Showing 1 - 10 of 389 posts found matching keyword: football

Again, I had tickets to today's Georgia's home football game, and again I did not go. The weather was nice, and I have no complaints about a 4:30 kickoff time, but I just could not get excited about driving five hours through Metro Atlanta traffic to watch UGA play five-touchdown underdog Mississippi State.

UGA hasn't lost a home football game since 2019. While I don't wish for them to lose, I also don't ever really care to watch uncompetitive football games. Where does that leave me? Answer: I worked through the first half and napped through the rest. If I gotta be bored, better to be bored on my own couch.

I know that every year I waffle about whether I'm going to renew my season tickets, but the writing really might be legible on the wall now. There are three home games left on the season, and I might go to two of them, mostly because I enjoy watching Tennessee and Ga Tech lose. That's not a great return on the $1,518 I paid for 2024 season tickets. I'm starting to think I'll be better served to start putting saving that money into, well, just about anything else.

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UGA is playing at home today against Auburn... for Homecoming.

Auburn.

For Homecoming.

That really should excite me... but it doesn't. I just can't make myself care enough to spend a whole day driving to Athens and back for a sunburn.

Last year, I was in a funk in October and still had fun at the Kentucky game. So maybe I should go. Maybe I would have fun. But I just cannot imagine that this game ends up entertaining.

It's not you Bulldogs; it's me. Okay, after the last few weeks, maybe it is a little bit you. But don't take it personally. It is mostly me.

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In 2023, only 22% of all NFL kickoffs were returned. That's boring TV, so for 2024, the NFL revamped the rules, creating a complicated mess they are marketing as the Dynamic Kickoff™ rule. So far, it's working. After 3 weeks, nearly 33% of all NFL kickoffs have been returned. Take that, going to the kitchen for snacks!

What is supposed to make the Dynamic Kickoff™ dynamic is that teams are forced to return the kicks. Assuming the ball lands in the newly designated Landing Zone™ (between the 20 yard line and the goal line), the new rules say you have to try and advance it. (Well, you have to unless the ball rolls into the end zone where you still cannot fair catch it but can surrender yourself to move your starting position out to the leading edge of the Landing Zone™. Oh, the technicality!)

However, if you are the kicking team, why would you ever willingly give your opponent the opportunity to return the kick? If a ball lands in the end zone or deeper, the receiving team gets the ball at the 30 yard line. This season NFL teams are averaging 26.8 yards per return (which is a smidgeon better than the 23 yards teams averaged in all of 2023 and a smidgeon worse than the 28.7 they averaged in 2022). Therefore, putting the ball on the 30 yard line is only a marginally worse outcome than the expected average return and has the added bonus of never surrendering a kickoff return touchdown.

As a matter of fact, even when touchbacks only brought the ball out to the 20, kicking it out of the back of the end zone was always the better strategy. A 0% chance of giving up a touchdown is always the best play, and the Dynamic Kickoff™ hasn't changed that calculation. I suspect that the 11% increase in returns is some combination of teams testing the new rules and kickers who are not capable of reliably hitting the end zone from 65 yards away. The first group is made of coaches who trust their guts over math; the second is a bunch of players who should be replaced with stronger legs. I expect both will get whittled down as the year goes on.

If it's not clear yet, I think the Dynamic Kickoff™ is a lousy rule. It does little to encourage teams to attempt returns and does nothing to repair the long-broken onside kick that has decimated the drama of late game come-from-behind attempts. It's a "solution" instituted by traditionalists who recognize a problem (danger of injuring players + boring mandatory change-of-possession plays) but are unwilling to take real steps to fix it. What it has given us is 11% more returns to the 26 yard line. Anyone need anything from the kitchen while I'm up?

UPDATE 10/1: Though 4 weeks, 18 of 32 NFL teams have a better kickoff touchback percentage than they had in 2023. Boy, that new Dynamic Kickoff rule is really doing it's job!

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"LIMITED EDITION! UGA BOBBLEHEAD SERIES," yells the headline in my inbox. The picture of 3 bulldog bobbleheads is accompanied by the number $300, which seems a bit expensive for three bobbleheads. The good news is that the fine print assures me that if I buy a whole bundle of 11, I can save $30!

That email, from "Georgia Athletics" (which spends most of its time begging for more money) links to the website for the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame*, and, as it turns out, they aren't offering me a bundle of 11 of the same bobblehead, but 11 different bobbleheads, one for each of the 11 Uga bulldog mascots of the Georgia football team over the past 70 years. Oops. I probably should have realized that. Maybe my reading comprehension skills could use some polishing.

That breaks down to buying 10 bobbleheads for $30 each and getting one free. That's not the worst deal, but does anyone really need 11 bobbleheads of white bulldogs wearing read sweaters? Only a couple of the Ugas are differentiable at a glance: Uga IX, "Russ," has a brown ear and rump, and Ugas I and II had narrower faces. And how much demand is there for a bobblehead of Uga VIII, who I'm sure was a great dog but didn't survive a whole football season before dying of cancer?

I'm inclined to ask "who really needs bobblehead dolls, anyway?" But I'll restrain myself. I've never kvetched about PEZ dispensers (because I like them), so I'm in no position to rain on the parade of any UGA fan who wants an entire kennel of nodding Ugas. It's your $300, spend it however you want to.

Besides, not bitching about bobbleheads frees up my time for complaining about my neighbors who have already set out their Halloween decorations six weeks early. Apparently, Halloween is no longer a holiday; it's a whole season! Arrrrgh!

No, sir. I don't like it.

*Hall of Fame and Museum, specifically "a one-of-a-kind museum with the world’s largest collection of bobbleheads from all genres and periods" with a mission statement that "seeks to provide access to the world’s largest collection of Bobbleheads, to advance an understanding of the historical role Bobbleheads play in American culture, and to celebrate the fun and quirky side of collecting." And also, it seems, to sell, sell, sell. Want bobblehead dolls of the Golden Girls, a jackalope, or Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer statue? They've got 'em!

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Yeah, it's not a great punchline, but I think you already expected that

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In 2020, Tua "If It Ain't Broke, Break It" Tagovailoa fell to the fifth overall pick in the NFL draft because scouts decided he was fragile after he broke his hip at Alabama. He missed 6 games in 2020 because of that hip and a busted thumb, 4 games in 2021 with broken ribs, and 4 games in 2022 with some pretty serious concussions. Last year was the first year he made it all the way through the too-long NFL season without missing any full games, and the Miami Dolphins, for the most part, looked pretty darn good. (At least until it got cold. Dolphins hate the cold.) If this was the new Tua, things were looking up.

Well, perhaps you've heard: in just the second game of the 2024 season, Tua had another severe concussion that left him stiffly lying on the field like... well, a player who's had a severe concussion. Nothing looks quite like the fencing response. Trust me, once you've seen it, you'll recognize it forever. And Dolphins fans have now seen it multiple times from Tua Tagovailoa.

In hindsight, "fragile" might be a polite way of putting it.

I don't mean to kick Tua while he's down. It's been proven in recent years that he gives the Dolphins their best shot at winning games. But winning really isn't everything. If it was, I wouldn't still be a Dolphins fan

I'm no doctor, and I'm certainly not getting paid $53 million a year to sacrifice my body for public spectacle, so I won't even pretend that I'm in any position to tell Tua what to do. What I will do instead is quote an infamously six-fingered man: "If you haven't got your health, then you haven't got anything." It's good advice no matter how many fingers you see.

UPDATE 09/17: Tua has been placed on Injured Reserve, which means he will miss at least 4 games because of this latest concussion. That's 8 full games (plus parts of 4 others) over the course of 2 calendar years (39 games) for concussions. That's a very, very bad trend.

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Welcome to the 19th Annual Wriphe.com Batman and Football Month, this year without any pictures from Georgia home football games!

Why no Georgia football this month, you ask? Because Georgia is only playing one home game in September, on the 7th, and I'm not planning on going. The opponent is the Tennessee Technology University Golden Eagles, an FCS-level program belonging to the Big South-Ohio Valley Conference. I attended the last UGA/Tennessee Tech game fifteen years ago, on November 7, 2009, and this is what I wrote in my online diary back then:

UGA homecoming weekend results in a huge win for the dogs. Huge win on the scoreboard, anyway, as UGA wins easily 38-0. I'm not sure that a defeat of Tennessee Tech University counts as a huge win in any other way. TTU certainly didn't seem to be trying very hard. Even their mascot didn't seem to care about his job, preferring to mingle with our cheerleaders instead of livening up the limited TTU fans in attendance. (Not that I blame him.)

Obviously, that was before Georgia was the perennial national title contender they are now (Georgia finished 2009 8-5), and by record, TTU was a better team in 2009 than they were last year. So the final score of this year's contest is more likely to be closer to the first meeting between the teams in 1943 when UGA won 67-0. No offense intended, Golden Eagles, but I don't feel the need to spend 5 hours in a car to go see you lay that egg.

The next home game is October 5th versus Auburn. I'm certainly planning to travel to Athens for that game, where I hope to see the Bulldogs defeat the Tigers by more than 67 points. Why am I in favor of one blowout and not another? Because rivalry game. Football is funny that way.

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*Note to self: Today was a very good day. It so rarely occurs to me in the moment that I'm having a "good time," so I think it is probably important to make note when it does. I woke up to watch UGA win, then gave haircuts to both Henry and Louis, then all three of us rode the Jeep over to Dad's to play with Cece, then I had Chinese takeout (vegetable lo mein and white rice) and played a video game (Borderlands 3) with an online friend (Brian) and watched even more football until the wee hours of the morning. I enjoyed all of those activities, many of which I partake in regularly, but football season is here now and football is just the best.

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See if you can follow along: In 2005, as a college football player, Reggie Bush won the Heisman Trophy for athletic excellence. In 2010, it was determined that Bush accepted illegal payments and a car in 2004 which should have made him an ineligible player, which would have also made him ineligible to be nominated for a Heisman, so the trophy was reclaimed. In 2021, it became legal to pay college football players which means that you can now give a player a car and a Heisman. Today, fourteen years after it was taken away, Bush was given his Heisman Trophy back.

I've never had a very high opinion of the very subjective Heisman award, but now it's impossible for me to have less.

Bush has always decried having his trophy taken away because, well, I guess he thinks he deserved that car. Sure, he was indubitably a great college athlete, and sure, it's legal to pay players now, but it wasn't then. And that's the point.

According to their own website, the Heisman Trophy Trust admits explicitly charges all 928 voting members with the following criteria for their nominations:

"In order that there will be no misunderstanding regarding the eligibility of a candidate, the recipient of the award MUST be a bona fide student of an accredited college or university including the United States Academies. The recipients must be in compliance with the bylaws defining an NCAA student athlete."

Even if the Heisman committee has decided that players always should have been paid, anyone who breaks the rules in place while they are playing, by definition, cannot be "in compliance with [NCAA] bylaws." Therefore, letting him keep the trophy is in explicit violation of the Heisman Trust's own stated rules.

Hey, it's the Heisman Trust's trophy and they can do whatever they hell they want to with it. But if they want us to believe their rules have any more significance than the NCAA's, they should at least stop pretending their award is anything other than a popularity contest.

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On behalf of the Classic City Collective and the Touchdown Club of Athens, we are thrilled to extend a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: Plant the next generation of Sanford Stadium hedges!

That's the first line in an email I received last week from The Georgia Bulldog Club, the fundraising arm of the University's athletics department. The catch there is that the so-called once-in-a-lifetime opportunity1 is limited to 32 slots and costs $5,000. Skinflint that I am, even I don't think $5,000 is too big an ask, but I think I will decline the honor, partially because of who would get that money.

I received the email because I have given money to The Bulldog Club's William C. Hartman Fund every year for over two decades in order to be eligible for football season tickets. (Actually, when I started donating, it was called the Georgia Student Education Fund. It was renamed after former fund chairman Hartman died in 2006.2) Hartman Fund money is intended to support all student athlete scholarships, academic support, medical support, and more. I'm certainly okay with all that, and I expect I'll be donating to the Hartman Fund for years to come.

The Touchdown Club of Athens is Hartman adjacent. (Hartman was a founding member.3) It's pretty much a fraternal organization built around a collective love of Georgia football. I certainly don't have any problem with that, though I don't think they need any of my money. Although I also love Georgia football, I've long shared Groucho Marx's rule about not belonging to any club that would have me as a member.

The organization I have qualms about is the Classic City Collective, which by their own admission aims to be a facilitator for "Name, Image, Likeness" (NIL) contracts for University of Georgia athletes. That means, essentially, that they find ways to buy athletes, luring them to Georgia with more lucrative income opportunities than they might find at other schools. Something about that rubs me the wrong way. While I certainly believe that the athletes should share in the millions of dollars the University makes off their hard work, I think there's something unseemly about buying college players. Maybe I'm just an old prude who was raised in a simpler time of "amateur" athletics, but even if that's the way things are done now, it still feels like cheating. I'd personally rather the football team was made up of students who wanted to study at Georgia, not mercenaries playing for the highest bidder, even if that means we only win as often as Vanderbilt.

All that said, it would be disingenuous of me to say that the participation of the Classic City Collective is the only reason I'm politely declining this opportunity. There's also the fact that this fundraiser is about planting hedges. Sorry, but I don't do yard work. If I'm paying $5,000, it better be someone else who is getting their hands dirty.

1 This should be considered a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity only if you have the lifespan of an English Bulldog. Even the athletic department admits that the hedges live a maximum of 40 years (georgiadogs.com). And while most of the current hedges were last replaced for the 1996 Olympics, some are only as old as 2001, when the hedges were trampled after rowdy students stormed the field three times in a season. (For the record, the hedges were first installed as a crowd control measure when Sanford Stadium was built in 1929 — when the stadium sat 30,000.)

2 In 2004, the GSEF was briefly renamed the Georgia Education Enhancement Fund (GEEF) before becoming the Hartman Fund. I only mention that here because that timeline is surprisingly difficult to find in a diligent Google search. In the Internet age, it seems no one much cares when exactly the GSEF became the GEEF, and I can't entirely blame them; I was working on campus at the time, and I can't remember the switch either. These days it's all just Hartman, Hartman, Hartman, which I'm sure would make the former UGA football star proud.

3 According to the official public relations arm of the University (news.ugau.edu), the Georgia Student Education Fund (GSEF) was founded in 1946 in part by 23-year-old Bill Hartman — then Wally Butts' backfield coach. However, I have to wonder if they haven't conflated the GSEF with the Touchdown Club. Hartman's obituary and Wikipedia page don't mention founding, only that he was a former chairman of the GSEF beginning in 1960. (I suppose it's possible that the Touchdown Club created the GSEF, so all Touchdown Club founders are also GSEF founders.) I'm sure more information about the origins of the GSEF are hidden in the moldering stacks of the Athens library; maybe one day they'll be more accessible to online armchair detectives.

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To be continued...

 

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