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October 16, 2008

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

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Moore, as usual, is off track. But I do think the celebration had an effect in the minds of the referees in our league. Richt has said as much. We used to not get called for late hits that are very similar to what we're being called for this year. I think we ratcheted up our thug factor with the celebration. But I'm all for it.

Obviously, we need to not have the stupid roughing the passer penalties and such, but we've gotten a rep as an aggressive team and I think that works against us.

But we never got those late hit penalties when Donnan or Goff was here. We never got roughing the passer penalties, etc. That's because our D didn't play to the echo of the whistle in those days. We're mean and the refs believe we're mean -- that's why get penalties. But mean teams win a lot.

Moore misses the point. Maybe we did get meaner and cockier with the celebration, but we also became a powerhouse because of the same act.

Crane said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
j.leonardjr said...

How does Mr. Moore explain how UGA was a heavily penalized team in the seasons prior to last year that Richt was at the helm? Good ole Terence never lets the facts get in the way does he?

Crane said...

Late Hits I believe are attributable to Willy wanting to hit the QB like we hit Colt Brennan. We just need to lay off a little.

Also Paul I think you should include a Douchebag TAG in your blog so I can easily find all terrance moore articles.

Anonymous said...

Being a d-bag pot stirring columnist apparently isn't fixable. If it was, it would have been "fixed" years ago.

Unknown said...

Is there some sort of Constitutional requirement to employ an off-the-wall sports columnist at every major publication in the country? If so it would make sense because this man (http://blogs.chron.com/sportsjustice/archives/2008/10/best_hitter_in.html) is the exact same way.

Anonymous said...

What about Massaquoi's malicious intentional trip in the ASU game? That was sarcasm by the way

Anonymous said...

I really liked the leaping call the PAC-1 refs called in Tempe...leaping, hehehehehe! Did they really call that?

Mike said...

Moore crawled out of the front pants pocket of Urban Meyer long enough to dredge this old thing up again. It must be a shame to not have anything else to write about. Terence Moore is a waste of good newsprint/pixels.

Anonymous said...

i got to tell you: i wish you and the senator and everyone else would simply ignore terence moore. complete indifference is the best response to a fool.

Unknown said...

I try to ignore him. But that is just so damn stupid, you pretty much can't avoid it.

Tommy said...

Don't feed the troll. Unless you enjoy wallowing in idiocy and aggravation, don't click on him, don't read him, don't link to him, don't send him traffic.

Life's too short and you have far better things with which to fill it.

Hobnail_Boot said...

Pretty sure Bean and Gamble are responsible for at least a third of UGA's penalties this year.

Anonymous said...

I agree in asking you guys to avoid driving traffic to that waste of a so called journalists articles. His gimmick is so worn out. He is an attention seeking tool who needs to be ignored.

Anonymous said...

Moore needs to go back to writing about Michael Vick and leave the Dawgs for professionals to write about.

Anonymous said...

i don't think Richt was responding Moore's column, because those comments came from last night's press conference and the story ran in today's paper. Don't give hm that much credit... I'm pretty sure CMR could give a **** about a worthless columnist. Unless Moore asked Richt at the confernce directly last night or something

Anonymous said...

I think Georgia's penalty problems are caused by George W. Bush.

Anonymous said...

you know why T Moore is in Urban Meyer's pocket? Because Coach Point and Stare once worked at Notre Dame.

There are only 4 things TM knows, loves, and writes about, really.

1. the good old days at ND

2. the good old days of the Big Red Machine

3. the good old days when Lester Hayes and the RAIduhs were running wild.

4. "it's because he was black, isnt it?"

you look closely enough at almost any TM column, you find one of those themes is an element.

Hardly anyone under the age of 40 can even remember the first 3, and not even TM can lament the oppression of victims like Barry Bonds, Mike Vick, et al. in every column. Maybe TM is trying to expand his horizons by pot stirring UGA so vigorously. I mean, what kind of bump would he get from sneering at Tech? Sure, a couple of chemical engineers in Bangalore might be incensed, but so what?

Anonymous said...

I don't know who is the bigger douche...TM or Stewie Mandel over at SI.com. According to him we should stop bitching about our ranking because we haven't beaten anyone yet...evidently that "PAC 10 powerhouse ASU" that USC beat last week, at home, without Rudy Carpenter doesn't count.

Anonymous said...

Paul reads Terrence so that I don't have to. By his sacrifice, I have now avoided clicking the link.

And all school, you forgot 5) Miami of Ohio: the Cradle of Coaches.

J. L. said...

If as a team you don't have an offsides penalty, personal foul, pass interference, and holding call at least once a game, you're not being aggressive enough.

I wish there would have been a pass interference call on UT's long completion last week. 15 is alot better than 50.

Anonymous said...

Has he looked at our record since the celebration? He has got to be joking with this article...

Dubbayoo said...

Terrence Less is going to harp on that Florida game til he finds a reason to prove himself right or the end of time...whichever comes first.

 
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