Wednesday is upon us, though, technically, I’m not sure Wednesday counts as "hump day" if it falls in a four-day work week, and my office will be shutting down for Christmas as of the close of the business day tomorrow. Accordingly, I am bringing you the glad tidings and great joys associated with the Georgia Bulldogs for what will be my final time before taking off to celebrate the holidays. It is in that spirit that I urge you to pour a cup of the cold-weather beverage of your choice and settle in for this morning’s edition of Dawg Bites:
- After falling to Gonzaga at the buzzer on Monday night to open the Las Vegas Holiday Hoops Classic, Andy Landers’s Lady Bulldogs rebounded with a 63-49 win over Montana State in Tuesday evening’s Sin City matchup. Meanwhile, Mark Fox’s Hoop Hounds downed Mercer, 72-58, in Stegeman Coliseum last night. (My postgame wrapup will follow later in the day, incidentally.)
- Speaking of the Baptist Bears, it warrants mentioning that, last month, Mercer unveiled plans for, and broke ground on, its new football and lacrosse facility. Mercer, the alma mater of longtime Georgia coach Wally Butts, will revive the dormant gridiron program in Macon beginning in 2013, closing out a 70-year lacuna in the history of the school that provided Georgia with its first opponent in 1892. Hopefully, the Bears will appear on the Bulldogs’ schedule shortly after resuming play.
- Speaking of Georgia’s future football schedules, we’re still waiting for the release of the Bulldogs’ revised SEC slate, which Greg McGarity said would be released by Tuesday . . . Tuesday being yesterday. Hey, no hurry, people, it’s just college football, for crying out loud!
- Speaking of college football, folks can say all they like that we have too many bowl games, but they can’t say the bowl games we have are dull. Four games into the Division I-A postseason, we have seen Ohio (Ohio) score the go-ahead touchdown with 13 seconds remaining to win the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl by one point, Louisiana-Lafayette kick a 50-yard field goal with no time on the clock to win the New Orleans Bowl by one point, and Marshall score a touchdown with 30 seconds left to seal the deal in a Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl in which the Thundering Herd hitherto had held only a three-point lead. Question if you must whether the games are “meaningful,” but don’t tell me they don’t make for exciting football.
- Speaking of lower-tier gridiron programs, do you remember Coastal Carolina’s David Bennett, of “we need more dogs” fame? Well, he was fired by the Chanticleers, and he since has been replaced by millionaire Joe Moglia in a move akin to letting Phil Knight coach Oregon, letting Boone Pickens coach Oklahoma State, or letting Jerry Jones coach Dallas (assuming, of course, that Jerry Jones does not, in fact, coach Dallas). As a Georgia fan who recalls that George Cecil Woodruff, a successful Columbus businessman, coached our alma mater’s football program for a dollar a year, I’m not going to criticize hiring the wealthy, but, even so, this is an odd move. If Moglia was willing to put his money into the Coastal Carolina program, maybe he should’ve shelled out enough coin to permit Coach Bennett to fix his broken screen door, or perhaps even to move into a house that wasn’t across the street from a residence occupied by a dozen stray cats.
You are now up to speed, my friends. Feel free to go about your business filled with the spirit of the season, secure in the knowledge that God’s in His Heaven, the Bulldogs are on the upswing, and all is right with the world.
Go ‘Dawgs!