Odds and Ends Heading Into The Weekend...

(Mostly football related ones too. Why? Because while admitting feelings in person is something very difficult for me, sometimes I think I take a little too for granted the freedom to expose my life--sort of, and not really in detail, and often without using names, but still--in a public forum read by maybe 5 or six people. So I'm cutting back on that. But don't call it a resolution, or crack jokes at my expense based on that. Make fun of me instead for my renewed interest in the gym and what a hoary old cliché I should be better than that resolution is.)

First: the Bama situation. My take remains that a good Bama is bad for eweT and the Barn, which therefore is good for UGA. However I’m not yet convinced Nick Saban is that good for Bama. Is he better than Mike Shula? Oh sure. Shula’s probably a nice guy (and if I say he’s not, papa Don will hold a press conference to yell about how terrible I am, just you watch), but he also suffered from a likely terminal case of Jim Donnan Syndrome. Per the DSM-IV, it’s marked by an inability to make proper game-time decisions or adjustments, often a failure to motivate or inspire, occasional disinterest in football (marked by repetitive and frequent trances entered into while staring at one’s shoes), red zone impotence, tunnel screens, constant running plays up the middle into 9-man lines, and losing far too many times to your rivals while also occasionally losing games the exhumed corpse of Paul Bryant himself shouldn’t lose (note: not the exhumed and reanimated corpse—aka “Plan B” according to Mal Moore—which while likely possessing nearly as voracious an appetite for brains as JoePa, would take the SEC by storm…likely by surprising the beejeezus out of other teams when they sudden find themselves facing a wishbone-running team coached by a zombie.) So as I was saying (wait, let me read back over that…sometimes these damn parenthetical asides just get in the way), here, in simple math is a truism: Saban > Shula. Good Bama > Bad Bama for UGA.

(Sort of like this...but not. Less...um...cuddly? Yes, we're going with 'cuddly')

But…just how good the Saban hire is depends on who Saban hires to be the OC (and while Autumn Reeser would be a clever hire, she needs to stay somewhat free so she can play herself in the movie adaptation of my novel in say, two years. Not that I’m optimistic or anything.)

(For the record, this is a laugh at the idea of being Bama's OC, not at being in the movie adaptation of an as-of-this-writing-incomplete masterwork.)

As I may have mentioned before, Saban knows D. As any Bama fan will tell you, Saban knows the coach of the Patriots. Defense, however, wasn’t Bama’s problem. Some of Joe Kines’ Ds at Bama were even better than Saban’s LSU squads. Offense was, and is the problem at the Capstone. Offense was why I feared Mike Leach getting the job and keeping Kines. That hire would’ve been cheaper, and would’ve paired an existing talented D with a man who’s Os averaged 38 points a game in the SEC while stuck with Hal Mumme-era Kentucky talent. Again, when he had a D and real talent at OU, he had a national title and hung half-a-hundred on the big rivals. Saban will win too, but it won’t be as much or by as much. (And shhh, don’t remind them in Tuscaloosa that Saban went 2-3 against Tuberville.)

But again, if they want to pay $4 mill to hand Auburn and UT some more losses over the coming years, fine by me (and let’s hope UGA repeats their last performance against a Saban-coached team over and over).

Speaking of UGA (see how smooth my segues are getting?), there is much to be optimistic about (dare I say “hope”?) going into 2007. As National Signing Day (an unofficial holiday) and the G Day Game approach I’ll come back to this.

Lastly, I wound up buying Barack Obama’s book (yes, the title grabbed me…blame that four-letter word) the same day the “oh no, he said he did blow” articles started popping up. And to me, that was refreshing. Unlike, say the current president (who all signs point to had quite a wild past, and just maybe impersonated Tony Montana powdering his nose one last time before things got really weird with Gina once or twice) Obama owned up to his past. To me it’s a hell of a lot harder to say—to the people you love, much less reporters, the nation, etc.—“I screwed up, and here’s what I did” than to say “I’m not proud of what I did…” “What’d you do” “I’m not going to say…but I’m not proud of it.” Or maybe that’s because I have a nasty habit of assuming things are worse than they are…oh wait. Enough about me. And so things don’t end on a political note…don’t forget, semi-mulleted Yankee Jackass DH Jason Giambi said the same thing.

("I just want to say I'm sorry..." "For what" "I can't tell you...")