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.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: football georgia mississippi state walter

I'll be spending Valentine's Day with the person I love most.

(Yes, that's the cutout of me that took my place at Georgia football home games during the unusual, COVID-abbreviated 2020 season. Well, for one game of it, anyway. UGA Athletics allowed FanCutouts only for the last two season games, the second of which was ultimately canceled when Vanderbilt could no longer field a healthy team. So even at only one game — a 31-24 win over Mississippi State on November 21 — that $55 piece of corrugated plastic spent more time in Sanford Stadium in 2020 than I did. Lucky guy.)

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: covid19 football georgia holidays sanford valentines day walter

I was worried Georgia might have their hands full today. Turns out, not so much.

UGA and MSU entered the game undefeated and ranked 11 and 17, respectively. However, early season rankings don't mean much. UGA squeaked by Notre Dame while MSU had walked over LSU. That made it seem that MSU might be tough competition. The final score, 3-31, proved otherwise.

It's still early in the season, but if Georgia can play as well as they did today against the rest of their SEC schedule, it could be a pretty good year.

Comments (1) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: athens football georgia mississippi state sanford

DawgNation.com reports that last week UGA had to lower the cost of their season tickets for year two of the Kirby Smart era. When asked why such an unusual move was necessary, the UGA Associate Athletic Director for Tickets said "I don't know what the full cause is."

Hmm. I don't know what the "full cause" might be, either. Let's help out the AADfT and see if we can't go all Sherlock Holmes on this using a little inductive reasoning (also known as "what I learned in PHIL 110, Introduction to Logic").

Logical syllogism #1:

Fan enthusiasm wanes following bad seasons.
2016 was a bad season.
Therefore, fan enthusiasm is down.

Despite what you may have read between the lines in my opening paragraph, I'm not going to blame Kirby Smart for decreased ticket demand. Not directly, anyway. Last year's very disappointing season is probably playing a role, but UGA has had other lackluster seasons without needing to discount tickets the following year (see: 2006, 2009, 2010, 2013, etc.).

Logical syllogism #2:

Spectators do not want to pay to see games against weak teams.
UGA's 2017 home schedule is full of weak teams.
Therefore, spectators do not want to pay to see UGA's 2017 home games.

Ugh! What a terrible home schedule UGA has put together for 2017. Home games against Appalachian State, Samford, Mississippi State, Missouri, South Carolina, and Kentucky — I'm not sure I want to pay to see most of those. If UGA can't win at least 5 of those games, it's time to get out of the SEC altogether.

Logical syllogism #3 (the important one):

Higher ticket prices result in fewer tickets sold.
UGA raised their football season ticket prices.
Therefore, UGA sold fewer tickets.

That's right, UGA raised their 2017 ticket prices a minimum of 10% over 2016 prices. Personally, I don't consider the new prices so bad because it's the first time they've raised the price in years, but I can't say that I'm surprised others have cut back, especially given other reasons listed above. Football tickets are a luxury expense, after all.

So there you go, Mr. AADfT. It's not going to do much to help you this year, but you might want to keep these things in mind before you set prices in the future. Even UGA fans don't want to have to pay a premium price for an inferior product.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: football georgia greedy mcgarity kirby smart news

This is the last post of Batman and Football Month, and it hasn't come a moment too soon for the Miami Dolphins, who have opened the season 0-3 and are facing the chip-on-their-shoulder San Diego Chargers this weekend before heading into their bye next week. If the Dolphins can't pick up a win before the bye, I predict very bad things for head coach Tony Sparano next week. It seems very likely he'll soon be joining the 14 million currently unemployed Americans. I'm not too upset: odds are that at least one of those 14 million would make a better coach than Sparano.

Meanwhile, this weekend will mark the third football game I've missed in Sanford Stadium since 2002. In recent weeks the Georgia Bulldogs have pulled out of their nosedive and look not half bad at 2-2 heading into this weekend's SEC contest with Mississippi State Bulldogs. Unfortunately, work calls, and I've been forced to give my ticket to Trey's girl Leslie. I'm sure she'll have a good time at this week's dog fight. Not as good a time as I would have had, but a good time.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: bulldogs dolphins football georgia leslie nfl trey

If every football game starts with a 50% chance of a team winning, there is an 88% chance that at least one of three games will end in a win. So you can probably tell what sort of weekend I had based on the following football weekend in review:

Friday: The Newnan Cougars lost their third game in a row. This is especially disappointing considering that they started the season with the longest ongoing winning streak in the state, and until Friday night hadn't lost a home game to a regional opponent in nearly 5 years. Oh, well. All streaks have to end sometime.

Saturday: Speaking of blown streaks, the Georgia Bulldogs lost for the first time in 36 years to Mississippi State, 24-12. UGA really couldn't have looked much worse, as the team seemed determined to lose the game. The team is now 1-3 and has yet to play rivals Tennessee, Auburn, Florida, and Georgia Tech, all of whom will waste no opportunity to kick a dead dawg. At this point in the season, there is no excuse for the players looking so unready for football game. Mark Richt has lost control of this team, and all of the seats in the football program should now be considered hot. (Ever the loyalist, I point out that this is perhaps not all Richt's fault: our Athletic Director was caught drunk driving while cheating on his wife in the off-season. If you want to talk about top-down bad examples, there you go. [And I find that I am mentally unable to prevent myself from typing, once again, that I hate Mike Bobo. Maybe it's a disease. Boboism: an inability to control your own actions, including putting together a competent offensive gameplan.])

Sunday: The Miami Dolphins fall to the New York Jets for the first time in 4 games. If this had been any other two teams, I probably would have called this a good game. But it wasn't. It was depressing. This was the Dolphins' first loss of the season, and the team falls into a three way tie with the Patriots and Jets. (The Bills, as usual, suck.) The NFL has a long season, and I'm not going to make a mountain of this molehill. But I would have liked to win such a close game. Especially against the Jets.

Good grief.

Comments (2) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: bobo is a bozo dolphins football georgia mississippi state nfl

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.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: athens football georgia mississippi state sanford