the Friday Misery is home for the Holidays

“I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.” - Ignatius Reilly

John Kennedy Toole’s protagonist was pretentious, arrogant, and bloated - both by brain as much as stature. But in times like these…I just wish Mr. Toole had more than one novel to delve into.

Crimes by Committee

Because if you replace just a few words in the quote, it explains our state of discontent these last few days. 

century Committee

occasional frequent

cheese dip Old Fashioned

There we go! Because a gluttonous group of glory holes can’t have it both ways. Best or most deserving…? Can we add another subgroup here - cheaters or non-cheaters? How about GOATs or wannabe-GOATs? Oh wait, they actually covered that one pretty well.

No, I’m not going to harp on it too long. Because you’re tired of rehashing it too. But to punish a team that did everything they could do, won every game including their conference, but because their defense wouldn’t be as good without its star injured quarterback…sorry ‘Noles. And to reward one team SO much for beating your week to week #1 as to elevate them fours spots, all while dropping said #1 team five spots??

That’s enough. My brain is reeling again.

I’m just thankful to have one.

On the other hand, pass me a pacifier

We sure got greedy quick didn’t we dear Reader? I seem to recall in the not too distant past, a time when we would’ve given an appendage just to be in last Saturday and Sunday’s discussion. And not like a Mr. Mays’ pinky digit either. Like a full on, non-dominant or dominant, God-given limb!

Sorry momma, but them aughts and such was Hell!

So yeh, I knew when I woke up Sunday and recalled the final SECCG score, that we had about as much chance of making it into the College Football Championship as Bama did of converting a 4th and 31 for a tuddy on the final play of the game on the plains as an internet wanderer has of going surfing for an hour without stumbling on another 7-8 articles about the NFL’s new wonder couple. 

So, like you most likely, I was resigned to stop whining and reflect on the unprecedented 29-0 run. What a time! We brought back a trophy and Bama-Covid from Indy, and just kept rolling! How many games were there the last couple seasons when the team was not playing to their standard, that we thought we’d actually lose? At Missouri, nah. Homecoming for Kentucky, nope. Hell, the regular season closer against Tech with an interim coach had my 1990’s self in awe!

Peach Ball dropped wide short!

It wasn’t until last year’s Peach Bowl that we finally broke a sweat! Whew.

And then this season? Can you imagine being down at half to the gamecocks and not being bent out of shape? Two weeks later on the Plains…okay, had to get on our knees and pray to dear Ol’ Munson’s Ghost that Abuurn’s secondary got a sudden case of dyslexia and thought that was OWBRES lining up in the slot.

Again, whew!

Anyway, all that to say it’s been quite a run Dawg fans! And despite what those kissin’ siblings up on rocky top, and those toothless reptiles down in the swamp might think…hell, throw in the 2023 SEC championship gumps…just like Kirby told ‘em, “We ain’t going NOWHERE!”

Now, please bow your heads…dear layin’ in a manger Baby Jesus, please keep the lights bright this Christmas. For both those with 5 stars and those without. (Don’t let the tithing plate keep passing you by Vandy.)

Enjoy the Army/Navy game ya filthy animals! Go Army! #beatNavy

Epilogue

Yes, I found the keys to this thing somewhere around the intersection of Inspiration Ave. and Got a Lil Time on My Hands Cir. I’d like to keep posting somewhere between frequently and weekly. But most likely we’re coasting into a “let’s see how this goes” time period.

Full disclosure, we have moved to coastal Georgia and I won’t get to as many games as I used to. With the move, a new gig, a rebuilt engine and a cracked tooth, I managed only two this season. But rest assured we watch every game, relish any game we can get in Jacksonville and any opportunity to tailgate with our old crew, as well as see some of y’all OG readers in red and black!

Now I’m off to clean some things up around here. Somehow since I last logged in the spam filter caught tens of thousands of spam comments. Blessing and a curse and all that. So I’ll first try and get commenting figured out, but it’ll be regulated to some degree to start with. 

Until next time, I’m putting the keys in my pocket this time. Then I’ll text the daughters to remind me of how to drop on of those “pins” from my iPhone so I can keep finding that intersection. Go Dawgs!

"Coach, did you hear Bernie may be bloggin again?"
"Oh he is is he!"

the Friday Misery puts down the fork, and picks up the gauntlet

“Aww...look at these poor little Dawg fans,” she said as she came upon our table. Then, as she wiped away fake tears, “Did they get their wittle feewings hurt?” 

There was no logical retort to make, as indeed, we had.

Comfort food in an uncomfortable moment

Paul Dupre' has a cozy little restaurant in Baton Rouge where his staff serves food inspired by his grandmother's home cooked meals. Elsie’s Plate and Pie has everything a southern palate might find comfortable to a hard working fork - okra, tomato pie, red beans & rice, pork chops. And of course, plenty of fried catfish.

It is also true that this is where our crew sought comfort after witnessing Kirby’s Dawgs get spanked harshly and very publicly by Coach O’s bengal bayou tigers last season. It had been quite a day for our hungry appetites already, having been invited into the infamous JR Vendetto’s tailgate. Under the shadow of the campus' Memorial Tower he and his fellow Louisianans had graciously served up gumbo and boudin and jambalaya and enough shrimp to feed Ignatius Reilly for at least a week. 

Nick Offerman as John Kennedy
Toole's sardonic protagonist

Although Ignatius would probably wash em down with a glass of sherry instead of all that cold beer. And given his penchant for grandiose complaints, he’d even find a way to underappreciate and pick nits at anything that graced Miss Elsie’s dinner table. But last October, as our band of dawggone tired travelers gathered around an outside table under the evening sky at her restaurant’s namesake, we needed comfort. To travel and witness a loss is one thing, but to see the team get beat so soundly was even more devastating than humbling.

So we passed around plates and argued over which dish was best (and for the record, it was the seafood pot pie in my humble opinion. But the Natchitoches meat pie will likely be my order the next time I’m there) all while punishing ourselves by reliving this failed play and that bad call and DEAR GOD DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THAT FAKE FIELD GOAL! 

There's something about sharing a table being weighted down as much by great food as good friends' voices. On a day that ended badly on the playing field, it was comforting to find familiarity in conversation and used silverware. Not to mention napkins used beyond their ways and means.

Yes, looking forward to another visit to Elsie's. But next time I hope to not be interrupted by an LSU fan spewing hateful truths and logic.

this offensive echo chamber is offensive

Look. We've all been arguing about it for months. And I know by now I’m not going to convince you one way or the other. I know that. By now you’ve either decided to hate this Georgia offense until you’re blue in the face, or to support it despite it’s awkward and unwelcome visage. 

As a person who is himself very often awkward and also, at times, finds himself unwelcome, it should be no secret I’ve chosen the latter stance. When Jake Fromm turns one way to hand the ball off and the ball carrier of note has moved in an opposite direction, I can relate. Just a few months ago I fell head first into the backyard trying to catch my dog by the collar before he gobbled up his own excrement. (I know right? I was all like “WTF dude! Naw, don’t do...oof.”) Like Fromm, my intentions were true. But the dog zigged when I thought he had committed to the zag.

We all pay a price for our inadequacies. It’s just that mine are less public. And not punishable by a 300lb lineman barreling in on me.

But can we all agree that we’ve said everything that needs to be said at this point? Does it really do any damn good to rip the scab off again just to shove it in a fellow Georgia fans’ face?

Regardless, by tomorrow night around 7:30 you’ll have one of a couple options: 1) keep pissing in your own cheerios and wallowing in your own misery over the fact that this offense hasn’t lived up to its potential despite its 11-2 record and third straight trip to the December Dome, or 2) enjoy another incredible win over LSU on the grand national stage.

Kind of like we did here. And also here. And I especially enjoyed it when we did it here.

I hold true to the lifestyle of being a Georgia Bulldog fan where it means you take the good with the bad. In other words, I’m just as much a Dawg fan now as I was when we lost to Georgia Tech 40-23 my first year at UGA back in 1990. 

Ray Goff wore a UGA conductor cap. I wore a grimace.

People train don't run outta
Wichita huh Coach?

Transitioning stanza

But I won’t wear a grimace tomorrow. Nor a UGA train conductor’s cap for that matter. And not because I’m too proud to be upset over a season like this that we’ve been begging for. For years now we’ve wanted a program that took us to back to back to back SEC Championship contests where we could see how we could stack up against the conference's elite as well as the nation’s best.

During the Richt years we had a taste of it every now and then. His teams took the lid off the cardboard box that held the cake and we got to drag our finger through the icing a bit, During the Donnan years we got close enough to stare at the lid...until Quincy threw yet another interception in Columbia and we just settled for another Little Debbie.

During the Goff years we played with toy trains evidently. I don’t know. I can’t remember anymore. 

No, tomorrow I will not be wearing a grimace because we’re gonna win this damn thing. I’m sick of hearing about this unstoppable LSU Fightin’ Tiger offense and ready for Kirby to change the national narrative to “Hey, maybe this Georgia defense is really THAT good. Garsh!”

Have we faced an offense this good? Nope. Not close. But have they faced a defense as good as Tae and JR and company? I bet not. And I'll take the Dawgs in that fight.

All. Damn. Day!

We're already living rent free in Dabo's head. Tomorrow Fromm and Co. make Coach O drop another F-bomb on his way down to 4th in Sunday’s rankings. Joe Burrows gets next week’s Heisman, but Rodrigo gets carried off the field on Jordan Davis’ shoulder as the red and black confetti reigns down.

Strike your pose Burrows, but #RespectTheSpecs! Always.

Now, if you will, please bow your head...Dear Lord Baby Jesus...gives us one more shot of Herrien barreling downhill with sights set on an LSU defensive back. And then please, please let our defense get after their ass! Go Dawgs!

-------
For reference if you're interested - Elsie's Plate and Pie. You won't go wrong, promise.

Also, if you're unfamiliar with the Ignatius Reilly reference, go buy a copy of Confederacy of Dunces, Toole's only book, may he rest in peace. From his tragic end we must celebrate every incredibly vivid character he gave us.

Friday Misery - Lulu and Junior and Catherine the Average

Had this Misery circled on the calendar ever since October 10th, 2015 at about 3:34pm. I've waited that long to see someone exact some measure of revenge. Someone who is about the humblest, most talented running back my kids have ever seen. Someone who worked his ass off to get back..not for this game tomorrow, but for the earliest game he could (in)humanly possibly play in.

I desperately want to see Nick Chubb run over tackle footballers in orange tomorrow. I desperately want to see 27 put his team on his shoulders and cure cancer on the way to the endzone for the game winning touchdown as the sun sets and the Middle East finds peace.

My heart wants that. My heart needs that.

But we don't win this thing tomorrow with what my heart wants. We don't become a better blocking and tackling football team with what my heart needs. We don't beat the Volunteers based on romanticized ideals.

We beat them only by earning it. Now buckle your damn chin strap son. Ole Miss was five days, 14 hours, and one minute ago. You gonna let them beat you twice?

Bitch please.

Lulu the Great

The easiest way to understand the abject simplicity with which the UTKnoxville HillBillys live is to really listen closely to the “lyrics” of their “fight” song.

A couple years ago I gave you a picture of what Honest Abe and his dear wife Mary saw as he toured the post-Civil War South and traveled through the Tennessee hills. Today I think we need to go back even further to the very beginning.

Yes, back to the Adam and Eve of HillBillys - Junior and Lulu.

I'm pretty sure Lulu is the one on the left.

“Down” in the Tennessee hills, Junior once had a girl on Rocky Top. According to local legend, she was half bear and the other half was a cat. (Yes, you read that right.) And together they commenced to a level of advanced husbandry no one has, or ever will (hopefully) match.

Catherine the Great, according to rumors, died trying under the weight of a horse.

Catherine the Great evidently was neither half bear nor half cat. (may she rest in peace)

The Butch and Dobbs' lovechild.

Most civilizations entrenched in the practice of incest and animal seduction die out as a victim of their their unGodly nature. Somehow “corn from a jar” has sustained these hillbilly deviants to the point where their tree of life ain’t seen a branch since the day Lulu dropped that spork into an empty can of beans, farted and then Junior felt his Wranglers rise to attention.

Yeehaw.

Hey hoss, you can’t crush faces with a box of kleenex

Can you imagine…”We just threw a box of tissue and got snot on their nose...we just snotted their face!!”

Ugh. We’re all like:

“Chubb may not play.”

“We can’t put no pressure on anybody.”

“We couldn’t block a no parking zone with a semi truck and a herd of buffaloes.”

“I have a real, real sad and college football won’t make me happy no more.”

“I burnt my tater tots yesterday and momma won't go back to the store!”

The thing about humiliating losses like last Saturday is that they tend to beat the fanbase more than once. Hell, some of y’all done gave up on the entire season! And some more have already started the next coaching search!

Lord A’mighty! What in the name of all things Holy! Look, it’s one thing to get caught with your drawers down. You’re embarrassed and ashamed and oh no Chad Kelly just threw another touchdown pass 187 yards downfield while side-stepping a dozen rabid black bears! But it’s another thing altogether to get caught with your pants down with one arm around ol’ man Cooter’s goat and the other cradling a box of Franzia.

Get hungry BIG DAWG!

We’re GEORGIA goddammit! WAKE the F up! You don’t shit the bed and spend the rest of the season wallowing in it. You stand up and clean yourself off. You grab a mop and get back down to basics. You GET YOUR ASS DOWN IN A THREE POINT STANCE BY THE MAILBOX AND WAIT FOR THAT BASTARD MAILMAN TO COME AROUND JUST TO GET ONE MORE REP IN!

We’re 3-1! THREE and one! Did you wait around all offseason to get shit-faced wasted on your own self-pity? Was it over when Casey Clausen hit Travis Stephens on the screen? No!

HELL NO!

So put down your sloppy box of tissues and strap on them boots. The first act is over, so tomorrow begins the second stanza and I’m damn sure not tuning up for some gotdamn song about non-existent animals and strangers that disappear into smoggy smoke.

I told y’all at the beginning of the week this one was different. I NEED to know y’all care. I HAVE to know you have the INTESTINAL FORTITUDE of Damien Gary and Verron Haynes combined. I’ve GOT to know you want this one more than your next breath, because just as Butchie and his boys aren’t coming to town in a Prius with a BB gun in the floorboard, we ain’t planning on sniffling like a bunch fancy pants’d sissies before the coin toss.

Brick by brick...F that. Attack the GOTdamn day and let's beat these tourdefranzia assholes!

Now, please bow your heads...dear Lord, please let their band get a flat tire and also help us make Josh Dobbs over work his deoderant. Blessed! Jazz Hands! Go Dawgs!

Another "commitment". Are you getting played?

Perhaps Twitter wasn't the best engine to use for some of the opinions I expressed last night in the wake of the Thompson commitment ceremony.

Look, I am excited about getting highly rated and talented kids to "commit" and especially enroll at my alma mater. Very excited. There's some energy in Athens that is most definitely translating on the recruiting trails. Now, for this next class, if Richt and Co. would stop recruiting anyone who is not an offensive lineman I would be really happy. Kidding. (No, not really.)

All that aside, and as I have said before here and here and then also here, the recruiting process is a game. A commitment is nothing more than momentum for a program and some balloons and cake for kids with five stars by their name. What is a five star? Well, sometimes even the "experts" don't know. So is it really that much more exciting when a "five star" commits than a "three star"?

Maybe, when they actually sign. Maybe.

My reality is I love the guys that wear the G and get coached up during their time in Athens to the point where the plays they make on the field actually change the outcome of the game in our favor. My reality is that many of these teenagers get chewed up and spit out by the system in which the process operates. When it's okay to joke about high schoolers getting lied to by grown men, speculated about anonymously on message boreds, praised/chastised/threatened/taunted on social media, or to put them in between one program's magnificent facilities and another's that is even more magnificenter, well then, perhaps it's time to re-evaluate.

Truth is, most (if not all) of you love Trenton Thompson about the same as you loved you some Da'Rick a few years ago. If that's the case, eventually you have to ask yourself - if college football recruiting is indeed a game, am I the one getting played?

Friday Misery stops by the woods on a snowy evening

Official off season update: miles and miles of weeks and days and months and hours and sunrises to go before Robert Frost shows his Pulitzers to Chris Fowler on the Gameday set. Sigh.

And miles to go before I sleep....Seriously, today is the second day of May. But in my mind we are still ever bundled up in the throes of mid February without a single stadium's bank of lights in sight. Perpetually in some epically slow motion, one like Penn Wagers' victims have never seen before...we plod along an inch at a time as we constantly check our watch. Each day the calendar changes, yet we only move further and further away from the next Clempsoning witnessing....ing. The clang of the Starkville bells are soundless. We yell and scream noiselessly.

As seen here: Robert Frost's pee
wee football coach. 

We'll never get there. Never. Ever.

Never. So just go back to your village Bobby Frost. Your horse ain't about to see a Texas A&M sans Manziel on this day. It ain't gonna see Gurley truck no Tiger either. Another Auburn miracle? Bitch please. Time to move on son. We're like a sled stuck in an embankment of ice that will not melt until Hoover's Wynfrey Hotel is empty of the 25,000 media members for every one SEC coach this July.

Sigh.

His house is in the village though...Boy has it been a week for assholes and douchebags, no? Just last Friday I thought the Clippers were a Los Angeles based hair cutting chain, like SportsClips in Pacific Daylight Time. A dude rolls out of the surf and decides to get his dreads trimmed and boom! Walks back out half his original body weight.

But no, the LA Clippers are actually a professional basketball team that harbors a billionaire troglodyte and Marge Schott wannabe. I mean if you're going to be a racist, Schott set the bar for sports franchise owners making offensive comments later leaked to the public, then offending people even more during an apology. Sterling on the other hand will let this dispute drag on through court, insisting his only mistake was mixing that last gin and tonic.

Mr. Frost, your village must be missing its idiot.

To ask if there is some mistake...Oh God, actually, make that two idiots. Because then there was the arthropod on arthropod crime in Tallahassee. Seriously, who had Crab Legs in the office pool as having a tougher exoskeleton than Jameis L. Winston? This guy makes Teflon Don look like poor old Roy Sullivan. He's as slippery as an octopus, which come to think of it prey on crab legs too. So maybe Winston isn't an arthropod after all. Hmmmmm...

(via BassinDawg)

Hell, I don't know what the guy is, except yet another Heisman wielding douchebag. So there may definitely be a Heisman curse, but this guy is making Manziel look like a cute little Disney'd hermit crab. We've had BB gun battles, Burger King soda fountains, [redacted by Tallahassee Police Department], and now absconding with crab legs from a supermarket.

But let's cut Winston a little slack. I'll admit that I have left a store before without paying for an item. Granted, said item was in my toddler's coat pocket, unbeknownst to me. But that's basically the same thing right?

Let's play it out and see:

My scenario: "Wait. Where'd that pack of gum come from sweetheart? ... Oh shit. You just made Daddy a thief!"

Jammy Jam's scenario: Walks into apartment with bag of crab legs while roommate is sitting on a rusted out lawn chair eating pork n beans from a can. "Hey Jammy Jam, how much you pay for that?!!?" ... "Time. Just time eventually. And only about 20 hours at the mall giving away smiles for free. Ha! Hashtag Manzieling!!"

Yeh, that's about the same. And at least the crab legs didn't ingest any rohypnol. That we know of.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep...Lastly, there's me. Yes yes yes. It's true. I have been inconsiderate as well. Inconsiderate of your needs as one who reads junk that drifts around through the cyberspace inside your wifi connectivity. The byline up there clearly says a daily look and it hasn't been as such here lately.

Now, I could lazily point to the calendar and tell you to get over it. Or I could just change said byline to whenever I damn well please. Or I could secretly record crustaceanic racist conversations about lobsters and post them here as if they were blogworthy.

But that's just not how we roll now is it? No, I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep.

And miles to go beFORE IT'S TIME TO MAKE SOME SANFORD STADIUM NOISSSSSEEEEEE!!!!!11!!!!111!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have a great Friday Reader. And maybe it will serve up some poetic justice. I don't know, like seeing Donald Sterling and Jameis Winston being forced to sit at a Publix promotional stand together dishing out itty bitty dixie cups of imitation crab dip and Ritz crackers for hours on end. If so, send me a video. That counts as blogworthy...in May.

Big day for Tallahassean crustaceans

Spent several minutes trying to decide which pic of Winston and his prized seafood was my favorite. And there were just so blessed many to choose from....but I eventually settled on this one by @nick_pants because of his inclusion of Red Lightning as the Publix produce man.

Take the day off Internet. You've earned it.

Is McGarity down with OPP?

Yeh you know me. This went over like a ton of bricks.

“If you need to get people revved up for a big third-down play, you can do that,” McGarity said. “You could always do it with your band, but now you can do it any way you want to. You still have to stop once the quarterback gets over the ball, gets under the center or in the shotgun.”

McGarity said the SEC has relaxed its rules on playing music over the stadium sound system that should give Georgia the same kind of environment during the game as the Bulldogs saw in last year’s season-opener at ACC member Clemson.

Because the ACC knows all about pumping up the jam. (via)

“They were able to do things in the ACC that we were not in the SEC,” McGarity said. “The rules have changed now for 2014 where we’re able to utilize songs and music up until the point when the quarterback gets over the ball. That’s a big change in the in-game atmosphere.”

A few questions/points here:

1. Couldn't the band play right up until the snap of the ball anyway?
2. Is ACC attendance going up? And if so, is it really because of this shit?
3. Are the students going to come in droves to hear some Eminem blaring over the PA when we play Charleston Southern?
4. Tennessee did a lot of this last season. Mrs. Bernie and I left with headaches from over exposure to piped in music noise. Yes, when music is blared into a stadium it's not only fake juice, its also just simply noise.
5. And for everyone so excited with this news, recalling how electric the stadium was with Knowshon and Co. dancing to the beats in 2007...again, what's it going to sound like when we're losing by 20? Or when we're up by 30 in the third quarter over Cupcake State?

Oh that's right. Y'all won't be in the stadium then.

We didn't need canned music to beat LSU in that historically frenzied game back in October. We needed big plays. When those came the fans rose to their feet and lifted their voices because the contest on the field motivated them to do so. If you're excited about this and actually think it will improve attendance, come back next February when we can talk about the addition of pony rides and Chuck Dowdle hosting karoake halftimes!

Jeebus. Let the Redcoats play. And get the hell off my lawn.

The repugnance of the recruiting game (epilogue)

So, I'm not saying that I won't have an occasional post on something involving recruiting. I'm just forcing myself to operate in actual facts, the black and the white. The gray area of "commitments" and "offers" and who is a lean and who is not...that's just unnecessary drama.

I do believe in analyzing and (when appropriate) criticizing Georgia coaches' recruiting trends. As commenter Joseph Fain helped to point out the other day, our recruitment of offensive linemen has been an ongoing problem for a decade now. That's fact, and worthy of continued exploration. Just as celebrating a new class is on the first Wednesday each February.

Beyond that, I'm staying clear of the pit of despair. There's just too much showmanship on that side of the line where the names of good young men are treated simply as pawns. In the recruiting game anonymity is cheap and the vitriol it creates is distasteful. In the end it's just about a kid's own personal decision. And in today's world, that decision is only final on the first Wednesday in February.

Seems a waste to worry over anything before then. I mean, Willie Williams spent more time tackling plates of lobster (and marijuana) than he did running backs.

The recruiting game will go on into perpetuity. But it will do so without my words 

adding even one innocuous whiff of propane to its furious blaze.

The repugnance of the recruiting game

The great literary hero Ignatius Reilly once said, "I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip." Will you join the fight against the confederacy of recruitnik dunces?

If you're the type that can only read what's along the surface you may want to skip on along. Because this is probably going to sound like I'm typing whilst looking down my nose. Even when I'm not. And it's important to note that I'm not breaking any ground here, merely stating the obvious - recruiting is a game that is ruled by constant coverage, speculation, rumors, message bored fodder, internet anonymity, and an incessant, rampant desire to turn one facet of college football into a filthy soap opera. On occasion, yes, I have been a part of the problem.

And while I cannot begin to tolerate the populace that gets markedly more excited over a seventeen year old's successful facsimile transmission than it does a win in Jacksonville, I certainly understand the allure of National Signing Day. In fact, despite the words and tone of this post, I plan to again be there on the floor of Butts-Mehre in a couple weeks. National Signing Day is the beginning of the new dawn. It's when the frost first begins to warm on the practice fields as they ready themselves for spring drills. It is the day you can faintly - ever so slightly and way off in the distance - hear the crack of the pads in preparation for the new season.

"Hey. Did Todd Gurley see his shadow?"

But I digress. No, I really do enjoy following the culmination of a recruiting cycle. It's the never-ending craptasical drama in between that disgusts me. It's the ugly underbelly that exposes national recruiting as a business that chews up kids' names just to make a headline, generate a click and ultimately turn a profit. Don't get me wrong, there's some real positives to the process along the way. A recent local one was Rico Johnson clearing a hurdle and realizing his dream once again. So many like him could've come up short of that goal despite a second chance at it. Many others would've just given up. He didn't. Instead he worked hard and will be a better man for it. But for every good and well meaning story there's countless others that expose any minutiae of "news" as vitally important, or worse as a scandalous development. And really, what can be so scandalous about a high school student-athlete changing his mind about how interested he is in a particular program?

This is supposed to be about celebrating youthful achievements and the realization of a true reward at the end of one of life's many long, arduous paths. Hey, I'm an idealist. What can I say?

Instead we have high school kids milking the moment for all it's worth (and who can blame them really?), without truly having earned such enormous attention yet. And they are greatly outnumbered by lazy fans of this recruiting game; mostly guys that for whatever reason spend money and countless hours defining their own self-worth by how their team finishes in the recruiting rankings. If I can hardly fathom how someone's success in life is bound by the record of the team they cheer for on Saturdays, then I have absolutely no hope of comprehending how decisions made by seventeen year old strangers affect a grown man's happiness and disposition. These guys applaud loudly when a high school star tweets that he enjoyed a visit to Athens and a chance to meet Coach Richt. They pump their fists wildly when the kid is rumored to be leaning towards UGA. But when the faxes get rolling, and the machine dials a different area code, suddenly this teenage stranger is worthy of all manner of insults. God forbid a kid change his mind about something as important as where to spend his college years.

Granted, these "fans" are the same mental giants that probably clogged up their own high school lunch line because they couldn't decide between a slice of pizza or a corndog.

No, this is not my game. In the world of recruiting coverage I am just a two-star with a slow hip turn who is lazy in the weight room. I truly appreciate the guys that actually do cover this "game". As Georgia fans we're lucky to have some of the best. They're the ones, for the most part, that truly connect with these kids and see them as actual human beings instead of names with stars stacked beside them.

In reality this has been coming for some time now. I guess I continued to update with posts on recruiting developments because I really do understand how important it is to Georgia football. But recently things have turned for me. The end result, as fun as it is to see who is coming to Athens, is not worth the sleazy fight the other 364 days of the year. Like I said the other day, there are plenty of blogs, websites and actual analysts where one can get better evaluation of how Georgia coaches are doing on the recruiting trails. But I'll no longer be a part of that game, both here on the blog as well as in practice at other locations.

“When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life.” Yes Ignatius. I think I'll do just that.

House Cleaning, Handshakes and other Hand Grenades

Before leaving town, it's always a good idea to tidy up. Here's some loose ends. Some of which have been rattling around in my head. Others have just been clogging up the inbox.

• As Hale suggested earlier this week, we're leaving King behind. Tripp also will not make his namesake.
• Whether you agree with the AFCAs suggestion of a handshake or not, you have to admit Gundy is taking some moderate sized PR shots this week. His team, as @credendino said last night, is "falling apart" it seems. A starting TE leaves his helmet on the field, more arrests than the defending nat'l chumpions, plus the little matter of gentlemanly refusal....it all adds up to a growing saturation in the crotch area of our favorite MAN.
• Was wandering around the internets last night and read this tongue in cheek preview of the Okie Pokies (h/t PWD). Mr. T-Bone...I guess you get what you pay for.
• Back to the handshake issue...I side with Quinton. As much respect as I have for what our QB is telling us, when you have the opportunity to show that you are above the game itself and perhaps teach some younger fans (maybe even older ones) what sport is about...well, just do it.
• Who knew Baylor @ Wake Forest was such a draw? If you're green with envy...call your local affiliate and simply ask - WTF??
• Lastly, make sure you wear your college colors tomorrow for College Colors Day. But also make sure you leave an appropriately RED shirt ready for gameday. Black won't work Saturday (h/t @ThinkingBulldog)