Fourth and Dumb

As if we really needed one.

In the whirlwind of Kiffy’s hiring by USC, he had to make some quick decisions regarding assistants. Understandably, not all could come with him, as some of the USC staff know Lane and have PAC-10 and team knowledge he’d want to retain. One guy left out in the cold was David Reaves, the WR coach for Tennessee under Kiffin.

Reaves learned of Kiffy’s departure, and his joblessness, the way the rest of us did: at Kiffy’s hastily called news conference.

The difference? Reaves is also Kiffy’s brother-in-law, sibling to his bikini-model wife Layla (and son of former Gator great John Reaves). You’d think at least sissy-poo could have given him a text or something as a heads-up, right?

When Derek Dooley got hired, he didn’t have any room for Reaves, leaving him out of work at a time when other programs have finished their hiring and firing. Don’t feel too bad for the guy, though: he still has to get paid his $150k salary, which is almost as much as CC English profs make. But still, I can imagine some awkwardness at the buffet line at the Thanksgiving dinner.

Yes, Vols, hang down your head and cry! You’ve just hired the Louisiana Tech head coach, your fifth choice (at best), scion of Vince Dooley, who comes in sporting a 17-20 record.

What is it about the Vols hiring relatively inexperienced HCs who don’t even have winning records? At least he seems like a polite young man, unlike that boor who they used to have. One hopes he will take his beatings respectfully, without all that gum flapping.

Let the wild speculation about the replacement at La Tech begin!!!!!

So it’s been a quiet week here at Fourth and Dumb. No action since Tuesday–hey, it’s like my marriage! Hey-o! Take my wife, please!

Sigh. Yeah, cheesy monologue material may be the way to go, as the college football season seems to have really stagnated here at the end of this season. Seriously, are there any games of import still happening? I’m too lazy to do the research, but I’m certain there are no more match-ups of two top-15 teams happening this week or next week. And even most of the rivalry games seem pretty lopsided this year. Today we get Ohio State-Michigan, for example, but outside of their fans, does that game jazz anyone this season? Same with next week’s Florida-FSU and Bama-Auburn: you just don’t think these games are going to be big ones. Or at least I don’t.

Anyway, there’s just one game in the SEC really worth watching for any normal people today (note that being abnormal, I fully expect to check out Vandy-Tennessee and Georgia Kentucky if I’m able): that’s LSU at Ole Miss. The Rebs seem to have awakened the offense a bit, with Dexter McCluster averaging 264 all-purpose yards the last four games, and Jevan Snead completing more passes to teammates than opponents. Still, the Tigers have a stout defense, and we can’t be sure Ole Miss won’t revert to old ways. I think this will be close, but the Rebs will pull it out to win by 2 or 3.

Florida and Bama get FIU and UT-Chattanooga, respectively. Let’s see if either team can crest 50; last year you’d expect the Gators to get 49 at half in a game like this, but though I expect Tebow to throw some long balls on the nation’s 118th-ranked defense, I think the Gates will still run a bunch and not score a ton of points. But I hope desperately that John Brantley gets some reps in the second half. For Bama, expect a steady diet of Mark Ingram, bolstering his Heisman hopes and not letting Greg McElroy lose any more confidence by throwing picks.

Georgia-Kentucky should be pretty competitive, and I’d be a boor not to pause to offer condolences to Bulldog Nation on the passing of UGA VII this week. I hope he’s got legs to hump in Dawg heaven (which, by the way, is near Schenectady, NY). Anyway, don’t be surprised to see Kentucky take the Dawgs down, but on the other hand, don’t count on it, either. Georgia throws for a ton of yards and wins close.

I’d love to think Vandy would give Tennessee a tough game at Knoxville, but their offense is too weak. If their D-line can play like they did against the Gators in The Swamp, they might be able to keep it close for a while, but their offense is so bad it doesn’t seem like they could do much with the field position their D might give them. Tennessee will win at around the spread of 17.

Miss State will try desperately to get bowl eligible, but Arkansas’s offense is too good for that. Still, Dan Mullen’s got the Other Bulldogs’ offense looking better than it has in forever. Expect good things from them in two years when he’s got the personnel his offense needs.

Before we get to the game, let us pause to mourn the end of the career (at UT, anyway) of Nu’Keese Richardson, who, along with scrub Mike Edwards, has been forever cast out of Knoxville. Oddly, Janzen Jackson is still there, so there must be something to the story we’re not getting yet (maybe he didn’t threaten anyone with a pellet gun?). But Gators everywhere are thankful to Lane Kiffin for taking Nuke from us. Thanks, Kiffy!

Adding to Kiffy’s tough week was the most interesting SEC development from this past weekend:  the long-awaited awakening of the Ole Miss offense we thought was going to play like this all year. Jevan Snead completed passes short and long, and Dexter McCluster gashed the Vols. Ole Miss may be rolling now, just in time to whip on LSU, but far too late to salvage its sky-high preseason hopes.

Georgia won a scorefest over Auburn, meaning the PlainsTigers have won only one game, against a non-conference foe, since I joined their bandwagon at the end of September and started predicting great things. You’re welcome, TigerEagles! But at least you’re bowl eligible.

The Gators continued to show that they are morphing into the Alabama team of 1961, grinding out games with running and defense. But that team won a national title, and I still think the Gators will do so (sure, I’m biased, what of it?). It’s a cliche, but right now the Gators really don’t seem that interested in their games. The offense putzes around, knowing the defense will mostly destroy people. No matter Pope Urban’s lectures about taking each game seriously, right now you have to figure the Gators players are sleeping and eating Alabama.

Speaking of the Tide, they efficiently rolled up the Other Bulldogs from Miss State and now get a scrimmage with UT-Chattanooga before heading to their showdown with the cow college kids from the Plains. Bama’s too focused to lose that game, but it’s a rivalry, so it might be interesting.

By now you’ve probably heard that three Tennessee freshman football players are being charged with ARMED ROBBERY! One of the three is scrub Mike Edwards, but the other two are starting safety Janzen Jackson and WR Nu’Keese Richardson, whom you might remember from last spring as the kid who’d been orally committed to Florida for over a year before shocking folks on signing day by picking UT. Why the shock? Remember, this is the kid who lied to UF and the media for a couple weeks after visiting UT at the urging of Lane Kiffin, who didn’t want Florida to know their recruit was jumping ship.

Well, I don’t reckon the Gators are missing Nuke right now. Damn, don’t those kids know how to get the “no-work” jobs from boosters like other CFB players? Sheesh.

College players often get in trouble for petty thefts and stupid assaults and other such garbage (not too much different from regular college students, really), but this is pretty serious–one of them had a gun. This could be it for all three players, and it doesn’t help Kiffy’s already-tarnished image much.

Some interesting things happened in the Nathan’s-foot-long-slathered-in-Sriracha sauce-and-jalapenos-and-sauerkraut that is the world’s greatest football conference, the SEC, this past Halloween weekend.

 However, the Florida-Georgia game really wasn’t one of them, unless of course you’re specifically a fan of either team. The Gators finally had a game in which they didn’t turn the ball over three or more times, and consequently they rolled the Dawgs up 41-17. Riley Cooper did make the best catch I’ve seen this year, hauling in his second TD with one hand while leaping forward, and there has since been the excitement of learning that Brandon Spikes decided to test the vision of a Georgia RB by sticking his fingers deep into his eyes (earning him a first-half suspension versus Vandy—I hope the Gators can hold off back-up Commodore QB Mackenzi Adams for two quarters!). But otherwise things went as most expected.

 A bigger surprise, maybe, occurred at Jordan-Hare, where Auburn “beat hayell outta the Rebs” (as PlainsTigers might say). Was there a more overrated team this year than Ole Miss? I, for one, was certainly guilty of thinking they would be a serious threat in the SEC West (um, did I pick them to win? Crap.), as on paper they seemed to have good reasons to be better offensively than they were in ’08. But Jevan Snead suddenly seems to make lots of bad decisions, and Dexter McCluster just isn’t gashing folks like he did last year. Maybe the UF and Texas Tech games last year fooled me, or maybe the Houston Nutt effect only works for a year. Either way, Auburn looked good and may be back on track for a 7-8 win season and decent bowl. Hey, Chizik has already won more games this year than he did in two up at Iowa State!

 The ‘Cocks were limp and lifeless on Halloween night, dribbling the ball onto the ground on the third play and then turning it over two more times in the next four possessions, keeping them from the kind of penetration they needed to embed the football in the soft and fecund soil of the end zone (Gah, will these moronic references never end???). “Hello Kiffy” got his fourth win with four to go, and that game at Oxford against the Rebs is hardly looking unwinnable right now, so he’s going to get the Vols into a bowl. I’d say more about this game, but I was handing out candy by then, wearing a prosthetic to make it look like my right eye had been enucleated, but unfortunately that’s my good eye, and coupling that with a lot of beer and tequila meant I was legally and morally blind by then. Fortunately, it spared me the ugly of UT’s black jerseys.

 Still under the radar, Miss State got new coach Dan Mullen a good road win at Kentucky, putting the Other Bulldogs at 4-5 with games against Bama and Ole Miss at home sandwiched around a trip to Fayetteville to play the Razorpigs. If he gets them to a bowl, he’s the NCAA coach of the year in my book.

This week’s games in the world’s greatest football conference, that Southeastern one, will offer much insight into the final jockeying for bowl position which will take place in November. Though there are no blockbuster match-ups, there are some very interesting games to the discerning aficionado of Southern pigskin.

To wit, South Carolina at Tennessee, the best game of the weekend. Kiffin’s flap with the Spurdog was less exciting than those he had with Pope Urban and Nick Satan, but expect to hear a bit about it on Gameday and during the gamecast. In case you forgot, Spurrier said that Kiffin may have been recruiting SC commits before Kiffin took his NCAA recruiting test, a requirement before recruiting, and Kiffin said he didn’t. Then Spurrier contemptuously told Kiff he never accused him of cheating in front of a pack of reporters and a (reportedly) bemused Bobby Petrino and Rich Brooks at the SEC meetings in Destin, Florida.

Anyway, the game itself is clearly the most important game of the season for Kiffin. Despite his “moral victories,” no one expected him to beat Bama or Florida this year, so he can bask in the glow of close games there. Likewise, he got his one big win this year by pounding Georgia. So why is this game so big for him? Well, UT is 3-4. His team will be favored and expected (by Vols fans) to beat Memphis and Vandy at home, while a roadie at Ole Miss will be an acceptable loss by most fans. If this comes true, that equals 5-5, with this game and the later roadie at Kentucky being the deciding factors for the Vols’ bowl eligibility this year. More important, Vols fans expect to compete with Florida (and most years, Georgia) for the SEC East, so even in this first season, they expect Kiffin to put the Vols ahead of the lower half of the division. If Kiffin really wants to get the fans behind him, he has to win this game at home. However, I think the ‘Cocks defense will be too stiff for the Vols’ running game, and the Spurdog will win a low-scoring, ugly game.

Ole Miss’s trip to Auburn is likely the game for third place in the SEC West. Ole Miss’s season kind of reminds me of Florida’s—they’ve made a lot of mistakes in close games, but unlike the Gators, they haven’t been talented enough, especially on defense, to survive those mistakes. Like the Gators, Ole Miss is due for a big offensive game. However, it won’t come in Jurdin-Hayer, where those cow college PlainsTiger fans will be in full throat. Still, Ole Miss will win a close one.

Florida-Georgia doesn’t have the luster of last year’s “Urban’s Revenge” game, but the Gators are still trying to get juice out of Georgia’s end zone dance of two years ago. This is pretty lame: the Gators just need to start acting like the pros that most of them are going to be. The Gators’ failures this season have been due to execution: they’ve often forgotten how to block and hold on to the ball. Fortunately, the defense has been as good as advertised (though not in the realm of the all-time greats, as Brandon Spikes had boastfully predicted before the season). Better for the Gators, they get Spikes back for this game, along with three (!) regulars from the D-line who didn’t play last week. Expect the Gators to put it together this week and actually score over thirty while holding the dogs to less than 17.

I think Kentucky will handle a game Miss State team at home, while the student-ATHLETES of Georgia Tech will pound the STUDENT-athletes of Vanderbilt. Jordan Jefferson will look all-world against the Tulane defense. Ryan Mallett will throw for six TDs against Eastern Michigan, one of which will come with him holding up a D-lineman in his left arm while throwing a 97-yard pass with his right. Satan will spend the entire day huddled in his dark lair, chuckling at footage of the LSU passing game. I will drink a dwarfsweight of Red Stripe before trick or treating with my daughter and then catching the last three quarters of the Oregon game. As Pippa put it in Browning’s great poem, “God’s in his heaven/All’s right with the world.”

The revelation of feet of clay was the major theme of the eighth week in the veil of tears that is the world’s greatest football conference.

Alabama got all of seven days as the new darlings of AP voters. The giant paws of Mount Cody saved their asses from an embarrassing loss to Mr. Moral Victory, Lane Kiffin. And all I heard for the last two days is how impressed we should all be with what Lane’s got building there in Knoxville. But please, let me call bullshit on that. The defense up there is very good, what with Monte’s coaching and Eric Berry’s presence, but the offense, the Georgia game somehow notwithstanding, is wretched. Can we all just remember for a second that A) Florida gave Tennessee a bunch of turnovers and played as conservative as Grover Norquist but the Vols still were never a threat to win, and B) Alabama was up 12-3 with three minutes to go before having a bad turnover at the wrong time and then giving up an onside kick. Neither game was REALLY that close, though obviously the Bama game really could’ve been a loss for the Tide but for Cody’s block, but that was due to the crazy stuff at the finish–for the entire rest of the game Tennessee couldn’t get a first down with six tries.

I’m not saying Lane won’t get them better; heck, he’s recruiting like a demon. But he’s got a ways to go, and I’m still betting against him getting the Vols bowl-eligible this year.

Anyway, Bama didn’t deserve to be demoted for winning an SEC game, just like the Gators didn’t need to get demoted after last week’s near miss versus Arkansas. But so it goes with today’s voters, who seem to think that the top teams have to win bigger to satiate their hype.

Speaking of hype, the Gators looked like warmed-over vomit on offense in Starkville on Saturday. First and goal at the three? What do you have, new OC Steve Addazio (keeping in mind you want to impress the last OC, Dan Mullen, who’s coaching against you)? Hey, how about throwing Tebow into the line three straight times? Sure, I bet Dan Mullen can’t recognize that blocking scheme! Really, the Gators’ offense has gotten as stagnant as Donald Rumsfeld’s boxers. Some questions most Gator fans have:

What happened to the talk of running CB Joe Haden as a wildcat option? (Or Brandon James or any of the RBs?)

Why don’t we hand off more when we’re in the Red Zone? (The Gates have converted two TDs in their last 15 trips, both on hand offs to RBs).

What happened to the talk of getting back-up QB John Brantley meaningful snaps? As he’s a much better pure passer than Timmy, wouldn’t he be a good change of pace for a couple series a game (or maybe even in the Red Zone?).

All I know is that when watching the game replay Sunday morning, I saw a number of plays with WRs seemingly open and waving at Tebow like Sevastopol hookers at the latest boatload of Greek stevedores (that’s for you, Charles Meigs!), while Timmy, under pressure, would tuck and pick up two yards. Still, all this talk of the Gators’ problems is a bit premature. They’ve done everything in their power to give teams a chance to beat them, but they haven’t been able to do so yet (and don’t give me the stuff about bad calls; Doe’s potential fumble wasn’t nearly as clear cut as everyone seems to think–if a replay has to be clearly conclusive to overturn the call on the field, I don’t see how people can be so emphatic about it, as it’s not clear that Doe dropped the ball before the tip crossed the white line of the end zone). And sooner or later they’ll take care of the ball for a whole game, and they’ll win by 17 or 20. But neither they nor Bama are teams that are going to crest 40 points very often this year, if ever. And right now the SEC Championship Game is shaping up to be straight out of 1928, a 8-6 affair with lots of blood and bits of bone on the field.

Meanwhile, South Carolina just keeps hanging around, just like the conference’s Big Two. They eked one out against Vandy, and now they’ll get Tennessee, in what should be an interesting game: the late 20th-century’s most hated coach in the South vs. the 21st-century’s most hated coach in the South. The over-under ought to be around 16.

Oh, and LSU also may be back on the uptick. They nicely pushed around Auburn, even showing some signs of offense with Jordan Jefferson. And it’s easy to forget that they still control their destiny with regards to the SEC title, and hence, perhaps even with the national title. If they can beat Bama in a couple weeks and then beat UF in a rematch, they’d be 12-1 and SEC champs, hard to deny a spot in Pasadena unless we still have Texas, Iowa, and Cincinnati all still undefeated (not to mention those petty sinks that DanGr’s always going on about).

Oh, and there were some other games in the conference, too, but you can look ‘em up on ESPN or something.

For the second week in a row, there are no really big games in the chili-slathered, Nathan’s foot-long that is the Southeastern Conference, but there are some intriguing games nonetheless. To wit:

Arkansas travels to Oxford to play Ole Miss. Can Ole Miss get back up off the mat and at least fight for second in the SEC West? Maybe. On the one hand you’d think that Jevan Snead can move the ball on Arkansas’s D, but on the other that Razorpig D nutted up and slowed the Gators last week. But then again, can Arkansas get up for another tough roadie after their oh-so-close loss to the Gators? I say no: Ole Miss wins by 3-4.

Lane Kiffin weighed in a few days, saying that Alabama is the “best-coached team” in the SEC and is the “clear” #1 team in the nation. Is this just more of Lane’s weird habit of kissing the ass of the powerhouse he’s about to play (cf his comments a few days before the Gator game that UF should be favored by 100 points), or is he just gigging Urban Meyer now that the Gators’ loss is in his rearview mirror? Well, if it’s the former, don’t bother: Nick Satan doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him, and he’s going to punish the Vols. Will Lane’s anger over being peremptorily disallowed from wearing orange on the road be enacted in a stirring effort by his team to beat the Tide? No.  Bama wins by 17.

Can Auburn look the way they did in the first couple weeks during their trip to Death Valley in Baton Rouge? Lately it seems like they’ve forgotten how to play pass defense, but fortunately for them, Jordan Jefferson can’t pass! Still, LSU isn’t going to let the PlainsTigers score many points. LSU wins by 4.

Tim Tebow gets to visit with his mentor and friend, Dan Mullen, when the Gators go to Starkville. The last time the Gates actually won there was the year before I began matriculating in Gainesville: 1985. Since then Miss State has been a graveyard of good Gator teams. And every single time it didn’t appear possible UF could lose. But really, it’s not possible UF can lose this game. Right? I mean, really? Anyway, I think the Gators win by 22. But I’ll be hitting the Patron early to calm my nerves, especially if the Gators start putting the ball on the floor early, as they have the last couple games.

South Carolina will let Stephen Garcia loose against Vandy and will win big.

Another week, another layer of lustrous nacre added to the fine pearl that is the greatest football conference on Earth, the SEC.

The marquee game between UF and LSU in Death Valley was tense and fascinating but not exciting, if that makes sense. I don’t imagine that disinterested fans from the Midwest or Northeast would say it was a great game to watch, as it was a defensive slugfest without many big plays. But for the discerning or interested viewer, it was a masterpiece of slug-it-out Southern football. The Gators played it awfully close to the vest on offense, obviously very confident that Jordan Jefferson couldn’t move the ball on their defense. And as in the Tennessee game, the Gators left obvious points on the field (missed FG, lame 4^th-down attempt in the red zone), allowing the score to make the game appear closer than it was. But despite the low scoring, the outcome wasn’t much in doubt after the first few LSU possessions. LSU now gets a needed off-week to prepare for Auburn, an elimination match for the Tigers as far as remaining in the SEC West hunt. 

Why an elimination game already? Because Alabama is starting to look nigh-unbeatable in the West. Greg McElroy has turned out to be an ideal game manager for the Tide, who, like the Gators, are happy to grind you to death with their front seven, score a few points, and play field position. Ole Miss just played awfully against Bama, but most of that is attributable to the Tide’s D. However, as much crap as Jevan Snead has gotten for that game, he had some receivers drop some balls and one of them literally hand over an interception to a linebacker when the Rebels had a chance to cut the deficit to three early in the fourth quarter. But that’s the danger of these low-scoring games for Bama and Florida: you’re always just a crazy play away from being in big trouble. But then again, these teams don’t seem to allow those plays.

Auburn’s offense played like a bunch of CHUDs suddenly exposed to bright light in Fayetteville against the Razorpigs. They were fumbling and throwing INTs and dropping passes against a three-digit-ranked defense. But to be fair to Arkansas, that Petrino offense is for real, and Massive Mallett is making lots of plays for that team. Now Arkansas gets Florida in the Swamp, while Auburn hosts Kentucky. Arkansas is dead meat, no matter how good that offense is, but Auburn has a fight on its hands, too. However, they’ll be aided by the fact that they’ll be playing a Kentucky team without starting QB Mike Hartline.

That’s because he got hurt in a very tight contest with South Carolina, who keeps escaping with wins. The SC defense played one of its softest games this year against Kentucky, even allowing pretty scattershot back-up QB Will Fidler to make some plays against them. The Cocks will have to seriously pick up the pace to have a prayer against Bama on Saturday, but I think their defense, matched up with Bama’s, means the game will be in doubt into the fourth quarter.

Meantime, Vandy went down in overtime vs. Army, telling us that Vandy’s seeming resurgence under Bobby Johnson is likely stalled, and that they’ll be a 5-6 win team forever, unless of course they scrap those stupid entrance rules and SAT scores for students and stuff. Miss State showed more offensive flash in a tough loss to Houston, but OtherBulldog fans should be excited by the fact that Dan Mullen has this team scoring points. How good will they be when he gets some actual players in there?

Last but certainly not least, what the hell is going on with Georgia? We all figured their offense would be down after losing Stafford and Moreno, but I at least assumed their defense would be as good or better than ’08. In fact, however, Cox has been better than expected, or was until Saturday when the Vols tore him up, and the Dawg defense has been just wretched. They made Jonathan Crompton look like Tom Brady Saturday; I wouldn’t have thought that Crompton could have thrown for that many yards against tall grass. Georgia may end up having a hard time getting to seven wins at the rate their D is playing; fortunately for them, they get offense-challenged Vandy to practice on this week.