The Dawgs may have had an open on Saturday, but the observing of misery and joy across college football didn’t cease. Hope many of you enjoyed a stress-free Saturday, because it all ends starting this weekend.
Here are ten thoughts…or something like them from a Saturday of watching others.
1. How much equity does a coach’s legacy buy them? Folks, we’re about to find out. The biggest epicenter of that is at no greater place than Clemson, SC, where the rock-petters are staring a a team that’s gone from
one of the nation’s elite to…1-3. Look, it’s not so much that they lost to Syracuse, but how badly they looked doing it. And one week after struggling to stave off a Troy team before winning? That does not help. Much like Urban Meyer at Florida, his success was greatly inflated by generational talent under center. There’s even a case to be made that Georgia’s win over Clemson to start 2021 began the Tigers’ backslide, exposing other declines. Swinney did himself no favors last week on his on-the-nose press conference comments directed at fans. When you do that, you had better deliver, and it appears Swinney is not the guy to do that to the standard Tigers fans want.
2. Speaking of the ACC…the first weekend of October gives us North Carolina against Clemson. ABC should go ahead and just make it the first college football game on Disney+, airing it in between episodes of Bluey. In all honesty, Bandit and Muffin might throw a better deep ball than Cade Klubnik.
3. Outside of Athens, the team with the most eyes on it in the SEC next weekend is LSU. The Clemson win had its good share of buzz at the time, but the current state of the Upstate Tigers begs a question of how good a win that was. Factor in less-than-overwhelming wins over Florida and Louisiana Tech, and you don’t know how good of an overall team LSU has. Talent is not an issue, but can all of that put it together? Ole Miss may provide the biggest test.
4. If you have friends…or those you talk to that are Auburn fans, let’s just say that they are fit to be tied. Did multiple bad calls play a role in the loss to Oklahoma? Sure. But let’s not present that the East Alabamians are the first time to be raw-dealed by SEC officiating, which finds a way to make itself a story repeatedly with its ineptness. To solely pin a loss on officiating is a discredit to what Oklahoma’s pass rush did. Bad breaks happen in football, and you have to overcome them. As former Valdosta High head football coach Mike O’Brien would often say, “we’ve got to play well enough to make our own breaks, and we have to play well enough to make up for the breaks that we aren’t going to get.”
5. Speaking of Oklahoma, they’re about to test how well a team can move ahead with a ferocious defense, even if an offense can’t sustain a running game. If the same Sooners defense that you saw on Saturday shows up week-to-week, it could spell trouble for any thoughts of thinking that Texas by default will be in Atlanta.
6. Speaking of Texas and the claiming of birthrights without earning them…this from Arch Manning…is not it.
It’s easy to give him the luxury of improving over multiple games and beating up on awful teams. But would the same be afforded to Gunner Stockton or Ty Simpson if they had a klunker of a game and didn’t look dominant against doormat opponents? Arch Manning, I’m sure will get up to speed over time, but at some point. He’s too talented not to. But the goal posts can only be moved so much….regardless of your name or endorsement deals.
7. So, for Georgia fans hoping to lure Sam Pittman back to Athens to coach the offensive line, the “Pit Boss” might be available soon following Arkansas losing to Memphis on Saturday. The Razorbacks strung a few wins together last year in games they were not favored to win on paper to buy Pittman more time, but much like Florida compared to USF, you just can’t be an Arkansas fan and be ok with losing to a program like Memphis, a school that fans there and at Ole Miss look down their nose at. Saturday’s loss was not so much about how Arkansas lost, but who it lost to.
8. Any time someone mentions anything about the Georgia Tech rivalry not being as big, I often remind them that they didn’t remember the late 1990s. Being around Yellow Jackets was about as much fun as it was to be a 10-year old in central Florida in 1990-91 amid Florida fans. It was not fun, and the insufferable level was high. The Trade School beat Georgia three times in a row in the late 1990s to 2000, it’s a key reason why Jim Donnan was replaced. All of that brings us to this year. The Yellow Jackets fell into a very, very manageable schedule…until the sterilized version of Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate. That schedule has world-beaters such as Wake Forest, Virginia Tech, Duke, Syracuse, NC State, Pitt, and Boston College.
Help us, Fran Brown. You’re our only hope.
9. The Falcons just need to go ahead and secretly sign Peyton Woodring for 2026 and get it over with. Usually, drafting a kicker is not normal. But this franchise, going all the way back to the Smith Family is filled with missteps.
10. I say this as someone who was in Sanford Stadium in 2008 against Alabama. Please wear red.
Go Dawgs!
