RBU, DBU, and, of late…TEU.
I’m not sure what his specific coaching strengths are, but the guy can clearly recruit some top talent.
Word out there is that transfer Benjamin Yurosek is making waves and will be a plug and play compliment to Delp and Luckie…and apparently there are more coming:
Williams is 6’7” and 235…as a junior. By comparison, Darnell Washington entered Georgia at 6’7” and 260.
Anyone else need a cold shower?
If I’m reading this right, Georgia would be favored in every game this season.
Here’s another view:
I’m sure the lines will move once teams take the field and show what they’re made of. Question is this – if Georgia curb-stomps the Palmetto Pussycats in Atlanta in the opener, what will the lines look like after? What does DeBoer have to do to be at least even odds with Georgia and a favorite against LSU?
Also, which of these is your mortal lock?
This week’s Playpen is a thought experiment intended to be analyzed independent of any historical controversies or current events in order to try an avoid unhelpful ideological divisions that ultimately obscure matters. In order to illustrate the issue I will set out two fictional historical scenarios with one minor distinction. In one, the actor under scrutiny is a current executive office holder and in the other the person under scrutiny is seeking to become an executive office holder through a popular election.
Fact scenario 1:
Winston Churchill has been promoted to Prime Minister at the same point in history as occurred historically. Assume though that Hitler does not subsequently turn East towards the USSR, but instead seeks to aggressively neutralize Britain’s war-making capacities making the calculation that the USA will never join the fight in Europe if Britain falls. It is assumed that once all of Western Europe is either secured, neutralized or led by friendly governments, then the issue of a normalization of relations with the Americas can be undertaken. A blockade and a no fly zone of Great Britain are established.
Britain is not only under siege from without, as parliamentary elections approach, an opposition candidate comes forward promising that he can both bring peace with Germany AND maintain national autonomy.
Intelligence is gathered suggesting that the opponent’s campaign apparatus is in contact with extremely high ranking members of the German Reich. Assume for our purposes, that the nature of the contact is mutually nefarious and meant to assist the personal ambitions of the candidate and the military ambitions of the German government. In essence, the candidate is running to become the titular head of a puppet government run directly from Berlin. In exchange for agreeing to participate in the plan, the candidate has negotiated for himself a substantial amount of money to squirrel away in various banks around the world and the appearance of great power. This assessment is not a matter of debate, context, conjecture or interpretation.
However, any public release of the details of the repeated contacts would tip off the identity of the source of the information with obvious effects. Two people in Germany know the essential details of the contacts and the future plans, and one of them is named Adolph.
As such, no prosecution is possible. No public release of information is possible. No private release of information to the candidate as a means of persuading him to drop out is possible.
Churchill is faced with winning the election or the nation he is charged with the obligation to protect is doomed. No two ways about it. Out of an abundance of caution, Churchill orders MI6 to neutralize the threat with extreme prejudice.
Fact scenario 2:
Candidate Smith is running against an incumbent US President. The incumbent has been faced with a military crisis on the Korean Peninsula. The North, with substantial Chinese aid, has crossed the 38th parallel looking once again to unify the peninsula. Losses have been substantial on both sides. The American people have lost patience and want the matter to end and/or for the South Koreans to take the lead.
Because of this reality, the South Koreans have doubts about the current administration’s sincere commitment to its future security. It perceives the administration as seeking to achieve a quick resolution for domestic consumption in an election year. They fear that the US will not insist upon the security guarantees it feels are essential to resolving the conflict now and in the decades to come.
While the administration and the North Koreans have an agreement in principle, and are waiting for the South’s decision, a backchannel contact is made by an associate of the Smith Campaign assuring the South a better deal under the Smith administration suggesting that it is in its long-term interests to decline to sign on. The candidate is fully aware of the enticement and the need to deprive the administration of a political victory.
And, in reality, Smith wants to scrap the entire peace framework and once having taken power will seek regime change in North Korea. While the South would welcome that end, it is not committed to the costs associated with that goal and would, given the choice, prefer the current administration’s offer over seeking total victory.
The South declines the offer. The peace deal collapses. Smith wins the election, and having promised to end the war if elected, escalates the war arguing that escalation is required to get the North back to the negotiating table, all the while knowing it he is not interested in a negotiated settlement, but in regime change only.
I assume that everyone agrees that the Smith campaign, the candidate involved and every actor who convinced the South not to sign onto the deal, are terrible, horrible people. However, between the two, only Churchill has committed a clear provable criminal offense with a classified paper trail.
Even if Smith and his campaign were later subject to an investigation denials, numerous loyalist buffers and difficulty in proving intent would stymie any attempt to hold those most responsible accountable.
Meanwhile, a subsequent administration would presumably have access to information proving with a certainty that Churchill committed a murder of a political opponent.
Since Nixon there has been a great deal of debate and discussion about the issue of presidential immunity and of drawing lines between private and public acts. While an interesting debate, and one I personally think makes little sense to engage in, the issue I am interested and what influenced this post is whether the line drawing is the important matter.
The truth is that the cunning and the clever, no matter their line of work, can engage in exceptionally unethical and morally repugnant acts and never face repercussion. Meanwhile, people of good will may on occasion be placed in a position to choose that which would clearly break the letter of the law.
Given the fact that we cannot rely on rules, laws, statutes, or judicial decisions to protect ourselves from really bad actors or really bad circumstances, isn’t the real question:
What is the most essential quality we should look for in those people we are considering entrusting with great power?
Discuss?
The Refugees have spoken…it looks like there were a few candidates yesterday that really seemed to stand out from the rest when it comes to the subject matter of a bad helmet.
Congrats, Terps. It looks like a tattoo artist attempted a Dali painting on a helmet, which would serve as a better cap for a crotch rocket captain than for a football player. This is the same program that fired Ralph Friedgen in his 2010 ACC Coach of the Year season to replace him with Randy Edsall and then DJ Durkin…so the trashy and psychedelic Panama City-vacation-airbrushed-t-shirt-meets-state-flag look really seems to fit.
Paul Johnson unveiled these for the night game against FSU in 2015. The only talented athlete on Tech’s team at the time was Harrison Butker, who kicked a thousand field goals and Tech ended the game with a blocked field goal for a TD and snapped FSU’s four year ACC win streak (not a big deal in 2015). Geeks everywhere shit their pants and a legend in Tech apparel was born. The win put Tech at 3-5 in the year and they wouldn’t win again, closing out the season with yet another home loss to Georgia, 13-7. (Turns out it would be Richt’s final victory of his Georgia career, with Sony Michel running for about 150 yards and Grayson Lambert just doing Grayson Lambert things). Bryan McClendon coached the TaxSlayer Bowl while Richt was headed to Miami, and Kirby Smart was on the sideline.
By the way, yellowjackets do have hexagon shaped tubes inside their nests, so the shape on the helmet is accurate. Fun fact – Yellowjackets are wasps that can sting multiple times without dying. In calling the helmet the “Honeycomb” design suggests that Tech, in fact, are bees, which die after one sting. Maybe it should be their permanent helmet.
While we are on the subject of Richt, there were two other mentions of horrible headgear, which squarely falls on our shoulders. Exhibit the first:
Personally, I didn’t hate it. I can’t tell you what combination of colors would make it work, but on a white jersey with black pants, meh. Honestly, I’ll take our traditional unis and our recent history of whooping ass over cutesy wardrobe changes.
To make it worse, it was another gimmicky thing to try to make an underwhelming Joe Cox team somehow beat the #1 team in the nation with a Halloween outfit. We got our ass handed to us in the WLOCP and Tebow broke Herschel’s rushing TD record, too. In retrospect, we should’ve dressed as ghosts or wore some form of Predator-level transparent cloaking outfit, or just disappeared all together.
Still, it wasn’t as bad as this:
What in the actual fuck was this? 2011 featured a handful of teams getting a unique Nike Pro Combat uniform, from Army and Navy to LSU. These select teams had a unique and decent look to them (except Ohio State’s, it was about on par with ours), and when they got down to designing Georgia’s, it was like they passed it off to an intern and said “eh, we’re tired, just color something and we will go with it”. Turns out the intern was either a toddler or a comedian, because the resulting Power Ranger outfit was neither splashy, unique, or imposing. No, it’s just really, really sucked giant donkey balls. As did Isaiah Crowell and company on our way to a 35-21 loss to Boise State in the 2011 Kickoff Classic.
I actually met my wife at that game on September 3rd, 2011, and we would subsequently go to every home game that season as we started dating. Even went to the SECCG and watched LSU hand it to us, but it was our second date in the Dome that year and, lots of football later, we were engaged and got married about a year after. We have three kids together, the youngest named Georgia, which was decided late in the evening as Sony Michel ran a wildcat sweep into the end zone to beat Baker Mayfield at the Rose Bowl. Lots of memories in the thirteen years since and I still can’t forget how remarkably awful the 2011 Georgia uniforms were. The coaches wore bright red shoes and my wife remarked “they look like clowns”. They were operating like them, too. Sigh.
I’ll leave you all with another repeated mention, which is this:
Not hard to hate these. FTMFs, and that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
While finding material for yesterday’s brief post on Guardian Caps for helmets, I came across some news around former safety Lewis Cine. Since leaving the program for the Draft in 2022, turns out things haven’t been going well for the former Bulldog.
Initially slowed in training camp of his 2022 season by a lingering leg injury, Cine saw action mostly on punt returns, up until his gruesome leg injury while playing in England against the Saints.
He recovered, and initial reports indicated that he looked to be back to normal and ready to be a contributor to the Vikings defense, but he again saw mostly special teams action and only recorded a single tackle during the 2023 campaign.
In scanning the internet for video of his famed collision with Kyle Pitts, I saw more and more articles indicating that Cine may be cut from the Vikings and traded to another team.
Then I came across this:
Color me shocked. In all the reading I do about Dawgs in the NFL, I hear nothing but great things about their professional readiness and depth of knowledge of the sport. I don’t know how Cine could’ve survived Smart’s defense without a level of dedication and study that we’ve come to know from the Georgia program, so I wonder what’s going on with Cine since joining the league.
Here’s hoping it’s situational and not a sign of things to come for him. Maybe a new team and different staff will revive his career and get him up to speed as the former defensive wrecking ball we came to know and love in Athens.
You say the bowls are meaningless, but I caught some deeper meaning with this one.
To add to it, one team from the Mountain West will face off against a team from the MAC. Maybe Mark Morrison will perform at halftime.
Nice piece in the Houston Chronicle on Kamari Lassiter, from his high school days to working with Fran Brown while at UGA. Definitely would recommend taking a few minutes to read the full article. Coupled with an article in Dawgnation on Javon Bullard, it looks like Georgia defenders are making a notable impression in their new NFL homes.
One thing that resonated with me from the piece on Lassiter is a quote from him at the end:
“Texans fans, you are getting someone who is the ultimate competitor, someone who is a real-life dog, someone who hates to lose, hates losing more than he loves winning.” (emphasis added)
Would’ve loved to see Keon Coleman going up against Kamari. Keon didn’t even lose this past year, so clearly his love of winning isn’t too strong, either.
Congrats to Derek and ctldawg, who correctly identified the WABAC Gameday post as the 1986 Auburn “Between the Hoses” game. If you’re a reader here and don’t understand why “Auburn Sucks”, you’re likely a youngster who has enjoyed our 17-7 record since the turn of the century and wonder how they could be a rival (we haven’t lost to them since 2017, btw). If you’re older, then this has to solidify your hatred for the barners in the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry.
November 15th, 1986. Top of the charts was Take My Breath Away by Berlin, and, man, did this game do that. We were in a low point, seemingly years removed from the Herschel Walker and Junkyard Dawgs days, and the program was embroiled in the Jan Kemp scandal, to boot.
There was no way in hell, after falling to the hapless Gators a week prior, that we stood a chance in this one. Our seasoned quarterback, James Jackson, didn’t even let the coaching staff know if he’d be at the game, or at least that’s what they would tell us, and turns out we were going to have to turn to an untested (within the season) Wayne Johnson to navigate us past one of Auburn’s more formidable front seven, featuring a young Tracy Rocker, with our backfield featuring Lars Tate.
I’ll do something different this week…I’ll let y’all watch, and pull the bullet points out that you observe from the replay of the game. To get your started:
Interested to see your bullet points. Have at it, gang.
Something to fire up the chat this morning:
What’s the worst CFB helmet design ever?
I’ll start:
Maybe this really won’t fire up the message board. Could be an open and shut case, amirite?
Pretty cool.
If there was ever a testament to how horrible Tom Crean was, it’s the fact that Jordan’s son (at least that’s the urban legend rumor) played for the Dawgs and he could only manage a .500 season out of it.
GTP Refugees 
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