A Word About Preseason College Football Predictions Before I Make Any
Right about the time I started thinking about my preseason predictions, MaconDawg reminded us what a wacky last few weeks it’s been, which got me thinking. Here is what I found myself wondering:
What if, instead of offering preseason predictions, I offered postseason predictions? Imagine, if you will, that I had made the following forecasts on Thanksgiving Day 2009 and assured you that each of them would come true before Labor Day 2010:
- Urban Meyer will resign abruptly as the head coach of the Florida Gators. After his wife has assured the media that there is no chance that he will change his mind, he will change his mind.
- The Auburn Tigers will get the bowl bid that everyone expected to go to the Tennessee Volunteers instead. The Plainsmen will win a thriller in the game most observers believed they didn’t deserve, while the Big Orange will lose a blowout in the game most fans thought was beneath the Vols.
- After the Georgia Bulldogs play their best defensive game in recent memory in a victory over the BCS bowl-bound Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets on the road, Mark Richt will fire Willie Martinez. A pair of graduate assistants will shoulder much of the load for running the defense in the bowl game, in which the Red and Black will hold high-octane Texas A&M to 20 points.
- Lane Kiffin will bolt Knoxville virtually on the eve of national signing day to take over the USC Trojans.
- John Chavis, Bud Foster, and Kirby Smart all will be candidates to succeed Willie Martinez as Georgia’s defensive coordinator. None will take the job.
- In the wake of Coach Kiffin’s departure, the Volunteers will hire a WAC coach with a losing record. Vince and Barbara Dooley will become Tennessee fans as a result.
- Mark Fox’s first Georgia basketball team will not win a conference road game, will not win back-to-back conference games, and will not make it into postseason play. Bulldog basketball fans will end the season with a feeling of confidence.
- The spring quarterback battle between Aaron Murray and Zach Mettenberger will end when one of the two signal callers is dismissed from the team following an incident in a bar.
- The Gym Dogs will lose to Auburn for the first time ever and be eliminated in the first round of the NCAA playoffs, also for the first time ever.
- Michael Adams will position himself carefully and shrewdly to become the new NCAA president, yet his efforts to ascend to that position will fail.
- The Diamond Dogs will give up 25 runs twice on the way to posting the worst baseball season in Georgia history. Afterward, David Perno will hire himself to be the team’s new pitching coach.
- The Colorado Buffaloes will join the Pac-10, the Nebraska Cornhuskers will join the Big Ten, and the Texas A&M Aggies will come close to joining the SEC.
- Neither Georgia nor LSU will represent the SEC in Omaha, where the South Carolina Gamecocks will win the College World Series.
- A former Georgia tennis player will set a new record at Wimbledon by winning the longest match in history.
- Approximately five minutes before beginning his new five-year contract as the athletic director at his alma mater, Damon Evans will be pulled over by a state patrolman and arrested for driving under the influence following a traffic stop during which he reportedly attempted to use his position to evade the consequences of his actions and tried to explain why he was holding in his lap the red panties belonging to the female passenger who was not his wife.
- Dontavius Jackson will be revealed to be the peacemaker in an incident in which Bulldog football players are falsely accused of misconduct. He later will be arrested on multiple charges, after which he will transfer to another school rather than sit out a six-game suspension.
- Bobby Johnson will resign abruptly as the head coach of the Vanderbilt Commodores, stepping down one week before SEC Media Days for reasons involving neither a scandal nor health considerations.
- After "Lost" ends, David Hale will get married, get a new job, and move to New England.
- Chick-fil-A will introduce a new spicy chicken sandwich.
You know as well as I do that, if I had posted even half of those prognostications last November, MaconDawg would have downloaded this .pdf form, filled it out, and filed it with my local Probate Court. Accordingly, the moral of the story is that, no matter how far-fetched our expectations, reality will trump our imaginations every day of the week, and twice on Sunday. (Oops; I forgot: Mark Richt canceled two-a-days.)
So, while I am trying to come up with a set of predictions that undoubtedly will pale in comparison to what actually happens, we have another matter to which to attend: Southern Dawg suggested "that it would be an awesome idea to have regular posters write up a ‘Dawgography’ once a week, so we could get to know each other a bit better," about which he dutifully reminded me (per my request). AuditDawg already set the standard for this sort of posting, and my story is pretty well-known, so this comment thread is your opportunity to volunteer to author a "Dawgography" fanpost.
Once all those wishing to have a say have had their say, I’ll make individual contact with everyone who signs up and we’ll set up a schedule, hopefully one that will carry us all the way until football season. While we’re at it, we need to figure out what day would work best. I don’t want to interfere with Free Form Friday, but pretty much every other day is open from a content standpoint. Let me know what day of the week would be best, and we’ll try to make that the standard Dawgography day. My thanks, of course, go out to Southern Dawg for the most excellent suggestion.
Go ‘Dawgs!
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Comments
Well...
I’m not sure I think us winning that NC championship is all that surprising. We’re the most successful team in the SEC over the past decade and had been to the CWS eight times and the finals three times before this year. I know UGA had the one NC win on us, but we had actually been to Omaha more often. I guess you could def. say it was surprising that LSU didn’t make it, considering the expectations they came in with. And I was certainly surprised that UGA was so bad. I’m sure you’ll be back next year, though.
This is a great post, though. Predictions aren’t worth the paper they’re written on, but that doesn’t stop us from doing them, I guess.
Garnet and Black Attack: A Blog by and for Gamecocks Fans.
"NC championship" = "NC"
Garnet and Black Attack: A Blog by and for Gamecocks Fans.
by Gamecock Man on Jul 17, 2010 10:10 AM EDT up reply actions
Now if we were to win some kind of championship in football, or even, say, just get to 10 wins somehow...
THAT would be surprising.
Garnet and Black Attack: A Blog by and for Gamecocks Fans.
by Gamecock Man on Jul 17, 2010 10:13 AM EDT up reply actions
Which begs the question
Why doesn’t Finebaum think Spurrier is on the hotseat? :-)
"I want anything wearing red and black to tear the head off anything that isn't."
- Lewis Grizzard
by RedCrake on Jul 17, 2010 10:45 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Well, it's obviously because Spurrier is unlucky enough to be coaching the guy Finebaum calls...
“the worst QB in SEC history.”
Garnet and Black Attack: A Blog by and for Gamecocks Fans.
by Gamecock Man on Jul 17, 2010 12:39 PM EDT up reply actions
Finebaum has a short memory....
Garcia has just been doing his best Quincy Carter impression….
Although I think he’ll be better this year.
"I want anything wearing red and black to tear the head off anything that isn't."
- Lewis Grizzard
I think Finebaum just forgot about all the QBs Alabama fielded during their down years...
Spencer Pennington rings a bell? He of two INTs in six attempts?
Garnet and Black Attack: A Blog by and for Gamecocks Fans.
by Gamecock Man on Jul 17, 2010 12:43 PM EDT up reply actions
Well Tennessee was good back then....
So he was probably too busy riding that bandwagon to notice.
"I want anything wearing red and black to tear the head off anything that isn't."
- Lewis Grizzard
Very true. Tennessee and Auburn, I'm sure.
Garnet and Black Attack: A Blog by and for Gamecocks Fans.
by Gamecock Man on Jul 17, 2010 1:10 PM EDT up reply actions
Fair point, Gamecock Man.
It’s more the combination of circumstances: LSU is a fixture in Omaha, Georgia is always good in even-numbered years, and South Carolina makes it to the College World Series but comes up short. Any one of those three things changing in any given year isn’t especially surprising, but all three of them occurring simultaneously would have been tough to foresee.
Thanks for the kind words about the Diamond Dogs, though.
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on Jul 17, 2010 12:21 PM EDT up reply actions
I think what I was trying to say was that...
you had to know we’d win one eventually. It’s true that we’ve always come up short in the past, but I think that the idea that we would always continue to do so is to impose expectations for our football team on our baseball team, and the two are, as history suggests, very different animals.
Garnet and Black Attack: A Blog by and for Gamecocks Fans.
by Gamecock Man on Jul 17, 2010 12:45 PM EDT up reply actions
But yeah, I know what you mean.
Garnet and Black Attack: A Blog by and for Gamecocks Fans.
by Gamecock Man on Jul 17, 2010 12:45 PM EDT up reply actions
Fair enough.
I didn’t mean to imply the Gamecocks would never win one; again, it was more the confluence of circumstances.
I sure hope that “coming close regularly and winning one eventually” thing applies to Georgia football under Mark Richt. I mean, it worked for Bobby Bowden, Mack Brown, Vince Dooley, Tom Osborne, and Joe Paterno, right? Right? Is this thing on?
Go 'Dawgs!
My postseason predictions for 2011:
First the reasonable ones:
- The Volunteers miss the postseason entirely, causing a reprise of wailing, gnashing of teeth, and Kiffin-effigy-burnings throughout eastern Tennessee.
- Washington goes to the Rose Bowl.
- UNC goes to a BCS bowl for the first time, having coalesced around the NCAA firestorm to win the ACC.
- Les Miles gets escorted out of the state of Louisiana by police (for his own safety) and finally goes to Michigan.
- Flying in the face of all reason, Vanderbilt manages to hire Ken Niumatalolo away from Navy.
Now, the “You thought this year was crazy” ones:
- Joe Paterno finally retires, at which time Penn State hires… Jim Tressel.
- The Big East decides not to wait for its imminent destruction, and goes on the offensive. They eliminate football and endorse the creation of a football-only “Great East” conference. The conference includes all 8 members of the Big East, plus Notre Dame, Virginia, Va. Tech, and Maryland. Hilarity ensues.
- Lane Kiffin leaves USC after going 5-7 to become the next head coach of the New England Patriots.
- Ed Orgeron finally clears his throat so loudly people hear it in Mississippi and says in a perfectly enunciated voice, “Damn, I’ve been waiting for that for 20 years.”
- Nick Saban will adamantly deny that he’s a candidate for the vacated SC coaching job during the months of January, February, March, April, and May. Then, during the first week of June, an unmarked, fully-loaded armored car will show up in Tuscaloosa, and Saban will next be seen flashing the “V for Victory” sign in Los Angeles.
And on a completely unrelated note...
… I’ll volunteer for a future Dawgography installment.
by vineyarddawg on Jul 17, 2010 12:03 PM EDT up reply actions
How about this for a prediction
Paul Johnson takes the Vandy job in 2 years to install the option.
It actually might work there.
Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.
I Corinthians 9:24
by Southern Dawg on Jul 17, 2010 12:37 PM EDT up reply actions
I will gladly accept
an assignment for a future Dawgography installation. It’s too close to kick-off for me to use the V word in any way that does not mean an opposing team and/or its fans, coaches, etc.
"Never refuse to do a kindness unless the act would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink- under any circumstances." Mark Twain
That's the right attitude, podunkdawg.
I should have known better than to use that word. For similar reasons, whenever I am making a court appearance, I make sure to identify myself as a “trial lawyer,” not as a “litigator,” because I ain’t no kind of ’gator.
Go 'Dawgs!
I heartily endorse this attitude.
I hate Florida.
by vineyarddawg on Jul 18, 2010 12:25 AM EDT up reply actions
Since i'm given partial credit for the Dawgography
I figured i’d be a defacto volunteer. And maybe after learning more about me DavetheDawg can cast me properly in his new film.
btw: the “Oops i forgot he canceled two-a-days” was pure genius.
Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.
I Corinthians 9:24
I'm up for a Dawgography
I’ll relive my sordid tale of rebellion and eventual redemption for the entertainment of the Dawgsports community…. probably in a verbose and slightly incoherent manner.
"I want anything wearing red and black to tear the head off anything that isn't."
- Lewis Grizzard
I'll do a Dawgography also
I don’t know exactly how entertaining the mysterious and shadowy details of my life are, but I’d be happy to give it a shot.
Dawgography...
I’m on board…even though it means the end of my involvement with the Witness Protection Program.
"If we score, we may win. If they never score, we'll never lose."
-Erk Russell
Is DavetheDawg Steve Detweiler's Dad?

I can’t wait to find out.
"I want anything wearing red and black to tear the head off anything that isn't."
- Lewis Grizzard
You know...
I was looking for that picture of “Henry Hill” at the end of Goodfellas when he’s in his bath robe and goes out to get his newspaper somewhere in suburbia. I guess greatly disturbed minds think alike…
"If we score, we may win. If they never score, we'll never lose."
-Erk Russell
Yeah, sure. OK.
I’ve dropped ample excessive biographical dawgographical information all over this blog over the past few years, but I reckon I can be counted on to fill up some more space.
really good stuff, t kyle
"Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic."
-Kurt Vonnegut, "The Sirens of Titan"
by Bravely going forward on Jul 18, 2010 2:25 AM EDT reply actions
In all fairness, TKK
We knew about the spicy chicken sandwich a really long time ago. I was in Baltimore last June when it was being test marketed and got to try one then, so the sandwich isn’t really that new.
http://hobnailboot.wordpress.com/
My bad, AuditDawg.
I missed the advance marketing of the spicy chicken sandwich, but I won’t make that mistake again. When I scheduled my appointment for a free spicy chicken sandwich the week before it was widely available, there was a box to check to be alerted about upcoming promotional opportunities. I believe it was literally the first time I ever checked that box when given the opportunity by any corporation.
Go 'Dawgs!
i would also love to do a dawgography
ive had a pretty up close/unique experience with being a redcoat band dawg. i’d love to share
Once a Dawg, Always a Dawg. How Sweet it is!

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