It took me one look at Doyel's bio on Sportsline to figure out his purpose in life. Every sports publication, TV show or radio program has the prickly commentator with a chronic case of diarrhea of the mouth. Think Jim Rome, Terrence Moore or any other columnist that just gets people's blood boiling. You see folks, journalism has evolved into an online business. Online businesses gain revenue by website hits. People return to sports websites to com
ment and engage in debate. Doyel's job is to enrage enough people so that they will continually return to the site to bash him. Doyel excels at his job.Really, if Doyel actually believes what he wrote, he either didn't actually watch the Georgia-South Carolina game, he has no recollection of any previous season of NCAA football, or he is in fact less intelligent than Stephen Baldwin's character in the classic movie Bio Dome, who also happens to be named Doyle.
Doyle alleges that based solely on Georgia's lackluster performance against the Cocks in Columbia, they are nowhere near good enough to be called the third best team in the country. Take the lead from his now infamous column.
There's a problem with Georgia, but it's nothing that can't be fixed. That's the good news.
The problem is more fundamental than Georgia's bad group of receivers, bad pass coverage, and bad play-calling. Georgia is ranked No. 2 in the country. That's the problem. But it's a fixable problem.
It can be rectified as soon as Sunday night when coaches and media make their newest Top 25 polls and drop the Bulldogs like a left hook to the jaw. South Carolina almost made it easier on pollsters by landing a haymaker of their own, but Georgia bobbed and weaved and avoided being knocked out of the BCS championship picture with a season-saving 14-7 victory Saturday at Williams-Brice Stadium.
Now it's up to voters to do the right thing and smack Georgia in the mouth. Say, by dropping the Bulldogs to somewhere like seventh.
Kudos, Doyel. Seriously, for someone who wears pseudo-intellectual reading classes and has an unnecessary "G" in his name, you certainly have your finger on the pulse of college football. If Doyel has been lucid over the past decade or so of this series, he would know that it's always an ugly affair. If Doyel wasn't in some sort of latte-induced suspended state of consciousness, he would realize that over the past couple of years, the Gamecocks have given the eventual national champions fits.
Last year, future national champs LSU needed a touchdown run from their kicker to pull away AT HOME and beat the Cocks 28-16. Two years ago, the media darling Florida Gators needed a blocked field goal at the end of regulation to squeak out a 17-16 win over the Carolina. Those Gators, if you'll remember, went on to one of the most dominant BCS Title Game performances in history.
So what did Georgia do? They went ON THE ROAD for their first SEC game of the year. They played in an extremely hostile environment in extremely miserable conditions. They went up against a coach whose single greatest joy in coaching is beating the Bulldogs.
And what did Georgia do? They won. They looked sloppy and under-prepared, but the certainly didn't look outmatched.
Doyel particularly delights in Georgia's offensive struggles (against the top-ranked defense in the SEC, universally considered the best conference on the planet). He likes to refer to Matthew Stafford and Knowshon Moreno as "alleged" Heisman contenders. He must have forgotten that Moreno torched the SEC for over 1,000 yards last year despite not being the starter for most of it.
Doyel also picks on a quote by Georgia coach Mark Richt, in which Richt attributes his team's sluggish performance to the weather and the hostile environment.
"When you play on a hot, muggy, miserable day against the type of resistance we were up against," Richt said, "you're not going to be sharp."
Apparently giddy with the chance to show off all the one-liners he apparently gleaned from Jim Rome, Doyel proceeds to point out that the Bulldogs play all of their games in hot weather.
"Georgia plays in the SEC, and the "S" isn't for "Siberia," Doyel quips hysterically. "It gets hot in the South. It'll stay hot in the South."
Gregg, I'm a journalism student, not a meteorologist, Al Gore or Nostradamus. But, I'm willing to go out on some limbs. I'm willing to bet it won't be a heat index of 99 degrees when the Bulldogs kick off against Alabama at 7:45 in Athens in two weeks. It probably wont be fry-an-egg-on-the-pavement hot when Tennessee comes to town one week after that. And it sure won't resemble the surface of the sun when Georgia heads to Auburn...in NOVEMBER.
Finally, Doyel suggests that USC, Oklahoma, LSU, Florida, Missouri and even Alabama deserve to be ranked higher. I sure won't argue with USC and I'll even give you Oklahoma, but come on. Alabama? Didn't they just beat Tulane 20-6? Hardly convincing.
Doyel, I don't think you're this dumb. I think Sportsline pays you to generate web site hits and that's what you do. Georgia may or may not win the SEC or BCS championships this year. But I promise you that Georgia's win over the Cocks was just that; a win. Not some ominous sign of doom.
Sportsline has a problem. But it's nothing that can't be fixed. That's the good news.
Gregg Doyel gets paid to come up with mind-bogglingly extreme statements for the sake of generating site hits.
Now it's up to his bosses to do the right thing and smack him in the mouth. Say, by putting him on the WNBA beat?
1 comment:
You really should be getting paid for this....
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