The countdown begins...

Welcome to the longest week of the year...every year. This is usually the week where you spend most of your time trolling YouTube looking for videos containing last years highlights just to get your fix. Which in turn leads to a elevated level of "pumpupedness" thus making the week even longer.

So, why not start now.



Oh, just an fyi. I don't believe this is the "official" intro video?

14th Street Bridge to open Sept 3rd!

Finally, this will make traffic to and from the games a little easier this year.

http://www.14thstreetbridge.com/

LAST DAY - to purchase White Out Shirts

They are only 10 bucks but today is the last day!

Order one here:
http://cyberbuzz.gatech.edu/reck/whiteout/purchase.html

I know counting is not your strong suit...

but come on. 42 and 42 are the same. As I recall, we didn't tie last year.


Nice try, pups. We remember, and we have video to prove it. We'll try and make this year's game not close enough to make a "typo" like that in next year's media guide.

I guess today is hate uga day (more than normal). It's just easy when this stuff keeps falling in your lap.

What We All Knew Already

"Well you're a turd sandwich!"

This time, ugag's not preseason #1.

GQ published what we've known for a while. That uga fits in with all the Ivy League schools.

Oh, not in academics, silly pants. In douchiness. See for yourself HERE.

They come in at #13 in the list of America's Douchiest Colleges:

#13 University of Georgia

Home of: The Ducks-Unlimited Douche
Affectation: Fully loaded black Chevy Tahoe with fishing boat lashed to top and backseat full of Realtree camo hunting gear.
Prized possession: White bulldog with notarized papers proving a bloodline to Uga IV.
Overheard at Gator Haters: "What happened to duck hunting this morning, boy?" "F##k, man! We were gonna go, but we raged downtown last night, then went to a late-night, and when I got home to pass out, my wake-up alarm was already going off." "F##k!"

Thank you, GQ. Thank you.

Georgia Tech in the News

Sports Illustrated has posted a couple of pretty cool articles concerning the upcoming football season. Now I do not tend to think these are the gospel but I find it fun to see what people assume will be how the season will play itself out. Because this is a Georgia Tech Blog (SHOCKER!), I think we should focus on the YellowJackets.

Here is the SI ACC Preview - Snapshot:
1) Georgia Tech will finish BEHIND Virginia Tech
2) Virginia Tech will play Florida State for the ACC Championship and beat them
3) Dwyer will be the Best Offensive Player for the Year
4) CPJ is the Coach on the Rise for the ACC

And because I have always followed the policy of having you see for yourself and not taking my word for it: READ IT!!!

The Macon Telegraph (which has good Georgia Tech coverage considering where it is located) has a really cool article on the Georgia Tech secondary for the upcoming year. People seem to be really excited about the secondary because it is STACKED with good players. The article focuses on the concept of the "Wolf" position in the secondary.

As always dear children: READ IT!!!

There has been a lot of talking on both the National and Local sports radio stations because of the recently released AP and Coaches Pre-Season Poll. This poll is the same one that thought that UGA was the prohibitive Number 1 team in the country last year, so you can imagine how valuable of a tool I think this can be. Nevertheless the poll is significant because it sets the stage for the entire year. If your team is in the lower half of the poll, no matter how good they are, it will be difficult for their position to be raised enough to be considered for a BCS bid. If your team is rated very high, then even if they lose, they fall only so much which still keeps them in the National Championship race.

The Georgia Tech YellowJackets are sitting comfortably in the 15th slot in both polls. This is actually a good position for them to be in as the year starts. They can easily slip into the top ten with some good early wins but even a lose or two will not get them out of the Top 25.

See what I mean? READ IT!!!

Last and not least are the Power Rankings. This is a ranking selected by some college football author who thinks they are an authority on the subject. In other words, this is an unofficial poll of one. The only reason I include it is because it is from ESPN and their writers are pretty awesome.

Aaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnd, READ IT!!!


And now, after a brief sabbatical, I present to you the Ridiculous AJC UGA Vent of the Week!
"Tech will get theirs -- don't you worry about that. What goes around comes around. Go Dawgs!"

Atlanta Falcon Throwback Helmets

For those of us who enjoy both college football and professional football, the weekend can seem to be an almost Utopian environment. Because college football is "amateur" and the NFL is "professional" there isn't a lot of connection between them if you look past coaches moving back and forth and the yearly NFL Draft. For the most part, the two entities are separate and are not very involved. This is a good thing for all intensive purposes.

The only exception that I have found to offset this tried and true concept fell into my lap while watching an Atlanta Falcons pre-season game. The commentators had their weekly conversation with the President of Operations McKay and he stated that the new Throwback Helmets have direct links to both UGA and Georgia Tech. For those of you who haven't seen the new uniforms, check below.

It seems that the Falcons are looking to try and bring in fans of both UGA and Tech by including their colors into the uniforms. This is not that difficult on the UGA side of the equation as both the Falcons and the Bulldogs (I will never call them Dawgs) use both Black and Red as their primary color scheme. So how did the Falcons incorporate the Georgia Tech White and Gold? Check it out!

The Throwback Helmets have the White and Gold colors running from the front to the back. McKay stated that this was intentional in that the Falcons wanted to bring the college fans into the pro game seats. I don't know about you, but I don't think that just because a team uses my team's colors, I would run over my grandmother to become a fan.

Maybe if the White and Gold replaced the Black and Red? I think grandma would forgive me then.

Get Your White Out Shirts!

AND we know it's legal!

You can now purchase the official white out shirt for the Clemson game online. They're $10 and must be picked up at the stadium. And these are from Tech, so there's no questioning their legality!

Regarding the Dwyer Brigade shirts, an email has been sent to the AA. We'll keep you updated.

Buy your white our shirt here:
http://cyberbuzz.gatech.edu/reck/whiteout/purchase.html

Dwyer Brigade shirts temporarily on hold

Due to concern about using Jonathan Dwyer's name on the t-shirts we've made, we've temporarily taken the online orders away.

We'll get them back up as soon as we get the persmission needed. We will not be selling the t-shirts for any profit, just at production costs so as many people as possible can show Dwyer their support.

In the meantime, the site is still going strong to continue the Fight for Dwyer for Heisman!

Join the Dwyer Brigade!

Gentlemen,

There lies before us an opportunity. A chance to bring back what was once ours. What began as ours. Sir John Heisman once walked the Flats, and he has not returned since those days. We now have a chance to bring him back. Not you and I, no, but one Jonathan Dwyer. You and I, we can help Mr. Dwyer, though. A revolution has begun, and we call ourselves the Dwyer Brigade. We have one fight to fight and we'll fight it til it's faught. We fight for Dwyer for Heisman.

Our adversaries are more well-known. Our hope is in a "system back." He leads a team not yet in the national title picture. But fear not. Though the fight will be tough, the fight can be won. With Captain Paul Johnson at the helm, anything can be done, and with the support of the Dwyer Brigade, young Jonathan will soon be heard from on a bigger stage. On a stage in New York, with a small, bronze man in hand.

Sure, Saint Tebow has the love of the people, and both he and Sir Bradford already know Mr. Heisman. But do they have a Brigade? I submit that they do not. With your help, Master Dwyer's name will be all over the internet and television. You'll see him on Twitter, on Facebook, and now on t-shirts. All he has to do is his part on the field. We'll take care of the rest.

So I ask you, gentlemen, do you believe in the cause? Will you join the Dwyer Brigade?

Happy Birthday, CPJ!

Post-Practice Interview with...

Moment of silence

Les Paul, the man who not only invented the hardbody electric guitar, but also brought us multi-track recording has died at the age of 94. Fellow guitar players know his significance, but trust me when I say, without him, most of the music you know today would not be.

Thanks Les.

Johnson Quotes - Part 1

In a new on-going segment here at MOTG, we will be bringing you the best in the Yogi Berra meets George S. Patton like declarations of our field general, Coach Johnson. The man has a way with words that we will let speak for itself.

“We might not have 98,000 people in the stands every time we play, but you don’t get any points for that.”

- Paul. Johnson.

Your 2009 Georgia Tech football season ticket package...

Top 10 Best E-Mail Subject lines received during the year?

10. The test came back negative.
9. You're not the father.
8. UGA football receives 20 year probation.
7. Your offer on the foreclosed home 300k under appraisal value has been accepted.
6.
5. We would like to announce that your debut film is nominated for 12 Oscars.
4. Johnathan Dwyer, stays for senior year.
3. Welcome to the Georgia Lottery Mega Million Winners Facebook Group.
2. It's a boy.
1. Your 2009 Georgia Tech football season ticket package is being shipped.

Deadication

Bumblebee! Ironhide!

2009 Great Yellow Jacket Encounter

Photo credit: LensEffects

Well, for those of you who were able to make it down to the Jacket Encounter Saturday I would imagine your one lasting memory was the blazing heat. I will however say that aside from that, I was very impressed with the turnout. Seemed to be much more excitement than the previous year. I thought the setup was great, and the lines for autographs were long (which should be expected). We grabbed a few posters for a friend's son, I'm going to ship them out in a day or so. You need all the help you can get to acquire cool GT items when you're way up in Seattle. The new video board looked great and feels a little like putting a new 50" Samsung HD in a 5x5 room (a good thing). The ribbon boards are still a work in progress and it appears that the lettering on the west stands is also getting an upgrade. I remember a major complaint last year was the lack of refreshment availability. I can't speak to that as we hit the Varsity afterwards. Interesting memory from the day. While sitting at the V feasting on a chili dog a young lady walks in wearing ultra tight micro-shorts and a tank top. Not a day over 16. But due to the over hormoned chicken nuggets that kids are raised on these days, it's frankly hard to tell. Well, she then proceeded to roll her shirt up as high as possible exposing her newly autographed midriff. Also made a point to push the low rise mirco-shorts even lower. The view from the back of the room was quite humorous as most of the guys had a difficult time hold on to their frosted orange. The reaction I'm sure she was going for. These kids today.

Check out RamblinWreck.com's Photo Gallery to see some pics of this years event. Sorry I forgot to take some!

LINK

Also, side note. For those of you who are jersey junkies and fashionestias. The new jerseys are out and yes, they have gone back to the "Vegas Gold" instead of last years darker gold. It looks good.

Practice Reports - Day 4

Here you go!

Georgia Tech's passing game improving - AJC

Day 4 in the books - AJC blog

GT Football Practice No. 4 - Tech Talk

Practice #4 - Jacket Buzz (new Tech blog)

My Dream College Football Scenario

Everyone has their own solution for college football's lack of a playoff. I sketched mine out a while back, and I'm just now getting around to typing it all out. This solution is a dream scenario that could never happen, but say we could do whatever we wanted... here's what I would do.

Reorganize the conferences

If there's one thing the Pac 10 has figured out, it's conference size. The Big 10 has it figured out in name only, but added an 11th team. They're trying to add a 12th now to be like everyone else, but that's not a good route to go. Here's why.

A 12-team conference means you don't get to play everyone in your conference every year in football. You can go two years without playing half of the teams in your own conference! And if you're lucky, like half the Big XII North every couple years, you avoid the good half of the other division (Big XII scheduling is set up so some teams miss Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas Tech in the same season).

Here's the beauty of a 10-team conference. You play every single team in your conference every year. There's no question who's the champ then. Sure, it may come down to a tie-breaker, but if it's a two-team tie, they definitely played each other. And if it's a 3-team or more, you just need better tie-breakers in place than the Big XII. And you don't need a conference championship game. The season was your conference championship because you had a chance to beat every team in the conference. Sure, it adds one more conference game than most teams currently have, but in this scenario, everyone would be doing it. And without the need for the conference championship game, every week still matters!

Want to know how it gets even better? You use these same conferences for basketball, and you play every team twice. No divisions. No only playing only half the league home-and-away. You play everyone twice. More on that later in a post that will include the new conference for schools with no football team (The Why Do You Exist Conference).

Onto what I'm getting at.

We take the current BCS conference teams and reorganize them into 10-team conferences. There are 66 BCS teams currently. We need four more to round out the conferences, and there were exactly 4 I felt were worthy of the bump-up due to recent, but sustained, success:

TCU
BYU
Utah
Boise State

So now we have our 70 teams. What will we look for when reorganizing? I want to keep rivals together and have everything make geographical sense. It ended up being possible to make no two teams that are in the same state end up in different conferences. So without further ado, here are my revamped 10-team conferences:

Click the map to see it in all its glory.

I was able to keep everything geographically well-contained with the exception of the Northern Conference. The leftovers were pieced together to make the last 10-team conference, but it's still not too large geographically; just has the two outliers.

A quick note for the Tech/ACC fans. I wanted to keep Clemson and South Carolina in the Southern Conference, but as I got further around the map, I had to go back and switch them for the Mississippi schools to balance everything out.

You end up with the same two most powerful conferences basically. The Southern Conference took some of the best SEC and ACC teams, and the Southwest Conference is basically the Big XII South plus LSU. Scary. The Pac 10 is the only one that didn't change at all.

Finally, rivals that are currently out-of-conference (Georgia/Georgia Tech, Florida/Florida State, Iowa/Iowa State, Kentucky/Louisville, Clemson/South Carolina) are in the same conference. And I'm helping the environment and schools' budgets by minimizing travel expenses!

So how does this become a playoff idea?

Well, you've got 7 indisputable conference champions unless a 3-way tie occurs. In that case, the newer, better tie-breakers are in effect. I'm not here to solve all the world's problems. Just the conference realignment and playoff bracket.

Take your 7 conference champs and let a committee, much like basketball's selection committee, add an 8th, at-large team and seed the 8 playoff teams. Now you've got yourself a nice little 8-team college football playoff. Everyone there won their conference except the one team a qualified committee deems the best team in the country that didn't win their conference. Now you've got a playoff, and you can't tell me every week doesn't matter with this playoff. You've basically got to win a 9-week conference playoff to get in.

True, your non-conference games won't matter as much, but neither will the polls. All you're trying to do there is boost your resume to be voted the best team in the country that's left out in case you don't win your conference.

What do we do about the bowls?

Let the rest of the country play them. There are still a lot of good teams out there. Still conference bragging rights. Even moreso now that they're completely regionalized and each one's champion is competing for the national championship. This is a dream scenario, so I'm not worried about money corporations, TV, and schools would lose. But you can't tell me this 8-team playoff wouldn't gain a lot of attention.

How many games would a team play?

Well, to win the national championship, a team would have to win 3 playoff games. Everyone in the country will play 9 conferences games, and pick whatever number you like for non-conference. Let's say everyone plays 3. None are taken up by rivals because they're in your conference. Sure, some minor ones may be lost, and Florida and Tennesse can schedule each other every few years if they want, but the main ones are on the conference schedule.

Anyway, that means 12 regular season games for everyone, one bowl game for bowl teams, and up to 3 games for playoff teams, so TWO teams will play 15 games. Everyone gets at least 12. That doesn't sound so bad. Plenty of teams play 14 including their bowl now.

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So there it is. What do you think? I'm sure I forgot some of the things I wanted to say, but basically, I would love for every conference to have 10 teams so they all play each other every year (and twice in basketball), and I would love a playoff to determine a true, undisputed national champion every year. I can dream, can't I?

EDIT: I knew I forgot a couple things that I'd think of this morning. Notre Dame - sorry... you have to be in a conference now. I don't care how many "rivalries" you have. Schedule some in the non-conference games. And if the selection committee deems an undefeated team outside these conferences to be the best team to fill the 8th playoff spot, that works, too.

Let us know what you think in the comments section.

Practice Reports - Day 3

Here are your links to Day 3's practice reports. Sounds like Nesbitt had a good day passing the ball.

Fall Practice #3 - From The Rumble Seat

Georgia Tech football practice report - AJC

Day 3 in the books - AJC blog

Better late than never: GT football practice day 3 - Tech Talk

Practice Reports - Day 2

Thanks to all these people going to practice and writing about it for us. Sounds like the quarterbacks started passing the ball a lot better yesterday, which is good news.

Fall Practice #2 - From The Rumble Seat

Georgia Tech coaches evaluate freshmen - AJC

Day 2 in the books - AJC blog

Position battles loom for Jackets - macon.com

Football Practice Day 2 - Tech Talk (macon.com blog)

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In other news, season ticket sales are up this year.

Also, ESPN did another gimmicky thing yesterday and picked the 4o teams they would choose if we could limit the FBS to 40 teams, and Tech made the list at #32. Full list here.

More actual thoughtful posts coming soon. Promise. It's a busy time.

Practice Reports - Day 1

CPJ tells Jonathan Malone he throws like a girl

Since I have to sit in front of a computer all day, I'll let those who can go outside report on the first day of practice. It's good to finally have something to talk about...

Fall Practice #1 - From the Rumble Seat (formerly thelegaxyx4 - they do a great job, check it out)
Johnson happy with Jackets' first practice - AJC
First day in the books - AJC blog
Yellow Jackets get off to slow start - macon.com
GT Football Practice Day 1 Update - macon.com blog