September 16, 2004

In the words of Vincenzo Cioffari: “In the unfolding of the chain of causality first come necessary causes, which produce effects with unfailing regularity; next come those causes which act with normal regularity; then those which act with halfway regularity; and finally the rare occurrences, in which the fortuitous is observed. When causality is viewed as a force differentiated among individual beings, it is Fortune; when it is viewed as the entire process from necessary causes to rare occurrences, it is Fate.”

I bring this up because it speaks to the question raised by Georgia Tech’s victory over Clemson on Saturday night. Was it fortune or was it fate? I don’t know, but I can say with some confidence that there was definitely a chain of causality late in the game where each event had to occur in precise order for Tech to win. This was a series of events in which the Clemson coaches either made bad decisions or the Clemson players failed to execute their assignments correctly. If even one of those decisions or executions had been made correctly, Tech would have lost the game.

It started after Tech scored its third touchdown to make the score 24-21 and kicked off to Clemson with less than 1:50 left in the game. On Clemson’s first play from scrimmage, Charlie Whitehurst rolled out and ran about eight or nine yards before sliding on his butt. He ended up about 18 inches short of a first down. If he had put his head down and dived forward, Clemson would have had a first down and been able to run out the clock without giving up the ball.

Chan Gailey at this point quickly signaled for a timeout, stopping the clock at the 1:31 mark. If Gailey had not called that timeout at that precise instant, Clemson could have run out the clock.

Whitehurst tried a quarterback sneak and was stopped by the Tech defense, making it third and inches. If the Clemson line had opened up a big enough seam for him to gain that 18 inches, the Tigers could have run out the clock.

Whitehurst then handed off to Yusef Kelly, but before Kelly could reach the line of scrimmage Tech linebacker Chris Reis punched the ball out of his grasp, preventing Clemson again from getting a first down. It was now fourth down. Clemson could have run the ball again to try for a first down or punted. Coach Tommy Bowden chose to punt and to let the clock run down until the officials called a delay of game penalty. This decision by Bowden stopped the clock and put the ball five years closer to Clemson’s goal line – which turned out to be a very important development for Tech.

On fourth down, Clemson’s Geoff Rigsby failed to snap the ball properly to punter Cole Chason. The ball skipped over the turf and through Chason’s hands, although Chason finally recovered the errant snap. Tech had possession with 16 seconds left and, because of Bowden’s decision to run down the clock to a delay of game penalty, the ball was on Clemson’s 11-yard-line.

Bowden (or his defensive coordinator) then made the most crucial decision of the game: to cover Tech wide receiver Calvin Johnson with a single defensive back who was eight inches shorter than Johnson rather than doubling up on him with a taller defender. Reggie Ball threw a fade to Johnson, who caught the ball in the end zone over the shorter DB for the winning touchdown.

It was a long chain of causality, and Clemson’s coaches and players had to make a crucial mistake at each link of the chain in order for Tech to win. And they did.

This leads me back to the original question: Was Tech fortunate to win? Or was Tech fated to win? I don’t know. It may be as simple as this: sometimes miracles do happen. Sometimes the good guys win.

Maybe the best way to explain the outcome is by looking at the game prediction posted by “20ozBulldog” on the Hive last week. The ol’ Bulldog likes to stir things up by making outrageous predictions about Tech games, and there are still Hivesters who go for his stanky old bait every time. But let’s hold Bulldog to his latest prediction and see how it stands up against what actually happened when Tech played Clemson. I will quote from his post of last Friday.

20ozBulldog: “If you get beat REALLY bad by a team revenge DOES NOT come into play. In its place is a mental block. Most people don't even consider that but it is very real. It goes back to the game within the game that I constantly talk about. Big concern for GT.”

Dr. Football: Mental block? What mental block? It looked to me like Tech hung in there and kept scrapping, even when they were down by 10 points with less than three minutes to play. I think the only concern about a mental block existed in the strange mind of 20ozBulldog.

20ozBulldog: “Daniels will show an occasional burst and get some yards but he will be held in check by the Tiger defense . . . Daniels will not have success running the ball early.”

Dr. Football: I don’t how you define “held in check” in your alternate universe, but P. J. Daniels gained 103 yards on 24 rushes for a 4.3 average. In the world inhabited by most sane football fans, those are very productive numbers.

20ozBulldog: “How will Ball handle adversity? How will he handle failure? Success? A bit concerned about this. The shoving of the UGA coach last year on the sideline and being suspended for the 2nd half comes to mind.”

Dr. Football: I have taken a load of bullcrap from Georgia fans since that shoving incident in the Tech-UGA game last year, and they love to taunt that it supposedly shows Reggie Ball is too hot-headed to be an effective college quarterback. Maybe my eyes were deceiving me, but I could have sworn I saw Reggie throw four touchdown passes against Clemson, including the winner with 11 seconds left. Yes, Reggie is hot-tempered at times and he likes to talk, but you know what? I’d rather have a player who wants to win so badly that he’s dying inside than a player who calmly accepts defeat. Reggie delivered in the clutch on Saturday night before a very hostile crowd. Is that enough adversity for you?

20ozBulldog: “Charlie Whitehurst. I broke the story on here about him. Dead on. He makes the Tigers go. If he has time Whitehurst will eat GT alive. GT has got to put pressure on him and sack him.”

Dr. Football: Tech did not put much pressure on Whitehurst and did not even sack him once, but he didn’t exactly put up great numbers. He completed less than 50 percent of his passes. He averaged less than seven yards per pass attempt. He had more interceptions (two) than touchdown passes (one). There were several occasions where he overthrew an open receiver and killed a Clemson drive. I thought it was a very mediocre performance.

20ozBulldog: “The GT offense is not suited to coming back and a tremendous amount of pressure will be on the GT defense to contain the firepower of Clemson.”

Dr. Football: Tech’s offense came back – twice – from 10-point deficits in the fourth quarter to win the game. That’s the only bottom line that matters.

20ozBulldog: “Watch out for C. Stuckey. Shifty. Elusive. WATCH OUT for him to possibly throw a pass as he is a former QB. Remember who said it.”

Dr. Football: Stuckey did indeed throw a pass. It was incomplete.

20ozBulldog: “Clemson will start fast and get a quick score.”

Dr. Football: Actually, Tech was the first team to score. Clemson did not score its first points until the second quarter and only had 10 points at the end of three quarters.

20ozBulldog: “Reggie Ball will be rattled early.”

Dr. Football: Ball was under constant pressure the whole game because of poor pass protection, but he threw only one interception (and that one was picked by Clemson after it bounced off a Tech receiver’s hands). In the final two minutes of the game, when any mistake would have killed Tech, Ball threw two scoring passes to Calvin Johnson. If he was rattled, he surely did a good job of disguising it to the Clemson secondary.

20ozBulldog: “Something BIZARRE will happen in the first half not involving the action on the field.”

Dr. Football: Hurricane Ivan moved closer to Cuba, which was bizarre and obviously did not involve the action on the field. Of course, it had no impact on the final score either.

20ozBulldog: “Clemson is a confident team. Look for Clemson to start out fast and GT will be a bit shell-shocked. Not totally but it will have an impact. This has not been talked about enough but the mental block GT has against Clemson is real. I was there last year. Look for GT to press in this game. I am convinced that GT has got to get some breaks in the first half and be within 7 points or it is over. In the end, though, Clemson is just a better team. The Tigers are at home and that will be enough. GT will be a little off the entire game with only an occasional burst of solid, cohesive play. Clemson wins by between 8-17 points.”

Dr. Football: Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Tech players had no mental block, kept their composure even when they fell behind by 10 points in the last quarter, and capitalized on some incredibly dumb decisions by Clemson’s players and coaches to win a game that any other team would have lost.

That’s enough from 20ozBulldog. Let’s get to your questions.

1. I thought he was good, but I had no idea he could totally take over a game like he did against Clemson. This guy has Randy Moss-type ability, without the attitude problems. Calvin Johnson may have an impact on Tech’s program comparable to Herschel Walker’s impact on the Georgia program in the early 1980s. He’s going to be fun to watch.

1. I thought the two quarterbacks, Chris Rix of FSU and Brock Berlin of Miami, were two of the worst-looking college players I’ve ever seen on any level, but Rix especially sucked. In fact, there’s no word in the dictionary that adequately describes how badly this guy sucks, so I’ll coin a few: Suck-erific. Suck-tastic. Suck-alicious. Suck-tarian. He is the quintessence of suckiosity. Rix sucks so bad he should just go ahead and change the first two letters of his last name to “SU.” He has had five years to learn Florida State’s offense. He is now in his fourth year as a starter. And he still sucks. Jim Donnan wrecked his coaching career when he bet everything on Quincy Carter at quarterback. Bobby Bowden’s career is coming to an inglorious end because he has also bet everything on playing Chris Rix. It’s no coincidence that the decline of the FSU program corresponds with the ascension of Chris Rix to starting quarterback.

   Of course, I don’t think Brock Berlin was much better, but he at least came out of it with a victory. If Miami loses one or two games this year – and I think that’s possible – it will be because of Berlin’s erratic play at quarterback. Not since Hitler was cowering in his bunker in the final days of World War II have we seen such a Berlin disaster.

1. Those two games are prime examples of why I quit betting on college football. Troy (when did they get uppity and drop the “State” from their name?) wasn’t even a Division I-A school five years ago and here they are beating a Big 12 school ranked in the Top 25. Troy’s victory over Missouri prompted wild celebrations at trailer parks across southern Alabama. The 26,000-plus fans in attendance were deliriously happy, grabbing their first cousins and kissing them as the seconds ticked off to the final gun. Of course, in many cases these first cousins were also their spouses. Suffice it to say that I haven’t seen so many people overjoyed at the sight of a pack of Trojans since the last time I purchased condoms at the local Walgreen’s as a teenager. Southern Mississippi’s spanking of Nebraska was less of a surprise to me. They’ve been playing and beating good teams on the road for a long time. If you remember, Jim Donnan’s first game as the head coach at Georgia was against Southern Miss at Fred Sanford Stadium – and Georgia lost.

   Another team that could have had a big upset win was Marshall, but the Thundering Herd was done in by the boneheadedness of their head coach, Bob Pruett. Marshall was tied 21-21 with Ohio State and got the ball with about 1:23 left to play in the game. You would have thought Marshall would throw the ball to try to move into position for a field goal or possible touchdown, but instead Pruett evidently decided to play for overtime. Marshall ran the ball three times and then shanked a punt. Ohio State got the ball with a few seconds left, completed a pass, and then hit a 55-yard field goal on the last play of the game to win it in regulation. Here’s some free advice, Coach Pruett: Playing for overtime doesn’t work unless the game actually goes into overtime. If you’ve got a chance to win in regulation, you’d better go for it. Just like Chan Gailey did.