I was 3-3 in last week’s non-conference forecasts, which dropped my national prognosticating ledger for the season to 29-18, which ought to make it clear why I issue the following weekly warning: Don’t Bet On It!
Here are this week’s national contests of note, all of which will be played on Saturday, November 6, unless otherwise indicated:
Nope, I’m still not there yet. Like Rhett, my efforts to give a damn have been wholly unsuccessful. I have been left feeling hollowed-out from my neck to my knees, nursing a sense of aching emptiness reminiscent of the "phantom pain" experienced by amputees in missing limbs, as I wrestle to accept the the most agonizing Georgia loss since the 2008 Alabama game. If anything, I feel worse tonight than I felt this morning, and I felt worse today than I felt yesterday.
As Doug Gillett so eloquently put it, the one-sidedness of this rivalry in recent years positively boggles the mind and defies all rational explanation. Granted, there have been plenty of years in which the Gators clearly were the better team, but there haven’t been that many years, and there just as clearly have been years where superior Georgia squads fell to Florida squads they ought to have beaten (1992, 2002, 2003, 2005, and 2010 spring to mind).
At the end of the day, there’s just no getting around this fact: a Georgia fan born on November 12, 1989, is preparing to celebrate being old enough to drink legally, yet that fan has had just three occasions to celebrate a victory over the Sunshine State Saurians in his lifetime. That’s not a lot of opportunities to drink for the right reason, and way too many opportunities to drink for the wrong reason.
Consequently, I remain today where I have been since Saturday. There’s simply no way the Bulldogs should have lost last Saturday’s game, and, until I come to grips with the fact that they did, I just don’t care what one set of teams is or is not going to do against another set of teams next Saturday. While one of MaconDawg’s and my SB Nation colleagues co-workers has accused me of being up on my high horse because I dared to echo criticisms of Urban Meyer he also offered, I’m not riding high, I’m at rock bottom bottom and wallowing from side to side.
Will I succeed in overcoming my funk and abandoning this theme before the end of the week? Don’t Bet On It!
(Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to call it a night. I have contracted the cold my wife is just now getting over, I sleep even worse than usual in the wake of a disheartening loss, and, frankly, I feel bad in just about every way a person can feel bad. I’m taking something that will knock me out and I’m going to bed. We’ll see if the situation improves tomorrow, but signs are not hopeful.)
Go ‘Dawgs!