Celebrations cause penalties? I would've guess youth

Terrence Moore announces (not theorizes...not suggests) that Georgia's penalty situation this season is caused by the Celebration in Florida. He might as well have blamed the penalties on the War in Iraq while he was throwing ideas against a wall.

He suggests that Georgia is the most penalized team in the country because we threw all poise and discipline out the window during the Celebration in Florida. Richt's retort:

"I don’t think [the Florida game] had anything to do with this, but I guess it’s up for people to debate. I do know that since the Florida game, we’ve won, what, 12 out of 13 or 13 out of 14 [actually it’s 10 out of 11]? I don’t know what that record is, but you might want to throw that in there."

The only thing the Florida Celebration did was wake up a listless program. If you count the actual Florida game, it's really 11 of 12 games in the W column. The team was only 9-6 in the 15 games prior.

For reaction to this column, we turn to the CyberWebs:

• Senator Blutarsky explores this issue further in his article.
  
  
• Dr. Saturday (formerly...SundayMorningQB) talks about how penalties don't really matter, and he explains why for Rivals.com.
  
  
• I'mstillAthena points out the penalty rankings for some other interesting programs this season. His data is a little different than mine, but here are the numbers (Dr. Saturday alludes to this as well). View these and decide which group you want to be associated with (Source: ESPN):
  
  

  Team	Most Penalty Yards	Most Total Penalties	AP Poll Ranking
  Georgia	2nd	4th	10
  Oklahoma St.	6th	14th	8
  Texas Tech	8th	16th	7
  Florida	12th	26th	5
  BYU	20th	13th	9
  USC	24th	18th	6
  Oklahoma	27th	20th	4
  Texas	48th	38th	1
  Georgia Tech	64th	33rd	n/a
  Syracuse	114th	112th	n/a
  Navy	115th (tie)	117th	n/a
  Army	115th (tie)	111th	n/a
  Washington	117th	118th	n/a
  Boston College	118th	119th	n/a
  Duke	119th	115th	n/a
  Pittsburgh	120th	120th	23

As for me, I attribute most of the penalties to the youth of the players committing the crimes. Consider these numbers. (best of my memory on academic class):

# of Seniors Contributing Heavily on Offense:
3 - Massaquoi, Chandler (out) and Southerland (1 game)

# of Seniors Contributing Heavily on Defense:
5 - Wynn, Irvin, Lomax, Ellerbe and Byrd

How many flags do you remember those guys committing this season? I recall one by Chandler, and Lomax jumped offsides a couple of times in the first game. Any others?

# of Juniors Contributing Heavily on Offense:
5 - Moreno, Stafford, Moore, Vance, and Durham

# of Juniors Contributing Heavily on Defense:
5 - Atkins, Weston, Allen, Evans, and Miller

Stafford has a delay of game call or two and Vance has a couple of holds. But, I don't remember the other upperclassmen getting many flags on offense. Defense...well...that's a bit different. We've had some close border line calls like Asher's interference penalty at ASU and a few questionable late hit calls. However, nothing consistently outrageous from this upperclass group either.

On the other hand, you've got these other guys:

• AJ Green - Good for at least spastic one false start per game.
  
• Bean Anderson - Pursing Dan Inman's unofficial record for most penalties in an SEC career. Offsides, holding, illegally downfield, you name it.
  
• Ben Jones and Cordy Glenn - Multiple holding calls and/or offsides.

All freshmen. Are those the only people committing violations? Obviously not. The defense has several dumb / bad plays, but it's mostly the young guys racking up the bulk of the flags.

I'm not saying that Georgia's
penalties aren't a "problem."
But I don't think the cause of the penalties is jumping up and down in the endzone vs. Florida almost a full year ago. The cause is primarily youth. That's fixable / coachable.

Is being a douche bag pot stirring columnist for 20+ years fixable?

PWD

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