Files "mysteriously disappear" from Rich Rodriguez' office

The already messy divorce between Rich Rodriguez and the University of West Virginia football program seems to have hit another snag: nearly all of the files from Rodriguez' tenure as head football coach are missing.

The way this headline on ESPN's Bottom Line read seemed like Rodriguez destroyed the files himself, and it certainly looks like he has (or at least someone who worked for him). However, the article leaves things up in the air; I'm sure they'll keep us posted on further developments.

Regardless of what comes out, there are a couple possible reasons it happened. A justifiable reason would be that Rodriguez has a very specific system, and it's plausible that he wanted no one to be able to steal any of his secrets. Yet, I wonder if there's that much information available in all of the player information missing — like "contact information, scholarship money awarded, class attendance records and personal conduct records. At first glance, it seems like a cover-up for NCAA violations.

However, ESPN does report that Rodriguez' camp suggests not everything is missing, and as the details unfold we'll be able to speculate better.

At best, though, I think Rodriguez looks crazy, guilty of violating NCAA regulations or not, if it turns out he was responsible for destroying the files. By doing so implies guilt, justified reason or not. If he wasn't guilty, then why do it?

A Ragin' Cajun' start to your day (though it's almost noon)

As you've probably noticed this week, we here at The Pasty Quail are immersed in exam and paper season, so our usual posting efforts have been slower and more sporadic than usual. However, we hope our well-informed (?!) insight on the random topics of the day are helping you through this tough time of year, whether you're in school yourself, or working and trying to push through the holiday season.

Today, we have the famous James Carville, noted political analyst, going off on the BCS College Football system, despite the fact that his alma mater, LSU, is a chief beneficiary of the debacle this year. Enjoy!

Can't Spell "Sugar" without "UGA"

Though this phrase has lost some of its meaning — seeing as the old adage usually comes in context with winning the SEC Championship to make the Sugar Bowl — our good ol' Georgia Bulldogs are headed to New Orleans on New Years' Day for the 3rd time in 6 years.

Thanks to The Great Pumpkin and his underachieving set of bastards some call a football team, we didn't get a chance to play LSU in the SEC Championship, and therefore didn't have a chance to go to the National Championship game, even though we were ranked #4 going into the week, and numbers 1 and 2 lost this weekend. However, I'm proud of LSU and our fine conference, which will have another chance to wax Ohio State, keeping the BCS crystal trophy in the south. Just wish it could have been us.

That said, I'm excited for us to play Hawaii, which remains the only unbeaten team in Division I-A. Here's ESPN's breakdown of the game. There is some concern about overlooking this team, as they haven't gained much respect due to their soft schedule and weird lifestyle out there in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. However, their quarterback Colt Brennan is the NCAA's all-time leader in touchdown passes, and there's not much else to speak of on their team, so I think we should be able to handle focusing on stopping him — the only problem will come if we can't do that.

As an addendum, I heard we're going to break out our black jerseys again; hopefully Evil Richt will show up with them and remember the last time we played a team in the Sugar Bowl with a high-flying offense and virtually no defense.

Finally, GO DAWGS!

BCS Conference Championship Preview

As we descend upon the conclusion of the NCAA Football season, here's a quick round-up of the major BCS Conference championship games, with apologies to the Pac-10 and the Big East, because while both are lame and do not have conference championships, at least every team plays each other team in a conference game. No apologies to the "Big 10," which has 11 teams and does not have a schedule designed to prove which team is best.

So, without further ado, and with many thanks to the Worldwide Leader for its previews, here's a quick rundown of Saturday's three major championship games:

ACC Championship: Boston College vs. Virginia Tech

Saturday, 1:00pm Eastern, Jacksonville, Florida


These two teams played earlier in the season, with No.2 (at the time) Boston College winning a miracle game 14-10 by scoring two touchdowns in the last 2 minutes. Since then, BC has lost two games and Va. Tech has remained solid (it's only other loss coming in the second game of the season against a then-unstoppable LSU).

It looks like Tech is the stronger team coming into this game, and if this Atlanta BC fan is right, the Eagles' lack of a fan base in Jacksonville may end up hurting their chances in the Championship. I guess that's what happens when the closest team in your conference is 500 miles away.

Anyhow, the winner of this game will play in the Orange Bowl unless something strange happens and they end up in the title game. This is unlikely.


SEC Championship: LSU vs. Tennessee

Saturday, 4:00pm Eastern, Atlanta, Georgia

In actuality, this column was inspired by my desire to post this article, explaining how Tennessee is an embarrassment to the SEC Championship.

Further, in another mostly negative article, an LSU source explains the team's declining state going into the game.

Both of these suggest that UGA is better than both teams, which I like, but unfortunately we won’t get the chance to prove it. Regardless, hopefully the entire game will be embodied in a similar manner to this:



Tennessee and LSU have not played this year, so there's no follow-up on that front. The winner of this game goes to the Sugar Bowl. If Tennessee wins, I might slit my wrists.


Big 12 Championship: Oklahoma v. Missouri

Saturday, 8:00pm, San Antonio, Texas


This is possibly the most hyped game of the weekend, seeing as Missouri is ranked #1 for the first time since 1960. Unfortunately, their one loss was to Oklahoma. If Missouri wins, they stamp their ticket to New Orleans for the National Championship game. If they lose, there's going to be a wrench thrown into the BCS machine to figure out what to do with all the two-loss teams as West Virginia and Ohio State battle it out for the title.

In the meantime, here's an article about Missouri not choking this year like they usually do. Don’t speak too soon. . .

And finally, a quick piece on Oklahoma from the AP. Surprisingly there isn't much presence in the blogosphere regarding Sooner football. Maybe there's a market out there for it.


Enjoy your weekend watching!

More news from the wide world of sports, or football

Keeping the light news separated from the heavy, here are a couple news items of the weird from the last couple days in the sports nation.

- Due to a rain delay last night, The NFL decided to forego the National Anthem before last night's game between Pittsburgh and Miami. This is just an interesting oversight of a time-honored tradition. Though I'm sure whatever C-list celebrity they had to sing before the Steelers played the 0-10 Dolphins was happy he or she did not have to be out there in the cold rain, how long does the Anthem really take? Three, maybe four minutes?

- And now for something completely different, but awesome nonetheless. I have the video of yet ANOTHER Auburn player being bitten by a dog during a game. Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville claims this is the first instance he's seen of a dog bite in a game, but, obviously he doesn't remember Uga going after an Auburn player back in 1996, which, luckily, is also shown in the video. Oh, and the dog bite is listed on the injury report. Enjoy!

Georgia's #3!

Looks like the Fighting Irish can be #1 in something this year. Forbes made a list of the Top 20 most valuable college football teams in the country. There's also a link to a slideshow here.

To save you the energy of making the jump, the top five are:
1. Notre Dame Irish (Value: $101M)
2. U. Texas Longhorns (Value: $92M)
3. UGA Bulldogs ($90M)
4. U. Michigan Wolverines ($85M)
5. U. Florida Gators ($84M)

Dawgs Black Out, Beat the Tigers, 45-20

The Dawgs carried on several of their new traditions for this year, including Knowshon Moreno running for over 100 yards (101 and 2 scores), scoring more than 40 points, and dancing to "Crank Dat" in the break before the 4th Quarter:



As you can see in the video, the Dawgs came out in black jerseys; according to Dan Magill, this is the first time we've ever come out in the blacks; others have claimed that the 1942 National Championship team wore black jerseys in the Rose Bowl at the end of that season. Either way, the stands were full of fans in black; the team looked great in the jerseys and, more importantly, they looked jacked up for the game. It seems like another psychological ploy by Mark Richt has paid off.

Georgia came out hot to start the game, scoring on a FG following a Kelin Johnson interception. After an Auburn FG, Mohammed Massaquoi caught a long touchdown to give the Dawgs a 7 point lead. After getting the ball back from Auburn, Sean Bailey added another touchdown to stretch Georgia's lead to 14. But Auburn would come back to score before halftime, and at the break, the Dawgs were clinging to a 17-10 lead.

As hot as we looked in the first quarter, we came out flat to start the second half. Auburn scored, and then drove down again to kick another FG with 6:47 to go in the 3rd Quarter. That kick gave Auburn a 20-17 lead, their first of the game.

After that, everything went Georgia's way. Knowshon scored twice, and Thomas Brown and Brannan Southerland each scored once; the Tigers never even sniffed the end zone after that. We quit scoring when the score got to 45-20, with just less than seven minutes left in the Fourth Quarter.

The Worldwide leader has the recap. Paul Westerdawg, at the Georgia Sports Blog, has an article about the Jekyll and Hyde effect of the black uniforms on our head coach. PWD also has pictures of the defense and the offense.

What does Saturday's win mean going forward? We still need Tennessee to lose another game if we're going to make it to Atlanta; even without a trip to play LSU in the Dome, we're sitting pretty at number 9 in the BCS standings right now. Of the 8 teams ahead of us, two of the three teams in the Big 12 must lose at least one game: Kansas and Mizzou play each other, and the winner of that game will have to play Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship. Arizona State still has to play USC, and Ohio State has to play at Michigan as well. If we win out the regular season, we could easily be in the top 5 of the BCS standings before Bowl Season, regardless of whether we play for an SEC Championship.

Unfortunately, I will be missing the game next weekend; if we can hold serve at home against the Wildcats, we'll be keeping the pressure on Tennessee. The Vols are only one slip-up away from handing us a shot at the #1 team in the country; it's hard to say how we'd fare against LSU, but I'd pay good money to find out.

EDIT: As if the video of Knowshon and TB dancing wasn't enough, here's Verne Lundquist:

Dawgs Win 42-30 Over Reptiles

As some of you may have noticed undoubtedly noticed, I was out of town this weekend, attending the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party in Jacksonville, Florida. And for the second time since I have been a student here at UGA, the Dawgs pulled out the victory. The celebration at left occurred after the Dawgs scored for the first time; Coach Mark Richt said after the game that he had threatened to make everybody on the team run if they did not get a celebration penalty after the touchdown. This is a marked difference from last year, when CMR had assigned places for every unit on the team, and no-one was allowed to move around on the sidelines.

Matt Stafford went 11/18 for 217 yards and 3 TD's; he did throw an early INT that was returned for a Gator score. Knowshon Moreno ran for 188 yards on 33 carries and punched in 3 TD's of his own. The Georgia D looked solid, holding the Gators to 107 yards on the ground, including a 13-rush, -15 yard (yes, negative 15 yards) performance by Tim "I Can't Believe People Thought I Would Win the Heisman" Tebow. The majority of the Gators' rush yards came from super-freak WR Percy Harvin, who had 10 carries for 97 yards. The Worldwide Leader has an error-filled article about the game; compare the scoring summary on the left to the text of the article and see how many inconsistencies you can come up with.

So Dawg fans, remember whatever voodoo curses you muttered in the direction of Gainesville, and save those socks and boxers. Superstition may be hokey and old-fashioned, but I'll be damned if that drive back from J-ville isn't half as long after a win.

Tennessee Sucks, Yeah!

In some sort of attempt to make us all feel better about Tennessee manhandling UGA a couple weeks ago, this article on The Great Pumpkin, Phil Fulmer and his lack of winning an SEC title since '98 is pretty inspiring.

My hatred for Tennessee runs deep, of course, but even long before I was a UGA fan. When I first moved to Georgia in middle school, there was a kid on our bus that loved Tennessee. His dad would always wait outside their house with him, and the entire place (including the car) was all decked out in UT crap (the images of that puke-orange/yellow Power T are burnt in my head for life). So, in response, as retarded middle-schoolers tend, we'd yell out the window every day "Tennessee Suuuuuucks! Yeah!" Pointless story, sure, but I shed a tear for my UT-hating nostalgia.

So, even though stupid Erik Ainge has owned us three out of the past four years (which is an atrocity unto itself), I don't want Phil fired. I'd much rather see him wade in his own lard for the next 15 years without another ring.

Just too classic

I found this picture on Deadspin, and it is just too amazing not to post.

For those of you who don't know who Mark Mangino is, he's the portly (a generous classification) coach of the Kansas Jayhawks football team pictured in the link. Now, he did say that the easy, or "cupcake," opponents his team played early in the season were good preparation for facing tougher teams later on.

However, I'm just not sure if putting this on the front page of KUSports.com for an entire day was supposed to be a joke or not. If so, that's pretty harsh to your 5-0 coach who's resurrecting your embarrassing football program. If not, I'd feel pretty bad for the editor for this glaring oversight. Ridiculous, nonetheless.

Flea-bitten hillbillies, mutt coached by the Great Pumpkin over UGA, 35-14

After an ass-kicking like that, we need to focus on the positive. Here's the video of Georgia's Highlight of the Season.

Nothing good can be said about the game last night. The Dawgs best play on offense was the TD pass to Demeko Goodman; for a brief moment, it looked like we might sneak back into the game. Tennessee's 7 minute, 13 play drive in the next possession squashed any hope that we were going to make a game out of it. They held us under 70 yards on the ground; most of those yards came in the 2nd half after the Vols were up 28-0.

Paul Westerdawg at Georgia Sports Blog has an initial reaction up, and the DawgChat is still a flaming mess; the Dawg nation is restless after this most recent shellacking at the hands of Phil and that mangy hound. Florida will be double-digit favorites in Jacksonville in three weeks, unless we can't handle Vandy on the road; in that case the Gators may be favored by 100.

Members of Dawg Nation far and wide are joining Uga as we speak; there are a lot of drowned sorrows to sweat out today:

University of Florida Fan Lacks Perspective

Final Score: UF 17, Auburn 20.

This loss also ended Urban Meyer's home win streak at 17, and the Gators' overall win streak at 11.

Tribute to the Living Legend

In the wake of the wonderous beauty that was the UGA football game Saturday night, here's a nice story from ESPN on our fearless leader.

No, not Mark Richt, but good 'ol Larry Munson and his impending retirement.


The guy has had quite a run, and it will be sad to see him finally go. The strange thing, though, will not be so much for those of us that have listened to him for so many years, but that kids coming into school in the future will never hear him and have no context for the psychotic ramblings played over the Sanford Stadium speakers before games. If every week is like last Saturday, though, Larry will enjoy winding down.

Apparently Notre Dame really is that bad

ESPN, for once, NOT showing phenomenal hyperbole regarding Notre Dame’s status (i.e. always laudatory at the slightest sign of strength, and defaming when the smallest thing goes awry), as they really are arguably the worst team in Division 1-A at this point of the season.

“Does Notre Dame deserve the No. 1 spot [in the Bottom 10 rankings]? Well, the Irish rank 119th [last] in points per game, total yards per game, rushing yards per game and sacks allowed. Notre Dame is the only I-A team with no offensive touchdowns.”

I think their decision to build up their stadium so as to block Touchdown Jesus is directly correlated to their demise in the last 10 years. God is pissed.

App. State, more than just hippies

Since no mention has yet been made of one of the greatest sights ever seen in college football, we must say that Appalachian State's phenomenal victory in front of 109,000 depressed Michigan fans was pretty ridiculous.

Though every small school has hopes and dreams of coming into a top program's stadium and winning, it turns out that these App. State bloggers were actually right.

Some things are just too good. . .

. . . not to post. Via Deadspin, this picture is just excellent. Just to give some context, this stunt was performed at the Colorado-Colorado State football game to promote water conservation.

College Football, 2007

Here's Ron Zook, former Florida and current Illinois coach, enjoying his summer. Along with him, The Pasty Quail cordially welcome all of you to the 2007 College Football Season, beginning this evening at 8:00 with a game between LSU and Mississippi State.

Ahh, Football Season Is Upon Us

Time to sit back and enjoy the nice weather, cold beer, grilled hot dogs, and casual encounters between opposing fans.

"If SEC football were mediocre, the South might as well be back in Reconstruction."

Thanks, ESPN.

Pat Forde argues that the SEC is a better conference than the Pac-10. We at the Pasty Quail would agree, but Forde's method of argument is questionable — at the very least — as his reasoning says very little about football and a lot about strangely-worded backhanded compliments.

Its that time of Year

Good God, I love football.