Rusty's Blog

Say what you will about Michael Scott, but he would never do that.
- Jim Halpert on The Office

When Tennessee shitcanned its second winningest football coach in school history near the end of last season — a man who gave almost 40 years of his life to his university — it signaled not just a change in personnel, but a radical change in philosophy.

UT was one of the last holdouts of an era when coaches were grown at home, and stayed at home. The new era is one of mercenaries, ushered in by the hated Gators and Crimson Tide, but one that was inevitable with rising expectations.

It should never be a surprise when a mercenary does an about face and turns his sword toward the last bag of money when the next bag of money comes along. And while it is never a surprise, it still can be shocking when it actually happens, as it was last night.

So I don’t blame UT athletic director Mike Hamilton for hiring He Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken. He was just trying to give UT fans what they were asking for and did the best he could with the available information and pool of coaching talent. If you’re not careful, your school will give you what you ask for too.

I was hoping the blackout trend had played itself out after Alabama mopped the floor with Georgia last year. No such luck, as both Georgia and Tennessee came out with some black apparel this past Saturday.

In Tennessee’s case, at least there’s a historic precedent that will let me rationalize the black jerseys as throwbacks rather than as the sacrilegious trendhopping gimmick they probably are: the Vols wore black jerseys in 1921 before switching to orange in 1922. Fortunately it worked out last Saturday, but being a little superstitious, I was against the idea when I first heard it might happen.

In Georgia’s case, it comes off in hindsight as a desperate last gasp from a coaching staff that’s out of ideas for how to motivate their players to recover a lost season. Of course, it’s always a good play call when it works, and a bad one when it doesn’t.

Oh, and Lane Kiffin is undefeated against Steve Spurrier. Heh. The gas pumping jokes still aren’t old to me, so keep them coming.

Enter your picks

Tiebreaker

How many total sacks will all defenses in the Coaches’ Top 25 poll register against opposing offenses combined?

Remember to enter your answer to this question in the comments section, and to make sure your answer isn’t the same as anyone else’s.

Last week’s tiebreaker question was “How many rushing yards will Georgia gain against Florida?” It turned out not to be necessary, but the answer was 121. writerchad’s answer of 123 was closest.

It’ll be a couple of years yet before we know if the Lane Kiffin experiment at Tennessee is a success or a failure. I’d caution against reading much from the game against Florida, or out of this season in general. But I am more optimistic about the future now than I was when he was hired. And I’m hoping it works out, because if Georgia football bloggers’ foreheads burst like they have been while the guy is losing, they’ll be beyond apoplectic when he’s winning. That will be fun to watch.

Meanwhile, Carl is still kicking your asses. But griftdrift is rebounding from a miserable first week, winning the second two weeks in a row after our makeshift bowling frame tiebreaker is accounted for.

Enter your picks

Tiebreaker

How many passing yards will Arizona State quarterback Danny Sullivan put up against Georgia’s defense?

Remember to enter your answer to this question in the comments section, and to make sure your answer isn’t the same as anyone else’s.

Last week’s tiebreaker was “How many points will all ACC teams score this week combined?” The answer was 344. I answered 301, which was closest. I guess that’s my consolation prize for being tied for dead last among players who have actually submitted picks every week.

This is one of a series of posts about jobs I’ve had during my time on this planet. You can read more posts by clicking the “jobs i’ve had” tag, and read a lengthier intro to the series in the first post.

This was another job I mentioned in my Internet history post. I wrote:

I also worked briefly for an ill-fated concert promotion company along with Furious D. I designed a couple of web sites, got drunk with some sketchy people, and got into some free concerts. There were two things I actually learned that were useful to me though, both having to do with clients we tried to get but didn’t land.

The first was when the manager of a famous recording artist called us about an estimate for web site development. I was busy with school work and took too long to get back to them, and by then they weren’t interested. So lesson one was a very basic principle of customer service that was later reiterated during my stint at Best Buy: even if you can’t help someone right away, acknowledge them and tell them you’ll help them soon.

The second was when the president of the company (one of the aforementioned sketchy characters) was pitching web development services to a band, and then without warning gave the floor up to me. We had vague ideas about what we wanted to sell — web sites, promotional video packages, and probably some other web-related services to go along with traditional concert promotion. What we didn’t have were package deals and price lists set up. So I learned that just telling someone “we can do anything you want us to do” doesn’t fly. They were coming to me because they have no clue what they want, so it’s my job to tell them and to let them argue with me if they think I’m wrong.

About the president of the company: he was a stocky dude with a bald head and a devil tattoo on his arm the artist had drawn to look somewhat like him. A variation of the tatoo ended up being the company logo. His speech was peppered with colorful, offensive phrases, like when he would observe that something was “cooler than cancer.”

I never trusted him, which turned out to be good judgment on my part. The most I ever put myself out there for the company was to purchase a scanner we needed with my credit card, and I kept that at my apartment (and later just kept it period).

He had a partnership with a pub in Knoxville I’m forgetting the name of, and most of the concerts the company promoted were staged there. Among the acts booked were 2 Live Crew and Sir Mix a Lot. 2 Live Crew was late to their show because they were getting high at a frat house down the road.

The biggest booking was a weekend-long festival somewhere in the Tennessee mountains with 20 or 30 bands. It actually was a pretty impressive effort on paper. I don’t know much about how it turned out since I didn’t go, but there were some pictures, so it wasn’t a total bust.

My other brush with celebrity when working for this company was when we happened to see Jamal Lewis at the Knoxville Hooters. The president chatted him up a bit, and they apparently knew each other. Considering Jamal’s troubles not too long afterward, this isn’t surprising.

There were a lot of deals supposedly in the works for me to do some development work, but ultimately I only made the company’s website and a website for the aforementioned festival. The company went under when the president skipped town after robbing someone’s car. He was rumored to have been part of other robberies, though I never received confirmation about this.

Update 4:59 p.m. – Furious D writes in:

He (/we, whatever) didn’t actually do the booking for the 2 Live Crew/Sir Mix-a-Lot shows. He just knew enough people to get in for free and “take some of the load off the management” (read: stand around and pretend to have something to do with it).

Haha, had me fooled. That actually makes it funnier to me.

See also: new entries by Jen, Sara and Garrett. And also a new player Nikki!

I like how sometimes people think I’m kidding when I say things like “I’m going to paint my kitchen Tennessee Orange.” I’ve mocked up an approximation of what this would look like in Photoshop for your viewing pleasure:

Technically this isn’t our kitchen until January 29. Knock on wood, everything seems in order to close on our new house that day. If you haven’t been reading Amber’s blog, here’s what it looks like:

She has more pictures and thoughts here.

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

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

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

Week 8 schedule

^* – 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.

I haven’t been in much of a blogging mood lately beyond NCAA Picks. It is worth noting that — barring another mishap of some sort — I’ll be having my wisdom tooth surgery for real on Monday. More on that in my original post about it.

Other items:

There’s a presidential election in less than a month. I have not written much about it here. Maybe not anything actually. If you can look at the last eight years and say, “oh yeah, gimme some more of that!” there’s probably not much I could say to you that’s going to change your mind.

I did have some fun with Photoshop the other night as I was waiting for the second presidential debate to start though, my friend:

Perhaps I’m a masochist, because I bought tickets to the Tennessee-UGA game this weekend. I’ll be traveling with Alyssa, who is good people even if she is a UGA fan.

UGA is a 13-point favorite despite losing the last two games by a combined score of 84-47. Even though history tells us anything can happen in this game, I picked UGA to cover in my picks. The tickets weren’t expensive, fortunately, and they do sell alcohol in Athens the last time I checked.

My 30th birthday is coming up in just over a month. I have no idea how I want to go about marking the occasion. Any ideas?

First, this note was posted in our apartment complex this morning:

Click through to read the full text of the note, it’s hilarious. We have a neighbor who lives on our floor who lets his stupid dog go on bathroom breaks without supervision. This is problematic because he’s breaking leash laws and illegally not cleaning up the dog’s pooh, but is even more problematic because the dog has gotten lazy and no longer walks all the way to the grassy area in the parking lot before dropping a bomb. I’m amazed I haven’t stepped in a pile already.

Next, we saw this license plate on our drive to work today:

That’s going to look pretty stupid if Obama loses. Like getting a Microsoft Zune tatoo. For more fun with license plates, see this thread at Drifting Through The Grift.

And finally, my Florida-Tennessee tickets arrived today!

I wrote some about this game over at Rocky Top Talk.

If you need game tickets, you should buy them from Larry at Take Me Out Tickets. I priced these out at Stubhub as well, and the overall price was $35-40 cheaper for equivalent tickets since Stubhub has extra fees and you pay shipping. Plus he’s local and a lot of you already know him, so you’ll get better customer service. And no, I didn’t receive anything to plug the site.

I can’t entirely explain why I find this so amusing, but here you go. University of Tennessee head football coach Phil Fulmer orders a latte at Starbucks:

From SportSouth’s Under the Lights series.