Searels to Leave for Texas?

According to Gentry Estes, of 247Sports, Stacy Searels may be on the move. For years now, Searels has been regarded as one of the top O-Line coaches in the country. When he came over to join Richt's staff from the Bayou, it was considered a HUGE win for the Dawgs. When we retained him and he declined to join the ATM operation on the Plains that his his alma freaking mater, well, that was another win.

Given the Dawgs recent struggles on the line and running the football, more than a few Georgia fans have started jumping off the Searels bandwagon (he's also been the "running game coordinator"). Some, even, may be excited to see him leave. Here are a few stream of consciousness-type thoughts on the situation (no... not the dude that cleared $5 mil last year thanks to MTV, although at this point, that may Garner (see what I did there) more hits):


So, is the fact Searels is considering jumping ship a negative sign? What's changed that would make Searels more likely to take this job than the alma mater? Were Bobo and Searles at odds on the play-calling? (*conspiracy theory* /lost'd) Searels contract is good through June 2011, so something has to give -- either we extend his contract, he works for free during the 2011 campaign, or he finds employment elsewhere. Did Richt (read McGarity if you believe Richt is spineless) grow some serious cojones and politely encourage Searels to consider another place of employment? If Searles does leave, who is his replacement? And finally, OMFG! What does this mean for recruiting?!?!

On a serious note, here are our thoughts:

1.) The O-Line grossly underperformed in 2010. Searels did some great work with the patchwork lines we've put out there in recent years, but I challenge anyone to praise his work this past year. You've got to wonder if Searels' approach was starting to fall on deaf ears.
2.) We really do wonder what would cause Seaels to leave now when he passed on Auburn previously.
3.) The idea of Richt and McGarity having to find a replacement is pretty exciting. While it's not as high profile a change as OC or DC, it is a significant part of the staff. The logic behind Richt hanging onto Bobo after the stellar (wait.. we lost?) performance against UCF is that it's widely believed Richt has one year to turn this thing around. Combine wholesale changes to the offensive staff with a young quarterback just starting to grasp the CURRENT offense and you've got a recipe for a long road back to the dubya column. If hiring a new O-Line coach offers an opportunity to make an impact in 2011 without completely jacking our swagger, then yay.

[*full disclosure: Our only interaction with Stacy Searels occurred inside Son's -- the new, not the old -- one day when he was eating with Bobo. Allegedly, Searels and Bobo are besties!]


For reals, y'all, what do you think about all this? As I've always said...

This Is Why Al Gore Invented Twitter

Wait, wha? He didn't invent Twitter? Anyway, you. Must. Click. This. (Dear God, thank you, EDSBS).

Unless, of course, you find 2.5 Men funny (the show, not the idea), then you can just move along... nothin' to see here.

Luck Follows Laziness

Sometimes laziness pays off. As a naturally lazy and unmotivated person, I cherish these moments. To me there is no better feeling than blowing off something that seems important at the time, only to find out later that you were better off sitting on the couch in your boxers watching Back to the Future and drinking a PBR or six (Then repeating with Part II).

So you can imagine my delight yesterday when the Patriots got stomped by their arch rivals and America's favorite overweight, trash talking, foot fetish cameraman. You see, just days earlier, I had drafted an entire divisional round playoff preview post for this very blog. The conclusion of this post was essentially me listing the many reasons the Patriots would make Mark Sanchez their bitch and basically advising our reader(s?) to throw the bank at Brady & Co. Then fate stepped in. I was roughly four beers into the process of editing, adding pictures, and just making sure everything was up to par with the self imposed standards of the most sophisticated blog in the blogosphere, when Marty starts jamming out to Johnny B. Goode. The rest, they say, is history.


"Your cousin... Marvin Berry!"

Fortunately for our avid following of gambling advice seekers, I deemed the fate of Marty McFly and Doc Brown more important than sharing with the world my infinite knowledge of sports betting (disrupted only by grey-haired, mammoth necked, play-action incompetent safeties). In the end, laziness won, and thus, countless STRWR readers were saved from massive gambling debt. You're welcome.

The murderer of my three-game parlay



In case you were wondering about my success in the other three games last week, I was 3-0 against the spread. I do take pride in that undeniable clairvoyance, but to be fair, the Patriots game was the only one in which I used an anal-raping analogy, so I'd say that prediction carries a little extra weight. Still though, a 3-1 prediction post doesn't do anyone any good if it dies in the drafts folder. That's why tonight I am DVR-ing Jersey Shore and resisting the urge to watch He's Just Not That Into You for the third time this week to throw out some bold but scarily accurate speculation. Without further ado...

NFC

Packers (-3.5) over BEARS

Finally. I get a chance to do what I've been waiting to do all season: bet against the Bears in the playoffs. Unfortunately I could not do so last week, as they were playing some 7-9 team from the NFC West in the divisional round. Were it not for Marvin Berry slamming his car trunk on his hand that fateful November 1955 night, you would have read in my previous post that I have been dying to declare the downfall of the biggest douche in football, Jay Cutler, and my plea for someone to just please kick this guy squarely in the nuts. Seriously, if I were Roger Goodell I would award a bonus for knocking this guy out, rather than issue a fine. Let's forget about the rumored cocaine addiction, the interceptions, the lack of any perceivable social skills and the ugliest drop back in football for a second and focus on the worst part of his game: his face. 

One look at this pouty-face, quaffed up chotch and your first impression is miles away from starting quarterback in the NFL (not that anything else about his game would lead you to believe otherwise). He does have a cannon, but I refuse to believe  he will ever be able to get over himself long enough to lead a team to a Super Bowl. Throw in a subpar O-line being pressured by Clay Matthews and Charles Woodson and there is real cause for concern in Chicago. Plus, between dong photos, lawsuits, multiple injuries, and meth busted sisters, Brett Favre has become Karma's bitch this year, and she is saving the best for last: a trip to the Super Bowl for his former team. Rodgers comes in hot, Cutler throws three pics, and we have a six seed in the Super Bowl.

Final Score: Packers 24, Bears 16

AFC

STEELERS (-3.5) over Jets

Come playoff time, I usually like to bet with quarterbacks and defenses. It just so happens that Pittsburgh has the league's best defense against the run, and the Jets' passing attack is shaky at best thanks to their wildly inaccurate and grossly overrated quarterback. Plus, on the other side of the ball, Big Ben already has two rings, one more and he'll be able to give the brass-knuckle shocker to totally consenting college girls in GCSU bathrooms... so you know he's motivated. Seriously though, the Steelers only allow 2.8 YPC on first down, which means you'll be relying on Sanchez to step up and make a play on third and long way too often. That guy facing pressure on third down is more confused than German drivers when facing a traffic circle. I know the Steelers line is more banged up than the Hill Valley Clock Tower after a lightning storm and the Jets varying blitz packages could give them problems with pass protection... but at the end of the day, I just see Big Ben raping the shit out of this team. 



Define "consentual"...



Final Score: Steelers 31, Jets 24

Write em down, take it to the bank. Guaranteed money. Well... I don't know about guaranteed. But hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed I will--I got spare time. But now, for your customers' sake, for your daughter's sake, you might want to think about taking the Steelers and Packers on Sunday. 

Stay Lazy-o,

Shast

Comments on Dribblin' Dawgs' Loss to Tennessee

• The Vols snatched 14 offensive rebounds.  The visitors from Knoxville also out rebounded the home team 34-28. In a game where both teams score under 60, that stat line matters. 
• Williams' shot in the final seconds beat the buzzer. Everyone at home knew that was the case and if there was no foul, the men in stripes made the right call.
• As for the foul, there is no "over-the-back" violation in basketball. I'm not a referee (or a basketball player), but looking at the NCAA rulebook will inform you of this. The rules of verticality govern players jumping for a rebound. While rebounding, one player who invades the vertical column of space above another player who has established his position legally, and who makes contact with that other player, has committed a foul. 
• I haven't seen the replay on that to know whether a foul looked like it should have been called, but I sure do know that the refs owed the Dawgs big-time after counting the Tennessee basket that occurred after the shot-clock had expired only several plays before.

UPDATE:

Over at Rocky Top Talk, Dawg fans are getting some fairly amiable consolation in the form of a that's-just-the-way-the-cookie-crumbles pat on the back...

NCAA Compliance Game

Play the game, it gives you ten scenarios and you make a choice between accepting or rejecting an offer or benefit as a student-athlete.  I missed one "opportunity," not accepting a benefit that was permitted by NCAA rules.  I've never read an NCAA compliance rulebook and this was just about the most obvious, common-sensical multiple choice test I've ever taken.  This is on a UNCCH website and I believe is intended to illustrate how difficult it is to not break NCAA rules, but it had the complete opposite effect on me.  I realize that many of these kids are border-line mentally incompetent, but come on, man... 

http://reesenews.org/2010/12/16/staying-in-bounds/7929/

League of Extraordinary Bloggers

Some questions just have no easy answer.  Questions like "Why are we here?","Is there intelligent life on other planets?" and "Dude, what were you doing with that sock?" 

In the past week, I have received these type of questions from both our readers regarding the contributors to Stuff that Rhymes with Radio.  O_Canada1994 writes, "what kind of people would waste their time writing this garbage? Also, how do block this site and how does my pop-up blocker not prevent this from happening?" and an automated message from QTslut69 poses the question, "Hey baby, wuts ur name? You want to cum over?" 

The world has spoken, they want the veil of secrecy removed from our League of Genius and our gifted writers to no longer toil in the oppression of anonymity.

STRWR Corporate Headquarters.

Unfortunately, STRWR is much more than a bully pulpit for our members to eloquently and persuasively extol the virtues of UGA Athletics and the New Orleans Saints... Or even-- in some cases-- incoherently string together seemingly unrelated words in rambling, mostly illiterate attempts at discussing the Falcons.

Sorry, Samuel L., most Falcons fans couldn't even "Rise Up" to meet Auburn's academic requirements.

Much like Operation Blackbriar or separate terrorist cells, the great men of STRWR know very little about each other.  This is a group focused on the mission at hand: filling the holes in our lives with the delusion that people want to read what we are writing.  Familiarity and camaraderie would serve to erode our collective focus.  We sacrifice fame, fortune, personal relationships, and occasionally hygiene to meet our common goal of spewing our opinions onto the web.  And in our selflessness, we are heroes.  Georgia fans can relate to the familiar coach-speak "the name on the front of the jersey means more than the name on the back."  Georgia Tech fans know that not even karate robes have names.

Parents weekend at Ga Tech.



With that in mind, my next post will be the first in a series in which, after looking up "psychological profiling" on WikiHow, I will attempt to go deep into the minds of our contributors.  While we may never know the names of these internet troubadours, I will study their habits, learn how they think, how they feel. In doing so, I will learn who they really are.   


Fasten your seat belts, readers (or, more likely, reader), and get ready for some serious investigative journalism.

I'm gonna blow the lid off this whole thing, I tell ya!

Things that could make my weekend not suck.

I was listening to "AllNight" with Jason Smith on the radio last night because a) my cable's out, b) I don't have a girl to tell me to "turn it off and go to sleep, I have a headache... not tonight, it's not your birthday" and c) sports radio is my only source of news (seriously, I didn't know about 9/11 until the Yankees embroidered an "FD" in front of their hat logo... Too soon?). He brought up an interesting, if not existentially depressing, point: Dick-Rod won 15 games in the last 3 years. At Michigan (Now, I'm not saying that we, as Dawg fans, should look at this and say, "Good Lord, we're sitting pretty in the Classic City," but that's another story...). The point is, Rodriguez has had 15 good weeks of work in 156 weeks on the job. Here is a guy who hates life from the moment he wakes up till the moment he loses a game and drinks/cries himself to sleep 90% of the time. Ninety Percent! How many of you would bitch and moan about losing a job where only one day in ten you didn't seriously contemplate drinking a cocktail of printer ink and Drano and shoving your dick in a blender (if just to feel something again!)?

Especially with a $2.5 mil payout.

You could buy like 250,000 more wives with that, Rich!

Then I got to thinking... and I'm not much for self-pity; I'm generally a happy guy, but my life sucks way more than 90% of the time. I put in 80 hour weeks each and every week for roughly 40k a year. Oh, wait, sorry, -40k a year. I don't have no money. It would take another 2 teachers' salaries for me to be broke. In fairness' sake, there is a plan somewhere in there to get a for-pay job... which I will need to pay back a debt large enough to cripple Greece. Again.

Anyway, I stepped back off the ledge when it dawned on me that maybe we all have to sit back sometimes and realize that we should just enjoy the small victories we can scavenge each day. Savor the scraps of happiness falling from Life's mouth as it devours our dreams of being filthy rich, dating a supermodel, and owning a fully sentient yet good-natured robot who plays X-box (but is just a little worse than you at it). Maybe we don't need the pure, unadulterated joy of another Saints Superbowl... not to mention the 1st Dawgs National Title since Reagan (Those were the days, weren't they?). Or even finding out that kid who kicked yous ass in kindergarten got hit by a police car fleeing an attempted robbery. Maybe we just need the simple pleasure of realizing, "You know what? Today didn't suck so much."

That's for my milk money. Bitch.

That being said, and since list-based humor has never been done before, here is my Top 3 Ways This Weekend Might Not Suck...


3.) Saints torch the Seahawks.

Prediction: Pain.

Let's be real here, there aren't many prognosticators out there who have the Seahawks making it past this round. Even at 10 point favorites, this is still probably the safest bet of the weekend. I know this is a Wild Card team against a conference champion, but take away a loss in a meaningless game and the Saints have marched through the second half of the season. It should be a de facto bye week for the Black and Gold. Besides, being this year's NFC West Champion is akin to being the tallest midget (Sorry, "little person"). Case and point: Seattle is entering the playoffs with a losing record (You read that right). The one bright spot over the past few seasons for the Seachickens, Matt Hasslebeck, is banged up enough to be sharing snaps with a greenhorn who couldn't even win consistently in the ACC. And the way Gregg Williams calls blitzes, you might as well forward Jonathan Vilma's mail to the Seattle backfield because he will be living there.

But still, something about this game has me uneasy. Our two leading rushers are now out for the year, and even Breesus has been throwing picks like he wants some work on his tackling. The Saints are more beat up right now than a Saigon whore after weekend leave and Reggie Bush runs between the tackles like he's got Avian Bone Syndrome. Combine that with the difficulties of playing in a city who's beautiful weather inspired the hopeful and upbeat stylings of Grunge music, and this game might be a little more treacherous than we realize. Plus, there's that whole twelfth man thing, which is totally gay-bones.

But who gives a damn, we're America's Team (eat shit, Dallas, we can milk the Katrina thing for at least 4 more years).

Probability: Take it to the bank. Seriously. In hindsight, it's safer than actually putting your money in one was five years ago.
Happiness Quotient: Anything less would be a brutal blow to my psyche and would precipitate the retiring of my once-proud Marques Colston jersey. But hey, we're only going for "not sucking," right?

2) Bulldogs Make Some Noise at Stegeman.

You know what that is, Patterson? Two points and a aerial teabagging.

And I don't mean two or three highlights that will melt your face off and cause Brandon Knight to spontaneously evacuate his bowels. We'll get those.

I mean make some noise on a national level. The fans will be ready, the Coliseum needs a signature win to go along with its face-lift and the student body is screaming for a team to get excited about.

It won't be easy. Trey Thompkins, start your ascent to a lottery pick with a 20-10 game. Travis Leslie, prove you're really a skilled basketball player and not some mutant athlete who happens to play basketball. Dustin Ware, don't be afraid to throw it up from beyond the arc; open up the lane for our big guys. Defensively, be on Knight like bad press on Kanye West. Mark Fox, have them ready. It's our time.

Beat Kentucky and that lone AP vote makes babies. Let's get relevant for the first time since Jim Harrick taught Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball. It's time to make a splash, lock up Atlanta area recruiting, and have Men's Basketball finally compete with Football for fan attention.

Probability: Pretty much on par with the chances I eat Wendy's twice this weekend.
Happiness Quotient: Can you quantify the redemption of the Bulldog Nation? We need this.

1) Production of an Arrested Development movie officially announced.

Officer, it was either the guy on the left or O.J. Simpson.

If you've never seen the TV show, go watch it. I'll wait.

Pretty great wasn't it? Damn right it was. I won't go into it too much, because it's not really why you're reading this blog, but other than perhaps Freaks and Geeks, no greater show was ever cut so short for simply being too far ahead of it's time. I know this; I've seen every show ever.

Rumor has it that the last piece of the puzzle is to get Michael Cera signed on with the project. Really? You've got an Academy Award winning director (presumably) on board and the lame kid from Superbad is dragging his feet? Could someone tell this "actor" he's got less range than Stephen Hawking? Also, he's from Canada.

This is from that movie where he plays a painfully awkward kid that's not really even funny.

Come on, guys, you owe this to us, and you owe it to yourselves.

Probability: About the same as Linda Cardellini diving in my bed.
Happiness Quotient: About the same as Linda Cardellini diving in my bed.

What?! I totally have things I can offer her.