Pantsless Predictions: Speed Dating

Since the paying job has thrown a huge wrench in my plans for blogging about Georgia's record this year, it looks like I'm forced to do a quick run-down instead of the usual mediocre analysis and garbage thoughts.

Thus far I've got us a 2-1 with a victories over U-LaFa and Arkansas. The sole loss coming at the hands of the Gamecocks. From here on out, here's what I'm thinking:


@Mississippi State - 9/25
Win.

Don't get me wrong, Dan Mullen is a great coach and will upset a team or two this year but it won't be the Dawgs. Fun fact: The last time UGA lost to Mississippi State there was no such thing as Wheel of Fortune...that's a long-ass time, folks. Dawgs win.


@Colorado - 10/2
Win.

"We won't have Joe Cox around to save Matthew Stafford's backside this time!" How weird was that to read? If you're like me you remember nothing about the Colorado game except we won by the skin of our teeth. Stafford played a stinker and Joe Cox saved the day. We'll be good, lets just hope we've got some oxygen tanks around for the big guys. Dawgs win.


Tennessee - 10/9
Win.

It's not about Lane Kiffin. It's not about the egg we laid last year. It's not about Da'Rick Rogers. It's about Vince Dooley "subtly and very conservatively" wearing something orange. Derek Dooley is a little snot and we will not lose this one. WILL. NOT. LOSE. Dawgs win big.


Vandy - 10/16
Win.

Everyone loves Bobby Johnson's replacement. Hopefully he learns his role early. Dawgs win.


@Kentucky - 10/23
Win?

Folks are calling this an upset game. I don't see it. I was at the pathetic display in Athens last year and it was embarrassing. Other than the last quarter, UGA outplayed Kentucky by leaps and bounds. Orson Charles had a banner day against the Wildcats last year and appeared to not get any touches in the second 1/2. Mike Bobo must have been fun to play NBA Jam against in the early 90's, God forbid he get the ball to anyone who's "ON FIRE". Dawgs win, why not.


Florida - 10/30
Loss.

I know nothing about how well our team will perform in this game. I see no reason to assume our team of new guys will beat their team of new guys. As I stated before I started making picks, I'm trying to play it safe this year...why not presume a loss and if we win say you knew all along we were gonna win? Dawgs "lose".


Idaho State - 11/6
Win.

Yawn. Dawgs win, this is the game to bring your toddlers and younger kids to...mark it down. Cheap, easy to find tickets, friendly-competitive atmosphere.


@OurBarn - 11/13
Loss.

We've beat Auburn for 4 straight years. I'd love to make it a .500 series (Auburn leads 53-52-8), but there is a small part of me that thinks we'll flop on this one as Auburn slowly becomes more competitive in the SEC. Therefore, I'll play it safe again and assume we lose against a hated rival. Dogs lose, but we'll finally get a bye week after a LOOOOOOONG stretch of tough football.


Kick back, relax, fire up the ELO, and watch the Egg Bowl...it's Bye Week, playa!




(cue Kernkraft 400, its time for...)
Georgia Tech - 11/27
Win.

Regardless of anything you hear from Heather Dinich, Georgia's rookie QB will probably have a good idea of how to play football by the LAST GAME OF THE SEASON. New defenses on both sides, but they are still Georgia Tech...so we win by default. 9 of 10. GO DAWGS! (Even if we've already got a new Uga mascot by this game, it might not hurt to bring Russ out with him just for good measure.)


Dawgs finish the regular season 9-3. Call it a 10-win season after the bowl game and the Dawgs keep the win-train rolling into an SEC Championship in 2011. Bank on it.

Farewell, David Hale

I believe it was somewhere around Blogging Pantsless' 1 year anniversary. I'd gotten to the point where I felt I was pretty hot s#*% because I was averaging somewhere between 60-70 UNIQUE hits per day.

I don't remember what exactly I posted that day, but I saw my counter jump by 500 hits over the course of morning to noon. I immediately went to my log of referrals and saw 499 of them had come from David Hale's Bulldogs Blog.
My first thought was to write a post thanking him for the link and throwing a week's worth of traffic my way in one morning. My second thought was I probably shouldn't call opposing team's star players "gay" anymore if I'm going to be getting serious about this blogging non-sense.

But as it turned out, most Georgia fans are just as juvenile as I and enjoy the occasional name-calling so I kept it up. Though, I can't say how many...IF ANY, of my current readers came from being linked by David that day. But I can tell you his referral of Blogging Pantsless did A LOT toward motivating me to keep this train rolling. So for that, Mr. Hale...

...WE SALUTE YOU!

I say it's one of the South's greatest losses since General Bobby Lee. But have fun up in Philthadelphia covering those good for nothin' Philthies. I wish you mountains of prosperity, but may your baseball team lose EVERY SINGLE GAME until the franchise ships off to Las Vegas as a new team. God Speed, David. You will be missed around these parts.

UGA/Tenn Arrest-off 2010!

Nothing took the spotlight off Damon Evans like the word-play associated with the arrest of Da'Rick Rogers and his band of merry outlaws.

Not to be outdone, Dontavious Jackson and Tavarres King, recent graduates from the Damon Evans School of Decision Making, saw a golden opportunity to get UGA athletics back in the headlines.

I know many of you might look at these headlines and shake your head thinking, "What has become of our beloved Bulldogs?" But I tell you, dear friends, if this formula holds true:

(Alcohol Arrests)-(Violent Crime)/non-starters > 0 = Futball Excelsiorz!

2010 looks to be a great year for the Dawgs. I hate losing players to athletic suspensions, and you definitely want your top talent against SEC opponents, but we didn't have any off-season arrests last Summer. This year our freakin' Athletic Director got canned for getting his swerve on (double entendre).

How can you not expect great things this year?!?

Where that little snot, Derrick Dooley made his mistake was thinking that face-stomping an off-duty cop increases team talent. That's a first-year SEC coach's mistake. Veterans like Coach Richt know non-violent crimes (MIPs, DUIs, beating up hospital signage, Emerging from alleys, and other scooter-related offenses) are where it's at. Bottom line, if you can't associate The Who's, Quadrophenia album cover to the offense...it probably won't make you play better.

I think it'll be interesting to see what Dooley does with Da'Rick who essentially MADE his recruiting class. You can bet your bottom dollar he's hoping for anything that allows him to pin this all on Darren Myles (who has already been dismissed) so he has reason to suspend Rogers for the opener against Tennessee-Martin. You want your 5-star recruits to learn their lesson before Oregon comes to town in week 2...pptptttt!

Either way, lets get through the remaining 54 days and take the field September 4th with the rest of our team, back-ups included, intact. GO DAWGS!

Oh Artie, How the Mighty Have Fallen

Completely unrelated to football, but I saw this story and couldn't help but feel disappointed.

Bob Saget's comic masterpiece, Dirty Work, came out when I was in high school.

That movie made me laugh for years after and was one of the often quoted jokes among friends even through college. Though I haven't been a fan of anything Artie Lang has done since then (especially his heroin addiction), I always remember him as Sam McKenna from Dirty Work.

That's why it's sad (for me) to hear he tried to kill himself recently. He's obviously got some demons he needs to work out in his life, but stabbing himself 9 times is an indication he needs some help.

Here's hoping Artie gets his life together and this whole event makes him appreciate the kind of talent he is capable of. In honor of the greatness of Mr. Lang, here's a clip from Dirty Work.

The SEC's Brave New World

Since an Aldous Huxley reference would be a little cliche I'll go with a STYX album instead.

As many of you have already heard from here, here, here, and here there's a new sheriff in town and his name is Horse Sh*t.

I'll readily admit I haven't analyzed this stuff under a microscope but from what I gather unlicensed media cannot post clips, interviews, shower-scenes, etc... from SEC football. I take this to mean no more YouTube collaborations from bloggers and Sunday Morning Quarterbacks (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Being that I had some great ideas for this season, I'm a little irritated at these new restrictions but I think I might have a tip for those who are interested.

Last year I bought some software called, Dazzle, from a local electronics store called Micro Center for approximately $75. This software allows you to record football games or TV shows to your DVR and then run an A/V line out to a USB cable where you can download and edit them with your computer. Needless to say I had a blast with this stuff and my levels of self-gratification from doing stupid stuff such as this...
...were at an all-time high.

But I quickly learned thanks to handy little notices like this one:

"This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG. The audio has been disabled."

...you don't tag your background music unless you want Eddie Van Halen's piss-on to write you an ugly note about using copyrighted music.

So that's my suggestion if you still want to create your own tributes to SEC football by making highlight collages. Pick up some capture/edit software and as long as you don't tag any of the stuff hopefully no one will find it by doing a basic search. Will it make it difficult for the average fan to find? Absolutely, but if nothing else it won't completely disable your ability to have a little fun due to the SEC's new Fairness Doctrine.

Per David Hale:

...I’m guessing after your favorite team gets spanked by a rival, you’re not looking for the watered-down version of what happened. Perhaps you really don’t care where the information is coming from, but my guess is that you value quality journalism a lot more than they give you credit for. Maybe you go to one place and one place only for your news. But I’d be willing to bet the majority of you have gotten used to being able to surf a few dozen sites to get a broad view of Georgia football.

I'd agree with that, my first stop after a Georgia win is to get the quality journalism first and foremost. I want to know the stats, I want to know where we lagged, and I want to relive moment after glorious moment of a victory. Then after I've had my fill of people who obtained degrees in Journalism I want to hear from the Business majors. Yeah, I know it's not the most politically correct crowd, but if I want to see Tim Tebow highlights set to a Wham! song with the word "queer" plastered on the screen I think (as an apple-pie eatin' American) I have that right!

But in all seriousness, would you expect otherwise? It's the same type of money-grab free-for-all that replaced Mr. Toad's Wild Ride with Winnie the Pooh Takes a Dump on Your Soul at the Magic Kingdom. Mo Money, Mo Problems says I and it doesn't appear to be getting better anytime soon. The awful part is, with the free-market, this still falls well within what fans are willing to put-up with in order to get their college football fix. The crux of the biscuit isn't the apostrophe, it's where the media deal decides it can squeeze more limitations into the picture. THAT should be about as fun to watch as Mississippi State/Auburn 2008 highlights.

Woooah Nelly, here we go.

Remember this time last year? When preseason polls and speculation had our boys sitting on top of the world. It wasn't a question of IF a Georgia player would win the Heisman...it was a matter of which one. The most modest fans had us losing 2 games, but those were the same downers who told not to take Tech for granted this year...PPPptptttttttt!

Alrighty, here we are one year older and one year wiser. Our last National Title was 1 year ago + 28 years. Our golden boys got a little tarnished, but that was before Maria Sharapova was here to give makeovers. Debbie Downer got her 2 loses +1...and Tech...eh, we can't wear our red & black without having 42-45 shouted at us (funny how they can stop their Second Life long enough to heckle in their first life with that stunning 1-7 record over the last 8 years).

But I've officially taken my step into reality for the 2009 season which is still so far out of reach dummies like me can do nothing better with their time than speculate. What is a Dawg fan to do after being told all last Summer he is invincible only to get 3 swift kicks to the sack? Well this year's episode of the Preseason Pantsless Preview will be served with a cold-fresh side of pessimism and you're gonna like it. Urban Meyer will not be betting me I'm a good enough dentist to pull my own tooth out this year.

My hope this week, with a slightly diminished workload, is to let you guys know where I'm expecting our team to be this year. I'll give you my win-loss predictions with point spreads so you'll know how much to withdrawl from the bank on your way to The Bellagio. This could get ugly, boys...I hope your sitting down.

Go Dawgs.

(occurances that shall not be named)

As many of you know I'm a slightly superstitious person (see GameDay traditions) and I hesitate to bring this up for fear of jinxing it. Therefore I will refer to them as (occurrences that shall not be named).

You know what I'm talking about, and it is still early yet. But I think the best way for the Georgia Bulldogs to prove they are serious about improving team discipline would be to completely eliminate off-season (occurrences that shall not be named).

Of course, like I said, it's still WAAAAAY early. But the fact Everyday Should Be Saturday already has their Fulmer Cup scoreboard up again shows it's openseason for off-season (occurrences that shall not be named).

A tall order? You're damn right it is, do you know how tough it is not to jay-walk in Athens?!? But the coaching staff has gone so far beyond beating a dead horse on the penalties/discipline issue it is nearing the point of necrophilia and molestation charges. There is a fiery red-headed team leader who is stepping up to take charge and will play Little Spoon to no one...well...except.......you know.


So that's my challenge to the Dawgs this Summer. Focus on your game, not your downtime. This will prevent off-season (occurrences that shall not be named) AND improve your skills/talent. If you want to party, party in the weight room. You can do either to the point of vomiting...believe me I know because I puked in the bushes outside the Marietta Salvation Army office when I thought I could hang with my wife's bootcamp class.

Our 2009 class is finalized, we got who we wanted. Now it's time for the coaching staff and upperclassmen to step up and mould these guys into NO LIMIT SOUL-JA's so we don't get our fudge packed when I make a trip down to Jacksonville this Fall.

GATA!



...also Happy Friday, suckers.