It was a busy day in what is bound to be a wild week and the Diamond Dogs' showdown with the Atlanta Braves is still a day away, so it's high time I took a few moments and got you caught up on a few minutiae you might find of interest. Without further ado, here we go:
- Following the Gym Dogs' win over Kentucky in last week's meet, Cassidy McComb was named S.E.C. Gymnast of the Week. McComb captured the all-around title on Saturday, tallying a 39.55 on the strength of 9.925s on the vault and in the floor exercise and a 9.9 on the uneven parallel bars. That's not a bad weekend's work for a freshman on the No. 1 team in the nation.
- Speaking of top-ranked Red and Black squads, Mark Schlabach has his alma mater's football team sitting atop his preseason poll . . . but the 'Dawgs will face the teams he has ranked No. 7 (Florida), No. 8 (Louisiana State), No. 10 (Arizona State), No. 14 (Tennessee), No. 16 (Auburn), and No. 24 (South Carolina). If the Red and Black make it to the national championship game, they'll have earned it.
- The Georgia men's tennis team posted its fourth shutout of the season with a 7-0 win over St. Bonaventure. The women's tennis team has worked its way up to a No. 2 national ranking and both sets of Bulldogs are scheduled to begin conference play on Friday.
- Sunday Morning Quarterback brought it to my attention, although Orson mentioned it, as well: Tony Kornheiser took time out from discussing "American Idol" to bash webloggers. Quoth the Kornheiser:
In fact, in fact, if a huge dumpster landed on their mother's house, and got all the way into the basement and crushed them, nobody would care. Nobody would miss them. They provide nothing good, no service that's any good at all. They, they are, they are, they are sucking mole rats, and that's the nicest I can be to them. But because, because they have a name, or, you know, because they get feedback from others, you know, they think they're very important.
O.K., seriously, are we back to this again?
Never mind the fact that a guy who spends as much time as Kornheiser does speaking on-air really ought to be able to express himself verbally without stammering like Hugh Grant in a romantic comedy so bad even he's embarrassed to be in it. Never mind the fact that Americans haven't "watch[ed] radio" since Edgar Bergen sat in a studio with a dummy on his knee and moved his lips while performing a ventriloquist act that the audience couldn't see. (Don't try thinking about that or you'll give yourself an aneurysm.)
Can the punditocracy please come up with some new material? Yeah, O.K., we get it; commentators who allowed their reporting skills to atrophy after they stopped being journalists and became talking heads (or columnists) are threatened by the rise of new media, despite the fact that the lines dividing the establishment from the insurgency increasingly are blurred, so they trot out tired stereotypes that bear little resemblance to reality. Can someone please have Trev Alberts explain this to Tony Kornheiser?
Oh, and Tony . . . before you start giving bloggers a hard time about how insignificant we are, why don't you ask Texas Rangers closer C.J. Wilson whether he thinks Lone Star Ball is an important weblog?
While you're at it, there, Kornheiser, answer me this: is it really true that we provide "no service that's any good at all"?
Go 'Dawgs!