I’ll say things have been getting solid with some of our programs as of late…equestrian, tennis, gymnastics, and especially track and field…
Congrats…AGAIN. What an accomplishment and some serious props to building a stable and repeatable product and improving what was a mostly forgotten about program in Butts Mehre.
I like to drop another fun fact here, too:
Hee hee.
Nice recovery, and if you watched the game, it featured some damn fine pitching on both side of the diamond.
Our started got pulled after having some tightness and in came Caden Aoki, who threw a gem in relief to close out the game and bring home the W for the Dawgs.
And based on some comments yesterday, yes, perhaps I’m being an old fart when it comes to the dugout antics of our squad. They were quite polished and professional throughout, so I need to tamper my traditionalism a touch and embrace what Wes Johnson is putting together.
After all, at least there’s nothing like this going on in the dugout:
This seems to match well with a team with Yell Leaders, yes. Yeesh.
Okay, so I have to admit…I kind of had a brain fog when I posted last week. As Derek pointed out, it could’ve been a reference to the 2018 Rose Bowl, but out defense wasn’t exactly 2021/2022 defensive by comparison, so that could’ve ruled that one out. Some said the 2019 SEC Championship against Joe Burrow, with the descriptor of the greatest quarterback of all time. Some said the 2007 season Sugar Bowl against Hawaii, as Colt Brennan definitely fit that bill at the time and our defense ripped the Rainbows a new one that night.
Admittedly, I was referring to the 2018 Rose Bowl. Mayfield, as big of a douche as he is, is statistically one of the greatest college football quarterbacks of all time. Statistically. Ditto Colt Brennan, and Burrow fits the bill for a single season but not for necessarily an entire career. So sue me. Maybe our defense wasn’t as great as I teased it in the description, but I do love the 2007 Sugar Bowl, so let’s go with that. Mr. Peabody, roll that beautiful bean footage.
Dial it up to about 8:45 and watch Marcus Howard kill a man (no offense intended). The 2007 college football season was something to behold, and is worthy of a series of 30 for 30 stories. This was a Georgia team that came on strong late, had the famous black out against Auburn, the field storming against Florida, and I personally think was the best team in the nation at season’s end. What could have been. How we lost to South Carolina (6-6 on the season) and Tennessee (10-4) remains some of the signature weirdness and frustration that was the Mark Richt era.
Anyway, here’s this week’s WABAC description. Allow me to be as vague yet more accurate in this one than I was last week. Sorry scamps.
Welp, this should be an adventure, folks. Our new coach gets his first taste of an away game and it’s going to be nationally televised at their place, and they’re a Top 10 team, to boot. Lead by their cool as a cucumber California kid quarterback, the opposition has a good offense and a stiff, tough defense, to boot. We’ve already dropped one inexplicable loss at home to an unranked team, and there’s not much reason to be optimistic as most of the outlets have us as an 11 point underdog heading into hostile territory.
To make matters worse, it’s the first away game for our young quarterback, and with new offensive philosophy and play calls and all that, this environment isn’t exactly optimal for a new coach, new quarterback, and a new Georgia bulldog team to communicate. They’re favored to win the conference, we’re favored to come in third or fourth, at best, and a long, long recent history of misery was broken once in the past decade – last year – but it didn’t save the former coach’s career by any means.
This one can make amends for the earlier loss and redeem the new guy early in the minds of Georgia fans. Or this could be the game where many of us will question if we ever will have a head coach who can lead us back to the promised land that we’ve come to expect around here. This could be a career defining game…for better…or for worse.
Take a stab at it, scamps.
First, there was the let down that was the Hoop Dawgs losing to Ole Piss in the SEC Tournament (PSA: Ole Miss just beat Alabama and is advancing…could they be the 2026 version of the 2008 Georgia Bulldogs in the Tornado Dome?). Then our Diamond Dawgs forgot about situational hitting and dropped their SEC opener to Tennessee last night, 7-4. But here’s the image from before the game:
Maybe Kirby needs to come coach the baseball team, too. Something tells me the swag and the dugout shenanigans would dry up quickly and, somehow, we’d be winning bigger and better. The swag and “feed the trees” would give way to “keep chopping trees” and we’d be barreling over first basemen and catchers just to prove a point. Send Javon Bullard in as a baserunner and let loose the dogs of war. Can’t hit a ball, but can hit a person.
I digress.
In some positive news, it looks like the Gym Dawgs are making a comeback.
Beating Alabama is always satisfying, and if Wes can’t right the ship at Foley, let Kirby come in as a guest manager for the Alabama series.
Sigh. Go Dawgs.
The great experiment came to an abrupt end.
As a tribute, here you go.
Players complained about the footing, the feel, and generally didn’t like it. If you saw it in action and you somehow dribbled over one of the Phillips logos, you were lit up in red. Interesting way to get viewers, stupid for the sport.
But that’s the theme of the year, is it now?
There’s all sorts of speculation around the 2024 season, and the turbulence that developed starting with the Carson Beck “decision” at season’s end. From there, it just got worse. Between key injuries, arrests, and the ongoing saga that was Carson Beck and his magical Snapchat stories, there’s much to be suspected about what really happened behind the scenes in Athens and why Beck seemed genuinely apathetic and why the team gained a spark when Gunner entered the game in the 2024 SEC Championship.
Did teammates hate Beck? Did he hate his teammates?
How did the coaches feel? Well, there’s this.
Yes, that’s Kirby pictured with Carson’s ex. It’s the Cavinder twins, and I can’t tell the difference between the two. I think that’s the point. Cough, cough.
Aside from pulling my mind out of the gutter, I have to then wonder why Kirby would be pictured with them and more importantly, why they’re pictured with Kirby. He seems to be on a vacation, of sorts, as Lane Kiffin let the world know earlier this week.
Lane also took some time to play basketball with the twins, which he posted on his socials and is getting Epstein-esque responses for it. And, to boot, Kiffin took a shot at Beck.
Yeesh. Mary Beth, go get your man and pull him out of this before it gets too weird.
If it hasn’t already.
It’s Friday the 13th for the 2nd of 3 times this year. The day is steeped in lore of bad luck and superstitions. A highly successful horror film series has ran for years with Friday The Thirteenth as its title. So, let’s concentrate on horror films today.
In my early teens I read the book “The Amityville Horror” and then went to see the movie. Believing the whispers around this being a true story, that movie scared me out of my seat on several occasions… I mainly remember a cat jumping on a windowsill unexpectedly and me shooting straight up off of my seat from being startled.
Are you a horror film fan? What movie did its job and scared the shhhhhtuff out of you?
Here’s a local hometown place that has some damn fine hamburgers, and I’ll shamelessly plug them here:
A 2018 World Burger Champion, the city of McDonough is fortunate to have at least one good place with real good food, though I’ll say we have a lot of other hidden gems around here, too. From a family owned place called Bojanes that focuses on great fresh food from vegan to carnivores but with a unique New York deli feel, to a great local Cuban restaurant called Papi’s, we do have our shining stars. But Kirby G’s is something else.
Yes, they have some great burgers. They have great everything, and it’s set in a 1950’s-esque diner with an ice cream bar and it has a nice aura to it. Kind of feels a little like being John Travolta and Uma Thurman walking in to Jackrabbit Slim’s in Pulp Fiction, just without the wait staff being dressed as actors and musicians from the era.
It’s nice to have places like this, and it seems like there’s always a great signature burger in a place like this. With ice cream and shakes. “You want that Martin and Lewis, or Amos and Andy?”. Oh, I’m having multiple flashbacks to the 90s (can I take the Waybac there, please. Pretty please. With sugar on top. Now clean the f*cking car). Okay, so I’m having Pulp Fiction flashbacks. Sue me. It’s on cable right now and it’s glorious. If you know, you know.
It also makes me flash back in time to another place.
Man, I’m just simply being nostalgic here, scamps. But to be honest, some of the best childhood to adult memories revolve around a good grill, some burgers and dogs, and some ice cold beers or great ice cream treats. Summer is approaching, I can feel it. Or I could Wednesday, and now it’s winter again. Come on, spring and summer.
Anyway, if you’re ever on the Southside, give Kirby G’s a visit, you won’t be disappointed. I never am, because they have top flight burgers when I’m of an age where I’d assume just make it myself, and I’ll actually pay money for it. And, it takes me to a happier time and place.
So, how’s about you? You have a favorite burger joint, or a memory associated with a good burger?
Discuss, scamps.
Jordan’s mom was sick of him sitting around the house and eating her out of house and home. Getting out of shape, being lazy, so she drove him down to a local football field and dropped him off.
He hated it. But the team offered free meals. He was 15, hooked on video games and junk food, mythology, and DJing and a music career. He loved playing basketball because he was bigger and the little guys would just bounce off him in the paint. He’d foul out often. He was out of shape. He was overweight.
Because of his size and the mythology that surrounded him, he enrolled at Mallard Creek High as a sophomore, and enrolling counselor was the football coach’s wife. She insisted he meet her husband, and was asked he played football. He responded in the negative, because he was a basketball player. His mom was working two jobs and couldn’t keep up with money because of his appetite.
“I was working two jobs,” Allen said, “and he was eating me out of house and home.”
That night, Allen informed her son he was going to football practice the next day. He didn’t have to play, she said. He could fetch water, serve as the equipment manager, “put Band-Aids on knees, if he had to.” Allen just wanted him off the couch.
The next morning, Allen roused her boy from bed bright and early, shuffled him into the car and drove him to practice. She opened the passenger door and shoved Allen out, telling him she’d return after teaching her summer school classes.
Davis stood there, befuddled. Eventually, Palmieri and a few other coaches found him and directed him onto the field, where he watched and baked in the sun.
“Oh, he hated it,” Allen said. “And he hated me for making him do it.”
But the next day, Davis returned. Eventually, he relented and started running through drills with the rest of the team. He stuck with it through camp and into the school year, but still, he was miserable.
Each day after classes, the team lifted weights. Davis was 6-foot-6, more than 300 pounds, and he struggled to bench press a fraction of his body weight. He begged teachers to let him sit in on tutoring sessions and, when that failed, hid in bathroom stalls, sometimes for up to an hour before coaches eventually found him.
“He was literally in tears, crying, saying, ‘I can’t do it,'” former Mallard Creek defensive line coach Shon Galloway said. “But he’s come a long way.”
Weeks passed. Davis got reps on the JV team. He asked questions, learned techniques. He improved. Before long, the kid who sobbed on the weight bench was squatting 400 pounds with ease. He had become a wrecking ball seemingly overnight. His first game on the defensive line came for the JV team, and Palmieri remembers the opposing center was so rattled by Davis’ size, he snapped the ball over the QB’s head nearly a dozen times. Mallard Creek had a genuine prospect.
Only one problem remained: Davis still believed he was a basketball player.
From three star prospect to a guy who could literally have a statue made of him at Sanford to an honorary Redcoat, what a long, strange trip it’s been. And he’s deservedly getting rewarded for it. Jordan Davis, ladies and gents, can take a bow.
Damn Good Dawg. And when it’s all over with in the NFL, maybe he needs a spot on the strength and conditioning staff in Athens working with the bigger guys.
Go Dawgs!
Look on the bright side, scamps. At least we didn’t go out and finish the season on a Wednesday night. Georgia got off to a really slow start, scoring only 20 points in the first half, but made a respectable and furious comeback in the second half.
However, it seems the ghost of Penn Wagers was having the last laugh.
Somto got a flagrant 2 and got ejected. Obvious goal tends (they literally bounced off the backboard before being swatted) were ignored. In the day and age where the game is stopped by multiple reviews and goes three hours in length, nary a moment was spent reflecting on what was and what could’ve been.
Regardless, I refuse to be an Ohio State or Alabama fan here, as we should’ve played like Georgia in the first half and less like a high school team, so there’s that. Last year, we had a slow start in the NCAA Tourney, so maybe we got it out of our system.
It is what it is. Let it be Ole Miss that we never want to see in the postseason from this point forward. Call it progress, though, because we played on a Thursday instead of starting on a Wednesday at the bottom rungs of the conference ladder. I’ll take it.
Still, March Madness awaits. We’ll be a likely 8 or 9 seed, either way, the first round will be a fight.
Let’s hope we’re a touch more awake when the Big Dance starts instead of searching around for our glass slipper. All glory is fleeting, the loss is yesterday’s news, and we still have one more game to play.
Go Dawgs.