….. If your favorite football team is named Carolina and has a shade of blue as its primary color, you are perched on a ledge in either Chapel Hill or Charlotte. BobLee assesses the current plight of Tar Heels and Panthers ….. as well as other stuff too.
I made a public comment earlier this week about how UNC’s notoriously fickle football fan base was in a fickled frenzy following yet another fruitless foray to “Bitzy Grant Stadium around Bobby Dodd Field across from The Varsity”. A notoriously fickle UNC fan challenged me that “State fans are MORE fickle”. The bar of “fickleness” has been officially lowered to subterranean depths.
Could my dissenter perhaps be referring to the lupine loons giving themselves wedgies following that lackluster South Carolina loss? Lackluster South Carolina loss ? What lackluster South Carolina loss? Oh, that was just a pre-season warm-up for Murray State! Oh! …. Fickle fans, like cockroaches and crooked politicians, are ever present everywhere.
Recall last January when Roy’s Boys were 0-2 in the ACC and the certifiably insane were demanding that Dickie call Rick Majerus ASAP. You define “fickle” your way . I’ll define it MY way.
Congrats to The Marine, Russell & Team for an impressive win over another former member of Jimmy Johnson’s Super Bowl Cowboys staff. TO’B seems to do well against Jimmy’s former assistants …. Huh?
I no longer visit those dark and scary loonie bins known as sports fan forums, but I was told that UNC was being touted as a BCS-buster prior to encountering “Paul Johnson’s stoopid offense that will never work in a big time conference”. Hopefully the touters of such foolishness will, upon reaching puberty, not cut themselves shaving.
Carolina loses more consistently in Atlanta than anyone since Rankin Smith and Biff Pocoroba.
Being “better than we were under Torbush or Bunting” IS a noteworthy tout and totally true. While Butch is not in the rarified pantheon of college coaching legends like Stagg, Yost, Hayes, Royal, Bryant, and Brown he does have far more than “a clue”. Butch Davis has indeed restored respectability to fabled Kenan.
Yes, the players who have gone on to the NFL since Butch’s much-heralded arrival were indeed recruited by the much-maligned “ol blue-bleeder”. Bunting The Bleeder had indeed figured out “recruiting” in the waning days of his woeful reign. Regardless, for an additional $1,600,000/year, UNC got itself a head coach with “cred”. But even “cred” can’t win without an experienced Offensive Line.
To the average Chapel Hillian the definition of “an offensive line” is “I like Dick Cheney”. A REALLY “offensive line” would be “Let’s rename Kenan Stadium after Jesse Helms.” Tar Heel sports fans might know a point guard from a ballpoint pen and a power forward from a Power Ranger but the subtle intricacies of successful football are sorta fuzzy beyond “how many Choos in Choo Choo?”
Yes, that last paragraph runneth over with “money line$”. Feel free to send the entire paragraph to all your buddies
Those “big fat guys that squat down in front of the Quarterback” are football’s forgotten men …. unless one is a quarterback, a running back or an offensive coordinator.
It is October 1 with eight games remaining in the season, six of which are against legitimate teams. Carolina’s offensive line has, thru off-season attrition and early season injuries, been reduced to “a bag o’bones, a hank o’hair and two freshmen walk-ons named Moe”.
No BFD you say. Find some more big fat guys and teach’em how to squat. I’m sure Assistant Coach Sam Pittman appreciates that succinct description of the fine art of offensive line play.
Offensive linemen are usually the smartest guys on a football team and, in many cases, actually graduate with meaningful degrees. Hidden from the view of frenzied fickle fans those 300 lb hippos in knee braces execute a quite intricate choreography that means the difference between a QB sack and some show pony receiver doing a break dance in the end zone. If just one hippo missteps a running back gets pan caked and/or the QB sees double and hears little birdies singing in his helmet. Those 300 lb dancing hippos toil anonymously in a world of split seconds.
Injuries and attrition are as much a part of college football as marijuana busts and Jimma Sexton. Every program is susceptible every time players walk on the practice field or step off a curb awkwardly. Thirteen months ago Georgia was pre-season #1 until in a span of two weeks Reverend Richt’s Dawgs’ O-line was decimated. With a patched together O-line the Dawgs limped home buried in the middle of the SEC despite having the #1 NFL draftee at QB. Matthew Stafford without an O-line was Tyler Hansbrough without Ty Lawson.
So anyhooo …. Butch’s Boys now face eight games using fuzzy-cheeked hippos and cardboard cut-outs of Harris Barton and Brian Blados. Luckily the next two of those games are against the 6th best team in Virginia and a compass Georgia school (where, incidentally, Paul Johnson’s stoopid offense won numerous national championship a few years ago. The SAME Paul Johnson? Yes. How do you remember crap like that BobLee? It’s a gift!).
A nice convincing W over Al “Dead Yet?” Groh’s Hoos will probably restore illusions of BCS-busting glory to the Tar Heel nitwit faction. We’ve learned that Al has already been told by Mr Jefferson not to plan the Groh Family Thanksgiving dinner at The Boar’s Head. After this season’s traditional butt-whuppin’ by Beamer’s Boys, Al’s UVa career, unlike his idol Rasputin, WILL be dead. There are no plans for either a Staples Center Memorial service OR a parade thru downtown HyannisPort.
Carolina will likely be 5-1 in two weeks but doing it with mirrors and the afore-mentioned freshmen walk-on hippos named Moe. Fortunately Midnight With Roy will magically appear and UNC’s fickle fans will be conveniently distracted as is their custom.
Meanwhile in Charlotte, the Big Panther Jerry Richardson must feel like Abraham. He dutifully sacrificed his two sons Mark & Jon in a weird, still unexplained, pre-season ritual. In exchange the NFL gods left him with Handsome Jake still throwing to the wrong color jerseys ….. and an apathetic Julius Peppers cashing giant-normous checks bigger than BoA’s guvmint bailout.
I’ve always liked John Fox. He is like “a Dom Capers who can actually smile” sort of. Life in PantherWorld has to be beyond moribund these days. Mick Mixson is already using old Torbush-era lines like “not quite as bad as last week” and “John Kasay is still pretty good”. Viewed over the life of the franchise, the Panthers have been quite successful but fickle fans with PSAs tend to be more concerned about the last three & out.
Unlike Tar Heels who always have Ol’ Roy as back-up when Autumn dreams fall with the leaves ….. Charlotte sports fans are left with their BOBCATS …… YIKES! Bobcat marketing gurus are offering free season tickets to any Mecklenburg County resident who can “name a Bobcat not named Raymond”. Even Michael and Larry can’t do it. Somewhere Georgie Shinn in fondling a skanky gal and grinning.
You won’t read it anywhere but here ….. but a legitimate Right-Wing pundit spoke UNEVENTFULLY at UNC-CH this week. Nary a window was broken nor pepper sprayed. Jonah Goldberg, blogger son of Conservative Internet Diva Lucianne Goldberg, spoke to a filled-to-capacity Great Hall. Jonah’s subject was Liberalism – A Foundation For Fascism.
Little Haley and her Carrboro Anarchists/street mimes were noticeable by their absence. Just in case, a crack CHPD SWAT team was on-hand. Remember this IS Chapel Hill ….. where a SWAT team consists of three Franklin Street flower ladies carrying nerf bats.
Kudos aplenty to our favorite popular young Chancellor who simply “does what’s right” ….. whether the local failing newspaper chooses to report it or not.
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BCS Championship Game – Houston vs Boise State !!! You read it here first.
The ONLY man in America with a better gig than Kirk Herbstreit is the dude that got the catering contract for the Kardashian / Odom nuptials. Skanks on the half-shell and peppermint stripper poles ! The Kardashians are the Gabor sisters of the New Millenium.
Upon arriving in Copenhagen to pitch Chicago for the 20-whatever Olympics, Obama generously offered a busload of ACORN thugs to “help count the votes” (wink, wink!).
Both of this season’s NCIS episodes have been humdingers. Ziva ALMOST showed an emotion this week but caught herself just in time. I ain’t too crazy about NCIS-LA.
Can you name …..
Three Gabor Sisters
Three Kardashian Sisters (spelling counts)
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