Odds & Ends: Florida Week

Wrapping up the week by tying up some loose ends from the week...

Reader Stephen W. sent me this email that is definitely worth passing along: "I'm not sure if you saw this stat, but I'm watching the VT/UNC game. UGA ranks LAST in red zone rushing ypc at 1.1. VT is next at 1.4. Just thought that was a telling stat for us."

Anyone think we might be seeing a lot of Blair Walsh on Saturday?

(And by the way, what are the odds of a UGA-VT Chick-fil-A Bowl featuring 63 field goals?)

-- And here's an email I got from a Georgia Tech fan: "HOW ABOUT THEM DAWGS? Just cute little puppies now. If them Dawgs win 2 more games then they may get to go to the Toilet Bowl! # 1 # 1 # 1 # 1 # 1 # 1 # 1 # 1 In the ACC # 1" signed, A YELLOW JACKETS' FAN FOR 62 YEARS!

This perplexes me. Why do I get these kind of emails? Am I supposed to just say, "Well, Tech is better this year. Guess I better go become the beat writer for them." Come on, I thought you Tech folks were supposed to be smart.

Comment from Billy D: "So sick of the celebration comments/questions. Not from you DH, you had to ask it but there is no comparison. Richt was trying to fire his troops up when they REALLY needed it, and it worked.

Meyer was just being the Dbag everyone knows he is. There was no reason other than child-like/playground revenge to call those timeouts.

The guy referred to himself in the third person for pete's sake when talking about the incident. I want to beat UF as much for me and UGA as I just want to see Urban dejected and upset. He is worse than Spurrier."

Hard to argue with that logic, but this is really what rivalries are. I mean, it's more fun with this stuff, right? Lane Kiffin is a joke, but he's a fun joke to have around, right? Hating people seems so much more appropriate when you have a good reason. Of course, I also despised Steve Bedrosian for most of the 1980s and early '90s just because I didn't like his beard, so who am I to talk?

-- I have a story in today's Telegraph on Georgia's running game and the approach they're taking to this week's matchup vs. Florida.

-- And a happy 183rd birthday to the Macon Telegraph, which printed its first issue on Nov. 1, 1826. Now, anyone want to guess the date it will print its last edition? (Man, I've really become way too cynical.)

-- From JADAMS regarding the Vince Vance arrest: "Vance was initially pulled over because he was stationary at a green light, not because he ran a red light. When the police officer inquired, he said there was a runner crossing the road, and he was holding traffic for him. The policeman knew this was a lie, as Vance hadn't blocked for a runner all year long."

-- Regarding my blog post on the success opposing tight ends have had against Georgia, I totally missed something, as one anonymous commenter pointed out: "Don't forget Brandon Barden from Vanderbilt. He is a tight end and was the leading receiver for Vandy against us."

I had left Barden off my list because he wasn't Vandy's starting TE in the game, but that was dumb of me. Barden had five catches for 49 yards and a TD against UGA. That's a season high in catches, just four yards off his season high in receiving and it was his only score of the season. Add to that the numbers that Monahan had, and Georgia actually turned in one of its worst performances of the season against TEs in their last game out -- a game in which Vandy's QB really couldn't complete a pass to anyone else. Not good.

-- Some more pretty interesting stats from Dave McMahon, including a far more fair comparison between Timmy Tebow and Herschel Walker.

-- USA Today's TV critic bashes "Community" saying that Joel McHale is ruining the show. I don't see why smugness can't be funny. (With the exception of Greg Doyle columns.)

-- If you're planning to be in Jacksonville tomorrow, this might be something you're interested in:

This Saturday October 31, Nissan will be hosting the Sports Illustrated Heisman Trophy Tour at the Georgia vs Florida game in Jacksonville.

We'll be setting up a huge tent with lots of activities for fans – all FREE - including:

-- Opportunity to meet winningest quarterback in NCAA Division I history from UGA, David Greene and former Heisman winner and 1996 National Championship UF quarterback Danny Wuerffel
-- Check out the original "four-door sports car" - the 290-horsepower 2010 Maxima!
-- Photo on the cover of a personal Sports Illustrated with the Heisman Trophy
-- Compete in one-on-one Heisman trivia challenges
-- Vote on favorite Heisman moment at Sports Illustrated Heisman Bracket Challenge
-- Check out features of every Heisman winner, facts and figures about the Heisman award and vintage photos and odd facts up around the tent.
-- Get a free copy of Sports Illustrated collector’s edition custom publication which celebrates 75 years of the Heisman Memorial Trophy.

The tent opens at 10pm and we'll be hosting activities at the Championship Dreams Festival outside of Jacksonville Municipal Stadium’s South End Zone, up until the 3:30pm game.

-- From ChicagoDawg regarding my analysis of Georgia's running game earlier this week:

"Good stuff David and certainly some interesting data. However, in doing statistical analysis and/or regressions (linear or multiple) one should always remember that a set of data may have a high degree of correlation without necessarily answering causation. This is especially so in football statistical analysis as the data sets are usually quite small (relatively speaking) and there are so many variables to consider. For example, a given team may run more in the 4th quarter, have more points in the 4th quarter, etc., because they amass these statistics in games in which they hold a large lead and thus are inclined to run the ball more and are playing mis-matched opponent. So, the bad team(s) might be the causal effect of greater 4th quarter ground and scoring success, not the commitment to running the ball in the 4th quarter."

I think what ChicagoDawg is missing here is that my statistical analysis relies upon readers not asking follow-up questions.

Seriously though, those are good points. As with any numbers, they're sort of a guide to help keep things in context, but the best analysis is always a hybrid of what the numbers tell us and what we've actually seen. In this case, I think both tend to add up to Georgia not being very good at running the football.

-- The documentary about "Big Lebowski" fans came out on DVD this week.

-- I got a couple of emails about this, so I figured I should address it: Apparently the length and quantity of posts on the blog's main page makes it tough to load the site on a Blackberry or iPhone. I've gone in and adjusted the formatting so only the past two days of posts appear on the main page. You can still look at the rail on the righthand side to find links to older posts. Since we usually post at least 3-4 stories a day, be sure you go and sift through some of the stuff you might have missed.

What I would actually prefer to do is to post only a few graphs from each blog post, then have you click on the post itself to read the whole article. Two problems with this though: 1.) I don't know how to set this up in Blogger, so if anyone can chime in with some advice, I'd love to hear it, and 2.) I'd be concerned that the "tease" to the whole post might not always be enough to entice you to actually read the whole thing. So... what do you guys think? Would you prefer a set up like that or leave the blog the way it is?

OK, that's it. I'm off to Jacksonville. See you in traffic on the way to the stadium tomorrow! Safe travels.