Recap of the Weekend...or 5-2 feels like flat Coke and cheap whiskey

Mental taxation. That is the phrase I use to describe the debauched, uninspired, perplexing and fallacious game that the Georgia Bulldogs played on Saturday. Notice I did not say "Dawgs." They don't deserve the moniker "Dawgs." There was nothing junkyard about this game, it just belonged in one. We have laid some eggs in Nashville, of this there is no doubt, but this one was a whole dozen of eggs. Big, brown, organic eggs for you Paleo dieters out there. I rank this game up there with our 2006 and 1994 losses to Vandy. Yes, we won on the scoreboard on Satruday and that's all that really matters....but we lost everywhere else.

There is very little worth mentioning about this game. Bobo called lateral runs all night long, our top RB sat out the first quarter because Coach "loves him" (whatever that means), and the O-line was marginal at best. The lone bright spots were receivers Marlon Brown and Michael Bennett, who flourished in the absence of Malcolm Mitchell. The defense was at its most porous, giving up over 200 yards rushing to an offense that was held to 4 yards rushing by Alabama and 41 yards rushing by South Carolina. When they flashed that particular statistic across the screen, I went in my house, grabbed my blender, filled it with rubbing alcohol, stuck my hand in there and hit puree. I thought my Dad was going to eat one of my holly bushes. Vinny dipped a log of Copenhagen in 12 minutes, Jeremy bit his Miller Lite bottle in half and Laura opened a third bottle of wine and said "this is a really dry red, don't you think?" If by "dry red" you mean some of the worst football of the season, then you got it. A whole case of it. Playing on this wine metaphor further, we drank it all night, got hammered, drunk texted our old flame with an "I loooooove you akhasansshf"  then puked in the yard while Vandy, playing the part of the bitchy sorority sister, refused to hold our hair back.

Our special teams gets a paragraph all on their own. The hat trick of special teams futility was achieved on this day. First, it was yet....another....fake.....&*^%&.....punt that was successful against us. In fact, nobody was even close to the Vandy player who recieved the ball. He could have sat down, finished his 2011 taxes and still gotten the first down. Another preposterous failure by a squad that is rife with preposterous failures. Second, we have a kickoff run back on us. I think one guy's fingernail scratched his sock on the 30 as he blew by us. Unacceptable. Third and finally, with less than a minute to go, we allow Vandy to block a punt that put them in a position to beat us. Hell, if the Vandy player had just picked up the ball and kept running, game over...Vandy wins. Mmmmmm, that dry red is going down smooth at this point. Pour me a freaking highball and a chaser. Fortunately, the defense held and we got out of there with a win. A fitting end to a boring, frustrating and downright piss poor game. Oh yeah, we attempted SIX field goals, and missed two of them. Ugh, I'm going to stop before I drown myself in a urinal.

The post game shenanigans were quiet entertaining, however. Apparently, Vandy's head coach James Franklin took exception to the fact that Shawn Williams, one of our defensive players who actually pulled his weight, was excited about the victory. He said some choice words to Shawn and our DC, Todd Grantham, did his best Lou Ferrigno impression, turned green and launched into James Franklin like Charlie Weis at a Chinese buffet. If you get a chance, Youtube the melee and read Grantham's lips. It's like the first 15 minutes of Full Metal Jacket. The two teams and coaches gathered, some shoves were passed around but eventually calm was restored. Our guys started hooping and hollering, motioning for our fans to cheer...in Nashville, against Vandy.....our newest rival. And that's where we lose. No longer are we mentioned among the elite. We are an afterthought. We are the Smashing Pumpkins, with our very own Billy Corgan. We were good for awhile but now, everybody asks, "what the hell happened to Georgia?" Instead of drugs and inexplicable weirdness, we are a product of complacency, of a lack of desire and an overall poor approach to the game of football. We are resorted to hoping for a Carolina loss (which I NEVER thought could happen in my lifetime) and hoping that John Brantley's faulty ankle is not healed in time for the Cocktail Party. This is not the Georgia I grew up loving.

Not to mention, even if we do win the East, we play the winner of the November 5th tilt between Alabama and LSU, which may as well be the National Championship. These two teams are head and shoulders better than anyone in the East.....Coast. And the West Coast. If we play either of these teams, we will certainly be destroyed. This makes me sad, because people used to fear us. Now, we fear everybody else. Case in point:

Ole Miss scores early on a long bomb make it 7-0 over Alabama. Oxford goes crazy. Airplane bottles of Southern Comfort are outright chugged in the stands. Guys named Butler Browning IV and Harrison Handsberg III steal a Land Rover and crash it into Archie Manning's statue. "We have a chance!" the Rebels say. Then Trent Richardson walks onto the field and says, "I must break you," and proceeds to annhilate their defense all day long and the final was 51-7. (+1 for Rocky IV reference) We barely beat Ole Miss and looked positively anemic all day.

Tennessee holds LSU scoreless for the first quarter. The orange faithful have Neyland rocking, even though they are missing their QB and top receiver, due to injuries. They gain some yards and stop LSU's ground game for the first fifteen minutes. Then LSU gathers themselves, imposes their will on Tennessee and it's 31-7 before Tennessee can say, "hey momma, is it OK to marry a third cousin?" Seriously, the turnaround was unreal. This does not happen in Athens anymore. I'm going to start watching soccer.

Other News and Notes:

1) Georgia Tech loses to Virginia in Charlottesville again. It looks like I am safe from last week's "steel wool and antifreeze" threat. You suck and your coach looks like Nien Nunb from Return of the Jedi. (google it...Paul Johnson and Nunb, dead ringers.)

2) It's Texas vs. St. Louis in the World Series. At least, there will be something to watch on the weekdays between football games.

3) Boise State is being courted by the Big East. They are going to "think about it." What is there to think about? Boise is east of....Seattle....right?

4) The NBA is going to lockout and Stern says that Christmas games are likely to be cancelled. Players are defecting to Turkey and Greece to play ball in the meantime. The only turkey and grease I'll be watching will be on my plate at Thanksgiving. Get it together, guys. You are killing the fringe fanbase.

5) People who write the ads for Atlanta and northwest Georgia title pawn companies basically play on every stereotype known to man. I swear, there was one down in College Park that said, "get paid, boyeeee!" and I heard one today in Rome that said, "Y'all get on down here and get y'all some cash, ya hear?" Terrible/Effective.

Enjoy the week. Dawgs are off before we play the Lizards down in Jacksonville. Notice I said "Dawgs" again. The Junkyard Dawgs will wake up and tear em a new one. Dawgs 20 - UFail 12.