The Georgia Bulldogs debut at #13 in the USA Today Coaches Poll. Georgia Tech starts the season unranked. Our scheduled opponents and other teams of note:
- 2. LSU - the pressure is really on Miles
3. Florida - dramatically overrated at #2
13. Georgia - a bit high I think
14. Auburn
15. Tennessee - a bit low
20. Arkansas - it's hard for me to take a team serious that starts Casey Dick at QB.
27. Georgia Tech - when they beat ND, they'll be ranked in Week 2
30. South Carolina - if it weren't for their schedule. Who knows how high they could climb
40. Oklahoma State - only registered 15 votes
The seven SEC coaches who are voting this year include: Houston Nutt, Sly Croom, Tommy Tuberville, Les Miles, Steve Spurrier, Phil Fulmer and Mark Richt. Interestingly, Neil Callaway has a vote over at UAB.
George O'Leary also has a vote at UCF, which makes sense. They probably wanted someone with a masters from a prestigious Ivy League school to participate in the voting.
PWD
13 comments:
MY GOD FLORIDA IS SO DAMN OVERRATED! NO PROVEN PASSER, NO PROVEN RB'S, AN ENTIRE NEW DEFENSE.
ARE THESE COACHES STUPID ARE AM I MISSING SOME HUGE VARIABLE THAT MAKE #3 JUSTIFIABLE?
I agree. I can't figure out why people are so high on Florida this year. Teams are going to play Tebow like a normal quarterback this year, not like he's some kind of wishbone formation running fool from Air Force who happens to pumpfake pass once in a while. I bet his effectiveness will be drastically limited, especially at the beginning of the year.
double clutch pass, I mean...
They also have us playing LSU in the SECC game and then the Orange Bowl (after apparently losing to LSU who they have in the Sugar)
3 is too high for UF. 15 is waaaaay to high for Tennessee. They may struggle to bowl-eligibility.
While Uga may not have the 13th best roster, the schedule should allow them to finish in the top 10. Just not many challenging games compared to some others in the top 25. I don't see any reasonable set of circumstances in which Uga should lose more than 1 or 2 in the regular season.
Correct, Paul. Having a gentleman and a scholar such as O'Leary, with such an impressive educational resume, certainly lends credibility to the coaches poll.
Thirteen sounds good to me. uf should enjoy that spot while they can. Im hungry for some w's this year, hopefully one at thier expense. GO DAWGS!
keep up the great work on the site paul, its appreciated.
In a weird way, playing an opener as dangerous as Oklahoma State will be good in that we won't have to wait long at all to find out whether or not this high ranking is justified.
Last year we came in right around #13, if memory serves, and rose in the rankings based on an all-cupcake diet before getting brutally exposed through that 1-4 midseason stretch. There will be no such false hope this year -- either our defense steps up against OSU and we prove that we've earned a #13 ranking (or better), or we collapse against the Cowboys and get knocked down in the polls right away.
I'm with doug, that first game should give us some sort of measuring stick to how good our Dawgs are going to be, especially on D (I'm not too worried about the O other than the young line). I wouldn't put too much into this game if it wasn't for playing a BCS team that fared well last year. However, I still think Bama coulda and shoulda won their bowl game last year. Speakin' of the west side, we'll see how Saban does with the Tide.
Oklahoma St. is one of those games that is significant if it's a loss and forgettable if it's a win.
If you lose, it's not necessarily a shame - they're a quality program. But it still means you've got some issues, and SC the next weekend won't be much easier.
But if you win, what does it tell you? You're #13. They're #40. You're at home - of course you're supposed to win.
SC is similar - people like to point to it as a season-defining game, but that's only if you lose it. Otherwise, it instantly becomes about the 8th most important game on the schedule as they plod on to 7-5 and whatever minor bowl is on tap. Winning just tells you that you beat a team that a ranked team should beat at home.
I see the Oklahoma State game as somewhat similar to the Boise State game from a prognostication standpoint.
OSU is a trendy pick to win; UGA had some problems last year (largely righted by season's end, I would suggest), and has some inexperienced (thought talented, I would suggest) players stepping in to fill key roles.
I guess sportwriters and pundits look at this as a chance to get ahead of the curve. UGA is down! OSU is rising! It's a trap game! The sky is falling!
What fun is it to pick all favorites? Besides, this would fit in nicely with the other popular national off season storylines regarding the SEC, which seem to be: 1. Spurrier is fully loaded and ready to retake control of the world, or 2. Tebow cannot be stopped, and he probably cannot even be contained, or 3. Fulmer and Cutcliffe will have Erik Ainge wiping Peyton Manning out of the UT record book en route to winning 13 games, an SEC title, and possibly the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
Oh, and LSU is ready to kick everyone's ass, unless Tuberville and AU (most wins of any team in the SEC over the last 5 years against teams with a mascot with an "r" in their nickname in games played during a full moon. Take that, bitches) continue their dominance of the league.
Basically, no one's thinking about UGA as a potential contender. Fine with me. It could all break bad of course, but you look at our roster, coaches and schedule and you dont have to hope for an alignment of the fates on the level of the harmonic convergence for us to inject ourselves into the SEC title discussion.
I guess that's why we go ahead and play the games.
i disagree with groo that the USC game is season defining only if we lose. USC is going to win 1 or 2 of there big games this year. That means atleast ut, uf, or uga is going to fall to the cocks' during 07'. They are to good and came to close to many times last year. That being said, if we can get by that game, it really puts some pressure on UT and UF and the looser of the UT UF game is essentially out of the hunt.
Fla - the real problem with them being rated so high is that it makes it harder for them to fall if/when they lose. So being #2 could help their BSC rank.
OkSt - I wish they were ranked higher, because as it was stated, there is probably much more to lose if they upset us because of their low ranking.
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