Henry and Louis' first snow day.

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I've been to a lot of Georgia games, but I've really never been to any game like this before.

The forecast for the rare Black Friday night game was for severe cold, so I lost my seat mate. Mom made the right decision. I've never been so cold in Athens, and for more than three quarters of football, the Bulldogs didn't do anything to help. (I didn't feel so cold in the fourth quarter, but that was because I really needed to pee and couldn't worry about both discomforts at once. When I finally went, I felt colder than ever.) It may have be the worst, the most inept football I've ever seen the Bulldogs play in person.

GA Tech led 17-0 at halftime, and I kept telling myself that if they stretched that lead any, I was going to go home. But they couldn't. Georgia finally started scoring, but when Tech scored with less than 6 minutes to restore a 2 touchdown lead, half the stadium gave up. I don't blame them. At the time, it seemed the sane decision. Sadly, that only made the rest of us colder because we lost our windbreak.

And then somehow, very late in the game, UGA came back to tie. So after a bad game, they played one overtime. Then another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. Eight in all. It was the most bonkers thing I've ever seen in Sanford Stadium.

Think I'm exaggerating? This is the ESPN Win Probability graph of the game.

The football was so crazy, I don't know that I have space in my brain for all the other notable things. Poor Uga (whose name is, ironically, Boom) tried to run away from the pre-game fireworks. The 50th anniversary of the Alumni Band played at halftime. Georgia's decision to go for 2 when down by 11. The crowd deciding that GT was faking injuries to slow the game down and booing those players when they were helped off the field. The failure to explain overtime rules to the crowd and their resulting confusion when Georgia didn't attempt a kick for the win in the second OT. The scoreboard gave up on counting overtimes after 5. And have I mentioned the cold?

When I thought I was going to be leaving early, I decided I would post a picture of the stadium at the moment I finally decided to leave. Ultimately, at three minutes after midnight, this is that moment:

Truth be told, I didn't even leave then. I watched the Tech players crawl off the field and waited for the presentation of the Governor's Cup (by the Governor). Then, when the Georgia student section finally left, so did I.

I'm home now (4:32 AM), and I'm still cold.

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I did not attend today's UGA / UMass game, but I am happy to say that my tickets did not go unused.

I gave them to friend James who took his son. I am assured they had a good time, and that's really what's important about football. And everything else, really.

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A year and a week have passed since I last visited Athens, GA, but today* I attended my first football game of the year to see the #12 Georgia Bulldogs play the #7 Tennessee Volunteers.

Things have changed a little in the past year. For one thing, the Bulldogs aren't quite as dominant now as then, struggling to get started in what eventually became a convincing win. For another, the local high school where we have parked for years has become a new unofficial tailgating lot, meaning we had to find a new place to park the car. Third, the stadium now sells beer, though the raucous atmosphere didn't seem too out of place for a Tennessee game. Very late starts always portend a carnival atmosphere in the stands.

Fourth and perhaps worst, the stadium now has fireworks. Those aren't rain clouds in the photo above. There were launchers all around the stadium; fireworks went up after every Bulldogs' score, and ash fell down on the fans. Ick.

Mom was my companion, and she was a real trooper. She doesn't really like cold night games (she prefers to be curled up with a heating pad and a good book by 9 PM), but in recognition that this could be one of the last chances to watch a game in Sanford Stadium with me, she soldiered on without complaint. Thanks, Mom!

* By "today" I really mean yesterday. Technically, I'm typing this at 3:28 AM on November 17, but that's only because I didn't get back to Newnan until 2:40. It was a 7:45 PM kickoff, the game ran the full four quarters, and we didn't even get from the stadium back to the parking lot until 12:08 AM. As I said, Mom was a real trooper.

Additional note: For about a half hour prior to the game, Kirk Herbstreit was on the field with his newest travel companion, Peter, who is apparently the brother of Kirk's late golden retriever, Ben. Herbstreit certainly looked to be a great dog daddy as he let anyone who wanted get a picture with Peter, who eagerly accepted all the head scratches he could get. Go dogs!

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New stickers for 2024. Now I feel like they're taking this thing seriously.

Two things of note:

Thing One: Following the flurry of law changes made in effort to appease the certain percentage of the country (and candidates for president) who still feel the 2020 election was rigged, I was under the impression that Georgia mail-in absentee ballots were only available to people too old or infirm to make it to their assigned polling places. However, according to the Georgia Secretary of State's website, "Any voter registered in Georgia can vote absentee by mail." The new law is that elderly folks only have to apply once annually, and us young 'uns have to apply for a new absentee ballot before each primary, general, and runoff election. Somehow, that makes everything safer. I guess.

Thing Two: In 2008, I decried early voting (which the state officially calls "Absentee Voting in Person") because it actually took longer than voting on Election Day (which the state encourages me to capitalize). My county has finally fixed that. They moved into a new building last year that was previously a movie theater until the Pandemic closed all of those. They now have a lot of dedicated space for early voting, sorry, Absentee Voting in Person, and I was in and out today with the only delay being the time it took me to silence my phone's ringer (in honor of the building's former use). So despite what you've heard in an endless stream of political advertisements, some things in this country are moving in the right direction.

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I threw a ball into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
Or, more perhaps it flew such height,
That trees would dare constrain its flight.

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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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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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There's a new yard sign that has been popping up lately around my neighborhood that has a picture of a particular ex-president alongside the words "Let's Go Felon." I don't understand it.

If it's a pro-Trump sign (and it is not an official campaign sign, I checked), why does it advertise that he's a felon? Being a felon is not something that most people would choose to celebrate. Is it supposed to be ironic, by which I mean is it a political statement that the State of New York is an unjust government (with a corrupted jury pool) that has no right to find someone guilty of the crime of falsifying business records? If that's the case, I'd expect it to have sarcastic quotes, you "genius" Trump supporters, you.

On the other hand, if it's an anti-Trump sign, why would any Never Trumper want a picture of that guy in their front yard? I certainly don't. (I see quite enough of him on the evening news, thank you.) Would they post a sign advertising any other felon?

I should mention that I first saw this sign in the yard of a home that also has a family of bigfoot signs, which is making it harder for me to interpret the intention here. Do they love imaginary creatures? Lost causes? Fairy tales? Conspiracy theories? I just can't tell. I can't even knock on the door and ask; they have a gated driveway. If there are actually any bigfeet, they're not actually welcome.

Maybe this is just another thing that will have to remain in the very large bucket of things I cannot understand.

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