Friday, November 21, 2008

Can UF outrush GT this weekend? Probably not.

Georgia Tech won a critical ACC game against Miami last night while throwing just seven passes. Nothing like 472 yards rushing to get your weekend started on a good note. It's amazing that Paul Johnson's offense is working as well as it is in Atlanta. Back to the drawing board for the Canes, although Randy Shannon will insist the loss was great news for them.

The BCS has yet another nightmare scenario to consider. It's a little complicated, but the gist of it is that should Missouri win the Big 12 title game it's conceivable the conference could get three teams into the BCS. Considering there's a rule against that happening, it would appear the BCS executives haven't thought their scenarios through well enough. Who could have ever guessed?

Former Florida assistant Mike Locksley has interviewed for the Clemson head coaching job. He's curently offensive coordinator for Ron Zook at Illinois. Locksley is a good guy who's a great recruiter and a decent offensive coordinator, but the Illini are 5-6 this year. I could see Syracuse feeling like he's their answer because of his DC-area recruiting ties, but Clemson is not the right fit for Locksley. How in the world has Charlie Strong not been contacted about this job yet with his previous ties to the state?

Last night I got a reminder why no one at ESPN Radio should be alowed to talk about college football until they pass an exam given by me. Doug Gottlieb, their early evening host, was doing a bit - with Bush about to pardon people as he leaves office, Doug was pardoning some sports figures for their misdeeds. That's fine, until he issues a pardon to Rich Rodriguez for Michigan's disastrous season. Why? Because they didn't get Terrelle Pryor to come be quarterback for Rodriguez's spread offense. "If they had, we're talking about a bowl team and probably a national title contender." Ummm, no. Pryor went to a team universally considered the best in the Big Ten going into this year, a team which had played in back to back BCS title games. Is Ohio State, led by Terrelle Pryor, a national title contender this year? Why no, they're not. So exactly how did Gottlieb conclude Michigan would have been? All I'm asking is for my fellow radio hosts to please at least try and make sense when they're talking college football. The national guys almost never do.

It's certainly no surprise to see that Steve and Barry's is going out of business altogether but it is a shame. This was a really cool store I found at a mall near Detroit completely by accident while up there to cover Brett Nelson, Matt Bonner and possible UF recruit Donnell Harvey in the Magic Johnson All-Star Game. Where else would you ever find Central Michigan and Washington State basketball t-shirts in the same store? The prices were amazing - I got five t-shirts for 25 dollars, and I still wear a couple of them today. Eventually the chain expanded, went into way too many cities way too fast and got away from the college concept that made it cool in the first place. Even though it's nowhere near as good as it once was, I always check it out if I'm in a town with one. The economy's tough even for well run businesses, so this one was definitely toast once things went south. I'll miss them though.

Back to Gainesville for me this weekend, although it'll be a quick trip to do the tailgate show and cover UF's demolition of Citadel before heading on to Tampa. I have a very bad feeling about the outcome of this weekend's Tampa Bay visit to Detroit, but hopefully I'm wrong and they don't gag against an 0-10 team. Have a great weekend and I will see you back here Monday.

2 comments:

GatorBull said...

The Gators did put up 394 on the ground and probably could have easily beat Tech's numbers if they really wanted to embarrass the Citadel even more. Tech's numbers are far more impressive and anything that makes Randy Shannon look bad is alright by me!

Phil said...

Completely agree with you about the national guys. They speak in generalities with little knowledge of details.