It’s Wednesday morning, and this is your wake-up call, Bulldog Nation! We live in a busy world, and, as Ferris Bueller warned us, you can miss a lot if you don’t slow down and pay attention, so this is your chance to grab a cup of coffee, take a deep breath, and get up to speed as we bring you today’s edition of Dawg Bites:
Ladies and gentlemen, your Georgia Bulldogs are ranked 19th in this week’s BlogPoll, putting the Red and Black ahead of both of their remaining legitimate opponents, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (ranked 21st) and the Auburn Tigers (effectively ranked 27th). So we’ve got that going for us.
Doug Gillett is a respected colleague and a good friend, but, from time to time, we have been known to disagree. For instance, he says last Saturday’s Cocktail Party win doesn’t represent a sea change in the rivalry, and that we shouldn’t be ordering commemorative T-shirts. I say it does and we should! (Doug, dude, let a fellow make a buck, will you? #OccupyDuvalStreet) On the plus side, at least Florida fans view Georgia as their "arch rival" again.
Registering four sacks against the Florida Gators earned Jarvis Jones honors as the national defensive player of the week and began speculation over whether the redshirt sophomore will be entering the 2012 NFL Draft. When explaining why he will not be turning pro early, Jones said: "I love the University. I love the guys here. I love being in Athens. . . . And I love my coaches, too." No word whether he loves his truck, though I’m hoping he demonstrates a couple of weeks from now how Auburn sucks.
Speaking of the Auburn game, CBS is exercising its six-day option on the November 12 SEC slate, which means we won’t know until Sunday when the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry will kick off. The game could get underway at 12:00 or 3:30 on CBS, or at 6:00 or 7:45 on the ESPN family of networks. (All times Eastern, incidentally.) The Plainsmen are liable to be sluggish for a noon kickoff in Athens, which will be 11:00 a.m. body standard time for the Tigers, but I’d love to see a 2007 blackout-like atmosphere for a night game against Auburn between the hedges. Please note: I do not want to see the team break out the black jerseys or any other specialty uniform gimmicks . . . but, if it’s a night game, I may wear my Knowshon Rockwell Moreno blackout jersey to Sanford Stadium.
The news isn’t all good, though: Dallas Lee was lost for the remainder of the regular season with a broken right fibula, though he could return for the bowl game. Kenarious Gates most likely will replace Lee at guard in the meantime, with David Andrews now officially the sixth man on the Georgia offensive line. Likewise, as tankertoad noted, Malcolm Mitchell will be held out of Saturday’s game, Richard Samuel also has been lost for the remainder of the regular season due to ankle surgery, and Isaiah Crowell, Ken Malcome, and Carlton Thomas all will serve one-game suspensions Saturday for unspecified team rules violations, reported by snide, sketchily-sourced, self-referencing ESPN pieces as failed drug tests, though, if so, this would be a deviation from the University’s strict anti-drug policy as it was applied two years ago, before the disciplinary crackdown. (Though there were some questions about the timing of the suspensions, Greg McGarity unequivocally shot down the accusation that the suspensions were delayed until after the Florida game.) In any event, dang. Oh, and be sure not to skim the depth chart too quickly when attempting to figure out which tailbacks will take the field this weekend; when I initially glanced at the name of walk-on Kyle Karempelis, I briefly thought I was playing running back for the Bulldogs, which I so totally would do!
Bill Connelly has put the "Mark Richt hot seat" chatter to rest. Bill is an SEC blogger---or he will be any minute now---so you can trust what he tells you.
Turning now to non-football news, we note that both Bulldog cross country teams posted strong showings at the SEC Championships on Monday, highlighted by the Georgia men riding a pair of top ten individual finishes to a third-place standing behind runner-up Florida (by a two-point margin) and champion Arkansas (which won its 19th conference title in 21 years; Arkansans are so fast because Arkansas is the Natural State, and life in the Natural State is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, so they spend a lot of time running from wild beasts, like razorback hogs). The Georgia women finished fourth, allowing the Red and Black to combine for their best SEC cross-country standing since 2006.
Andy Landers’s Lady Bulldogs, ranked 13th in the preseason AP women’s college basketball poll, opened their 2011 campaign on Tuesday night with a 72-38 win in a exhibition game over West Georgia, about which all you really need to know is Moses riding a donkey up to a drive-through, 72-38?!?! The Georgia women’s basketball team will start playing games for real on Veterans Day, when the Red and Black host Texas Christian in Stegeman Coliseum at 6:00 p.m. Meanwhile, Mark Fox’s men will play an exhibition game against Morehouse on Friday before welcoming Wofford to the Classic City on November 11 at 8:00 p.m. (All times still Eastern, by the way.)
Finally, if you’re still trying to figure out how exactly the ‘Dawgs lost to Boise State, we may have our answer: Georgia played the Broncos in a bowl-like setting, and BSU may be a Big East team. We’ve struggled against those in bowl games, you know. Yeah, it galls me, too.
That may or may not be all the news that’s fit to print, but, at any rate, it’s all the news that fits, so finish that cup of coffee, dive into your day, and prepare yourself for the start of the Brandon Harton era between the hedges this Saturday!
Go ‘Dawgs!