It is Football Eve here in the Peach State (unless you count Georgia Tech playing last night, which I don’t; if a football game is played on a Thursday, and it isn’t on my T.V., it didn’t really happen), but, egad, is there a lot of news to report before we get down to the serious business of game day.
Accordingly, you need to buckle up, hold on, and sit tight, because I’m going to run you through these pretty quickly. This is what we were getting ready for while we were doing mat drills and running gassers and huffing and puffing our way through two-a-days, people. Oh, wait; the team did that . . . we’re just slackers who spend too much time on the internet. Still, though:
- Surely you have noticed by now, but, just in case you hadn’t, the musical stylings of Matt Hinton (formerly of Sunday Morning Quarterback) now are available at Dr. Saturday. Until the inevitable Orson Swindle/Matt Hinton merger produces a weblog called "Every Doctor Should Be Dr. Saturday," Matt is joined there by Doug Gillett and by everyone’s favorite ubiquitous Tennessee fan, Holly Anderson. Be sure to drop in for regular visits, but feel free to ignore Doug when he writes about politics. (Doug, man, trust me when I tell you: the country will be governed badly no matter which way the presidential election goes, but Georgia winning makes life immediately and demonstrably better, so rest assured that the first Saturday in November matters immeasurably more than the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Some sense of the two events’ relative significance may be gleaned from the fact that the Sugar Bowl takes place four times more frequently than the Iowa caucuses.) Also, feel free to overlook Matt’s recurring (and increasingly disturbing) "Grey’s Anatomy" references. (Dude! "Grey’s Anatomy" is so 2006!) In any case, we wish the best of luck to Matt, Doug, and Holly.
- Speaking of Doug, his BlogPoll roundtable roundup is up and well worth taking the time to read.
- Time is short, but it’s not too late to go vote for the fellows at The Pigskin Podcast, who had me on the show this week.
- I regularly get asked whether Dawg Sports is available through an RSS feed and I invariably offer the same answer: "What’s an RSS feed?" I still don’t know what one is, but, for those of you who want that sort of thing, click here and the same magic gnomes who make rapid exact copies of documents fed into my office fax machine and run them down the phone lines to the other end will ride their unicorns to your Blackberry or your iPod or whatever and sprinkle the pixie dust that gets the content from me to you. (I apologize if that description of the process was overly technical.)
Or, you know, you could just come up to me at the game tomorrow and ask me what I wrote this week, or use a computer, or something.
- The blog roll is in serious need of updating, but, until that free time I sent away for arrives via U.P.S., it will have to suffice for me to alert you to the ongoing expansion of the Dawgosphere, as evidenced by the existence of The Dawgsden, The Hobnail Boot, Horton’s Hob-Nailed Boot, and the exquisitely well-named Bubba ‘n Earl Sittin’ on the 50. (We’re happy to have y’all, fellows, but let’s not forget that Larry had a lot of great calls before the 2001 Tennessee game. A weblog called "Look at the Sugar Falling Out of the Sky" or "Man, Is There Going to be Some Property Destroyed Tonight" wouldn’t be altogether out of line. I’m just saying.) Also, I have been more than merely remiss in failing to point out the fine work of The Macon Telegraph’s David Hale and the welcome return of David Ching to a newspaper near you. Bulldog Nation is well served by the professional journalists who operate weblogs in our environs and we should be grateful for the fine work being done by the sports reporters without whom we would just be a bunch of yammering yahoos. More than we already are, I mean.
- As long as I’m highlighting the fine work being done out there, I feel obligated to call your attention to "The Cheap Seats," a weekly internet-based program covering Georgia football. As many of you know, my brother-in-law, Travis Rice, and I spent six years doing a weekly show on local cable called "The Dawg Show," which was exactly what it sounds like it was. (In a way, Dawg Sports arose out of that experience, as much of the material I prepared for the show wouldn’t fit into a single 22-minute telecast, so I wound up sending out what I had written in the form of e-mails, which went to an increasingly burgeoning list of readers until a friend of a friend forwarded it along to Paul Westerdawg, who wrote to me and said, "You should really start a weblog.") Anyway, I appreciate the work that goes into a fan-based television show, so I encourage you to give Jason and Matt Gilley’s labor of love a look.
- What is event tagging? Find out here and use it in good health as another in a lengthening list of user-friendly advances designed to make SB Nation your one-stop source for sports information, commentary, and conversation. Except for all those other sites I just got done telling you to visit, I mean.
- Speaking of which---sports content here on your favorite blogging network, that is---CW gave a fair assessment of Georgia’s national title chances and Richard Pittman provided the most compelling paean to three guys named Dave with worse A.V. equipment than your high school had out of all those the blogosphere has had to offer, which is saying something, since the aforementioned Orson Swindle and Matt Hinton also chimed in upon the subject.
- Over at ESPN, Ted Bauer has something up about Herschel. Our policy here at Dawg Sports is clear: write something nice about Herschel and you get a link, no questions asked. Also, Ted called my attention to Chelsea Lipocky, who will be representing Bulldog Nation at the Worldwide Leader this fall.
- Last but by no means least, the recent discussion of fight songs here at Dawg Sports moved J.W. to post links to some videos pertaining to that selfsame subject. Watch ‘em, learn ‘em, sing ‘em at the game tomorrow.
That’s all for now. I’ll see y’all in Athens tomorrow. MaconDawg already beat me to the punch (line), but I ain’t proud, so I’ll recycle it, anyway: I’ll be the loud one in the Knowshon Rockwell Moreno jersey. If your blood runs red and black, get on your feet and make some Sanford Stadium noise for your No. 1-ranked Georgia Bulldogs! (No, not right there where you are; I mean in the stands and everything. Unless you’re sitting in the stadium reading this on your RSS reader, in which case, perfect timing.)
It’s finally football season! I can’t wait.
Go ’Dawgs!