Put Your Torches Down, There Is No Need For a Lynching

This past Saturday was a pretty good day. Like any day there is good and bad, but overall it was a good day. I got to play golf with my little brother( he whipped me pretty good) and then that evening I got to spend with my family celebrating my Memommie's 84th birthday. Now the bad. I had to unfortunately watch the Georgia Bulldogs play what had to be the worst game I've ever witnessed against the Tennessee Volunteers. Since the debacle in Knoxville, there have been articles written and talk show lights lit up over what went wrong and who is to blame. One of the comments written and said is that the school should look at a change in the head coach. Now that got me thinking. I thought, people, really, calm down! The first sign of adversity and people want to go to the extreme. Changing the head coach is not the answer, that should be the last thing anyone thinks, especially the decision makers in Athens and most certainly the fans.

I thought this would be a great time to remind people just how good the University of Georgia has got it when it comes to the head coach of the football team, Mark Richt. A little background, Mark Richt came from Florida State as the Offensive Coordinator for Bobby Bowden. He was the OC for 10 years there. On his watch the offense was consistently in the top ten in the country. They lost only two games fives times in his OC tenure and never more than that. They were never outside the top five in the polls too. Since he left FSU, they have won 10 or more games in a season just once and have lost at least three games every year. In his eight seasons as the head coach of Georgia, they have had SIX seasons with double digit wins. His win/loss record is 82-22 for a .788 winning percentage. I tell you all this for three reasons. First reason, the two previous coaches at Georgia, Ray Goff and Jim Donnan had a combined record of 86-53-1 for a .614 winning percentage. Do the fans really want to go back to that? I don't think so. Second reason, the coach that Richt cut his teeth with, Bobby Bowden, was 71-26 or .732 winning percentage his first eight seasons at FSU. In his ninth season, the one Richt is in now at Georgia, he was 7-3-2. I think FSU has done pretty darn good since. As a side note, Bowden went 4-7 in his ninth season at West Virginia and then went 9-3 the next season before heading south to Tallahassee. My third and final reason for all this is to compare him to who a lot of people consider the greatest Georgia coach of all time, Vince Dooley. Now, I am not trying to say Mark Richt is better than Vince Dooley or ever will be, only time will tell where Richt will line up next to Dooley. I am just comparing where they stack in the same amount of time both have coached. Coach Dooley was 59-24-4 for a winning percentage of .678. In his ninth season, he went 7-4. I think if fans keep this in mind, they won't think they have it so bad after all. There is going to be some rough patches and sure some changes need to be made, but changing head coaches is not the answer nor the change that needs to be made.

Random Thoughts from the Weekend

So I went by my office this morning to drop off a drawing for a quote on some countertops. When I went to open the front door, it did not budge. I thought, hmm, this is odd, usually someone is here and if no one was going to be there, then I would have been told. Well this got me to thinking. Since no one bothered to tell me that no one would be in this morning and since I do not have a key, I thought, this is great! Just a great topper to what was just a wonderful weekend! (tongue in cheek)

My first thought from this past weekend, how is it that in the Georgia/LSU game on Saturday, the zebras decide that they want to have a part in the outcome of the game and not leave it up to the players? With 1:09 left in the game Georgia takes the lead from LSU in what had been a back and forth game. LSU had just went ahead like 30 seconds before and UGA drives down and A.J. Green makes just an unbelievable catch! The crowd goes nuts, the players, as a group, come over and congratulate Green, all is good right? Nope! Mr. Zebra man decides that these young men are celebrating too much and showing up the visiting Tigers of LSU. Now if I could figure out how to pull that video and show it here I would, but I can't, so take my word for it. It was a bogus call and well I guess that is how the cookie crumbles and in a single play, how Georgia's season has gone to date. My second thought, I was watching the NASCAR race in Kansas on Sunday. Now this year for me has been torture! My guy is Dale Jr. and to put it bluntly, he has sucked it up this year. It has gotten so bad that I have contemplated jumping ship and joining the ranks of the Smoke Brigade. Ah, but there was hope this weekend, Jr. was starting on the outside front row and overall looked to have a pretty good car for the show. It looked even better when on lap 12, he took lead and all was great in Junior Nation for the next 44 laps. Then the wheels fell off, more to the point, a lug nut fell off. Gotta come back in put it on and when its all said and done, he's a lap down and finally with about 20-30 laps to go, a belt falls off, he loses power and finishes where he has most of the season, in the 30's! Yippee-Ki-A Mother *Bleep*! Last thought from the weekend and this is the topper. The wife in her infinite wisdom, decides that since I have suffered through the Dawgs loss on Saturday and Jr.'s debacle on Sunday, that I should be destined for more suffering.... that's right, I couldn't even get "any"! Damn, I sure am glad its Monday!

Welcome to the Happiest Place on Earth

Its been awhile since I last checked into the blogosphere world. Things have happened and there have been place to go, ya know what I mean? Well boys and girls, I'm back and have I got a doozy for you! For those few that actually read my golden nuggets of wisdom, the wife and I spent the last half of last week at the Happiest Place on Earth, Walt Disney World. Actually, we only spent one day there and it was one for the ages! My wife and I actually went down to Orlando because I was playing in the USSSA( United States Speciality Sports Association) Class E World Series. We got there on Wednesday, started playing on Thursday and we were put out of our playing misery on Friday afternoon. That experience is for another time. Since we were put out of the tournament on Friday, the War Department, aka, The Wife wanted to spend Saturday at Disney World. Last year, we were down for the same tournament and we were able to go to both Animal Kingdom and Epcot. So this year the natural logic was that we go to Magic Kingdom. Now, I love Disney, I am a kid at heart and if you talk to my wife, she will tell you that I will never grow up and will always be a kid. This past trip to ole Walt's World though just might have cured me of being a kid forever, well not really, but oh my did it really test me like no other time in my life.

I must just for a moment back up to the night before. Like I said earlier, we were put out of the tournament that Friday afternoon. We were put into what is affectionately known as the "beer bracket". The "beer bracket" is just another way of saying, "your done, now let's go drink beer and drown our sorrows for such pitiful play." Well to say I went deep into the "beer bracket" would be a understatement and didn't get "put out" til somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 a.m. So Saturday morning came early and so did the nudging of my wife telling me to get up and GET HAPPY! So with a groggy head, bad breath, and squinty eyes off we went to the Magic Kingdom. First stop was to have my picture taken at the front of the entrance with me and a Schaefer! As a proud Schaefer HofFer its my responsibility to "take it to the streets"! The security guard was cool about it and even got a chuckle outta the guy when another guard walked up and asked what was going on and he explained my plan. That was the highlight of the day and its barely 9 a.m. at this point! From there, we did all the usual rides, Its A Small World, Peter Pan, Haunted Mansion, Hall of Presidents, Splash Mountain, and so on and so on. The big downer of the day by far was that Space Mountain was closed! I was thinking, geez! I'm hungover and no Space Mountain, what freakin' gives?! As I've stated before, this is the Happiest Place on the Earth, right? Well, they need to tell that to all the people that feel like its ok to walk into you and instead of saying "excuse me" or "I'm sorry", you get a dirty look and some angry remark, usually in a language that I didn't understand. After you get past the rude, then you get that greatest of human species, the mother with a stroller! I swear, they should make these women have a license or something to drive those things around the park! If there was a open space up ahead while walking, they were hell bent and determined that she and that stroller were gonna be in it! After getting dang near run over a few times, it actually got to be pretty funny. The wife and I actually started to keep count! Well, I made it through the day, albeit tired and with achy feet. The wife was happy and in the end, even though it seemed like everyone in Florida and half the free world were there( they don't say Its A Small World After All for nothing!), I actually had a great time and am even trying to plan our next trip there. I think next time though, I will wear heel and shin pads for the women strollers from hell and definitely won't be pounding beers the night before!