Georgia/Georgia Tech had a lot of interesting moments, but like spectators on the highway, the attention tends to focus on the obvious disasters. Like Reggie Ball playing the University of Georgia at quarterback, a role of such abject misery and incompetence as to paralyze any conventional comparisons we’d care to make. For the past four years, him under center against UGA has been like looking at the fresh wreckage of a car crash for four hours straight and waiting for the gas tank to go off in a ball of flame and sizzled flesh.

Reggie Ball: set to go off at any instant.

For four years running, it went off with unreal frequency and regularity. Which means we’ve got to dig into the Douglas Adams archives to find just the right blend of unreal bad luck, shoddy execution, and futile self-mutilating rage to capture the career of Reggie Ball properly. (Warning: two minutes of internet research required. Gird that attention span, ADDers!)

First, the numbers: For his career against UGA, Ball went 45-104 with one touchdown and five interceptions. He was sacked at least six times, and tackled for losses on hopeless scrambles on innumerable occasions. He also lost four fumbles, including Tony Taylor’s squirrel/nut run giving UGA their first score in 2006 and signalling the beginning of the final catastrophe.

Worse than the number was the timing of Ball’s mistakes:

–2003: knocked out with concussion caused by running into own teammate.

–2004: throws ball away on 4th down on potential game-winning drive.

–2005: throws game-ending interception five yards shy of tying td.

–2006: loses crucial fumble for score AND throws game ending pick into triple coverage on final drive with over a minute left on clock.

Ball was a master–in fact, he got worse with each game he played against Georgia. The more the pressure mounted, the more success Ball enjoyed as a starter, the worse he played against the Bulldogs. He came back stronger each time, and yet could not stop improving on his masterwork of disaster. In fact, his senior year capped his artistry: not only did he lose a game-killing fumble, he also tossed his signature game-losing pick, a Matisse of malicious fortune and bad execution made worse with a 6 for 22 performance killing any potential of consistent passing offense.

The simile: Reggie Ball : Georgia as Agrajag : Arthur Dent. The story:

Agrajag is a piteous creature that is continually reincarnated and subsequently killed unknowingly by Arthur Dent each time. Agrajag first appears in the series as a falling bowl of petunias (although, if the books are read in sequence, the reader doesn’t know it at the time). In another incarnation, he was a prehistoric rabbit who was killed by Arthur for breakfast and whose skin was fashioned into a pouch, which is then used to swat a fly who happened to be Agrajag. In yet another, he dies of a heart attack after seeing Arthur and Ford materialize, seated on a Chesterfield sofa, in the midst of a cricket match at Lord’s Cricket Ground.

If there’s any harmony in this universe, Reggie Ball will end up in his next life as a pot of petunias, which will be dropped from a windowsill by an offspring of Paul Oliver.

Reggie, seen here in his next life plotting his soon-to-be-thwarted revenge.

Part three of an epic couch-straining weekend of football. We almost died from pleasure. Or gout. Both, actually. Samuel Johnson would have been proud.

Saturday

–We wrote the words “low wattage” in association with this game last week. A noon kickoff confirmed that for us, a suspicion only increasing as Florida swatted its way through a thicket of false start penalties to hop to a 14-0 lead over a Seminole team still captained by half a coaching staff and an old guy wandering around with an old hat on, wary of the EBay that had scuttled his son’s career earlier that month.

–Part of that 14-0 run included a play cribbed straight from Houston Nutt’s playbook, a quarterback draw with Percy Harvin under center. If you have not seen Percy Harvin play, it is likely because your eye can’t register his movements. A good way to do this is get a fast-motion camera that slows him down enough to see his legs, which are available through fine photgraphy wholesale shops. If you want to attract him, put out trays full of a solution made of 3 parts water to two parts sugar–it’s the only fuel that can sustain him calorically. Harvin flew out of the blocks and into the FSU secondary, running past fellow blue-chipper Myron Rolle, who apparently hates Harvin’s ass for one reason or another.

Harvin: visible with the right technology. Loves sugar water.

–It was nifty and fleeting revenge, since Harvin got accordioned between two FSU defenders on a hit and left the game on a backboard. (more…)

That narrows down the ‘Bama list, at least: Texas defensive coordinator Gene Chizik goes to Iowa State, a score for them. Head-busting cover-2 scheme to follow, for sure, leaving Mack Brown with a critical hole to fill on his staff at Texas. (HT: Dave.)

The real question: will someone in the Big 12 not run the spread? Besides Colorado? And will cash be enough to make this angry man smile?

Smile, Gene: if they gave McCarney that long, you’ll be just fine.

Part Two of our Thanksgiving weekend recap. Naturally out of order, hastily written, and one hundred percent unrefundable.

Friday, cont’d

–One final note on the TAMU/UT game: if Bill Cowher is still around at Pittsburgh next year, he’s drafting handy doorstopper to the gods Jorvorskie Lane. If he’s at NC State, he’ll inquire about a transfer. Fatty running backs and Cowher r made n heaVen luv mates.

–WOOO!!! LSU/Arkansas. Who doesn’t love watching the SEC West? Watching their games is like watching old caveman movies where dinosaurs fighting people get distracted by a flying pterodactyl; when they kill each other in stop-motion animated death blows, the cavemen eat them.

Perfect metaphor for this game, since the spectacular beasts on both teams were brought low by the cavemen playing around them and coaching them. Muddled best describes the play of both teams for the majority of the game with the exception of manmutant Jamarcus Russell and his brother in species advancement Darren McFadden, who spent the majority of the game attempting to elevate the lowly, unadvanced cavemen around them.

Jamarcus Russell did his usual bit: standing with a tackler draped around his knees while firing passes fifty yards downfield without stepping into the ball. Dwayne Bowe answered the evolutionary bugle, (more…)

A feeble attempt to cover every single thing that’s happened in college football over the past four days. It’s already a failure, but at least it will be an interesting one.

THURSDAY

–Larry Coker’s bald head is of the shiny variety, not the slick Julius Caesar/Ben Kingsley glare-free kind. We say if he’d dampened that down a bit he would have gotten another year, since being bald just makes everything a little bit harder.

–Boston College is a weird, weird, weird team. Even when they win you’re never entirely convinced that they actually just won the game; in Bill’s words, like their coach, they’re too good to fire, too bad to embrace.

Case in point: Miami starting having petit-fours and champagne in the BC backfield around the beginning of the second quarter. Big time, as in Baraka Atkins coming through on repeated occasions and blocking out the sun for Matt Ryan. Ryan, who took an unholy beating this year like a champ, is told to throw the same crossing pattern against the pressure in the second quarter. His receiver drop it repeatedly, mostly because they’re being hammered by linebacker/safety with brick in hand just waiting for the route. Matt Ryan, who gets brain cells knocked off weekly in this offense, is getting no help.

The half comes and goes, and with Atkins and company now moving on in the course of the meal–you know, really getting to know Ryan, his likes and dislikes, bonding over their families while getting pretty deep into a bottle of Remy Martin–what do BC’s offensive coaches do to help out their iron-sternumed but rattled qb? Call the same crossing pattern, which Miami gleefully explodes for the rest of the night. Matt Ryan, who lost his sense of smell in the third quarter from a nasty hit, gets no help in this offense.

–Kirby! Freeman! Kirby inhaled the opportunity to impress by playing like the reckless, untrained second-stringer he is–and it was the best thing that happened to Miami all night. He jettisoned the Captain Checkdown tendencies of the offense under Kyle Wright and winged the ball downfield with a regularity that surely stopped the hearts of his coaches on a few occasions. He threw three picks, but also gave Miami something it hadn’t seen against quality competition all year long: the sight a fleet wide receiver running under a deep ball and gliding to a score.

Kirby!

Friday!

–Dennis Franchione never, never, never fails to amaze. Lining up against a pass defense bleeding yardage, he opts to attack the Texas defense with…the option. In what should have been an idiot move seemingly designed to commit career suicide, the Aggies actually swallow whole quarters whole. In the fourth quarter alone the Aggies mount an eight-minute drive for the winning TD, and that’s with the clock stopping. for first downs. Idiocy abounded–our favorite plays being the ones where they pitched the ball to 450 pound RB Jorvorskie Lane on the outside, which is akin to running your midget third down back on first down.

–Despite Dennis Franchione’s self-destructive gameplanning, it worked, mostly because Colt McCoy got punch drunk early and stayed punch drunk. Coaching demerit to Mack Brown for not pulling the rubber-shouldered McCoy earlier, since he lofted easy picks and dying quail in the air all day. With the Aggies ganging up on the run, McCoy spiralled; went from uneasy to totally fogged somewhere in the third quarter. His misery came to a head when an Aggie defender speared him late as he walked to the bench, earning him an ejection for his patented Joe Buck Disgusting Display.

When the Aggies put helmet to shoulder and pinched a nerve in his shoulder, McCoy was done for the day, and Coach Fran got downright weepy at his kids’ triumph over his mad gameplanning. If you’re an Alabama fan, this video may induce vomiting and ruin what is an otherwise happy day for you:

McCoy’s brilliant freshman season ended with a whimper, but that shouldn’t diminish the fact that he outplayed every freshman quarterback in Texas history and nearly set the NCAA record for TD throws by a freshman. Injury and the attrition of the season got to him. Despite his obviously fake name, he’s going to be really dangerous for at least the next two years, provided someone can donate a shoulder for a transplant. (It’s Texas–they’ll find someone who’ll hand one over.)

So much bloodshed…and so interesting, too. The coaching carousel gets mortally serious after a madcap weekend of foozball. The body count:

–Shula, gone. His replacement will be Nick Saban, Steve Spurrier, or the reanimated corpse of Howard Schnellenberger. Whaddya mean he’s not dead? Okay, the reanimated corpse of Pat Dye. Wait, come on, now…don’t coaches ever die around here?

Shula cannot coach and should leave the profession. Most everywhere he’s been, the thing he was directly in charge of was the weak link on the team. To say that his last name was irrelevant to his rise through the coaching ranks is a brazen mistruth; he ran a deplorable offense at Tampa in the NFL and was fired, and ran a deplorable offense in the SEC and was fired, and if put in charge of another football team will run their offense into the turf before getting axed. He should serve steak or cash in on some other benefit of being a Shula, and will likely then be fired from that job, too, before settling into a pleasant life of dithering away his 4 million dollar buyout. Alabama is already better off without him.

Shula, gone. Shula love…lamp, $4 million dollar buyout.

Who they should hire: Paul Johnson or Jim Grobe. Both guys who can coach their ass off who aren’t retread refugees from the NFL with glorious college pasts to haunt them. Paul Johnson in particular would be a great fit, since he already sounds like the head football coach at Alabama and can succeed in multiple offensive systems. Whatever happens, keep Joe Kines in Tuscaloosa; besides one complete humiliation of Florida (owww….still burns…), Joe Kines has been the adult in the room for Alabama over the past three years. Losing him would be a tragedy, if only for the lost redneck pidgin soundbites he doles out weekly.

–Mark Dantonio, late of Cincinnati, gets the Michigan State job. First and most difficult task: explaining this “dee-fence” to Michigan State players, who collectively qualify as refugees for suffering blunt trauma to the soul after this season’s zany negligence under John L. Smith. Being a Saban acolyte, he has already outlawed fun and made a man twice his size cry just by text messaging him (FROM: MaDant HLLO FaTTIe SeE U N W8 ROom LoL!!111)

–The Chuck Amato Survival Meter, like Amato himself, has been retired involuntarily. He said he would not resign, and, well, he won’t have to. NC State fired Coach Gazongas yesterday. We’ll miss those sweet, sweet coconuts, Chuck.

–Dirk Koetter, out. Norm Chow’s already picked out the drapes for Koetter’s old office, and they’re totally chic.

Again: why wouldn’t he just hop a flight to Tallahassee to hand in his resume in person for the offensive coordinator at Florida State? Doing anything at all will guarantee a burnished reputation for the next person to take that job; actual success would drop jaws, since the last time points lived in Tallahassee Snoop Minnis was the one hauling in passes.

Ah, back when they were talented and evil: Snoop Minnis and the go-go Noles.

BTW: if Florida State does not have its own receiver name Hall of Fame, there is no justice in this world. Examine:

Craphonso Thorpe
Snoop Minnis
Lavaranues Coles
De’Cody Fagg

There’s a quad set right there of sheer greatness, a trio of crap/gay/just plain weird names all in a single lineup. If they signed a freshman named Felcher Shitkiss we would be delighted, if only to listen to Musburger run facefirst into it every time the kid reeled in a catch. TOUCHDOWN, SHITKISS!!! Please, God, let this happen.