Expansions - Clemson

Just for fun, I got to thinking about Clemson joining the SEC. Part of me never wants them in because (from my upbringing) I kinda want them to always WANT to be in, but just can't, like the nerd outside the club. But, part of me wants them to come in and get slaughtered. I took a theoretical look at their schedule this year and what it might look like as part of the revamped SEC east, including A & M as their 'all the time' opponent from the West (assuming Texas and FSU would play every year). I'm also assuming a 9-game conference slate, and assuming the keep the rivalry w/ GT (which is highly unlikely). But it's also very likely the conferences would move to 10 conference games.

 Sept. 4 North Texas
Sept. 11 Presbyterian
Sept. 18 at Auburn
Sept. 25 Open Date
Oct. 2 Miami (FL)
Oct. 9 at North Carolina
Oct. 16 Maryland
Oct. 23 Georgia Tech
Oct. 30 at Boston College
Nov. 6 NC State
Nov. 13 at Florida State
Nov. 20 at Wake Forest
Nov. 27 South Carolina

vs. North Texas

vs. PC

@ GT

vs. Tennessee

@ A & M

vs. UGA

vs. Auburn

@ Kentucky

vs. Vandy

@ FSU

@ Florida

vs. South Carolina

I'm sorry, that would be funny to watch. I think Clemson will lose @ Auburn this year, go 1-3 vs. FSU, Miami, UNC & Tech. That's 8-4 if they win the pushes vs. South Carolina, BC and maybe at Wake.

With my revamped schedule...those boys would be lucky to go 5-7. And I mean lucky. The great thing about being UGA, Florida and UT is that you don't have to play yourself. Adding FSU to that mix and that's 4 juggernauts you've got to play every stinkin' year. Not to mention the Cats, Cocks, and Aggies. And every once in a while you're going to draw Bama or LSU or the Horns from the west. They might want to re-think conference expansion in Pickens county. You're trading trips to Chapel Hill, Winston Salem and Chestnut Hill for trips to College Station, Lexington and Gainesville? whew...

TURNOVERS

I'm sure some of you have seen blutarsky's blog about turnover margin and regression to the mean. He and I are of kindred spirits. Here's the last 8 years of T.O. margin in the SEC: http://blutarsky.wordpress.com/

Georgia's numbers are:
09: -16
08: -3
07: 9
06: -1
05: 11
04: -2
03: 11
02: 8

It's easy to see how you go to the Sugar Bowl or get to the dome: finish w/ +8 or better in T.O. margin. What you also see is that last year's numbers were darn near astronomical. How in the world we won 8 games playing 12 of 13 games against BCS opponents and playing in the SEC is beyond comprehension. They were literally our undoing. Losses at OSU, vs. Tennessee and vs. UK were directly related to turnovers. What you see is that the odds of us repeating that are even more astronomical. Last season alone took our average from 4.7 to 2.1. The law of averages (and the fact that our running backs know the plays now and we don't have Cox at QB) has to decrease the turnovers. Trading at Stillwater, vs. Arizona St., vs. LSU, and at Tech for vs. UL-Laf., at Colorado, at Miss. St., vs. Tech won't hurt either. Losing Willie, is obviously a plus, too. I'm looking through red and black glasses, but it's hard for me to look at those numbers and not thing we're going to be a lot better and by a lot I mean a lot more Ws.

Pre Season Rankings

I'm terribly confused by rankings. Barnhart's are a great example. Let me get this straight: We were 8-5, with a terrilble QB, the worst T.O. ratio in the nation (basically), and a defense that looked like a pop-warner team. With THAT team, we went TO Arkansas and blasted them w/ 51 points (Richard Samuel started that game at RB and Washaun never saw the field) and we went TO Tech and ran them 30-24. Arkansas also when 8-5 last year and has Mallet-head back but has done little besides cross it's fingers to fix that terrible D that made Joe Cox look more like Joe Montana. Tech lost a plethora of talented guys, returning basically only Nesbitt and Allen. They lost difference makers (Dwyer, Thomas, Morgan, Burnett).

On the other hand, we will start a QB not named Joe Cox, which is a step up. One has to figure we pick up more than 2 fumbles this year. We fired our DC, brought in an NFL fire-breather, and decided to take our head out of our rear-end on special teams. Plus, we finally figured out late in the year that King and Ealey can handle the offensive load just fine. And didn't we play Tech w/o AJ Green? Wow, we beat Arky and Tech and never played either of them w/ BOTH Ealey and Green together, our two best offensive players?

So, both of them come to Athens and, yet, Barnhart (and his is indicative of everyone else's) has UGA at #21, Tech at #15 and Arky at #16. I'm not saying we're a top 15 team, I'm just hard pressed to figure out how those 2 numbskull teams are 5 spots better than us.

Boy, you say it every year, but those first 2 conference games are ginormous. If we can get through (fake)SC and Arky 3-0 and head to starkville and Boulder w/ a little confidence, I feel good about us.

Can't wait for fall.

Mega Conferences - Re Visited

I posted this a month or so ago.....With all the conference expansion talks, I figured I would re post this and see what you think....

So, I've been meaning to give my 2 cents worth on conference expansion. Like playoffs, I'm always concerned that the powers that be simply aren't as smart as the rest of us. Also, there's so much that would have to happen to make it happen, and a lot of complicating factors (see Notre Dame). But, there seems to be some consensus among many of the commissioners that this is very much going to be a reality one day. So, we're looking at four 16-team leagues. Already, that's a problem. There are 65 BCS teams right now, not counting Notre Dame. Plus, cutting that number down to 64 won't include teams like BYU, Utah, TCU, & Boise St. I, for one, wouldn't worry too much about those non-AQ schools. I've got a solution for them. Notre Dame is a hitch in the giddy-up, and trying to find the team that's going to willfully get off the money train will be hard to find, and it's hard to find a team that SHOULD leave. For that reason, I'd say that this is the time to tell ND to put up or shut up. I'm going to work out a system in which they are involved in a conference (with maybe some contengiency plans if they're not.

The New SEC:
12 current schools plus Miami, FSU, Clemson & GA Tech

The New Big 16 (formerly known as the Big 10):
The current 11 schools plus Notre Dame, Missouri, Kansas, Kansas St., Iowa St.

Pac 18:
Current Pac-10 schools plus Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Texas Tech, A & M, Baylor, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St.

How you divide those up could be done in a myriad of ways. The SEC would be a challenge to not make the East terribly difficult, but I'll have to think about that later. Basically, you would have the winner of these conferences meet 1 week or 2 weeks after the conference championship games. Use the current BCS rankings to determine seeds. #1 & #2 host #4 & #3, respectively. That’s the key, without home field advantage as paret of the system, non conference games lose all their luster. Losers of those game go to a BCS bowl, winners go to the big dance. Also, you would have to ramp up conference play to 9-10 games. I think 10 games would be a stretch, but this new system would almost eliminate most non-conference rivalries. Clemson/Fake SC, UGA/Tech, FSU/Florida, Florida/Miami, Missouri/Illinois would all be conference games now. USC/Notre Dame would be about the only real traditional non-conference rivalry left. So, you could play 10 conference games (7 division - 1 non division constant - 2 rotating).

So what about the non-AQ teams? This is where it gets complicated. It's easy to say that if one of those teams is ranked in the top 4, they go ahead of the lowest ranked conference champion. However, you're going to have a hard time convincing the conference commissioners of that. They know they're going to face a brutal schedule each year plus a conference championship game. Winning those leagues with only 2 losses is an accomplishment, and to think you could fight all season and lose a tough game in Gainesville and one in Baton Rouge but win your conference and some 12-0 TCU team that beat Baylor in non-conference play is going to go ahead of you. So, I'd do something like if the non-AQ team is in the top-4 and a conference champion is ranked below #12 in the final BCS poll, the non-AQ team goes to the final 4. This would stop us from having those 4 loss conference champions in the tournament.

That would be a pretty doggone true national champion.

Post G-Day Dawg Talk

I hope you've read some about Belin's comments about kickoffs. He's going to try a novel concept: let our all-american kicker kick it as far has he can, put fast, good tackling starters on the kickoff team and teach them to shed blocks and make tackles. That line of thinking was just too much for Fabris, and, really, where's the challenge in that?

The more I think about this team and season, the more excited I get about what has to be some fun and good times ahead in 2010. And though we can spin it every spring, it's hard not to imagine a better season. We won 8 games and won a bowl. I think we'll be able to pull that out again, plus many more.

2009 facts

-Our defense was horrible
-Our kickoff strategy was darn near suicidal
-We threw 17 interceptions
-We were some ridiculous number in turnover margin, last in the nation, basically
-We recovered 2…count 'em…2 fumbles
-We played Kentucky w/o AJ Green
-We had Bryan Evans at safety
-We didn't realized Washaun Ealey was on scholarship until 3rd Qtr. of the LSU game (5th game!!)

It's hard to imagine our D is worse, and Grantham makes me think it will be much, much better. It's also hard to imagine our kickoffs are worse. It's hard to imagine we get worse play out of the QB position, even if it is a RS frosh. It's hard to imagine that we are the turnover machine we were last year and lack-there-of on defense. It's hard to imagine we don't get #3 and #4 the rock early and often, especially w/ a veteran line and rookie QB. It's hard to imagine that I couldn't cover better than Bryan Evans. And lucky for us, Bacarri Rambo is considerably better than me.

So here's what I think:

-The QB situation is addition by subtraction. Joe was a DGD, but man those INT's killed us.
-Murray also just might be special
-The O-line looks a lot more like our 2002 O-line than ever before
-Orson Charles is uncoverable
-AJ Green is uncoverable
-Washaun is the most underrated player in the league. Dude's going to be All-conference this year - bank on it.
-Our D is going to attack like never before.

Now, one of th interesting things is that it's hard to imagine Blair and Drew having better years. So, all we can hope for is that they equal last year, but we might see a drop off. Drew got us out of a lot of tight spots. What if we just averages 43 yards a kick, which is, like what normal human college punters average.

The thing that I'm starting to really like is the match-ups. Spurrier will have virtually no idea (for once!) what we're doing. They still somehow worked out that Thursday game before they play us, but they've got a real opponent. They open up w/ Southern Miss in Columbia at 7:30 on ESPN on Sept. 2. They'll have to be ready for a national TV game and that RB for Southern Miss is no joke. If the Cock's coast through that one, they'll flat out get beat, and Spurrier knows that. Moreover, we get to unleash our new D on them. We will be nothing but vanilla against the Ragin' Cajuns on Sept. 4. And here's the really good thing about our D. I think it's going to work great against pro-style teams, and that's what we get early w/ Spurrier and Petrino's offenses. Grantham wants to confuse and blitz passing QBs. How do you think Ryan Mallet's going to handle that. We're going to have some hiccups and probably get burned a few times, but I think our matchup against those deals is going to be good. And Grantham is going to be out to prove himself a worthy hire vs. the Cocks. And I like the fact that he's used to spending 70 hours at the office to get ready for games. I wonder how this D will work against the spread, but I guess Bama did alright vs. the Gators last year. We've got a window here. 2010 and 2011 the schedule sets up and in 2012 we'll add Bama but McElroy, Richardson, and Ingram will all be gone and Brantley will be out in Gainesville -- and #11 will be our QB the whole time. Let's hope we jump on it and dominate for a few years.

Monday Nugget

Scanning across a Banner Herald article and found this nugget:

Making the right decisions will be a key determining factor for coaches in choosing the next starting quarterback after the Bulldogs’ 17 interceptions last season were their most in 25 years — since Todd Williams, David Dukes and James Jackson combined for 17 in 1984.

I remember those days, boys. Those were some of the worst ever in UGA QB history. We were flat out lousy. Luckily we had a bruising TB (Lars) and the greatest kicker in the history of college football. That just tells you how bad it was. By the way, we threw 16 picks in 2006 and Bobo threw 16 himself in '96. That's the recipe for a flat out crappy season. It's hard to imagine Aaron Murray will be that stupid with the football. If he's not, chalk at least 1-2 more games up for the Dawgs, and that's w/o improving in a single other area. Recovering 2 fumbles and throwing that many picks…I really can't believe we won 8 ballgames in 2009.

Thoughts from the Saturday Scrimmage at Sanford

We have us a QB. He's #11. Unbelievable release and accuracy. He is in my opinion, better than the other two QBs and it's not really close. How will he react with 90,000+ in the stands?

#8 is better than ever. It did not matter where the ball was, he caught it. He wore out Boykin on 1 on 1 drills all day. The good thing is Boykin will only be better because of that, and we won't play anyone as good as AJ.

Todd Grantham is awesome.

#42 was dominant. No one could stop him.

Richard Samuel may need a redshirt. Lots of talent ahead of him. Not to say that Richard's not talented, but he may need some more time to get back in a defensive mode. Just a thought.

#3 and #4 know how to run a football. They looked very sharp and very polished. #3 looks great.

Jakar Hamilton looks awesome in a uniform and you can tell he knows how to play ball.

Nick Williams is HUGE. He looks odd at Safety he's so big.

Jordan Love also passes the eye test. Sanders Commings was working at CB again.

The "starting" DL was Dobbs, Abry Jones, Kiante Tripp. Don't know if theres anything to read out of that, but that was the first unit today.

The 3-4 looks almost like a 5-2 the way the OLBs are positioned, and we were bringing pressure from everywhere. Corners were blitzing often. It was really fun to see.

And Orson Charles is really good, in case you did not know...