Georgia beat Georgia Tech for the 6th year in a row today. My father, a Tech graduate, was very irritable in the stands after Georgia scored the go-ahead points in the final 2 minutes. But even he still had a good time. I suspect that we'll be playing in the Dec. 30 Chick-Fil-A Bowl, but I'll be damned if I know what ACC team we'll play against.

It's been a long, puzzling season for the Bulldogs. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that we finished with a respectable 8-4 record. After the Homecoming loss to Vanderbilt, I figured we had no chance against Auburn or Georgia Tech. I guess that goes to show what I know.

Looking back at the season, I remember the hecklers during the Tennessee game, the buffalo on the sideline at the Colorado game, and the UGA tailgaters offering the Vanderbilt faithful barbecue after their victory. Yes, it's been a pretty good year, all things considered. And there are only 280 days to go until our September 1, 2007 kickoff against Oklahoma State. Go Dawgs!

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Dogs win for homecoming! Bulldogs 44, Troy 34. I think this game had just about everything that you could've asked for in a football game. An F-14 flyover, an enthusiastic crowd, and an alumni band and cheerleader squad. Not to mention that for the better part of 4 quarters, it was anybody's game.

But it shouldn't pass without controversy. Down 10 points and losing yards to penalties and a suddenly swarming Bulldog defense, Troy's coach, Larry Blakeney, seemed to give up late in the fourth quarter when his team chose not to attempt to convert a 3rd and 29 from their own 16 yard line, instead opting for a short yardage run up the middle to set up the punt. Invigorated by Troy's decision to give up the game, the Bulldogs returned the punt to Troy's 2 yard line, from which they easily scored their final touchdown to drive the victory margin up to 17 points.

Troy's next possession was a quick 4 and out. No attempt to punt, but it certainly appeared that since the coach had given up on the team, the team didn't care to play anymore. And why should they? What was the point if the coach had already thrown in the towel on the game? Taking advantage of the situation, the Bulldogs ate another about half the remaining time off the clock and gave the ball back to Troy with more than 2 minutes remaining. That's when things got weird.

For their final drive, Troy put in their second string. And drove the ball down the field. When they reached the UGA 35 yard line, they took a timeout with 34 seconds remaining. Two plays later, having reached the UGA 4 yard line, they took their second timeout with 18 seconds remaining. Failing to score, they took their final timeout with a mere 11 seconds remaining. That's right: eleven seconds in the game. Down 17 points. With the second team in the game. Troy called their third timeout. Sure, on the next play they scored. But with so little time remaining, the game was over.

The question becomes why Troy's coach called those last two timeouts on consecutive plays with less than 18 seconds in the game. The likely answer was to ensure that he scored another touchdown to keep the margin of victory at 10 points. He called those timeouts not to win the game, which with a mere 11 seconds remaining is essentially impossible, but to ensure the scoring of the touchdown. (Note that after the score, with 5 seconds on the clock, he chose not to onside kick, but rather to kick a regular kickoff 40 yards deep to kill the remaining clock.) In the Coach's own words to ESPN following the game:

"The crowd that stayed booed us for trying to execute, which was funny," Blakeney said. "I think we certainly had the potential to win, and I doubt we'll get any quick invites back here."

Sir, we didn't boo you for trying to execute, we booed you for wasting our time.

"The potential to win"? Down 17 points with only 18 seconds left, victory is all but impossible. Certainly, I am completely unaware of any time when such a large margin was overcome so late in a football game. In an earlier game today, Clemson scored 16 points in 39 seconds (two touchdowns separated by a safety), a rare and amazing scoring pace that is one fewer point than what Troy needed in more than twice the time. Clemson running back Cullin Harper said of Clemson's performance, "that's the fastest I've ever seen 16 points scored." By comparison, Clemson's all-time fastest back-to-back touchdowns were scored just 14 seconds apart. But two touchdowns is still fewer points than Troy needed at that point in the game. Seventeen points is at least three scores.

Since the coach had all but given up the game two possessions earlier, and he had replaced his starting players with second-stringers, there are only three possibilities. One is that he intended to give his second-string players some experience. This possibility is a necessary evil of football and would not require a lie to cover it up. Another possibility is that he wished to ensure that the record books didn't include such a lopsided score. Unpleasant and selfish, but understandable. But the worst of all is the possibility that the coach was gambling on his team. Or at least encouraging it.

After the game I checked and found that at most Las Vegas casinos, the spread on the game was between 14 or 15 points in the Bulldog's favor. By struggling to score that last touchdown, Coach Blakeney was ensuring that his team would beat the spread. This no doubt won money for gamblers backing Troy and the spread. However, beating the spread serves no purpose on the field of play and should never be the concern of a coach or a team of players. It's an embarrassing day when the head coach of a highly touted (reigning Sun-Belt Conference champion) Division-IA football team is more concerned about beating a gambling spread than winning his game. Embarrassing and disgraceful.

There is at least one thing that I agree with Coach Blakeney about. I also certainly doubt that UGA will extend any more invites to have Troy back, either.

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Dolphins' outside linebacker Channing Crowder made news today by admitting that he couldn't find London on a world map. While many suspect that the affable Crowder was likely kidding, many others have taken the opportunity to ridicule him. Crowder is an Atlanta native who played college ball for >shudder< Florida where he majored in "Social and Behavioral Sciences" before abandoning education for the NFL as a Junior. So long as Crowder can find the ball on Sunday, I'm prefectly willing to ignore his checkered past and dubious education. (Especially if the Bulldogs can pull out an upset win against his Gators in the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party this Saturday. Go Dawgs!)

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Another Batman and Football month draws to a close with another Georgia Bulldogs victory. This win was a little odd because it seemed that we were able to draw together and defeat Mississippi 45-17 only because of Knowshon Moreno's dancing to a calypso beat during one of those forever long official time outs. After Knowshon got the stadium crowd worked up, Thomas Brown became Superman, tearing through defenders as he ran downfield at will for the following quarter. Why couldn't we beat an inferior team like Old Miss without a couple of players providing motivation very late in the game? (Dancing with the stars, indeed.) That's UGA for you.

We won't have another home game until November. We've got to play Tennessee and Florida on the road first. I'll decide if I'm going to the Troy State game based on our performance in October.

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I've just returned from the Newnan High School homecoming football game against Lithonia High School. We left at halftime, as the NHS Cougars were beating the LHS Bulldogs 35-0 and I simply didn't care to see any more, especially if I was going to have to sit through the halftime Homecoming Court presentation. (I'd've stayed if the LHS band was going to take the field. Their drum corps was much, much better than their football team.)

As we left the stadium, I realized that I did not have my wallet on me, and I was convinced that it had fallen out of my pocket in the stadium. My brother patiently explained that my wallet must still be on my bed. Since my slightly-paranoid neurotic nature would have alerted me to the wallet's absence during the game if it had been present and then disappeared, he explained, my realizing it only after my departure was because enough time (and football) had passed for me to forget that I hadn't brought it in the first place. Therefore, I was fretting only because I had forgotten that I had not brought it to the game.

He was, it turns out, quite right. My wallet was right where I had left it, on my bed. I dropped it there before we left the game because I was excited upon putting on a pair of pants and finding $6 in the pocket. (Yes, I am so broke that $6 is a huge find.)

So now I'm the worst of both worlds: a paranoid with a memory short enough to be suspicious of my own behavior and motivations. And finding $6 is enough to get me too excited to pay attention to anything for about an hour. Great. What's that they say that's the first thing to go, again? Cause I'm sure that's already gone.

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I'm back, and I have some catching up to do, don't I?

First game of the UGA season: victory! Dawgs win, 35-14, over the Oklahoma State University Cowboys. Word on the street was that the Cowboys sold out every seat that we offered them. Quite an impressive display of fan loyalty, there.

I know it was the first game and all, but I was surprised that the lady who owns the season tickets in the row in front of me didn't recognize me. She recognized my brother, and remembered my mother and father, but not me. I must have gained a lot of weight since last year.

Second game of the UGA season: defeat! Dawgs lose, 16-12, to the University of South Carolina Gamecocks. The Bulldogs performance was utterly uninspired, and the generally low expectations for this year's squad were proven uncannily appropriate awfully early in the season.

The crowd was barely involved in the game. I don't know if we were too shocked or if we had resigned ourselves to the loss early. In last year's SEC home losses, the fans were behind the team until the final second. But this time we seemed to be as stunned as the players on the field that South Carolina, who most of us had written off as beneath us, was having their way with us. Damn you, Spurrier! >shakes fist in rage<

Of course, the NFL season kicked off this weekend, and my team, the Miami Dolphins, lost. The teams of my couch-mates, my brother and his girlfriend, respectively cheering for the Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Giants, also lost.

So far, this does not have the makings of a very good Batman and Football Month.

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After completely schooling me at NCAA Football 2006 on the PS2, my brother made the horrible mistake of trying to teach me to play his favorite card game, Cribbage. (Note, please, that my brother was playing the mighty Georgia Bulldogs, a team boasting two recent Heisman Trophy candidates and a National Championship, and he had given me the lowly Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, a team that couldn't find its ass with three hands and a sliderule. In the first quarter, I tried 4 passes: 3 went to receivers that I DID NOT throw to -- seriously, pressing triangle and watching the ball sail to the R1 or circle receiver gets really, really old very, very fast. Apparently the computer decided that my pressing the triangle button only constituted a suggestion -- and were not caught. The 4th pass was intercepted. I did not attempt another pass until the 4th quarter, when I went an entire drive calling ONLY Hail Marys, 4 of 5 of which were completed, resulting in my only touchdown of the game. In a fit of pique, I ran my linebacker into the offensive line before every future attempted play, preventing my brother from ever running a play again because the game was not programmed to prevent me from repeating the gambit as a real referee would do by ejecting players or ultimately declaring my team forfeit. So, to summarize, NCAA Football 2006, like all the Madden games on which its physics and rules are based, sucks balls.)

Now where was I? Oh, yes. The so-called "game" of Cribbage.

Cribbage, it should be noted, was apparently the invention of a seventeenth century poet named Sir John Suckling. After making up a shitload of completely inane and nonsensical rules, he reportedly passed marked decks out to the English nobility and traveled the country ripping them off for a small fortune. Though at first hearing, that anecdote may seem ridiculously implausible, once you realize that only a truly foolish individual would appreciate a completely random game such as Cribbage, you will recognize the likelihood of such a misadventure.

In case you can't tell, I think Cribbage sucks. But what else should I expect as the offspring of a poet named Suckling?

If you've never played Cribbage, I can sum it up thusly:

1. The Deal: The dealer deals everyone 6 cards and then everyone throws 2 of those 6 away.
2. The Play: Take turns turning over the 4 cards that you kept. Every time you turn over a card, yell out a number and then score yourself anywhere between 0 and 12 points.
3. The Show: Once you all have turned over all 4 of your cards, reveal how many ways you can combine the cards that you turned over plus the top card revealed from the remaining deck to total 15 points or just create some pattern that you find pleasing to your eye. Then give yourself anywhere between 0 and 29 points.
4. The Crib: Now the dealer gets to look at all the cards that were thrown away and repeat step 3.

I'd like to say that there is some sense to the game, but there simply isn't. A player is rewarded for reaching an odd-numbered 15 points or having pairs which can never add to an odd number. Triples are scored as multiple pairs but runs of cards are scored by the number of cards in a run, thereby rewarding a player holding a three-of-a-kind but comparatively punishing a player for having a much rarer Royal Flush. Playing a run is worth more points than having a run in your hand. You get a point for playing a card that prevents other people from playing, unless the added total of the cards played equals 31, in which case you get 2 points instead. Rhyme? Reason? No, not with Cribbage.

When my brother revealed a Jack of Clubs and with a chuckle said, "I get a point because this card is the same suit as the card that is on top of the deck," I was done playing.

There is a Star Trek episode titled "A Piece of the Action" in which Kirk tries to trick aliens who look and act like Al Capone's gang by luring them into a card game called Fizzbin. As one of my favorite episodes, I've seen Fizzbin played many, many times. Since Kirk's rules for Fizzbin change based on times of the day or days of the week, I always chuckled at the gullibility of the gangster trying to learn the game. Now the poor gangster seems that much more the sap to me; Fizzbin probably sounded like a likely game to him because he was probably a Cribbage player.

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So this is Christmas? I must say that this Christmas was probably more enjoyable than recent years past. No one argued. No one threw punches or food. No one stormed out and drove home. (Though my father is sleeping in his car tonight. But it's just out of appreciation for tradition.)

The lack of friction around the table this year made me realize that I often hear people talk about their dysfunctional families' holidays, but I never hear anyone talk about their functional families' holidays. I think it's about time that the June Cleavers and Donna Reeds of the world speak up. Is Nixon's "silent majority" too busy enjoying the holiday season with their sweater vests and sober relatives to tell the rest of us that we're screwed up? Or are they just smart enough to lay low, lest they find themselves co-starring on a very special holiday edition of Cops with my father?

I even enjoyed a better than average gifting this year. The only thing I asked for was socks, but in addition to the socks, I also received 12 pairs of underwear and a fog machine. Wowee! I'd say it was "like Christmas," except for the fact that it actually was Christmas. In this case, my extensive mental inventory of useful sarcastic cliches has let me down, leaving me grasping for words with which to describe the event. (Sarcasm just can't be used to describe satisfaction.)

The 12 pairs of underwear made me wonder about why we call them "pairs" of underwear. A quick internet search reveals that back in the day, only nobility wore anything over the coverings of their genitals, so there was technically no such thing as "underwear" until the last few centuries. (Unless, of course, you were hanging out in a royal court wearing a codpiece or tunic.) Modern legged outerwear evolved from two, unattached leggings (a pair of hose, to be precise) to become the single garment that we now call "a pair of pants." As I understand it, the word "pants" evolved from the word "pantaloons," a type of legged, female underskirt garment designed to cover their highly coveted naughty bits. This would make "pairs of underwear" a vestigial etymological remnant of a bygone wardrobe in our lexicon.

Note that since "pants" originated as a type of underwear, modern outerwear "pants" should properly be referred to as "trousers" since "pants" is specifically derivative of a type of undergarment and "trousers" are outerwear for the legs. This appears to be yet another difference in American and British English languages. They get it right, whereas we American's don't care what you call it so long as you can't see our legs.

It turns out that "men's cotton briefs," such as I received for Christmas, weren't even invented until the 1930s in Chicago, Illinois. Named for the 20th century male undergarment called a "jockstrap," they were designed and sold by a company which would later adopt their brand name as the company name: Jockey.

Now, all this thinking of underwear has reminded me of an editorial that I once wrote to the University of Georgia's student newspaper, The Red and Black. I took the opportunity to satirize the University community's overreaction to one editorial cartoon by criticizing another by my classmate Mack Williams (now an accomplished animator for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim program Frisky Dingo). What does this have to do with underwear, you ask? Simple: "culottes," a French underwear that appears to be a cross between a skirt and shorts. I quote from one of the many, many responses to my letter:

First we had someone decrying Williams' Feb. 26 cartoon as an insult to the soldiers who fought at Iwo Jima, when it should have been plainly obvious such an insult was not the cartoonist's intent. Now we've got someone with his culottes in a bunch over Williams' portrayal of poodles in a subsequent cartoon ("Poodles not often angry or mean dogs," Feb. 28). Poodles! Come down off the ledge, Stephens, and understand that the poodle in that cartoon was a symbol for something else -- the cartoon was not about poodles any more than it was about bulldogs or people with facial hair.

The full text can be read from the archives of The Red and Black online. The event played out in the editorial pages' "Mailbox" from February 28 through March 3, 2003. The highlight of the affair for me was this dialogue exchanged in the online feedback section:

I am stunned at how many people have been writing in about the initial poodle letter. I know Americans are supposed to be irony-free, but this is ridiculous. The letter was satirizing the Iwo Jima complaints. Come on, people, show that you deserve to be at college.

Which received the following response:

He wasn't satirizing anything, it was written by a mixed up old secretary who has his priorities all mixed up. Not everyone is as clever as you think they are.

Now THAT is satisfying journalism.

Hmm. I seem to be rambling. It must be the effects of too much cranberry sauce, Hershey's Christmas Kisses, sweet tea, pound cake, Coca-Cola, and Klondike Bars. I suppose the point of all of this rambling is that I associate 17th century women's underwear with poodles. (But I don't endorse putting poodles into women's underwear. That's just weird.)

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Mark Richt, head coach of the Georgia Bulldogs, recalls Halloweens past when he dressed as Batman. So does NBA great and UGA alum Dominique Wilkins. So does current NBA superstar LeBron James. I guess I'm in pretty good company.

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I don't think I've ever been in a stadium of 80,000 people who expected their team to lose before. After the last two weeks, the so-called UGA faithful Bulldog Nation held their breath on every play. The stadium was so quiet, I could hear the electronic buzz from the stadium PA system.

And we were almost not disappointed. Down only 3 points with no timeouts remaining, Mississippi State had the ball near our 20 yard line with 18 seconds left to play. Their quarterback didn't seem to understand the necessity of not taking a sack under any circumstances. When we hit him, he lost the ball. Though we recovered, it wouldn't have mattered, since no time remained on the clock and no other plays were run in the game.

So we won the game, no thanks to our own players. I heard "fans" in the crowd compare Matthew Stafford (3 picks) with Quincy Carter and Mohamed Massaquoi (3 drops and a fumble) with Terrence Edwards. One guy was verbally flaying OT Daniel Inman alive for his 3 false starts. After time expired, most of the crowd left with their head down as though we had lost. It's been a long season already.

Next week: Florida. Ick.

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