"I talked to God, and He told me it’s time to take a new step."

—New LSU Head Football Coach Lane Kiffin
in response to ESPN reporter Marty Smith's question
"Why was LSU the right choice for you?"
while standing in an airfield on his way out of Mississippi
which he abandoned before the 2025 postseason started
November 30, 2025

I'll be the first to admit that I have never been privy to any conversations that Lane Kiffin has had with his God, but I'm skeptical that any god really cares enough about Kiffin's financial situation to give him professional advice.

Kiffin is a football coach, not a preacher. At the risk of sounding blasphemous, it strikes me as no coincidence that Kiffin's new job is paying him $4 million more than the old. If money wasn't an issue, LSU could certainly save some of that cash for the players. Or even their students. Maybe pious Kiffin will share with the less fortunate.

Maybe I'm just jealous. God never tells me which jobs to take. (If God has been giving me career advice and I haven't heard it, whose fault is that?) I suppose it remains possible that Lane Kiffin has been hoarding God for himself. I bet $13 million a season buys a lot of divine advice.

And although this sounds to me like a con man's rhetorical trick to avoid honestly answering a reporter's nosy question, you can't argue with God. That's why there's a whole Commandment instructing not to take the Lord's name in vain. I'm sure Kiffin wouldn't break a Commandment any more than he'd break a contract. (That's probably why he coaches college and not pro ball; gotta keep that Sabbath day holy.)

Whatever the case, I'll just thank God that Lane Kiffin isn't coming to coach Georgia, home of the 2025 SEC Champion Bulldogs and the highest paid college football coach in the country. Go Dawgs!

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During the drive into Athens, during the walk into the stadium, during the wait for the game to start, everywhere Friend Ken and I looked and every stat we considered augured bad omens for UGA's chances against Alabama. I wish I could say that we were just being pessimistic after losing nine of the last ten meetings, but... final score UGA 21, Alabama 24. Now ten of eleven.

The above picture was taken 40 minutes before kickoff. In over two decades of home games, I cannot tell you when I have ever seen that many people in the stands that early. Sure the prospect of playing Alabama in Athens (for only the 3rd time in 21 years) in a nationally televised night game was a draw, but I assume most were early because they gave away blinking wrist lights to the first 65,000 in attendance. For the record, by the time I got inside the stadium, they were all gone.

Many in the stadium were Alabama fans, and they were keen not to let us forget it. I know that UGA fans have an SEC-wide reputation for being assholes, so I guess that we must have been real jerks to Bama fans in the weeks leading up to the game following Alabama's season-opening loss to Florida State, because once Alabama won (ten of eleven, mind you), their fans were fucking awful about rubbing it in our faces. I mean, on the way back to the car, we were passed by at least four groups of Bama boys yelling at the top-of-their lungs at every Bulldog within earshot about how great Alabama was, is, and always will be. They made Tennessee fans look like gracious winners by comparison, and if you know what lousy winners Tennessee fans are, you know that's really saying something.

I was reluctant to attend this one for several reasons, and after struggling through three hours of traffic to get to Athens and then three more hours of sitting amongst a sea of drunks (alcohol sales now being allowed in Sanford Stadium), I cannot say that I had a great time watching UGA play poorly and lose yet another game to Alabama (ten of eleven, I hear). Maybe it really is time to let go of my season tickets. I'm sure I would have been utterly miserable if Friend Ken hadn't accompanied me. Thanks, Ken; you made a shitty experience tolerable.

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I thought about posting yesterday when the UGA Bulldogs came from behind to find a way to win against the Tennessee Volunteers, but I held off so I would have to write something here about today's Dolphins game. As nervous as I was about the outcome for UGA, I really, really enjoyed watching the Bulldogs play. The Dolphins, not so much.

Of course, the Bulldogs are a good football team with excellent coaching and talent. The Dolphins, not so much. Their defense is truly awful*, and their finesse offense will never be able to compensate enough to overcome their flaws. I know they're not going anywhere, so there's nothing to get excited about.

In fact, it felt like a bit of a chore to wake up early and watch the Dolphins. None of the players have vivid personalities that make them worth cheering for. The coaches seem to care less than I do, and I don't even like looking at the team's current logo or uniforms.

I can't even get excited about the fact that the Dolphins might be so bad that they'll end up in a position to take a high draft pick. The last time they looked this awful was was the 2019 season, when their motto was "Tank for Tua." Well, they even fucked that up, but still traded a bunch of resources to draft Tagovailoa, who has proven as durable as cotton candy and can no longer differentiate Dolphins receivers from his opponents. I don't know which player the Dolphins will waste their pick on in the 2026 Draft ("Death March for Arch"?), but I've come to believe that they're equally doomed.

Obviously I'm not alone in feeling frustrated. Earlier this week, after Josh Gad publicly bailed on the Dolphins season during an appearance on Seth Meyers' late night talk show, another guest encouraged NFL fans not to push their young children into fandom "because that's how you end up with Dolphins fans." Today in Miami the remaining Dol-fans seemed to agree; the stands were never more than half full for the home opener against a division rival. Maybe financial pressure will force the team to do something other than just suck all the time, but at this point, until there's a change in ownership, I'm not going to hold my breath. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

* According to CBS: "The Dolphins have allowed points on 13 straight drives dating back to last season. That is the longest streak by any team since 2000." For the record, that streak came to an end when the Patriots knelt on the ball to go to halftime. So maybe "awful" isn't a strong enough word.

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Fifteen years ago, the top ten keywords at Wriphe.com were "comic books," "football," "news," "holidays," "batman," "superman," "movies," "television," "wriphe.com," and "uga" (which at some point in the past decade I changed to "georgia" because I now use Uga exclusively to refer to the UGA Bulldog mascot).

As of today, the top ten keywords are "movies," "comic strip," "poodle strip," "walter," "poodles," "football," "comic books," "news," "holidays," and "havanese strip."

The five constants there are "comic books," "football," "holidays," "movies," and "news."

I don't know what that means, if anything. I just thought I'd point it out.

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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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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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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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"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!

*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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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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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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