I’ve given you my predictions for the games of consequence, both in the S.E.C. and around the country, so it is time for me to post the final installment of this week’s "Don’t Bet On It!" selections; namely, the national game of disinterest.

For the uninitiated, the national game of disinterest is the least intriguing college football contest of any given weekend. This is the one game that I would least like to watch and am least likely to pick, because forecasting the outcome would imply that I cared enough to look up the final score afterwards.

This week, the choice of the national game of disinterest is obvious:

Continue reading this post »

Because the ‘Dawgs are idle this Saturday (and, thus, there is no need for me to prepare an installment of Too Much Information), I have been able to take a more leisurely approach to this week’s posting schedule. For instance, I didn’t take you around the S.E.C. until Thursday morning, which means I didn’t get to the national games of interest before now. Had I done this earlier, though, I, uh, would have called Wednesday’s Ball State-Central Michigan showdown and Thursday’s Georgia Tech-Miami (Florida) matchup correctly. Really, I promise I would have.

The credibility of the preceding claim may or may not be bolstered by my 4-2 ledger in last week’s national picks, which improved my season-long record in non-S.E.C. predictions to a middling 37-30. Surely it goes without saying that such a prognosticating resume offers all the incentive you would ever need for following my regular recommendation: Don’t Bet On It!

Will Muschamp proving to be the finest hire of the 2008-’09 coaching carousel? You can bet on that!

Here are Saturday’s national games of note:

Pittsburgh at Cincinnati: This game presents a lot of unanswered questions. Will Brian Kelly’s apparent candidacy to take over at Tennessee distract the Bearcats? Is Dave Wannstedt really on the verge of leading the Panthers to a conference crown? Is this game being played in 2008 or in 2001? Before the season started, I voiced my doubts about Pitt and heeded the apparent wisdom of my brother-in-law, who advised me: "Every time someone ranks Pitt in their top 25, an angel loses its wings." The Mid-American Conference refugee ‘Cats, on the other hand, seem like the odd men out in a Big East otherwise made up of disappointments (Louisville, Rutgers, South Florida, and West Virginia), flukes (Connecticut and Pitt), and disasters (Syracuse). Cincinnati, by contrast, actually seems like a solid program, which is why I’m going with the Bearcats to keep their heads about them while the Panthers inevitably implode.

Brigham Young at Utah: I don’t know whether this year’s edition of the Holy War will be the best game money can buy, but there’s a good chance it will be the best game you won’t get to see. I don’t know that this is such a terrible thing, though, because the Utes clearly appear to be by far the best of the non-B.C.S. conference teams and the Cougars look like the most overrated of the potentially rankable mid-majors. I like Utah to take care of business at home in a game that won’t be particularly close.

When I note that B.Y.U. is the most overrated of the possibly top 25-worthy squads from outside the longstanding power conferences, I am even including the Hawaii Warriors of the Midwest, the Ball State Cardinals, who have played no one but at least have gone undefeated. (Associated Press photograph by Michael Conroy.)

Michigan State at Penn State: I have to give the Spartans credit; I keep waiting for them to collapse, and they haven’t done it yet. It would be more than a bit of a stretch to claim that a loss to the Nittany Lions in Happy Valley followed by a loss to, oh, say, Georgia in the Capital One Bowl would constitute a late-season fade, but, just the same, let’s give it a shot, shall we? Michigan State gets some semblance of a downturn underway with a loss to Penn State; we’ll see how the rest of it plays out come January 1.

Texas Tech at Oklahoma: I know it’s sacrilege for an active participant in the college football blogosphere to say so, but I don’t particularly care for Mike Leach. I respect him as a coach, and I have no basis for disliking the man personally, but he strikes me as being like those guys in high school who tried to be weird strictly for the sake of being able to brag about how weird they were. That’s the hit I get off of Coach Leach’s public fixation with pirates and his purposeful quirkiness. I don’t mind those attributes in a sportscaster or a blogger, but I don’t particularly need to see a Division I-A head coach let his freak flag fly solely so he can make a production out of celebrating how odd he is. It’s like he’s a sports talk radio host caught in a football coach’s body. To give credit where credit is due, though, Coach Leach has put together a complete team in Lubbock and is no longer entirely reliant upon soft scheduling and ludicrous aerial numbers for his success. Can he win on the road against a man who has done little of late to earn the nickname "Big Game Bob"? I’m not sure whether this has more to do with faith in Texas Tech or a lack of same in Oklahoma, but, either way, I’m going with the Red Raiders to cement their claim to the No. 1 ranking with a Norman conquest.

Those are my picks for tomorrow’s college football action on the national stage. Since my track record is what it is, the foregoing forecasts are for entertainment purposes only; no matter what your particular circumstances happen to be, you ought to take my weekly advice: Don’t Bet On It!

Coming Soon: National Game of Disinterest.

Go ‘Dawgs!

While it sounds good to say that I went 4-1 in last week’s S.E.C. predictions, last Saturday’s slate of Southeastern Conference games wasn’t any great shakes, so, really, there’s not a lot of pride to be taken in my having improved my record in league prognostications to 60-14.

In other words, don’t let the won-lost ledger fool you, folks: I’m bad at this, so my regular disclaimer continues to hold true. Whatever you do . . . Don’t Bet On It!

Here are this week’s conference contests, whether noteworthy or otherwise, all of which will be played on Saturday, November 22, because only second-class conferences like the M.A.C. and the A.C.C. allow their teams to take the field on a weeknight:

The Citadel at Florida: All that stuff about not betting on it? Forget for the moment that I ever said that; bet the over and take the Gators to cover. Even if the spread is 80, you’d better believe Urban Meyer knows what it is and won’t let up until he gets it. I’m not saying that in order to accuse the Urbster of being an unsportsmanlike classless jerk with deep-seated self-esteem issues who believes at a subconscious level that, if he wins enough football games by a sufficiently large margin, it will somehow earn him the love of the emotionally distant father who never hugged him when he was a child; I just think he’s a cold calculating technocrat trying to capture style points to protect his place at the forefront of the national title debate. I mean, Urban Meyer is all of those bad things I just accused him of being---and, really, even Gator fans don’t doubt that this guy has something funky and unseemly with his internal wiring that was never true of Steve Spurrier even at his fourth-quarter-flea-flickeringest-to-get-to-50 moment---but, when he has an incentive to twist the knife, he’s never going to let it just stick out of your back untouched. Also, I’m pretty sure The Citadel’s mascot is the Bulldog, so they’re probably going to pay for that end zone celebration, too. Tim Tebow will toss his twelfth touchdown pass of the game with five minutes remaining in the fourth quarter as Florida wins big.

Arkansas at Mississippi State: Be warned . . . watching this unsightly travesty of a game will do for your love of college football what watching Paul Giamatti steal back Thomas Haden Church’s wallet in "Sideways" will do for your libido. Some displays of ugliness simply were not meant for human eyes to behold. Of course, if you were given the chance to watch it, you couldn’t not watch it, in the same way you couldn’t look away from an impending train wreck. Between a locomotive hauling medical waste and a passenger carrier filled with circus freaks. In slow motion. While being filmed for a scene in a David Lynch movie. Starring Steve Buscemi. I look for the Bulldogs to hold a 3-2 lead late in the game and be in the process of running out the clock when the M.S.U. quarterback takes the snap, backs up to take as much time as he can before kneeling it out, stumbles over his own feet, and falls backward into the end zone to give the Razorbacks the game-winning safety.

How ugly is the Arkansas-Mississippi State game going to be? It’s going to be uglier than the Tennessee-Vanderbilt game!

Tennessee at Vanderbilt: In a way, this game is completely meaningless. Neither coach’s job security will be affected by the outcome---unless, I guess, you count the fact that the likelihood that Bobby Johnson won’t be back probably would be heightened by a Commodore win---and the result will not impact either team’s eligibility for a bowl game. However, this is nominally a rivalry game, any hope that the Volunteers hadn’t quit on their lame duck coach was dashed when they lost to Wyoming, any fear that the ‘Dores were mailing it in was answered when they won at Kentucky, and the game is being played in Nashville. The way I figure it, there’s no need to fail by a little; if you’re going to collapse, go for utter disaster rather than mere disappointment. The Big Orange go all in on this whole coming up short thing by losing to Vandy.

Ole Miss at Louisiana State: Let’s make one thing very clear from the outset . . . a Rebel win would not constitute an upset in anything other than the most strictly technical sense. There is no particular reason to believe that L.S.U. is a better football team than Mississippi. There is every reason to believe that Houston Nutt---who knows a thing or two about beating the Bayou Bengals, you might recall---will have his team ready to compete in what is almost certainly the S.E.C.’s most underrated rivalry. We already knew Ole Miss had the better-looking co-eds; on Saturday, the Rebels will have the better team, as well.

Take those predictions for what they’re worth---which, trust me, ain’t much---but do yourself a favor and take a little free advice; namely: Don’t Bet On It!

Coming Soon: National Games of Interest.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Things are getting interesting in the college football blogosphere . . . or, wait, actually, maybe they’re getting the exact opposite of interesting. I’ll report, you decide:

We have been made privy to the new BlogPoll, in which Texas Tech retained the No. 1 ranking while idle by pulling down 48 of 70 possible first-place votes. Although 16 of the remaining 22 such votes went to No. 2 Alabama, hard-charging Florida gathered in the other six to stake a claim to the No. 3 ranking. The coming showdowns in Norman and Atlanta loom large.

The teams ranked fifth through 13th stood pat, the last of which happened to be Georgia. To the list of things for which to be grateful as we head into the Thanksgiving season may be added the fact that Dawg Sports did not appear among the top five contenders for any of the extracurricular honors . . . although, to Brian’s credit, the move to CBSSports.com has had a mellowing effect on the BlogPoll inventor and administrator, as his doling out of dubious distinctions now is done with a tone more avuncular than excoriating. As someone still carrying the emotional scars from previous assaults upon my earlier ballots, I understand exactly how much this is a plus.

In this week’s S.E.C. Power Poll, everything remained the same, only more so: Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana State made up the top four, in that order, but we are starting to see some separation as the Gators routinely outplay the Crimson Tide down the stretch and the results of Alabama’s trip to Athens and Georgia’s trip to Baton Rouge continue to be confirmed as representative rather than aberrational.

In short, the stars are starting to separate themselves from the also-rans, both locally and nationally. The mists are parting and all is becoming clear . . . except, of course, for the A.C.C., where there is a logjam of indistinguishable 7-3 squads and (I haven’t checked the math on this, so it’s just a hunch) each division may yet end up snarled in a six-way tie for last (or, I guess, first) place among half a dozen teams that are 4-4 in conference play.

Go ‘Dawgs!

As always, I posted my preliminary BlogPoll ballot on Sunday night, solicited reader feedback, and gave additional consideration to my rankings before making appropriate adjustments to produce this final version of my top 25:

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Texas Tech	1
2	Alabama	1
3	Texas	--
4	Florida	--
5	Oklahoma	--
6	Southern Cal	--
7	Utah	--
8	Penn State	--
9	Ohio State	1
10	Oklahoma State	1
11	Georgia	1
12	Boise State	3
13	Missouri	--
14	Michigan State	2
15	Pittsburgh	3
16	Cincinnati	1
17	Oregon State	5
18	North Carolina	4
19	Maryland	7
20	Boston College	6
21	Miami (Florida)	5
22	Georgia Tech	3
23	Florida State	3
24	TCU	5
25	Ball State	10

Dropped Out: Virginia Tech (#21), LSU (#23), South Carolina (#24).

I didn’t want to rank Texas Tech (10-0) ahead of Alabama (11-0) . . . not as an S.E.C. homer; not as someone who believes a team ought to be penalized for playing a Division I-AA opponent (which the Crimson Tide have not), much less two of them (as the Red Raiders have); not as someone who, um, may have underestimated the team just a wee bit. Nevertheless, Mike Leach’s squad has recorded two quality wins over Texas (10-1) and Oklahoma State (9-2), whereas the best victory registered by Nick Saban’s team was its road win over Georgia (9-2). After L.S.U. (7-3) needed a furious rally to defeat Troy (6-4), I couldn’t even give ‘Bama credit for its overtime win in Death Valley, so there’s a new sheriff pirate in town.

After that, quite frankly, I bailed on the mid-majors located outside of Salt Lake City. I dropped Boise State (10-0) from ninth to twelfth, Ball State (10-0) from 15th to 25th, Texas Christian (9-2) from 19th to 24th, and Brigham Young (10-1) out of the poll altogether. Why did I dock the other non-B.C.S. conference contenders and not Utah (11-0)? Because the Utes actually beat someone: Oregon State (7-3).

Frankly, that’s more than can be said for the rest of the mid-majors. The Broncos’ best win was a narrow escape over what ultimately proved to be unrankable Oregon (8-3); the Horned Frogs’, a thumping of a B.Y.U. club that has accomplished nothing noteworthy; the Cardinals’, a victory over Navy (6-4). Other than that, there are a whole heck of a lot of victims with eight losses in their ledgers, which doesn’t carry a great deal of weight with me.

After additional reflection, I realized I had given the Beavers too much credit by vaulting them past Michigan State (9-2), Pittsburgh (7-2), and Cincinnati (8-2). Unlike O.S., which lost to Stanford (5-6), those three teams do not have losses to teams below .500---although Pitt admittedly came close---and the second-best wins registered by the Spartans (over Iowa), the Panthers (take your pick: at Navy, at Notre Dame, or at South Florida), and the Bearcats (over South Florida) all are as good as or better than the second-best win claimed by the Beavers (over Cal) . . . and Oregon State’s resume is dragged down by wins over Washington State (1-10) and Washington (0-10).

I thought it over some more and decided that additional changes to my ballot were required. However, I have not budged from my belief that Princess Ardala was hotter than Colonel Wilma Deering.

That just leaves us with the usual suspects among A.C.C. clubs sporting 7-3 records. From 18th through 23rd, I arranged these thusly: North Carolina, Maryland, Boston College, Miami (Florida), Georgia Tech, and Florida State.

On balance, the Tar Heels unquestionably boast the best resume in the Atlantic Coast Conference. All three of U.N.C.’s losses were close contests and two of them came on the road. North Carolina has three quality conference wins (at the Hurricanes and over the Eagles and the Yellow Jackets), plus three decent out-of-conference victories against Connecticut (7-3), Notre Dame (6-4), and at improving Rutgers (5-5).

The Terrapins edged out B.C. because Maryland had the better conference win (over North Carolina, which surpasses the Eagles’ win at Florida State) and the better non-conference win (over Cal, which surpasses anything Boston College can claim). Both, however, had better resumes than the ‘Canes, who have no quality wins. The Ramblin’ Wreck and the Seminoles brought up the rear because each has a pair of wins over Division I-AA opponents and the Engineers earned the nod by virtue of their having beaten F.S.U. head-to-head.

As always, your comments and constructive criticisms are most welcome. Although the Wednesday morning deadline is fast approaching, it’s not necessarily too late for you to change my mind with a sufficiently persuasive argument. For now, though, that is how the top 25 teams in the land stack up from my perspective and those are the reasons why.

Go ‘Dawgs!

I hate to admit it, but Doug Gillett and Orson Swindle are right; this is a down year for the S.E.C. There’s a good-sized gap separating the top two teams from the third-best team, and at least that large a chasm separates the third- and fourth-best teams. Below that, there’s a jumbled muddle ranging from the merely mediocre to the truly bad, particularly on offense. It pains me to say that this is how the Southeastern Conference stacks up right now:

1. Florida: Once again, this is a power poll, so the standards are somewhat different from those found in my BlogPoll ballot. No one in the conference is playing football on a par with the Gators right now; arguably, no one in the country is playing football on a par with the Gators right now. When Tim Tebow makes a bleary-eyed promise to get better, you can (unfortunately) take that to the bank. He has the most powerful tears of anyone other than Elaan of Troyius. (Wow, even I think that was an unbelievably obscure and geeky reference!)

2. Alabama: The Crimson Tide are solid and they’re undefeated, but they get a little less convincing with each passing week. If you’d asked me the day after the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, I’d have welcomed a second shot at Florida, but I’d have been nervous about a rematch with ‘Bama. Now, a repeat performance with the Gators would seem even more daunting and another meeting with the Tide wouldn’t scare me too much.

3. Georgia: The Bulldogs do nothing particularly well except win against every team they’ve faced not ranked in the top five. They must be doing something right.

I’m not altogether clear on what that something is right this very minute, but, given time, I’m sure I’ll think of a plausible answer. . . .

4. Louisiana State: Believe me, this placement is strictly by default; the Bayou Bengals’ No. 4 ranking is an insult to everyone else, not a compliment to the Fighting Tigers. L.S.U. is talented, well-coached, and riddled with holes that prevent the team from living up to its potential. Basically, Les Miles’s team is Georgia with a Cajun accent.

5. Ole Miss: The Rebels very quietly have climbed back to respectability. There’s half a chance I’ll pick Mississippi to register what would only marginally qualify as an upset over L.S.U. in one of the country’s most underrated rivalries.

6. Vanderbilt: The Commodores overcame a quarter-century of unfavorable history to become bowl-eligible for the first time since I was in junior high. It will be the cruelest of ironies if Vandy receives a Music City Bowl bid for its trouble.

7. South Carolina: The Gamecocks were putting together a nice little season there, right up until the point that the thoroughly obnoxious and unsportsmanlike head coach of the Gators decided to hang 50 on them just to prove that he could. What goes around comes around, Stevie Boy.

8. Kentucky: The Wildcats have improved substantially not just as a team, but as a program, and Randall Cobb has given U.K. partisans a glimpse of an even brighter future. Unfortunately, none of that was enough to secure a win over Vanderbilt.

9. Auburn: The Plainsmen are good enough to play everybody in the S.E.C. close. They just aren’t good enough to beat anyone who isn’t lousy.

10. Arkansas: When the Razorbacks ran off Houston Nutt, the university athletic administration should have been flagged for intentional grounding, because that’s exactly where this program has been run. The Hogs are a mess. This team is basically Auburn with a smarmier head coach. I can’t believe I just typed that sentence.

11. Mississippi State: A respectable effort for a quarter or so against Alabama enabled the Western Division Bulldogs to avoid the cellar.

12. Tennessee: Has any program in the nation come so completely off the rails as this one? (Besides Syracuse, I mean.) As long as he’s meddling in college football anyway, the president-elect should declare this team a disaster area and send in Red Cross volunteers to aid the . . . um . . . Volunteers. Yeah, that sentence, like the Big Orange’s season, never stood a chance, did it?

Feel free to voice your agreement or disagreement with the foregoing as the spirit moves you.

Go ‘Dawgs!

It had been my plan to get down into the nitty-gritty when casting this week’s BlogPoll ballot, but, honestly, what meaningfully changed between the time I cast the final version of last week’s ballot and the time I cast the initial version of this week’s?

The teams I had ranked second, fifth, 16th, 18th, 19th, and 25th had open dates on Saturday. The teams I had ranked first, third, fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth won over basically no one in particular by margins of 32-7, 35-7, 56-6, 45-23, 63-14, 34-7, and 45-10, respectively. No team ranked in my top thirteen lost and only one team ranked in my top 19 fell.

Consequently, there wasn’t a great deal of movement on my ballot, the first draft of which looks like this:

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama	--
2	Texas Tech	--
3	Texas	--
4	Florida	--
5	Oklahoma	--
6	Southern Cal	--
7	Utah	--
8	Penn State	--
9	Boise State	--
10	Ohio State	--
11	Oklahoma State	--
12	Georgia	--
13	Missouri	--
14	Oregon State	8
15	Ball State	--
16	Michigan State	--
17	Cincinnati	--
18	Pittsburgh	--
19	TCU	--
20	Maryland	6
21	North Carolina	7
22	Georgia Tech	3
23	Boston College	3
24	Miami (Florida)	2
25	Brigham Young	1

Dropped Out: Florida State (#20), Virginia Tech (#21), LSU (#23), South Carolina (#24).

Oregon State made the leap from No. 22 to the newly vacated No. 14 spot after the Beavers’ 34-21 win over Cal because O.S.’s losses appear increasingly forgivable and the Beavs have a quality win (over Southern California) and are continuing to give every indication of being a solid squad.

Brigham Young earned inclusion in my top 25 by beating Air Force to add a meaningful victory to the Cougars’ otherwise largely empty 10-1 record. Naturally, B.Y.U. will have the chance to prove itself against Utah.

Between those two teams I arrayed a series of more or less interchangeable 7-3 teams from the A.C.C. Against my better judgment, I gave the highest ranking to No. 20 Maryland, which beat No. 21 North Carolina, which beat No. 22 Georgia Tech, which beat No. 23 Boston College, which beat the Florida State team that beat No. 24 Miami (Florida).

The ‘Noles ended up as the odd man out, despite having defeated the ‘Canes, because of F.S.U.’s weak collection of scalps outside of Miami’s, but I could be persuaded that I ought to rank the Hurricanes 25th and the Seminoles 24th. I could also be convinced that Oregon belongs in there somewhere, as well.

Trying to choose among the A.C.C. teams clustered together in the twenties is as difficult as trying to choose between Colonel Wilma Deering and Princess Ardala, except that the Atlantic and Coastal Divisions both present markedly less attractive alternatives than the choice of smoking hot outer space chicks faced by Buck Rogers.

I dropped L.S.U. in spite of the Bayou Bengals’ win because, if you need a furious rally to beat Troy at home, you’re not a top 25 team.

I watched the Ball State-Miami (Ohio) game on Tuesday, the Central Michigan-Northern Illinois game on Wednesday, and the Miami (Florida)-Virginia Tech game on Thursday. On Saturday, I watched all of the Georgia-Auburn game and parts of the Kentucky-Vanderbilt and Boston College-Florida State games.

I’ll be revisiting and (likely) revising that ballot between now and the Wednesday morning deadline, so your feedback is sought earnestly and would be appreciated greatly. Let me know what you think.

Go ‘Dawgs!

I will be atypically brief, for two reasons.

First of all, all that really needs to be said about the Deep South’s oldest football rivalry generally and the 112th installment of that rivalry specifically essentially has been said in a pair of comment threads appearing here at Dawg Sports in recent days.

Secondly, my response to games of this nature is stark and uncomplicated, so little space is needed to articulate my postgame reactions and reflections.

To the tale of the tape, then: Georgia converted only three of eleven third down attempts, committed nine penalties for 95 yards, roughed the kicker and lost a fumble on opposite ends of the same play to turn a three-and-out that would have given the ‘Dawgs great starting field position into a one-play possession in which the Plainsmen went 52 yards for the go-ahead touchdown, muffed the center-quarterback exchange while attempting to run out the clock, had a 21-yard field goal attempt blocked, and only narrowly led one of the weakest offenses in the S.E.C. in first downs (20-19).

Auburn, on the other hand, converted seven of 17 third down attempts, racked up 303 yards of total offense, held the advantage in time of possession (30:49-29:11), and retook the lead with a little over eleven minutes remaining in a game the visitors were expected to win, perhaps handily.

In short, every criticism offered by every Georgia fan in the aftermath of this game is legitimate. I make no effort to rebut any of it.

My only response to the critics, who are myriad and whose points are valid, is this:

Scoreboard.

Although I foolishly predicted a double-digit victory, I ought to have known better. The last two series meetings notwithstanding, these are the kinds of games these teams play against one another.

The Tigers are our oldest rivals. Georgia has played Auburn more often and for a longer period than Georgia has played Georgia Tech. Auburn has played Georgia more often and for a longer period than Auburn has played Alabama. The cross-pollination between the two programs is so deeply ingrained that Auburn’s field is named for a two-time Bulldog all-American.

Low-scoring nailbiters are the rule rather than the exception. This is so not only of Georgia-Auburn games generally, but of this Tiger team specifically. The Plainsmen’s two S.E.C. wins were by final margins of 3-2 and 14-12. Their five S.E.C. losses have come by final margins of 26-21, 14-13, 25-22, 17-7, and, now, 17-13.

For the home team, this was a typical game against an S.E.C. opponent in 2008. These two rivals were tied at the end of 60 minutes of play ten times in their first 104 showdowns; Larry Munson looked at the sugar falling out of the sky after the ‘Dawgs won in Jordan-Hare Stadium by a 19-14 score; 70 X Takeoff lifted the Red and Black to an S.E.C. championship in a game that ended 24-21.

At the end of the day, 17-13 is business as usual. Heck, 17-13 was the final score between these two teams in 1974.

The only difference is, this time, Georgia won.

Georgia won because Matthew Stafford averaged 9.0 yards per pass, threw two touchdown strikes, and never threw an interception. Georgia won because Knowshon Rockwell Moreno carried the ball 22 times for 131 yards (6.0 yards per carry) and caught four passes for 58 yards and a touchdown. Georgia won because A.J. Green and Mohamed Massaquoi each caught five passes, including the true freshman’s second straight game-winner.

Georgia won because, when the Bulldogs had to score to win, they did. Georgia won because, when the Tigers had to score to win, they couldn’t.

There are huge problems that will need to be addressed during the open date. For now, though, the Red and Black just went on the road and did not play their best in a rivalry game, yet they won anyway.

I, for one, feel like a Bulldog on Saturday night after beating Auburn.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Historically, close games between Georgia and Auburn have been the norm, so the nature of this afternoon’s contest should not have surprised us. Nevertheless, as nerve-wracking as the whole thing was, it was a win, so it is my happy task this evening to update the Mark Richt Victory Watch.

The Mark Richt Victory Watch now stands at 81. Coach Richt needs 120 more wins to tie Vince Dooley for the all-time school record.

Mark Richt’s 81-21 record remains the best ever by a Georgia football coach after 102 games. Only two of his predecessors coached more than 99 games with the Red and Black, and both Wally Butts (73-26-3) and Vince Dooley (68-29-5) had worse records than Mark Richt at the same point in their respective careers.

Between 1983 and 2001, the Plainsmen dominated the Deep South’s oldest football rivalry, posting a 13-5-1 record against the Bulldogs during that span. After losing to Auburn in his first season in Athens, Coach Richt has guided his teams to a 5-2 record against the Tigers from 2002 through 2008, including a 3-1 record in the Loveliest Village.

Go ‘Dawgs!