In football, there's nothing like a good offense, and there was nothing like a good offense in yesterday's UGA opener vs Clemson. The only touchdown was an interception return. A win is a win, but it looks like another year for the Bulldogs without anyone who can catch a ball. I should be used to it by now.

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Somehow, both the Georgia Bulldogs and the Miami Dolphins have the weekend off. I think that means I have the weekend off, too.

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While watching the University of Georgia football team struggle in the first half of Saturday's season opener, it crossed my mind that maybe they were playing poorly because I had forgotten to wear my usual red gameday underwear. I immediately dismissed the thought because it is crazy.

There is nothing I, as a distant observer, might do on my sofa that could possibly affect the outcome of a football game in progress being played hundreds of miles away. There's even less my underwear could do about it. If it could, that would mean that there are intangible, undetectable threads connecting my very being to the game like the strings on a marionette. That's the stuff of superstition and religion. Like I said, crazy.

Of course, it's a seductive kind of crazy. It's easy to think that the world revolves around me, that I'm an integral piece of the cosmos, that my behavior and desires are strong enough to change the outcome of distant events. There are certainly narcissistic people — well known people, powerful people, *presidential* people — who think this. Those people are crazy.

Even if the energy that makes up the sentient being that calls itself Walter Stephens is indeed intertwined with the background radiation of the cosmos in significant ways (and that's a pretty big "if"), it's ridiculous to think that my energy is more relevant to the outcome of a football than the physical/mental energy expended by the 22 people playing it. My wants and desires will never be stronger than a motivated linebacker who has sacrificed significant portions of his life on the way to his goal of being able to charge through offensive linemen so that he can hug quarterbacks. That guy's crazier than I could ever be.

So, just because A) I'm not wearing red underwear, and B) the Bulldogs are playing poorly, those two things don't have to have a causal relationship just because I want them to. It's that sort of magical thinking that gets people in trouble. If you're one of those people, well, you know what you are.

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I haven't mentioned the Miami Dolphins in over two months and for good reason. They're bad. They're even bad at being bad. Their best achievement in 2019 was having Dan Marino named as one of the 10 greatest quarterbacks of the past century. Too bad Marino retired 20 years ago. The team hasn't had a consistently decent quarterback since.

To solve that problem, the team started the 2019 season with the intention of losing more than anyone has ever lost before to secure the first pick in the 2020 draft. They ultimately finished fifth in the race to be worst, meaning they won't get the best available quarterback. They might not even get the second, third, or fourth.

The best option, according to just about everyone, is Joe Burrow, whose LSU team mastered the art of having offensive linemen get away without being called for holding. He is followed in some order by Justin Herbert, Jacob Eason, and Jake Fromm. Two of them are/were Georgia Bulldogs, so I'd be fine cheering for them as Dolphins. On the other hand, Herbert is slow to make decisions, but is a nearly seven-foot-tall giant. Given that NFL scouts are size queens and Herbert is the one I like least, I figure he's the one most likely to be the Dolphins' eventual pick.

If there's any good news for the Dolphins, it's that their original target QB, Tua Tagovailoa, has fallen from his early projections and should still be available at five. (Maybe even at twenty.) Why? Because he's fragile. Would the team that famously passed on Drew Brees' wounded wing draft a player who's the real-life equivalent of a mid-80s G.I.Joe figure with a busted rubber band? We'll see.

Meanwhile, the Dolphins' last quarterback project, Ryan Tannehill, refuses to lose with his new team. Two games into the playoffs, two wins. That's two more than Ryan won in seven years with the Dolphins. Given that the Dolphins are still paying Tannehill against his last contract, they deserve at least some credit for those wins, right?

It remains possible, maybe even likely, that last year's starting QB, Ryan Fitzpatrick will return under center in 2020. In 2019, playing for his 8th team, Fitzpatrick became the oldest player (37) to lead his team in rushing yards (243) and rushing touchdowns (4) in a season, which implies that the Dolphins running game might be a bigger problem than whoever they've got under center. (Tannehill, for example, is now winning largely thanks to the legs of Derrick Henry.) I won't be surprised if the team decides to try losing another year's worth of games to address that problem in 2021.

Go 'Fins!

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Only one team showed up to play in the annual Georgia/Missouri game. Luckily for Georgia fans, it was Georgia. Final score: Missouri 0, Georgia 27.

Above see the blue lights rolled out for the Veteran's Day ceremony at halftime. You know, this was the sixth home game of the 2019 season and I have yet to see an opponent's band on the field. Do schools not have bands anymore?

My guest for the evening game was Friend James (aka the man who paid me to make this), who had never attended a football game before. I spent most of the game explaining it, which was fine. With only one team on the field, there wasn't that much to see.

Not that I'm complaining about the Bulldogs pitching a shut out, mind you. It was just cold — very cold — and it would have been nice to have something to jump up and down about.

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Today is the start of the 14th Annual Wriphe.com Batman and Football Month! Yesterday was a busy day on and off the gridiron, so let's get straight to the news.

Yesterday, the Georgia Bulldogs opened the season on the road against Vanderbilt and won easily. Theirs was the only game played between SEC opponents, so Georgia's win puts them in first place in the conference!

Speaking of the conference, winning the SEC East might be easier than usual for the Bulldogs this year. South Carolina fell to North Carolina of the ACC (2-10 in 2018), and Missouri was beaten by Wyoming of the Mountain West (6-6 in 2018). Wyoming had been winless against teams from Power Five conferences since 2014, but that's nothing compared to Georgia State of the Sun Belt Conference. They were also 2-10 in 2018 and hadn't beaten a Power Five team ever... until they ruined Tennessee's season with a 34-30 win. That's not strong competition.

Speaking of winning, the Miami Dolphins won't. One week ahead of the start of the season, the Dolphins have traded their starting left tackle for multiple picks in next year's drafts. Dolphins' management had already telegraphed their intention to tank 2019, but I don't have high hopes for their ability to ever convert all the draft picks they're banking into a winning team. Number One overall picks are no panacea for a team full of mediocre talent and an ownership with no idea what a winning team looks like.

Meanwhile, Batman is still Batman.

Poster by Marco D'Alfonso

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For the second time this season, I will not be attending a UGA football home game. Making it to one out of three would be a pretty good success rate... if I had season tickets to baseball.

At least this time, I have a good excuse: family. Can't live with 'em; can't turn your back on 'em and pretend they don't exist. (Right, Trey?)

Good luck with Tennessee, Bulldogs. And enjoy the tickets enough for both of us, Matt.

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I don't want to alarm anyone, but the Georgia Bulldogs have started the season 4-0 and the Miami Dolphins are up to 3-0.

Armageddon may be closer than we thought.

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UGA played a football game today in Sanford Stadium. I was not there to watch it.

This is one of the few times since I've had season tickets that I simply chose not to go. There were several reasons for that decision.

The opponent was Middle Tennessee State, who had played UGA only once. In 2003, the Bulldogs beat the Blue Raiders 29-10. I saw that game. They didn't impress me then. Driving more than four hours to see a "football game" involving a team unlikely to score a single point.... I did that two weeks ago, and had no desire to repeat the experience so soon.

In addition, the game, originally scheduled for 7:15PM, was moved to noon to accommodate Hurricane Florence, which as I type this is still terrorizing North Carolina. I was excited about attending a night game, but couldn't get up for sitting hours in the same murderous afternoon heat that drove us away from the Austin Peay game. Besides, to reach Athens by noon, I would have to have set my alarm for 8AM. I'd rather be hit by a hurricane.

I'm not complaining about these events. I only enumerate my reasons above for my own elucidation when I look back on this season. I didn't miss the game, as it was televised on ESPN News. (Every game is televised these days, and I had a better view of the action at home than I do in my seats.) Given the same set of circumstances, I'd probably make the same decision. Even a football nut like me has to draw the line somewhere.

And for the record, the final score was 49-7. I regret nothing.

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Not so long ago, conservative columnist Kathleen Parker wrote an editorial for the Washington Post complaining that Donald Trump should not be called "Putin's Poodle." She did not write this because she is a fan of Trump — she very openly considers him an albatross around the neck of the Republican party — but because poodles deserve better than to be called "weak" or "submissive." I couldn't agree more.

In fact, I wrote a similar editorial myself about a decade ago.

If you don't recall, in the winter of 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was called "America's Poodle" for blindly supporting George W. Bush's push to invade Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction. (Remember W? Remember when we thought he was the worst president in American history? Ah, the good old days!) That led to the University of Georgia student newspaper, The Red & Black, to run this editorial cartoon:

My response, which was more a reaction to an overreaction to the previous day's editorial cartoon than a reaction to this cartoon itself, read as follows:

I assure you, that was written with tongue firmly in cheek. Something tells me that Kathleen Parker was being a little more serious.

(You can see responses to my editorial in the blog post I wrote on Christmas Day 2006.)

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