On Good Sports Days and Bad Sports Days...

There are good sports days and bad sports days.

90% they are Saturdays (sorry, I'm just not a huge NFL fan. Unless the Dawgs are playing that ol' favorite "Bye" or their sister school "Bye" I am probably too worn out, drained, happy, sad, hoarse, and/or painfully hungover to emotionally invest myself in a pro team's fortunes (and it doesn't help that the local NFL squad's most prominent defensive player attended the North Avenue Trade School while their QB with UGA ties sits the season out with a knee injury.))

Labor Day weekend's Saturday was Good Day. UGA won, in a more convincing fashion than I honestly hoped for, Tennessee lost, and not only did the Red Sox win, they did it with a rookie pitcher throwing a no-hitter in his second ever MLB start.

Ideal Good Days for sports usually need not only more than one of my (or your if we're going to open up here and not have my blog be all about me) winning, but they should also win while those teams' rivals lose.

The exceptions are when one team wins a title. If your team wins the Superbowl, sportswise it doesn't matter what else happens (though if they win whilst beating their rival, all the better, no matter how unlikely).

UGA beating the BBQ pork ribs off of Arkansas to win the 2002 SEC title: a very good sports day.

Boston winning the World Series on a weeknight in October: a very good sports day.

UGA losing, Boston losing, the Yankees, Gators, Vols, and GT all winning: a pretty shitty sports day.

Which is what this past Saturday was.

Sadly, Dice-K imploding against Baltimore to the tune of 8 earned runs in one "bad inning" is becoming commonplace. The season is far longer than any he faced in Japan, and he's having to go on one less day of rest each time. The Sox should rest him this week, especially if they come out of the Tampa Bay series still holding at least 6 games over the Yankees. While I don't relish the thought of losing 6 in a row to A-Rod's Merry Band of Highly Paid Jackasses, it is comforting to know it could happen, late in the season, with both teams in the playoff hunt, and the Yankees still miss out on an AL East title. The lead could evaporate too, but 2004 means not having to worry about 1978 quite the same way.

As for rival college football teams winning...well, this past weekend it was bound to happen.

Southern Miss was the only team that could even be considered a threat as Samford and Troy fall squarely in the "cupcake" category. UGA gets one this weekend, meanwhile Florida has to finally play a team with a pulse (and considering Troy's QB shredded them a bit, I think Erik Ainge may actually look forward to going to the 8th circle of hell Gainesville this weekend.) So yes, I am mostly still pulling for a large metorite in Saturdays EweTee Vs. Jean ShortsU game, but barring that, I'd settle for Tim Tebow to be ground repeatedly into the Swamp turf.

As for the Dawgs..."frustrating" comes to mind.

Also, "why does John Eason still have a job?"

Sure, a blind man could've seen the hidden-ball play-action coming in this one, but for the most part Bobo called a good game. Richt himself said the Dawgs dropped or overthrew at least 4 TDs. Note: if you've been torturing yourself over the missed FG, don't think about the previous sentence at all. SoCar's front seven destroyed the young OLine for most of the game. We had 150+ yds between Moreno and Brown, but I'd wager at least 3/4ths of those yards were to the outside. The less said about pass protection, the better. Stafford's completion % of the game should be viewed about as often as Britney Spears's 2007 VMA performance--which is to say, ideally never looked at again, ever--but would've looked better if the WRs hadn't decided to occasionally play John Eason's Greatest Hits (re: dropping balls that hit them in the HANDS).

Of all the things that went wrong for Georgia (ranging from Coutu inexplicably missing a FG he'd make at least 9 times out of ten early to the D inexplicably getting manhandled to the tune of three straight 10 yard runs up the gut late), the drops reemerging was the most distressing.

I am no great fan of Willie Martinez, but all signs point to him learning from his mistakes. Spurrier's offensive game plan was like Chinese Water Torture (also, I think I say that because it reminded me of the game plan UF used on is in 2002), but they barely had over 300 yds and less than 20 points, despite a great performance from both RBs and a near perfect night throwing from the Columbia Barfighting Champ. But the WRs for Georgia far too often did their best Michael Jenkins (the NFL version) impersonations, and Stafford far too often forgot no one on the team is as tall as Leonard Pope (or Robert Wadlow, given the height on some passes).

So let Carter Strickland and company (or their copy editors) take the lazy way out and say "Spurrier beat UGA". Tyrone Nix, with help from the seemingly non-existant coaching of Dr. Eason, played a far more active role. Ah well, nothing hanging half-a-hundred on a I-AA cupcake not named AppState won't temporarily fix.

Don't ask me about 'Bama yet though...