Join us Sunday as we recap the Georgia game.  We’ll also have extended discussion about WHY THE HECK TBONE MISSED THE SECOND HALF OF THE GAME (Spoiler Alert: He was forced to go to a wedding). 

We’ll also be previewing Navy, and why it still hurts so bad to even mention their name.  You can find the show here:

TRC Unleashed – Episode 5

Go Cocks!

Most awesomely ridiculous drawing of football players with mascot heads I have ever seen:

Couple/three points:

– Yeah I know it’s from last week, and that this is THIS week, and Boise/UGa stuff is old news, but I see what I see when I see it.

– The drawing is from ESPN the Magazine, I think, so h/t to them I guess.  BUT, I don’t think the artist knew what the BSU mascot is.  The thing drawn here looks like a weird Toad Demon, with a Steve Taneyhill mullet.  Actually, maybe Boise should consider going with this over their banal Bronco.  THE BOISE STATE WEIRD TOAD DEMONS WITH STEVE TANEYHILL MULLETS TAKE THE FIELD!!!   It could work.

– Oh, and why is the thing breathing fire?  I can believe that horses and dogs can be dressed up to look like football players, but the fire nostrils tell me it was a Lord of the Rings nerd pushing the ink pens.

– Is that lightning or slobber coming out the dog’s mouth?   I would go with slobber, since that’s the closest to bulldog reality (I’m talking about the mascot, NOT THE FANS, geeze people!), and it would be a good rock-paper-scissors answer to the flaming nostrils, but its gotta be lightning, right?  Otherwise The Mothership is betraying a huge bias in favor of BSU and against the SEC, and that can’t right, can it?

– The dog is kneeing the flaming toad monster in the groin, which, as we all know from hard experience, is an accurate portrayal of Georgia sportsmanship.

– The toad monster and the dog are apparently fighting over a giant ear of corn.  What’s strange here is that neither dogs or toads eat corn as best as I can remember.

– Why is the dog wearing a kilt and knee-high socks?  Is Georgia Scottish in some way I’m not aware of?

– Upon reflection, the unis on both of these animals are far superior to the ones worn by either side in the game.

– The pawhands on that dog make me sad inside – it looks like the poor little thing is too tired and abused to even lift them.  Actually, if you saw the game, this is the most accurate thing about the whole drawing.

 

Maybe, just maybe, the SEC will avoid expansion again (yes, we get the irony of a SC blog objecting to expansion, WE GET IT).

But if we do avoid destroying everything we ever loved about the SEC, it might be because of the loveable, precocious Baylor Bears.

In celebration, we offer the following:

 

[by the way, NEVER Google "dancing bear" unless you have your filter
 on high.  Trust me, and you're welcome.]

 

On the heels of the success of Mike Leach’s Swing Your Sword, comes the newest blockbuster from a college coaching legend: the Head Ball Coach himself, Stephen Orr Spurrier.  In addition to valuable insights into his coaching philosophies (and his head scratching decision to start Connor Shaw over Steven Achilles Garcia in the ECU tilt) comes his definitive guide to success as a college signal-caller.  Among his wealth of sage advice:

• Shave – leaders of men don’t have facial hair. That movie “300” was a crock of bull.
• Don’t wear your cap backwards. Actually, the bill of a cap should always face directly frontwise, it wasn’t made to shade your ear.
• If you’re not on the football field, there’s no reason to not be wearing a freshly pressed golf shirt, khakies, and penny loafers. Socks optional if you’re feeling a little rebellious.
• Shirts are required at all times. I am the exception as I have very sensitive areolas, and as a Heisman Winner I can take my shirt off whenever I feel like it.
• That shirt that you’re wearing (I hope): Tuck it in.
• Tell it like it is. Just be prepared to sit for long periods of time when you do, bucko.
• Stay away from anything beyond a PG movie, even PG-13 is a little too risky.
• Reserve alcohol for after your NFL career. Since you won’t have an NFL career, it’s probably best you stay  away from the sauce forever.
• Open doors for ladies, ALWAYS.  Except the door to your dorm room, Romeo.
• Never think on the field, I’ve already got that covered.
• Get the ball out on time.
• If you can’t get the ball out on time, GET THE DAMN BALL OUT, SON.
• I really need you to audible, but don’t, cause you’ll just screw it up.
• No backwards plays.
• No sideways plays.
• Diagonal plays are allowed as long as they’re frontwards-diagonal.  THIS IS A REAL THING, SMARTASS.
• “Damn”, “hell”, and “ass” are acceptable profanities, but only in the privacy of the huddle or when your holding my golf bag.  Oh, and by the way, NEVER touch my golf bag.
• Convince me you can kick a game-winning field goal even though you’re not our kicker.
• Shouldn’t you be out organizing some pass-skel instead of reading books?  Who do you think you are, Barbara Walters?
• Flip-flops should only be worn in the shower, the way God intended.
• Snot rockets and snake draining allowed, but not in the presence of ladies.  By “ladies” I mean my other quarterbacks.
• There are only two acceptable answers (and no acceptable questions):  “Yes, sir” and “No excuse, sir”.
• Always remember I hate your sorry ass and I really want to play the guy behind you. But hey, it ain’t personal, cause when I play him I’ll hate his sorry ass, too.
• Start all sentences–not with a capital letter–but with “as we all know”.
• End all sentences–not with periods–but with “but anyway…”
• Be named Danny.
• Being named Shane or Rex is OK, I guess.
• But mostly be named Danny.
• Under no circumstances should you be named Doug or Blake.
• Without anything even approaching adequate blocking, you should be able to survey the defense, take a seven-step drop, make the correct read, and fire a strike on any down and distance.  (But you probably already knew that.)
• Tattoos: not acceptable unless you would be proud to have your mother read it aloud in church.
• Piercings: absolutely not, unless it’s in your mother’s ear lobes in church.
• Suggested reading:  “They Call Me Coach” by John Wooden, the Old Testament’s Book of Job, and the Complete Songbook of Glenn Campbell.
• Speaking of songs, you might want to add some Karen Carpenter to your pre-game iPod playlist. Soothing.
• You need a nemesis.  I find that large, round, orange, slow-witted ones work best.
• Don’t try to swipe some post-touchdown greenery from the Sanford Stadium hedges.  Et up with chiggers, trust me.
• Don’t listen to Junior, I’ve never trusted that herky-jerky kid.

Available for $25.99 from all major online and retail outlets – pick up your copy today! (don’t really, as we have the only “copy” that exists, but as a service to our faithful readers, we will continue to release excepts when appropriate).

Some quick, barely researched, not fully-formed thoughts from last night’s season opener:

– The insurance salesmen, accountants, doctors and lawyers were right.  When the decision to start Connor Shaw over Stephen Garcia was announced on Thursday, there were a lot of fans that took to the world-wide web to express their displeasure.  Mild as my objection was, I was one of those folks.  There were a few who defended Steve Spurrier with tried and true variations of “You’re an insurance salesman, you think you know more about football than Steve Spurrier?”

Well, I certainly don’t know more about football than the HBC, but I know what I saw Saturday night.  Connor Shaw looked like a squirrel trying to cross I-77 in his three series, and when Garcia entered in the second quarter a calm came over the offense.  All of our failings against ECU cannot be blamed on Shaw, just as all our successes cannot attributed to Garcia, but I do know that once Garcia came into the game we outscored ECU 56-20.  I’ll take that over great scrimmage stats any day.

– #7 is for real, but people need to start talking about #6 .  Jadeveon Clowney was big, fast and powerful, just like we’ve been told.  You noticed when he was in the game, and you noticed when he was not.  I know, he wasn’t playing against an SEC-caliber offensive line, but still, you have to be excited about the future of the War Daddy.  The story on the DL, however, was the play of Melvin Ingram.  He is a freakish athlete (did you see the hands on that pick?) that was all over the place last night, and deserves to be talked about in all-SEC terms.

– Lattimore was Lattimore and Jeffery was Jeffery – And thank God for that.  #21 even looked a little quicker and more decisive running the ball.

– We have a return game! Ace Sanders’ PR for TD was easily the most exciting play of the game last night, and the first time we’ve seen that out of the Gamecocks since 2003 (Chavez Donnings, anyone?)  Bruce Ellington looked great on kickoff returns as well.

– Speaking of Sanders and Ellington… We have a lot of weapons on offense, we just have to find a way to get the ball in their hands.  I was a little surprised we didn’t see any short passes to one of those two guys to try to get them out in space (Sanders’ short TD catch doesn’t count), but that part of the playbook may be closed until next week.  Shon Carson looked very quick with the ball in his limited touches, and I was really disappointed we didn’t get to see Dameire Byrd last night.  Hopefully that situation will be cleared up by next week.

–  Stephon Gilmore is not a shutdown corner. This situation continues to disturb me.  A great cornerback is going to get beaten on occasion, but a great cornerback is going to make a great play every once in a while too.  I haven’t seen a great play out of defensive #5 in quite a while.  Somebody please tell me why I’m wrong, I would like to be reassured.

– Don’t let the 37 points bother you. I really think our defense will be better this year than last.  ECU’s points were a product of turnovers and their offense, which will score a lot of points on a lot of people this year.  And they’ll need every one of them.

– Game Ball:  Antonio Allen.  Wow, 16 tackles, 2 caused fumbles, 1 fumble return for TD.  Have yourself a night young man.

– We will be playing an ultra-desperate team next week. UGA was manhandled by Boise last night (side note: mad props to Boise, I was wrong), and conventional wisdom says UGA will be playing to save Mark Richt’s job.  This could also wind up being an elimination game in the SEC East race, so USC will have to eliminate the mistakes from last night and be ready for a hostile bunch of Dogs.

Join us for TRC Unleashed tomorrow night where we’ll discuss these topics plus many more.

Go Cocks!

Instead of our usual Sunday night podcast, we’re going to move it to Monday at 6 p.m. and call it the TRC Unleashed Labor Day Spectacular!  Not really, but we had to move it to Labor Day evening due to some Sunday family frivolity.  Anyway, we’ll be recapping the ECU game, previewing the UGA game, and wrapping up the first weekend of college football.  You’ll be able to listen live here:

TRC Unleashed – Episode 4

Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter (@rubrchickens).  Tbone will be giving live game tweets from Bank of America Stadium along with the Gman, while I’ll be giving live game updates from my couch.

Go Cocks!

Ever since it came across my Twitter feed last evening that Connor Shaw is getting the start over Stephen Garcia Saturday night, I’ve been slightly less excited and optimistic about our football season (by slightly, I mean on a scale of 1,000,000 I’m down to about a 999,500).

On the eve of what is supposed to be the greatest college football season in the history of South Carolina football, and at the most important position on the field, Steve Spurrier is giving Shaw his first career start over Garcia, who is the third leading passer in school history and has started 28 consecutive games.

COACH SPURRIER, STOP SCREWING WITH US!!!!!

There was speculation all over Twitter last night that maybe this is Spurrier’s final jab at Garcia over his “transgressions” (for which he has been forgiven, right?) But Spurrier says no, Shaw has just played better in practice and deserves the start.

Spurrier has talked about a clean slate, fresh start, etc., when it comes to the QB situation. Well, sorry coach, I just can’t erase victories over Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and Clemson in the same season from my slate. With all due respect to Connor Shaw (whom I like a lot), Stephen Garcia would take the first snap for me from under center on Saturday night.

The HBC is very calculated in everything he says and does, and more often than not it works out.  My belief is this is most likely a motivational ploy for Garcia, and he’ll get the most playing time Saturday night and will get the start next week against Georgia.

But if Spurrier thinks Shaw is truly the man to lead this team in 2011…

I was a boy of nine (almost ten), and it was getting dark.

You might think the next sentence is going to involve me playing happily outside and being called reluctantly in for supper, but I’ve left out two very important details:

It was New Years Day, and I had just discovered college football.

I wondered through our family’s den with a sketch pad tucked under my arm and several pencils in my hand. Not sure where I was going, but I was probably looking for a quiet spot to draw pictures of myself driving life-sized versions of my matchbox cars, which was a favorite pastime of mine in those days.  Regardless, my dad called me over and explained to me that the football game on television was called the Orange Bowl and that I should watch it.

He told me that one of the teams belonged (that’s my memory, but probably not his exact words) to Burt Reynolds, the guy who drove the Firebird in Smokey and the Bandit.  That detail caught my attention, as I had a matchbox black Camaro that I pretended was the Bandit from time to time.  I ran and retrieved my “Bandit” then plopped down in front of the TV to draw myself and Burt in the car.

But the game drew me in, and before I knew it, I was trying to draw a football helmet instead of a Pontiac.

I don’t remember any major details of the game, other than the Oklahoma Sooners won over the Florida [State] Seminoles.  This made me happy, because the nickname “Sooners” sounded immediate and exciting to me, and I had no idea what a Seminole was.  I also remember that the Sooners threw the football to each other with a frequency that apparently surprised my dad, and that the Seminoles didn’t seem very good at tackling.

I spent the rest of the evening in front of the television, drawing scenes from the New Years bowl games (I think the rest of the games were over at this point, but I may not have understood highlights versus live action).  My dad told me that Clemson lost to Baylor the night before, which made me happy, even though I didn’t really know why (my main aversion to Clemson in those days was the sweat-stained tigerpaw t-shirts of the grimey schoolyard bullies).  He also told me that South Carolina lost to Missouri a couple of days earlier.  This was an absolute affront to my sensibilities and seemed like a painful reliving of the Civil War (which I was also slightly obsessed with at the time).

I learned from the announcers that New Years Day was the best day for the very best teams to play, and that the season would be over as soon as the Orange Bowl game finished.

Season over already?
But I just got interested!

It didn’t matter as it turned out, because I was already hooked.  I read everything I could about college football from that point on, and began keeping a scrapbook of my new favorite player, a running back for South Carolina named George Rogers.  A lot of people in the paper and on
television thought George Rogers was going to have a big year in 1980, and it would turn out that they were right.

But I remember the anticipation of that spring and summer as I waited and waited for college football to start up again.

I get that same excited feeling each year, although my distractions from the games are no longer just drawing paper and matchbox cars.  Now work issues, social obligations, weddings, and even funerals (not my dad’s yet, thank God) crowd college football from my mind for much of the year.  It doesn’t help that the innocence of college football seems as distant as that Orange Bowl from days gone by, what with most converage of college athletics nowadays being about impermissive benefits, conference realignment, off-season arrests, and ESPN-fed profits.

But gentle reader, another season of college football is about to kick off, fresh and new.  And despite the sport’s many flaws, it still draws me in.  I’ll be watching the South Carolina Gamecocks from the stands this weekend, accompanied by my two sons.  One of them just turned ten.

I have no idea how the season will develop, whether one team will throw the ball too much, or if the other team can tackle.  And I don’t really have any firm idea about how the Gamecocks will fare.

But a lot of people on the internet and on television think a guy named Marcus Lattimore is going to have a big year in 2011, so we all need to temporarily put down whatever else we are doing and watch.

Here’s to a great 2011 football season!