Rusty’s Blog

The essence of college football fandom is to revel in the theft of someone else’s joy. It’s a nice bonus when you can commandeer that joy for yourself, but it’s not totally necessary to consider an afternoon a success.

From that standpoint, there are worse things than Tennessee being winless in the SEC. Georgia spanked the Vols in Sanford Stadium this past Saturday, true. But since the Vols entered the game with a dismal record against meager competition and no reasonable expectation of victory, there was no joy remaining for Bulldog Nation to steal from the Tennessee faithful.

That, Russell, explains your malaise when the book was closed.

Once you factor in UGA’s red zone blunders and subsequent inability to translate yardage into points, it wouldn’t be outlandish to describe the game as a karmic wash.

Plus, there was Eric Berry’s immensely-satisfying (and perhaps dirty) hit on Knowshon Moreno:

Bon appétit.

Housekeeping notes

• I’m having surgery Monday and will likely sleep through Monday and Tuesday thanks to some prescription narcotics. Fortunately, a couple of (little v) volunteers have offered to enter the betting lines in the comments section. Those hopefully will be in place Monday night for you to base your picks on.
• You may have noticed the ridiculous lead rugbyfan just opened up in the overall standings. This is due to a well-placed side bet with Archibald, whose drop in the rankings is equally as stunning aesthetically. Obviously, we will all be expected to place some side bets as the contest progresses to close this gap. If you don’t remember how side bets works, read this comment.
• The I’s have spoken by a margin of 6 to 4 (including poll results and Alyssa’s comment), and Reggie wins last week’s tiebreaker. Moving forward, we will go with margin of victory over total points scored in counting Game of the Week tiebreaker scores.

Results

Week 7

Player	Points
Carl Lindecrantz	11
Jen	10
rugbyfan	8
Alyssa	7
Archibald Throngbow	7
Ben K	7
Griftdrift	7
Rusty	7
Tony	7
Garrett	6
Reginald	6
Sara	5
Tony Ventry	5

The full results spreadsheet for week 7 is here. If you find an error, let me know and I’ll adjust the results.

Overall standings

Player	Points
rugbyfan	98
Rusty	67
Carl Lindecrantz	63
Ben K	61
Griftdrift	59
Tony	59
Garrett	58
Tony Ventry	58
Jen	55
Reginald	55
Sara	55
Alyssa	49
Archibald Throngbow	8

The full overall standings with week-by-week scores and side wager results can be found here.

Week 8 schedule

Thursday, Oct. 16

Time	Game	Line
8:00 PM ET	Brigham Young (8) at Texas Christian (24)	See comments section Monday night *

Friday, Oct. 17

Time	Game	Line
8:00 PM ET	Hawaii at Boise State (16)	See comments section Monday night *

Saturday, Oct. 18

Time	Game	Line
12:30 PM ET	Vanderbilt (23) at Georgia (9)	See comments section Monday night *
2:00 PM ET	Colorado State at Utah (13)	See comments section Monday night *
3:00 PM ET	Baylor at Oklahoma State (10)	See comments section Monday night *
3:30 PM ET	Mississippi at Alabama (2)	See comments section Monday night *
3:30 PM ET	USC (4) at Washington State	See comments section Monday night *
3:30 PM ET	Ohio State (11) at Michigan State (17)	See comments section Monday night *
3:00 PM ET	North Carolina (21) at Virginia	See comments section Monday night *
4:30 PM ET	Michigan at Penn State (3)	See comments section Monday night *
8:00 PM ET	Missouri (12) at Texas (1)	See comments section Monday night *
8:00 PM ET	LSU (14) at South Carolina	See comments section Monday night *
8:00 PM ET	Virginia Tech (18) at Boston College	See comments section Monday night *
10:00 PM ET	California (22) at Arizona	See comments section Monday night *
TBA	Kansas (15) at Oklahoma (6)	See comments section Monday night *

^* - In my absence, either Alyssa or Tony Ventry will enter the odds in the comments section when they become available Monday evening. Make your picks against those.

Game of the Week

Missouri vs. Texas.

Previous number three Mizzou was upset by Okie State last week (this Tennessee fan wishes Cowboy co-offensive coordinator Trooper Taylor was still wearing the right shade of orange).

Texas pulled off an emotionally-charged win against hated rival and previous number one Oklahoma, good for their own number one ranking this week.

Conventional wisdom says both teams will start sluggish after last week’s draining contests. If that holds, which one will snap out of it in time to pull off the win? Could be a classic or a clunker, but there’s no shortage of intrigue here.

How to enter your picks

You read the rules, right?

The short version:

• You’re picking which teams won’t cover their spread. You must choose at least one team not to cover unless there is only one game being played that week.
• You’re also entering a predicted score for the Game of the Week, which cannot be the same as a predicted score another player enters.

Example:

Florida and Clemson don’t cover. Alabama wins the GOTW 19-14.

If I entered that, that means I think Florida and Clemson either would lose or not cover their spreads, and you then wouldn’t be able to predict a 19-14 win for Alabama.

You already saw No Twitter for Hitler, right? It’s funny. Like every good YouTube video, it already has many imitations, offshoots and parodies. Typically these are lame, and get lamer as they go along until the joke is run all the way into ground.

This one, about lofty expectations for the Georgia Bulldogs football team this year, made me laugh:



You’re welcome Garrett and Tony. Glad I can be your number one resource for Georgia Bulldogs information.

Watch Mark Richt, coach of the 2009 hypothetical national champion Georgia Bulldogs, and wife Katharyn mumble their collective way through a Carpets of Dalton commercial. This came on CSS last night during a replay of the 2006 Tennessee-LSU game.