What is the sort of fan who reads Dawg Sports discussing this holiday weekend? Here are a few representative samplings in answer to that question:
- Although an early setback consigned them to the losers' bracket, the Diamond Dogs have advanced in the S.E.C. baseball tournament by posting back-to-back 16-10 wins over Kentucky and South Carolina to set up a payback game---and, with any luck, two of them---against Vanderbilt today.
- The new poll question has already generated numerous responses and garnered some discussion regarding the nature of Georgia's rivalries. A good point was made about the importance of geography---fans in Columbus detest Auburn, fans in Augusta despise South Carolina, and fans in South Georgia hate Florida---but I believe another important factor is age. It's easier for someone old enough to remember Bobby Dodd and "The Drought" in the 1950s to consider Georgia Tech to be the Bulldogs' biggest rival; I, by contrast, have been alive on the planet for 37 years and I have seen the 'Dawgs beat the Ramblin' Wreck 27 times . . . and that's not even counting the 1998 and 1999 games, in which the Golden Tornado claimed last-second victories on clearly blown officiating calls in games in which Georgia Tech fielded multiple players who were academically ineligible. Fans a few years younger than me consider the Gators to be Georgia's biggest rival, since their memories do not antedate Darth Visor's triumphant return to Gainesville and it's harder to have a sense of perspective about going 2-14 against Florida in the 16 seasons from 1990 to 2005 if you aren't old enough to remember going 13-3 against the Gators in the 16 seasons from 1974 to 1989. For my part, I belong to a generation that recalls as a formative fan experience the losses to Auburn in the 1980s that shifted the balance of power in the Southeastern Conference from the Classic City to the Ugliest Village . . . not to mention the water hose incident in 1986. As you may have noticed, the cumulative effect of that experience is that I hate Auburn. In essence, if you tell me the year that you started following Georgia football in earnest, I'll look at how the Bulldogs fared against their major rivals in the 10 seasons immediately thereafter and I'd be willing to bet that the team that beat the Red and Black most frequently during that period is the team you dislike the most.
Steve Spurrier - articulate + cheating = Pat Dye.
- I asked and J.P. answered: Michael Weston was, in fact, the actor who portrayed both the repulsive violent criminal in "Six Feet Under" and the lovable bumbling deputy in "The Dukes of Hazzard."
- As though the foregoing did not constitute sufficient service to Bulldog Nation for one day, J.P. also paid tribute to former Red and Black editorial cartoonist Mack Williams, directing us to an example of his work and sparking additional conversation. Although J.P. claims that he is "not really quite sure" how the diaries work, it looks to me like he has a pretty good handle on the concept: the diaries are a tool for making Dawg Sports a forum for civil exchange rather than just a place for me to publish the minutiae rattling around inside my noggin. I appreciate J.P. and the other readers who have moved this site in that direction.
