Look, don’t take this personally or anything, but, if you aren’t a Georgia fan, I probably don’t like you very much. That’s all right, though, because, if you aren’t a Georgia fan, you probably don’t like me very much, either.

After I answered a sports researcher’s questions about taunting between fan bases, I found out just how much Tennessee fans hate us . . . heck, they even hate our dog, which is just mean.

It always baffles me to be reminded that South Carolina fans hate us, just as it surprises me to learn that some Georgia fans hate Alabama, although, given the recent records of achievement compiled by the Bulldogs and the Crimson Tide, I get why such laughter-inducingly misguided broadsides as this silly slur on the Red and Black would bring a Bulldog fan to despise the Tide. (Way to focus on one game and pretend the rest of the last decade hasn’t happened, guys. I hope that eases the sting of the Louisiana-Monroe loss.)

As human beings generally, and as sports fans particularly, we are defined by what we despise as well as by what we love. (If you happen to be a Georgia Tech fan, you’re defined totally by what you hate and may be incapable of love, or at least require kissing lessons.)

I propose that we take it down a notch, from the team-specific to the player-specific. Already certain names have popped into your head, haven’t they? Steve Detwiler. David Treadwell. Kent Hrbek. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. (All right, technically, that last one wasn’t from a sports rivalry, unless you happen to believe that war is a metaphor for sports.)

There are even some guys you can’t bring yourself to hate, like Peyton Manning or Tim Tebow (as opposed to the media glorification of Tim Tebow, which is something altogether different), because they seem like genuinely good guys, so you can’t even dislike them personally . . . although I suppose that may make some folks hate them all the more.

What players are on your personal "most hated" list, and why? Let me know in the comments below.

Go ‘Dawgs!

All right, I really wasn’t planning to write anything more about this, other than noting it dismissively, especially since the author of the original piece felt moved to add this caveat after his gossiping began to gain some traction:

UPDATE: I’d like to clarify that the sources I refer to are not from the Michigan Athletic Department, and this still remains a rumor

This is that particular author’s politically correct way of saying, "I am utterly full of unmitigated crap." However, since this bit of baseless conjecture has proven yet again that a lie can travel from Maine to Georgia while truth is still getting on its boots, it is time to put this idea to rest, once and for all.

I begin, however, with a caveat: I strongly favor a home-and-home series between Georgia and Michigan. Having openly agitated for such an arrangement in the past, and having thought we were close to getting a deal done at one point, I had my hopes dashed and I now believe the Bulldogs and the Wolverines will never meet outside of a Sunshine State bowl game.

Nevertheless, because enthusiasm understandably is high among Big Ten partisans, it is necessary for me to emphasize that this rumor was pulled out of thin air. In this case, "thin air" is a euphemism for "the rumormonger’s hindquarters."

Because he bothered to check the schedule, Brian Cook knows this is nonsense. There simply isn’t room for Michigan on the schedule in 2010. In addition to playing Georgia Tech at Grant Field, the Bulldogs have a road game against Colorado in Boulder. This is the return game from the Buffaloes’ 2006 trip to Athens. Colorado (quite understandably) would not want to let Georgia out of this contractually-mandated contest, and Damon Evans (quite understandably) would not be willing to give up the home game.

Moreover, in stark contrast to the purveyor of this rumor (who explicitly states that his "source" is not someone in the Michigan athletic department), David Hale was in Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall when this supposed "story" broke, and he couldn’t find anyone who knew the first thing about it. David has proven himself as a reporter covering the Bulldog beat, so, if he asked around and couldn’t sniff out the story, there is no story out to be sniffed.

Finally, Georgia has played at Ann Arbor twice already and would never agree to a regular-season series with Michigan that didn’t involve bringing the Maize and Blue to the Classic City. That fact is important because, to be blunt, the Wolverines will play a regular-season road game against an SEC team over Bill Martin’s dead body. I state that position with conviction because I wrote the Michigan athletic director about such a prospect and he sent me a polite reply in which he identified the Wolverines’ long term contract with Notre Dame as the chief impediment to such a series. He then proceeded to renew the arrangement with the Fighting Irish for the next umpteen jillion years.

I don’t think Michigan is running scared---the Wolverines have a good enough record against the SEC that they have no reason for being afraid---but the fact is that, outside of State College (where over a century of athletic independence has not been overcome by a decade and a half of conference affiliation), Big Ten teams don’t schedule SEC teams, period.

Should it happen? Eventually, it absolutely should. Will it happen? Probably not in Bill Martin’s lifetime, and probably not at all. Is it going to happen in 2010? No, it isn’t.

Move along, folks; there’s nothing to see here. We now return to our regularly-scheduled offseason, which is already in progress.

Go ‘Dawgs!

I recently received an e-mail from someone who was researching sports taunting and the particular types of jabs that would get under the skin of a particular fan base. He posed a half-dozen questions, to which I sent him my answers, but I found the topic intriguing, so I decided to post his inquiries (in bold) and my responses. Please feel free to answer some or all of the questions in the comments below:

Who do you consider the Bulldogs' biggest rivals?

As a 40-year-old Bulldog fan, I consider Auburn Georgia's biggest rival. The Bulldogs and the Plainsmen have the Deep South's oldest football rivalry and, since the mid-1890s, it literally has taken the death of a player from injuries sustained during a game or a world war to keep these two teams from playing one another. Plus, during the '80s (my most memorable early years as a fan), Auburn represented Georgia's chief obstacle to SEC supremacy. (Along those same lines, I would argue that, historically, Clemson is Georgia's second-biggest rival, even though we don't play that often any more.)

Fans of my father's generation are more likely to say Georgia Tech is Georgia's biggest rival, because they remember Bobby Dodd, the eight-game losing streak in the '50s, and facing the Yellow Jackets as a conference rival. Likewise, fans younger than me almost all would say Florida is Georgia's biggest rival because of the way the Bulldogs have struggled against the Gators in the last two decades. Basically, if you ask a Georgia fan, "Which major rival beat Georgia most often between the time you were twelve and the time you were 25?", his answer is likely to be the same as his answer to your question.

What teams and specific players do the casual or die-hard Bulldogs fan hate the most?

At this point, most of the average Georgia fan's hate probably is reserved for Florida, although the attitude displayed by the Georgia Tech faithful on those rare occasions when the Yellow Jackets actually win one against the Red and Black reminds us how deep-seated our disdain for the Ramblin' Wreck really is.

On a personal level, I don't know that there's that much hatred for particular players; with Florida, for instance, it's hard to have any personal dislike for Danny Wuerffel or Tim Tebow, who are good people even if they play for a despised rival, but we have all kinds of hatred for Steve Spurrier (as a coach, not as a former player) and Urban Meyer.

If you wanted to taunt players from the SEC, who would be the biggest targets? The rest of college football?

Probably the easiest players to taunt are the ones with off-the-field issues, such as South Carolina's Stephen Garcia, or ones whose mouths write checks their rear ends can't cash, such as former Tennessee quarterback Casey Clausen. By and large, I think we confine our taunting to teams, coaches, states, and fan bases while leaving individual players alone, unless they're players (like Georgia Tech's Reggie Ball) who have shown that they can be rattled by crowd noise.

What kind of taunts would sting the casual Georgia fan the most—going after the make-up of the fan base, individual players, coach, or the state?

I think we pretty much write off attacks on the fan base, the state, or the university as ignorant stereotyping that is, at best, 25 years out of date. Opposing fans who go after the University of Georgia's academic standards or portray us all as extras from "Deliverance" simply don't know what they're talking about and can be easily dismissed.

The worst taunts we endure are attacks on Mark Richt and on the players, because they tend to take the form of "can't win the big one" assaults in the former case and accusations of lawlessness in the latter case. It gets very frustrating having to explain that the 2002 and 2005 SEC championship games, the 2003 and 2008 Sugar Bowls, and the 2007 Florida and Auburn games (to name a few examples) were "big ones" and that a program is not "lawless" just because law enforcement in Athens is overzealous about open container ordinances and unpaid parking tickets.

In less than 100 words, best describe the Bulldogs fan base.

Georgia fans are rabid, dedicated, and willing to support a successful football program with our vocal presence and our financial contributions. While we have gotten much better about showing up and standing up for our team, we are impatient, often fickle, and demanding . . . but, given all the natural advantages the program enjoys, our lofty expectations are not unreasonable, however much the media may wish to portray us as unrealistic.

What are the common stereotypes associated with Georgia fans? In what ways are they true/false?

We suffer from some of the same image issues as all SEC programs; namely, that our fans are all message-board yahoos and uneducated yokels. Not only is that stereotype generally false, it completely misses the mark most of the time. If anything, we're probably a little more yuppified than we'd care to admit; like archetypal alumnus Lewis Grizzard, we as a fan base tend to be affluent suburbanites adopting a good ol' boy persona on game day.

Let me know your take on those questions in the comments. If you’re impressed that I could answer any question in under a hundred words, feel free to say that, too.

Go ‘Dawgs!

With July almost upon us and the preview magazines hitting the newsstands, we who love college football find ourselves fully in the grip of the offseason and counting down the days until Labor Day. In anticipation of casting my preseason BlogPoll ballot, I already have identified three teams I’m buying in 2009, but there is a limit to the number of limbs out on which I am willing to go, so now it is time to offer . . .

Kansas Jayhawks: After four straight seasons of bowl-eligibility and 20 wins in the last two years, Mark Mangino’s team is starting to get the sort of reputation that yields regular top 25 rankings. The problem for K.U. is that, during their two-year run, they’ve beaten exactly one regular-season opponent with a pulse, and even that makes the generous assumption that last year’s Missouri Tigers qualified in that category. While I fully expect a 6-0 start from Kansas, the Jayhawks’ six-week stretch run will expose them (and their secondary) as nothing bearing the vaguest resemblance to a contender even in their weak division.

Ole Miss Rebels: It pains me to say so, since I have University of Mississippi alumni in my family and I pretty much root for the Rebels whenever they are playing a team from anywhere other than Athens, but I’m not buying the hype. You can’t not root for Jevan Snead and Dexter McCluster, if only because "Jevan Snead" and "Dexter McCluster" are just so darned much fun to say, but I don’t care who’s back if Michael Oher isn’t. Houston Nutt’s club finished strong in 2008 . . . just like the Georgia Bulldogs did in 2007, complete with a January bowl win over an overhyped mid-major. (All right, technically, the Texas Tech Red Raiders aren’t a mid-major, but come on . . . if Mike Leach’s squad made the jump to the W.A.C., would anyone claim it wasn’t a legitimate fit?) The Rebs will get back to a bowl game, but they won’t replicate last year’s win total and, if they make it to Atlanta in December, it’ll be for the Peach Bowl.

South Carolina Gamecocks: Since the heady 17-7 glory run of 2000 and 2001, the Palmetto State Poultry have been very nearly Chan Gailey-like in their consistency, posting records of 5-7, 5-7, 6-5, 7-5, 8-5, 6-6, and 7-6 in the last seven seasons. The East Coast U.S.C. always manages to win a few close ones and lose a few close ones, but never manages to do enough of either to rise too far above or fall too far below mediocrity. With just eleven starters returning and Stephen Garcia having yet to give any indication that his innate Steve Taneyhillness extends to actual on-field production, I see no reason to believe this is the year the Chicken Curse gets lifted.

I extend my apologies to fans of Kansas, Ole Miss, and South Carolina, but, when it comes to the Jayhawks, Rebels, and Gamecocks, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Go ‘Dawgs!

The end of the College World Series, probably literally and certainly practically, marks the end of intercollegiate athletics until Labor Day weekend. That gives us a lot of time to await the arrival of college football season with mounting anxiety and anticipation, producing a surfeit of nervous energy as we speculate about the autumn that is to come.

Although I’ve already begun giving thought to my preseason BlogPoll ballot, the recent arrival of the preview magazines has made me keenly conscious of the fact that I’m not sure any team outside of Austin, Gainesville, Los Angeles, or Norman will be any good at all (whatever team I rank No. 5 is likely to be a very distant fifth behind the Florida Gators, Texas Longhorns, Southern California Trojans, and Oklahoma Sooners); nevertheless, every game must produce a winner and a loser, so I am bringing you the first installment of my early forecasts in the form of . . .

Clemson Tigers: Forget about James Davis and Cullen Harper. As we in Bulldog Nation learned the hard way last year, games are won and lost in the trenches, and C.J. Spiller will have lots of room to run behind an offensive line that returns five starters. Defensively, the Country Gentlemen lose one of four starters on the line, one of three starters in the linebacking corps, and one of four starters in the secondary. Anyone who doubts former Tiger receivers coach and Alabama Crimson Tide player Dabo Swinney needs to remember this fact: the last three times Clemson chose a head coach by promoting a former ‘Bama player who already was on the Orange and Purple staff, the Tigers hired Frank Howard, Charley Pell, and Danny Ford.

Michigan State Spartans: Once you get past the Ohio State Buckeyes, you find a power vacuum in the Big Ten. (Insert your "giant sucking sound" jokes here.) The Penn State Nittany Lions will take a step back from last year, the Iowa Hawkeyes and Wisconsin Badgers have fallen off after appearing to emerge as challengers for conference hegemony, and the Michigan Wolverines have dropped off the edge of the earth. Mark Dantonio’s Spartans appear poised to fill the void, at long last shedding their "choke artist" image by winning three of their last four regular-season games in 2008. With no Ohio State on the schedule, Michigan State has a solid shot at a second-place finish in the league.

Pittsburgh Panthers: I can’t believe I’m actually believing in these guys, but, in a depleted Big East, someone has to come out on top, and it might as well be Pitt. Granted, we may be looking at another one of those 2004 tiebreakers-decide-which-team-wins-the-right-to-get-throttled-in-the-bowl-game scenarios, but the Cincinnati Bearcats lost everyone on defense, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights lost everyone you’ve ever heard of, the South Florida Bulls have shown no ability to close the deal, the West Virginia Mountaineers lost Pat White and kept Bill Stewart, and Dave Wannstedt’s Panthers bring back eight offensive starters and seven defensive first-teamers from a squad that won nine regular-season games in 2008.

Did I really just pick Clemson, Michigan State, and Pitt to be better in 2009? Son of a gun, I just did. I am so ready for some football. . . .

Go ‘Dawgs!

My wife, Susan, is a few years younger than me, and she looks younger than she is, so, when she first got out of grad school and starting teaching in high school, she often was mistaken for a student. Early in her career, Susan once was asked for a hall pass by an assistant principal and she was used as a narc by an administrator who sent her into the girls’ bathroom to see if she could catch students smoking.

Several years ago, because of Susan’s youthful appearance, she was selected to play the part of a cheerleader in a skit at a pep rally in which teachers took on the roles of students for the sake of humor. I don’t know whether the skit actually turned out to be funny for the reasons its author intended it to be funny, but, prior to the skit, Susan brought home an East Coweta High School cheerleading uniform and tried it on to make sure it would fit for the next day’s pep rally. I arrived home from work that afternoon and found my wife dressed like a cheerleader.

Suffice it to say, therefore, that I have no quarrel with cheerleaders. None whatsoever.

That said, I cannot fault Florida International’s decision to cut its cheerleading squad for budgetary reasons.

If we must have cheerleaders, they need to fall into one of two categories: University of Georgia alumni from the ‘50s who show up at homecoming and actually lead cheers or Eliza Dushku from "Bring It On."

I don’t know about you, but, when I go to a sporting event, I’m there for a sporting event. I neither want nor need beach balls bounding around in the stands or people doing "the wave" or cheerleaders. We need the band; Brian Cook and I disagree on many, many subjects, but, although I find his blanket denunciation of all piped-in rock music to be crotchety in a way one typically associates with grumpy men of a much earlier generation than Brian’s, he is right about the need for live musicians who contribute to the flow of the game with appropriately-selected and –timed musical numbers. Erk Russell’s "Junkyard Dogs" moniker became (and remains) a hit with fans because the director of the Redcoat Band agreed to play a few bars of "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" whenever the defense made a big play. (I could, however, do without the Bon Jovi medleys, the Earth, Wind & Fire retrospectives, and the Andrew Lloyd Webber tributes at halftime. Marching bands generally should stick to marching band music.)

At the end of the day, though, I agree with Lewis Grizzard that cheerleaders are the parsley of athletic competition. I’m not advocating doing away with the cheerleading squad---it’s a frivolous expenditure, to be sure, but no real needs are being left unmet because of what we spend on having cheerleaders on the sidelines---but neither will I fault a school for doing away with this ephemeral excrescence in times of financial crisis.

It’s one thing if you’re braving actual danger by catching a flaming baton as it spins end over end; I’ll even give the dance team credit for providing eye candy to the alumni while taking a terpsichorean turn. What sort of fan would I be, though, if I felt the need to have another human being lead me in cheering for my team?

Prefabricated enthusiasm is like an arranged marriage; in each case, the modifier robs the noun of all consequential meaning. I’ve never been told to "stand up and hollar!" at a moment when I was not already standing up and hollaring. I have been known to applaud so energetically at football games that I have torn the flesh of my opposing hand with my class ring and spent the second half bleeding. (Erk, I believe, would have been proud.)

In fact, I take it as a personal affront when the Coca-Cola fan of the game is announced in the third quarter. Dude, I bring it in the fourth quarter. Come watch me for a full 60 minutes before you start handing out free Red Baron pizzas to some yahoo in the upper deck who happened to grab a red shirt out of the closet when he rolled out of bed on Saturday morning.

One of the greatest compliments ever paid to me as a fan came long before I ever entered the blogosphere (or before there even was a blogosphere). I was in Jacksonville for the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party and a Georgia fan I did not know came up to me. He asked me, "Do you sit . . . ?" and proceeded to name the section in which and row on which my season tickets are located.

Shocked, I replied, "Yes." He said: "I sit ten rows behind you. You’re a good fan."

So let’s cut F.I.U. a little slack here. Honestly, what are they sacrificing by getting rid of their cheerleading squad? Yes, they’re pretty girls, but I’ve never been to Sanford Stadium on a game day and noticed any shortage of lovely ladies. Maybe, by removing the crutch of designated directors of fan enthusiasm who inform the faithful when their shows of support are warranted, Florida International will produce a better class of booster. Perhaps the F.I.U. fan base will become a bunch of self-starters who spontaneously show up, stand up, and shout out for their team.

I am no advocate of abolishing cheerleading squads, but I fail to see the harm in compelling the fans in the stands to accept responsibility for creating on their own the inimitably organic energy that makes sports so special.

Go ‘Dawgs!

You can tell it’s the offseason, because we all have too much time on our hands where intercollegiate athletics are concerned. How much time do we have on our hands? I have gone to the trouble of compiling the Georgia Bulldogs "all-name" football team; that’s how much time we all have on our hands.

First, a few ground rules. I used only players from 1964 to the present. Since 1964 was Vince Dooley’s first year as the Bulldogs’ head coach and the first year for which the media guide lists offensive and defensive starters separately, that seemed like a good starting point.

I also used only starters, and I listed players who lined up at multiple positions by the year they started at the position to which they have been assigned. My middle linebacker is listed in the media guide only at "linebacker," but his was the one name that had to appear on such a list. Likewise, due to changes of scheme and terminology over the years, I decided to lump in strong safeties with rovers. Otherwise, I don’t think I took any liberties, and, where possible, I listed backups.

We start with the offense:

LT – Winford Hood (1983)
LG – Mayo Tucker (1969)
C – Wayne Radloff (1982)
RG – LeMonte Tellis (1988)
RT – Wilbur Strozier (1985-‘86)
TE – Ulysses Norris (1977-‘78)
SE – Cassius Osborn (1984, 1986)
FL – Amp Arnold (1979-’80)
QB – Preston Ridlehuber (1964-‘65)
FB – Alphonso Ellis (1987-‘88)
RB – Knowshon Moreno (2007-’08)

Backups: Resty Beadles (G ’94-‘96), Selma Calloway (RB ’95, ‘97), Carmon Prince (FL ‘78), Rex Putnal (SE ‘70), Ray Rissmiller (LT ‘64), Troy Sadowski (TE ’85-‘88), D.J. Shockley (QB ’05), Brannan Southerland (FB ’05-‘07)

Honorable mention went to Lenny Ellspermann, the Bulldogs’ starting split end in 1972, who just couldn’t crack the lineup against the other fellows at that position. This brings us to the Georgia all-name defense:

LE – Calvin Ruff (1983, 1985)
LT – Jiggy Smaha (1967)
RT – Hiawatha Berry (1989)
RE – Carlyle Hewatt (1984)
WLB – Knox Culpepper (1983)
MLB – Happy Dicks (1967-‘68)
SLB – Chip Wisdom (1971)
SS/ROV – Terreal Bierria (2000)
FS/SAF – Buck Swindle (1969-‘70)
RCB – Buzy Rosenberg (1970-‘72)
LCB – Carlos Yancy (1994)

Backups: Sylvester Boler (SLB ‘74), Jerone Jackson (FS ‘73), Mo Lewis (LB ’88-‘90), Armin Love (SS ’95), Wycliffe Lovelace (DT ’86, ‘88), Alandus Sims (RCB ‘95), Ronnie Swoopes (RT ’75), Ben Zambiasi (WLB ’75-‘77)

I felt badly for Abb Ansley, the Bulldogs’ starting rover in 1974, who had the same problem as Lenny Ellspermann. Next up was my biggest challenge, choosing from among the specialists:

P – Spike Jones (1967-‘69)
PK – Dax Langley (1994-‘96)

Backups: Bucky Dilts (P ’74-‘76), Hap Hines (PK ’96-‘99)

I have to say, it was hard opting against Brandon Coutu, Gordon Ely-Kelso, Hap Hines, Kanon Parkman, and Rex Robinson.

Naturally, some tough calls had to be made, and you may have made them differently. Which ones did I get wrong? Which ones did I get right? What glaring omissions are in need of correction? As always, your answers are welcome in the comments.

Go ‘Dawgs!

That 34-14 thing may have been one of Pepper’s few errors since he came rolling back to the old campus campaigning like a circus ringmaster. A Georgia Bulldog is no elephant, but he never forgets when it comes to something like Tech. . . . It was gloating time. . . . The Technicians and ilk wallowed in it. They rollicked and rolled slogans off their tongues all winter. Georgians were spitting mad. They went home and spent the winter smarting, like wounded bears in caves.

Furman Bisher
The Atlanta Journal
November 28, 1975

Being a loyal denizen of Bulldog Nation, I am no friend to Furman Bisher. That said, optimistic Georgia fans are attempting to temper their confidence, so I suppose I should reciprocate by making some effort to curb my unremitting pessimism . . . hence, the Bisher quotation above, a juxtaposition which I now will endeavor to explain.

Not long after last autumn’s season-sinking debacle against the Yellow Jackets, I compared Paul Johnson to Pepper Rodgers. The analogy seemed to me then, and seems to me now, apt.

It’s not hard to see the parallels. Coach Rodgers, like Coach Johnson, arrived at the Flats with prior head coaching experience at two previous stops and installed an option offense. In their respective first seasons (1974 and 2008), each took a Yellow Jacket squad to Athens on a cold, wet, miserable day and hung an embarrassingly high point total on the Bulldogs between the hedges.

It’s high time we took that analogy to its logical conclusion.

As Bisher noted in the Atlanta papers just before the 1975 clash between the two teams, the insufferable attitude of the Ramblin’ Wreck faithful after the establishment of a one-game winning streak under a first-year head coach served only to fire up the Red and Black, making them more determined than ever to reassert what any even remotely unbiased observer recognizes is Georgia’s natural dominance over Georgia Tech. If you’re like me, you’ve been on the receiving end of quite a bit more crap from the Georgia Tech faithful in the last seven months than you ever dished out in their direction in the preceding seven years.

In 1975, in the season finale at Grant Field, Vince Dooley pulled his starters at the end of the third quarter . . . after the ‘Dawgs had built up a 42-0 advantage on the Engineers.

I’m not saying it’ll be quite that lopsided in Bobby Dodd Stadium next November, but, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Bisher, who was right then, is right now, as well, and for the same reason.

I hope one in a row was fun for y’all, nerds. I know winning’s a rarity for you, so you don’t quite know how to handle it when it happens, but try not to be quite so obnoxious about it next time. Payback is coming, and there’s a saying about payback with which you ought to be familiar, since payback is what you’ve been of ours for 33 of the last 45 years.

Go ‘Dawgs! . . . the male ones, anyway.