Today is the first time in upwards of a week and a half that I have the time to update the ol’ blog. It’s been a busy few weeks, as we have had shows at my place of employment AS WELL AS a road trip to Starkville, MS. More on that later…
Is it just me or are you pissed that it’s already halfway through football season. I can’t believe that we already have Tennessee playing Alabama…and that Florida has lost three straight. Nothing makes me happier than this time of year! We haven’t run the air in what amounts to be about 2 weeks, and have had the windows open the entire time. I SAY I SAY…IT’S GOOD TO HAVE LAND.
Today marks my first day of moving into my own, brand new office. It’s not too bad, about 8 x 10, had a door and it’s my OWN personal space. Who would complain about that? Now, maybe I can get a few people to come say hello and “spend some time in my office”. MOVIN’ ON UP!
So that whole Starkville trip…
It started with a wakeup call about 5:30 and heading out the door at 6AM. It’s a relatively short 2.5 hour drive over to the promised land of Mississippi, and the Ms. Boss was more excited than I could believe. Once we finally got into town, traffic nonexistent for 3 HOURS PRIOR TO KICKOFF! I couldn’t believe it. The stadium/campus itself wasn’t too terrible. Very open, very green…just what you would expect from an agricultural school. Even the fans were friendly…and even joked about how annoying the “COWBELLS” are. (Again, more on this later). We finally get to park about 1/3 mile from the seats, and would you guess it? 2 MSU fans having a cup of coffee and reading The Wall Street Journal. BIZZARO WORLD.
After doing due diligence on taking down a bottle of Piggly Wiggly’s finest champagne and OJ, we turned our attention to cold Natty Light around 10AM or so. It felt so right, so early…it was college all over again…with the exception of being in enemy territory. The walk to the stadium was very quiet, very low key. No partiers, no cheering…just waddling to the stadium. Now, I made the comment on the ol Facebook feed that “if you want an ACC experience and don’t want to leave the comfort of your SEC state…Davis-Wade stadium is for you!”. I couldn’t have been more right. This place was a joke. It was so bad, Clemson may (I REPEAT MAY) be better. 10 minutes before kickoff, you got the token, “WHO LET THE DOGS OUT” song. The Bulldogs come out to Will Farrell’s skit “WE NEED MORE COWBELL”. Then, you get techno music from some random European trash spinning in the background. Right before kickoff you get the “MAROON” and “WHITE” cheer, which…I’m all for fan support and cheers but 2 syllables makes it very difficult to keep up with. NEED I NOT FORGET TO MENTION that the East upper was white shirts, lower was maroon. West upper was maroon, lower was white. Carolina can’t even coordinate a shade of garnet…so for this, I give MSU and their fans an A+. They sure as hell can work up them tin cans and telegraph lines to make pretty things happen!
During the game, it was an unexpected back and forth battle. Normally, if this was an SEC stadium, you would have been able to cut the tension with a knife. You’d have fans cheering and going crazy at every opportunity. This wasn’t the case at ol’ Davis-Wade. I kid you not, Connor Shaw was taking snaps on the 25 and I could hear him. Just unreal. Maybe it was the fact that they wanted to play “guess which car wins the race” during timeouts. Or, it could be “pick the Bulldog who has a treat in his mouth”. Or, it could be the great in game advertisements about catfish ponds or Dan Mullen inviting you on down to Richard’s bar after the game. For 3.5 hours, I felt like I was at a hokey, wacky, jump the shark ACC game. It was like football wasn’t the reason why you were there. There was never a sense of urgency or “Get Loud!”. Even with the cowbells, I was expecting a little more intimidating atmosphere. Nothing. Nada. Zip. I guess it’s just how things are down on the farm, and I’m sure that the 11:22 kickoff had something to do with it too. It just didn’t have the feel of big time football. Maybe this is what it would have been like to go to school at UNC or NCSU…or (insert any other ACC school).
Now, on to the most important issue that has been bugging the t-total shit out of me since Saturday. I’m not going to bash Carolina fans..but either we have some of the DUMBEST fans in the world…or simply put 80% of people have little to no concept on how the game of football is played. Let me entertain you with some examples from Saturday:
A – Holding. As a former offensive lineman, holding happens on every play. 9 times out of 10, you don’t get caught. It’s also understood by the majority of people who understand football that it happens too. HOWEVER, many loud, obnoxious middle aged women have no idea what holding is, or how it should be called on the field. Just because an offensive lineman is doing is job and standing up a defensive player, keeping him from getting to the QB is NOT HOLDING. When an offensive lineman has a defensive player turned sideways when their QB takes off to scramble; THAT IS NOT HOLDING. STOP YELLING “HE’S HOLDING REF! HOLDING!” Ugh. Nothing makes me want to bang my head into the concrete faster than this. If you see Offensive linemen grabbing jersey, that’s a hold. If you see an offensive lineman’s hand’s outside of the other team’s shoulders while blocking…it’s usually holding. Remember, there is 2 refs looking at the line for holding, and I’m sorry…sometimes it doesn’t get called. It is subjective, but hopefully this post will educate you enough to not annoy the piss out of everyone at the game around you.
B- Running outside the tackles with a RB build for the inside zone. Now again, this post is not too relevant with Lattimore on the bench, but it could be enough to pull your head out of your ass and say “I can be smart and understand which running backs work…and where”. In this case, middle aged woman was going crazy because “WE CAN’T RUN IT UP THE MIDDLE” and “WE NEED TO RUN IT OUTSIDE NOW WITH LATTIMORE”. There are a few things wrong with this statement. First, if they are stacking the box (the area where the LB and DL play) with 7 or more players, you aren’t going to be able to successfully run it to the outside. Generally, this is accomplished with 4 down lineman, and 3 to 4 LB’s playing behind them securing the corner or dropping back into a read/zone. If you aren’t going to make it up the middle, off to the side is not easy either. Secondly, Lattimore…if you haven’t noticed…is not/was not an outside the tackle running back. Our offense is based off of a little thing called the INSIDE ZONE. We aren’t a team with tons of speed on the outside to run sweeps.
C – Running the Option inside of the 10 yard line on your game winning drive: This was unacceptable. A grown ass man yelled out no 1st and Goal from the 8 to “RUN THE OPTION”. Let’s look at the situation. First, we had a freshman at RB. Secondly, why would we pitch the ball and run the risk of a fumble? (See Georgia/Andrew Pinnock) Third, we aren’t even an option team. All of this made zero sense.
D – Taking an intentional safety to win the game: My goodness…you would have thought that we were going to be solving all of the world’s problems during the final 4 seconds. I heard everything from “run around and don’t get tackled” to punting the ball. Yea, let’s punt the ball out of our end zone and run the risk of a block recovered for a TD…or even a kick returned! It was simple…take the safety and end the game. Get out of Starkville with the W. (Editor’s note: I understand those that yelled anything other than SAFTEY likely had Carolina -3.5 or -4…resulting in a loss)
Again, I’m not saying that I am not everything in the game of football…but just please pay attention in the future.
-Gamblin Boss
