Only one week after his season-ending knee injury, and boy, do the Georgia Bulldogs miss Nick Chubb already. It's time to stop pretending this 2015 football team is remotely good.

Missouri 6, UGA 9. Nothing but field goals. Quite frankly, UGA didn't really deserve this, as their game-winning kick came only after the officials gifted the team with a truly mystifying pass interference call on a play that Plastic Man couldn't have cought. Greyson Lambert's 3rd-down pass was characteristically awful, and I have to assume that the officials assumed that a pass 5 yards out of bounds was as on-target as he could make it. Maybe they just wanted this terrible game over so we could all get home before dawn.

I probably should have expected this sort of game. UGA was missing Chubb, and Missouri suspended its starting quarterback two weeks ago. Add in the terrible games UGA played back-to-back in the past two weeks against Alabama and Tennessee, and I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that NONE of the season ticket holders beside or in front of me came to the game. You know it's sad when the regular fans don't care to show up for a homecoming night game against the reigning SEC East Champions.

Anyway. I hope the team enjoys this ugly victory. UGA heads to Florida in two weeks, and 9 points won't win anything in Jacksonville.

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UGA crushed South Carolina. Then Alabama lost to Mississippi. Vegas declared No. 13 Alabama an underdog against the No. 8 Bulldogs. All UGA had to do was show up and play.

They didn't.

Final score: Alabama 38, UGA 10. It wasn't ever really that close.

In all the UGA games I've ever watched, never have I seen the team collapse like they did today in the steady rain. After clawing to a 3-3 tie, it was like they ran out of fight at the start of the 2nd quarter. Alabama proceeded to score a rushing touchdown, block a punt for a touchdown, pass for a touchdown, and come back from halftime to intercept the ball and ran it back for a touchdown. All UGA did was stare at their own navels. The only reason the score wasn't worse was because Nick Saban didn't need it to be.

UGA did nothing right. Defensive backs were out of position on every play. Quarterback Greyson Lambert couldn't decide who to throw to and froze up. Relief quarterback Brice Ramsey couldn't manage to throw to his own team. But the worst of it all was Coach Richt and his coaching staff:

• Calling a majority of passes and not runs even before the game was out of hand. (The Bulldog's two scoring drives were the only two possessions in the game when UGA called more runs than passes. That was not a coincidence. Maybe I was too hard on Mike Bobo all these years; Bobo is gone but UGA is still up to its same old sour tricks.)
• Continuing to get special teams wrong. (Time outs to ice your own field goal kickers? Punt protection formations that block no one? Sigh.)
• Worst of all, completely failing to prepare their kids for yet another big game. (Of everyone in the stadium before kickoff, no one seemed more confident in a UGA victory than the UGA players. That swagger sure disappeared in a hurry once they went down by one touchdown!)

Let this be known as the game that finally destroyed my faith in Mark Richt. I mean, I still like the guy. I think he's good for the University and its student athletes. I certainly don't want him to be fired. (Some things, like academic performance and ethics, are more important than wins and SEC Championships.) LSU in 2011? Alabama in 2012? Vanderbilt in 2013? Florida in 2014? Alabama in 2015? I just need to accept that we're never going to win any "big games" while he's the head football coach.

I admit that I didn't go to last week's game. I was sick with a cold and didn't want to endure the rain just to see UGA beat up on an inferior opponent like Southern University. I regret that decision now. If I want to see UGA win, those are the only games I should go to. Inferior opponents are the only ones we can beat.

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A full house showed up for this evening game. We were hoping for a win. I doubt any of us were expecting a blow out. Final score: South Carolina 20, UGA 52.

Losing to South Carolina last year derailed our season, so it was especially delicious taking the wood to Steve Spurrier's 2015 team. That they appeared light on talent was the usual problem for USC. That they were also undisciplined was less common for a Spurrier team. Is this year an aberration, or is Spurrier losing his touch? I guess we'll find out when we meet in 2016.

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We left the season-opening University Louisiana Monroe/UGA football game with 9:54 remaining in the fourth quarter. But so did everyone else. The game was called after its second lightning delay with Georgia ahead, 14-51.

The first lightning delay was called at 8:35 remaining in the third (ULM 14, UGA 35), and the game wouldn't restart for another hour. Friend Randy and I took shelter in the stadium concourse while it rained. It was hard to tell how long it might last. Even in the middle of the heaviest downpour, Randy's WeatherBug® app insisted that there was a 0% chance of rain in Athens, GA.

The second delay was called completely unexpectedly during a period of sunny skies. The few of us left in the stadium watched as the two head coaches met on the 20-yard line. It was obvious to all of us what they must be talking about. Sure enough, they soon announced that the game was called. UGA win!

I've been a season ticket holder for over a decade, and this was the first time I've seen either a lightning delay or a called game. Just when you think you've seen everything....

(P.S. Today's game was also the unofficial debut of Uga X-elect, Que. I didn't know this before I arrived at the game, but when I saw that the mascot had no brown spot on his rump, I knew it wasn't Russ. I hope that the rest of Que's tenure produces many more games just as memorable.)

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According to the Athens Banner-Herald, two men have been arrested for shooting a deer outside Watkinsville, Georgia. Sadly, the deer seems to have been an innocent casualty in the ongoing uprising between man and deer.

Bucky, as the friendly deer was known, was hanging out in a private field eating grass with tame cattle when the two men shot and killed him. From a public road. At night. It would be easy to call this a cowardly act, but that kind of assumption about the motives of others is likely what got Bucky killed in the first place.

Maybe the shooters thought they were doing the right thing. Someone had to defend those cows from the unwanted advances of an aggressive buck. The purity of the beef supply of the human race was at stake!

During wartime, it can sometimes be hard to differentiate the soldiers from the bystanders. It's easy to denigrate the enemy with slurs like "rackhead" or "grass-eater" then say "they all look alike to me" after killing a doe or fawn. But ignorance is no excuse for murder, even with the best of intentions.

Everyone is a victim in the Great Deer Uprising.

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Remember last year when Vanderbilt ended UGA's season with that last minute comeback in Nashville? Revenge accomplished.

I cannot tell a lie: we left in the 3rd quarter when Vanderbilt, down by 24 points, punted on 4th and 1. If Vanderbilt was willing to give up on the game, I didn't see any need to stick around for the 17-44 final.

No more home games until November, when Auburn comes to town. If the Tiger's 7-41 romp over LSU today was any indication, that's going to be a pretty good game.

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Well, that was closer than it should have been. Tennessee 32, UGA 35. Early in the 4th quarter, I marveled that the UGA defense had held an SEC opponent to 17 points. Then the Bulldogs reverted to form.

There were plenty of celebrities at the game. Peyton Manning was reportedly present, and several PGA golfers and actress Chloë Grace Moretz were introduced to the crowd. However, the guest of honor was Vince Dooley, who took over as head coach 50 seasons ago. Vince looked good and pleased to be back on the field. At halftime, the band spelled his name, and he mugged for the cameras with his family, friends, and former players.

I've never met Dooley myself, but I did know a student who in 2002 decided to walk into his office as Athletic Director to meet him. He got as far as Dooley's secretary who told him that Mr. Dooley was far too busy to meet anyone who didn't have an appointment. However, before the student could leave the office, Dooley stepped out of his office and signed the student's hat on the spot. Dooley didn't have to do that, and I think it says a lot about why Georgians like the man.

To honor Dooley, the Bulldogs won by the skin on their canine teeth, surviving a game of terrible play by quarterback Hutson Mason (I begin to worry that he's not very good: a qb who only looks at one receiver from snap to throw will not win many games) and some bizarrely self-imposed wounds. For example, UGA sent 13 men on the field for a punt return in the 4th quarter. Coaches noticed the overage and removed one man. Tweet! Illegal participation. The 5-yard penalty didn't give Tennessee a first down, so they lined up to kick again. This time, Georgia over compensated, sending only 10 men out on the field. Ouch.

It wasn't just Georgia making boneheaded decisions. The weather forecast called for overcast skies, so naturally I chose to forego my sun hat for the game. Two words: sun burn. Sigh.

But we won in the end, and that's what counts. Bring on Vanderbilt!

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UGA wasn't a very gracious host today, beating the visiting Troy University Trojans 66 to nothing.

Honestly, I left after UGA scored on their opening drive in the 3rd quarter, making it 52-0. I decided that I had better things to do than sit in the sun and wait out the game clock.

Biggest thing of note in the game was the presence of the blue Allstate net strung up in the far endzone. Don't think I've seen that in Athens before. (We also had a visit from former Dawg Terrell Davis, but I have seen that in Athens before!)

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No. 16 Clemson came to No. 12 UGA to start the season, and UGA was determined to avenge last year's 38-35 loss. Mission accomplished!

Clemson is still a good team, and they might have been better on the line than Georgia to start the game. However, they weren't as deep. Eventually, in the 4th quarter, the Bulldogs broke the game open, beating Clemson into submission with our relentlessly pounding running game.

Three things of note:

1. Todd Gurley. I mean, great balance, great strength, great vision. He scored 5 touchdowns, including one 100-yard kickoff return. In years to come, this is probably the game that we will all remember as Gurley's signature performance.

2. The crowd. I mean, people everywhere. Maybe because it was a 5:30 kickoff and no one felt compelled to wear white (red, red, red), or maybe it was because the game was a tie into the third, but there was a huge crowd with great energy. In years past, when the crowd has been excited, there's been an undercurrent of desperation or anxiety. Not tonight. Whether because expectations were low after Murray, or because we were playing a non-SEC opponent, whatever the reason: excitement without the fear. What a great way to open the season!

3. The heat! Hotest game I've ever been to. Kickoff temp in the mid-90s, humidity you could see, no breeze, and the sun hiding behind clouds so that your sweat didn't evaporate... brutal. I'm sure the heat is the main reason Clemson folded in the 4th, and I commend UGA trainers and coaching staff for getting our players ready to play and mostly cramp-free.

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We probably should have seen it coming. After the injury-plagued season the Bulldogs have had in 2013, it shouldn't surprise anyone to see Senior quarterback Aaron Murray be carried off the field of his final home game with a knee injury.

Otherwise, the game was all Georgia. Kentucky never put up anything amounting to a fight in this 56-10 rout. The biggest obstacle for the Dawgs was the cold. Boy was it cold!

The fans turned out despite the cold (and wind) to say goodbye to the departing seniors, including Aaron Murray. Poor kid. Friend Brian insisted on blaming Murray's knee injury on his decision not to slide on a play near the end of the first half with the score already out of reach. I prefer to blame a conditioning staff who have seen a disproportional number of kids in their care leave games with knee injuries this season. I'm no doctor, but when I see the top 6 offensive skill players miss playing time on the season with knee injuries, it seems to me that you're doing something wrong, guys.

(In fairness, there was a rule change this year that penalizes players for hitting helmets. I've heard that this has caused players to start tackling much lower, endangering knees. Maybe Georgia coaches have just been slow to adjust to this new style of defensive play. In any case, I expect better next year.)

Perhaps I should add that I overheard many fans lamenting the fact that UGA didn't wear black jerseys for the game. I didn't hear this rumor until the broadcasters discussed it on the pregame radio show. Who knows who started it. I'm glad the team wore their regular red jerseys. I don't think you should celebrate four years of hard teamwork by wearing someone else's jerseys.

With the 2013 home schedule in the books, I'd like to go on record as saying that this was probably the most talented Georgia team I've ever seen. If we hadn't been hit so badly by injuries, if the defense had managed to give up just one fewer touchdown per game, if the special teams hadn't played like retarded teams.... Oh, well. It was an exciting season anyway, with the game against LSU standing out as among the best I've ever seen in person.

Here's hoping that today's game won't be the last time we see Murray behind center for the Bulldogs. He'll be hard to replace.

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