Here, without undue ado, are a few points for you to ponder this fine Tuesday afternoon:
- New Florida Gators head coach Will Muschamp has turned to the NFL in assembling his coaching staff, and "Seattle Seahawks defensive line coach Dan Quinn will be Florida's defensive coordinator. Like new offensive coordinator Charlie Weis with the Kansas City Chiefs, Quinn will remain with the Seahawks as long as they are in the NFL playoffs." National Signing Day is February 2. Super Bowl Sunday is February 6. Here’s hoping the new Florida assistants’ teams all go deep into the playoffs.
- Are Mark Fox’s Bulldogs NCAA Tournament-bound? SB Nation’s Chris Dobbertean thinks so, projecting the Hoop Hounds as an eleven seed in the Chicago Pod of the Southeast Region. No, I don’t understand how a Southeast Region can have a Chicago Pod, either, but what else are they going to do, call the regions "Leaders" and "Legends"?
- Jay Clark’s Gym Dogs are about to get their season underway, albeit without freshman Kaylan Earls. While I respect the need of the powers that be in Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall to put the best face possible on the situation, the litany of 2010 achievements that includes "an All-America season by senior Courtney McCool, a perfect 6-0 home record, top-10 final rankings in all four events, the highest overall team score in the SEC, the only perfect ‘10’ of the season in the SEC, the No. 1 attendance average in the nation, and a regular-season win over the eventual national champion UCLA Bruins" ignores the reality that last season was a disaster and the Red and Black need to find a way to get back on top this season. (Yes, I realize that I have just opened myself up to a rash of "fire Mark Richt" comments, but expectations for the Georgia gymnastics team are even higher than those for the Georgia football team, if such a thing may be imagined.)
- Speaking of Coach Richt, a Michigan fan recently offered an insight that I believe sheds some light on the competing schools of thought on the Georgia football program and the need, vel non, for an immediate change at the top:
I have a rough memory from something in college where we discussed three different paradigms of thinking. The trick was to identify which type your audience is and use his kind of reasoning: if you have a "believer," then discuss agreed-upon moral precepts; if it's a pragmatist make analogies to previous "successes," and follow these proven-successful decision-making processes; if it's a scientist, make the case with data and then argue against yourself until you've shown you can exhaust rebuttals. Nobody is just one or the other, but you're probably aligned more toward one and/or against one.
If I am reading the situation correctly, the believers favor giving Coach Richt another year, the pragmatists favor firing Coach Richt now, and the scientists are on the fence. I may have the pragmatists and the scientists reversed, though. - I have a theory on how to make the Bulldogs better in the 2011 football season. I think it generally is agreed that Tampa native Aaron Murray’s two worst games were against Florida and Central Florida, in which he threw three touchdown passes and five interceptions. Maybe the kid is just spooked by facing a home state team. Could we try telling him that any opponents we face from the Sunshine State are from, I don’t know, Connecticut or someplace instead?
Those are a few of my thoughts. Feel free to share some of yours in the comments below.
Go ‘Dawgs!