Preseason coaches polls are stupid...and other random musings

- The first USA Today Coaches Poll was published last Friday...four weeks before any actual games have been played.

Long time readers of this blog (all four of you) know that I have made my feelings about preseason polls clear in the past. I understand Lindy's, Athlon, Phil Steele, etc. publishing them...they drive conversation and (presumably) increase magazine sales. The difference with this one is that this poll actually makes up 1/3 of the BCS formula. That is absurd.

Look, the Coaches poll is stupid in its own right. Coaches know their own team, and maybe the ones on their schedule. There is no way they are familiarizing themselves with the rest of the teams in the country, at least not enough to be ranking them intelligently. And, yes, I know that head coaches aren't actually filling out the ballots (which raises a whole other argument)...but I don't think assistants are really paying that much more attention. They're just voting for whomever Herbstreit, Corso, and May tell them to (I don't think anybody is paying attention to who Dr. Lou wants them to vote for...if they were, Notre Dame and South Carolina would play for the MNC every year).

But...a PRESEASON poll? Seriously? And not only a pre-SEASON poll...in many cases, it's a pre-PRACTICE poll! As of the time this poll was published, the Dawgs had not had a full-contact practice yet, and we were one of the first teams to start practicing. How in the world is ANYBODY supposed to rank teams at that point, especially coaches who obviously have their own team as their focus? Who knows which freshmen are going to step up, or how teams are going to adjust to new coaches and schemes, or how badly outgoing players are going to be missed?

Again, if the poll was just for fun then I don't care...but this is ONE THIRD OF THE FORMULA THAT DECIDES THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP. And, unfortunately, where you start can have a lot of bearing on where you finish. Take Boise State, for instance...they start this year ranked 5th. They start the season with Virginia Tech at a neutral site, and then for the rest of the year they play NOBODY. Because they are starting the season ranked so high, they only have to win their one real game, and they are virtually guaranteed of a spot in the championship game. For that matter, since they are ranked so high, they could conceivably LOSE that game (the only one on their schedule), run the table the rest of the way, and be sitting at 12-1 at the end of the year with the idiots at ESPN touting them as real contenders for the national championship.

I'm not a BCS-hater...I'm not a playoff proponent (the only way I want a playoff is if it's GUARANTEED to be no more than 4 teams). But something has to be done about this 33.3% of the formula.

Two suggestions:
1) Start the poll later. Wait 4-6 weeks before the first poll. By that time, we at least have SOME idea of what the landscape is. I would even support waiting later, but I know that would never happen.

2) Take the coaches poll out of the equation, for all of the reasons I stated before. I would support replacing it with the Legends Poll, which is voted on by a group of former coaches. Every week, they send DVDs to all of their members of all of the games played by teams who are likely to be ranked. After they watch the games (supposedly...hey, no system is perfect), the voters get together on a weekly call and rank the teams. They also publish how they voted every week, a bit of transparency that you only get in the final week of the USA Today poll.

Some other quick musings...

- I was originally going to talk about how it's been almost exclusively good news out of fall camp. Then...today happened. So never mind.

Smith and Samuel being out for any length of time is especially worrisome...as we are installing Coach Grantham's new defense, every possible contributor on defense needs to be getting as many reps as possible.

I hate fall practice.

- It was great to have LIVE football on my television last night, even if it was a crappy NFL preseason game. Congrats to Geno Atkins...former Dawg picked up 6 tackles and a sack. That's how you make an impact!

- If you are looking for a great Braves website, check out TalkingChop.com. Superb content, updated several times a day...and rather than the idiotic commenters you get on AJC blogs (First!!), you get stuff like this, from "Lennox" in celebration of J-Hey's 21st birthday:

Did I ever tell you about the time Jason Heyward took me out to go get a drink with him? We go off looking for a bar and we can’t find one. Finally Heyward takes me to a vacant lot and says, “Here we are.” We sat there for a year and a half and sure enough someone constructs a bar around us. The day they opened we ordered a shot, drank it, and then burned the place to the ground. Heyward yelled over the roar of the flames, “Always leave things the way you found ’em!”

Something about the image of that last sentence had me cracking up all day...

Speaking of the Braves, they seem to have righted the ship in the last week or so. They are really reminding me of the early 90's Braves...ridiculously good pitching, and just enough timely hitting to get by. I still wish we would have gotten one more big bat at the trade deadline...I think we're one bat away from being a real World Series contender.

But, these days, all I really ask from the Braves is that they keep it interesting until fall practice starts, and they have certainly done that. Anything more than that is just gravy.

- If you were wondering why so many (myself included) started turning on Brett FaRve even before he started waffling like John Kerry every summer...look no further than this post.

- Summer TV continues to be TONS better than it was when I was growing up. Now that LOST is gone, Friday Night Lights and Mad Men are the best two shows on television, in my opinion (coming from someone who, for some reason, has never watched Breaking Bad).

Speaking of LOST...as a fan of both that show and Weezer, well...this pretty much made my day.

Why I list Bill Simmons as one of my favorite authors

Just a few random sections from the Bill Simmons (ESPN's The Sports Guy) mailbag today:

Q: If you could have the best seats in the house for any sporting event of the past century, which would you choose?-Max A., Cleveland
SG: The only answer can be "USA 4, USSR 3." A tougher question: Which sports-movie event would you choose? I'd pick the game in which Michael J. Fox first turns into Teen Wolf. Name me a more stunning sports-movie moment. Fans in the stands are frozen for, like, 45 seconds. You're not topping the experience of being in a sparsely attended high school hoops game in which one of the players turns into a monster, then dunks on everybody. I'm sorry.

Q: If you were playing dodgeball and had first pick of anyone, who would it be? -Blake, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
SG: I'd say a QB makes the most sense, because they're used to throwing bigger balls with a quick release. So the answer should be Georgia's Matthew Stafford. That kid has a bazooka. But I'd pick Brett Favre just for the chance to make the Eric Mangini Did-Somebody-Just-Fart-in-the-Car Face after Favre singlehandedly kills my team by getting picked off two minutes in.

Q: You do realize that J.D. Drew will be the highest-paid Boston player in '09. That's a bad omen for the coming season, right?-Hefe, Manchester, N.H.
SG: Short of chicken blood squirting from the Green Monster, yes, I'd say it's about as bad an
omen as you can have.

Q: Can you guess which two jerseys the Heat have retired? Michael Jordan's and Dan Marino's. Quite a franchise.-Ian S., New York City
SG: I've confirmed it on the Internet and still can't believe it. Preposterous. Is it too late to retroactively void Miami's 2006 title? We already had plenty of ammo after Games 3 and 6 were rigged and the fans did the whole everyone-wears-white-T-shirts-to-playoff-games gimmick. Isn't this the final piece of the puzzle? I can't take it. Marino and Jordan? Why not put Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas up there?

Gamecock preview

Well, it's finally time to say goodbye to the cream puffs and start playing Big Boy Football. This week has seen a ridiculous amount of attention paid to a missing highlight (glad I could help add to the hysteria).

Bottom line is that it was an oversight...it's not some sort of conspiracy to keep the Dawgs from getting any publicity. I do think that the Dawgs have received less coverage than a typical #2 team, but I think that has a lot to do with A) our level of competition and B) our lack of difficulty in dispatching of said competition. As backward as it seems, we probably would have received more coverage if we had struggled against CMU the way tOSU struggled against tOU. After this week, I really don't think we'll have much to complain about in regards to how much coverage we get.

Spurrier is trying his best to poor-mouth their chances this week, even going so far as to say that critics that say the game has passed him by may be right. He couldn't help himself, though...he had to throw in the little dig that 16 points was enough to win this game last year.

Gamecock fans are more down in the dumps than I can remember...the Gamecock message board was in full on meltdown mode after the Vandy game last week. It was pretty entertaining to read.

OFFENSE:
- This week will be a HUGE step up in difficulty for our offense. As great as we have looked, we might as well have been running pass skeleton at times based on how much resistance we've seen. Carolina returns just about everybody from the defense that held us out of the end zone last year.

That being said, this Dawgs offense isn't the same one the Cocks saw last year. For starters, we didn't really know what we had yet in Knowshon this time last year. If we had handed the ball off to Knowshon a few more times rather than ask Stafford to throw the ball 45 times....I think it would have been a different game. How's that for hard hitting analysis?

The S. Carolina D is going to be stacking the line against the run and daring Stafford to beat them. I think he can, especially if the wide receivers continue the stellar play we've seen so far this year. I look for MoMass and Green to both be making plays downfield, especially off of play-action. Nice to get Harris back, too...if he's 100% that's just one more downfield threat.

Jasper Brinkley looks SLOW. I think the more we can spread these guys out and make them run sideline to sideline, the better off we are. I think we will continue to run those little swing passes we've been running a lot, as well as some screens to Knowshon. Another thing I think will probably work is a little old-school...the toss sweep with the pulling guards that we've incorporated into the offense really accentuates the new athleticism we have on the line with Glenn and Tripp. Those guys out in front, with Knowshon's cut back ability, could give this defense fits, I think.

One more thing on the offense...everybody keeps talking about Spurrier breaking out some kind of trickeration this week, and that wouldn't surprise me. But what about Bobo? I wouldn't be shocked if we try to pull something like that off, either, especially as concerned as the Cocks are going to be about gearing up to stop the run. How about an end-around to Green off the hand-off to Knowshon? That halfback pass we ran against Auburn last year worked perfectly, if not for the procedure penalty, and we haven't seen it since. Think the Gamecocks might be ripe for that one, especially early? Their number one corner, Captain Munnerlyn (great name), is going to be looking to make a big play after his embarrassing night last week. I think he can get sucked in by one of these.

DEFENSE:
- The defense is actually facing WEAKER competition this week than they did last week. The Gamecock offense has been atrocious. Neither of the quarterbacks have played well, and their offensive line has been less than effective. I think SC is going to have a hard time scoring at all, as long as we don't turn the ball over and give them a short field.

With Mckinley out, the number one threat the Cocks have is tight end Jared Cook. Take him away with our athletic LBs and safeties, and they don't have much else.

The return of Weston helps a lot...we should be able to rotate DTs all day (which will help, since it's going to be around 93 degrees), and I look for pressure to come up the middle. Neither of the SC quarterbacks are very mobile, so even if our DE pressure doesn't increase (which it needs to eventually) I think we'll have at least 2-3 sacks just because of the push up front.

The wild cards in the equation are Spurrier and Stephen Garcia. Spurrier always has something extra for us, and it will be even more magnified this week because his back is against the wall. However, I don't know if it matters because he just doesn't have the personnel to do what he wants. Lots easier to recruit playmakers when you're a Gayter, huh Stevie?

If the QBs play poorly, I will be very surprised if we don't see Garcia. More mobile, supposedly better tools, but an absolute imbecile, if all evidence is to be believed. Can't stay out of trouble, apparently can't pick up the playbook. If we see him, the key will be to contain him, as I don't see him running through a progression without taking off.

To me, the absolute key to this game is the first ten minutes. If we can shut them down and put up a couple of scores, I think they will be deflated due to the mindset they are in after Vandy and the fact that the fans will absolutely turn on them. However, if we let them in the game, especially if we start turning the ball over, we could be in for a long day.

I don't think that happens....final score: Dawgs 27, Gamecocks 10.

GO DAWGS!!!

Knowshon who?

That is apparently what ESPN is asking, since THIS play was not deemed worthy of a mention or clip on ANY of their highlight shows. If TEE-bow had pulled something like this off yesterday, not only would Brent Musberger have drowned in a puddle of his own drool, but we would have already seen it 48,745 times by now.

Ri-Donk-u-lous.

UPDATE: Apparently (per Ugasports.com) this came up on Richt's weekly teleconference today and set off a little snit between the ESPN and Fox correspondents on the call...ESPN claimed that Fox did not include it in the highlight package they sent in, and Fox countering that ESPN had a camera there and could have captured it themselves. Richt's response?

"OK, so maybe it wasn't that good of a play," he chuckled. "I thought it was pretty good."

Love that guy.