October 10, 2001

1. Not at all. Tech managed to cover the spread without a whole lot of trouble, the first team offense moved the ball efficiently if not dazzlingly and the defense played quite well in the second half. Tech didn't play a very inspired game, to be sure, but they probably did about as well as you would expect when you consider they were competing in front of about 8,000 fans against what is, essentially, a Division II football team. Put it down as a boring "W" but a victory just the same.

   What's not boring is the injury to Ather Brown, which means Tech has two starting linebackers out with injuries and will probably have to start true freshman Tabugbo Anyansi at middle linebacker against Maryland. Anyansi saw a lot of action in the Duke game after Brown was injured and acquitted himself well, showing why O'Leary was wise to recruit him last year. But he's still a true freshman who will be playing against a team that hasn't lost a game this year (as opposed to a team that hadn't won a game since 1999). That does not bode well for the Jackets, and it's one of the reasons why I am worried about the Maryland game.

   As we've all discussed ad nauseam, there is the Friedgen factor to consider. Ralph has deservedly earned his reputation as an offensive genius because of his ability to find weaknesses in the opposing defenses and exploit those weaknesses at every opportunity. I don't think he'll have a lot of trouble figuring out what to run against a true freshman linebacker starting his first game in college: maybe he'll have the tight end hold at the line for a count or two and then drag across the middle for a short pass, or send a running back into the area vacated by Anyansi on a blitz, or let Shaun Hill run the ball out of the shotgun like Woody Dantzler did for Clemson. It could get ugly very fast, I fear.

   Although, when you think about it, the person who probably has the most to fear is Truett Cathey, the inventor of the famous Chick-fil-A sandwich. With Friedgen and O'Leary both in town at the same time, they could wipe out every Chick-fil-A franchise between here and Rabun Gap. Talk about collateral damage.

   Ironically, you could make a credible argument that Tech hasn't really missed Friedgen as an offensive coordinator this year. In the first five games of the 2000 season under Ralph's play-calling, Tech scored 147 points for an average of 29.4 per game. In the first five games of this season under Bill O'Brien's direction, the offense has put up 199 points for an average of 39.8 points a game. Even if you throw out the Navy score, the Jackets have still averaged 32.3 points a game, which exceeds what they did during the same period last year. I've mentioned this before but I'll note it again: the 70 points Tech scored on Navy is a one-game total they never matched when Friedgen was the offensive coordinator (under either O'Leary or Bobby Ross).

   Tech doesn't really miss Friedgen as an offensive coordinator. The team has moved on and has actually improved its bottom-line performance on offense, which is to put points on the board. What Tech will miss, however, are Daryl Smith and Ather Brown at linebacker. That will have much more of a negative impact than who's calling plays as the offensive coordinator.

   I don't like this. I don't like it at all.

1. If you're looking for hopeful portents, here's one. Maryland comes to Tech with an undefeated record and a Top 25 ranking for a Thursday night game. The last time the Terps came to Bobby Dodd Stadium under those identical circumstances, they got skunked 31-3 (it was O'Leary's first ACC victory as Tech's head coach). Maybe we should bring back the seat cushions.

1. Well, let me put it this way: remember the movie "Earthquake," which was filmed in Sensurround so that the theater shook and vibrated as you sat there watching? That's what Bobby Dodd Stadium will be doing as George and Ralph plant their massive size-12s on the Grant Field turf. As if Friedgen and O'Leary weren't weighty enough by themselves, Friedgen also has an assistant coach at Maryland, Charles "Chuck" Filet, who weighs in at more than 320 pounds. With both Friedgen and Filet on the coaching staff, Maryland is rated 22nd in the AP poll and 7.5 on the Richter Scale. For you structural engineers in the audience, you may want to monitor the East Stands on Thursday to see if they can hold up to the stress. The after-shocks will be felt all the way to the San Andreas Fault.

1. . I'm not ready to crown them champions just yet. Their offense doesn't impress me as much as last season's team, but they have got some ball-stompers on defense, don't they? Everything will hinge on their game with Nebraska. I do think the Sooners' 14-3 victory over Texas gives us further proof, if any were needed, that Mack Brown is one of the most overrated head coaches in the game today. Mack certainly recruits an impressive looking bunch of players, but they never seem to go anywhere on game day.

1. My records indicate that Georgia Tech's largest margin of victory over Georgia was in 1943 when the Jackets won by a convincing score of 48-0. The defeat was so humiliating for Georgia that they refuse to include the score in their official "history" of the Tech-Georgia series.

1. George has had a very effective season and, according to the latest NCAA statistics, ranks number 8 in passing efficiency with a rating of 162.8. Pretty good stuff. I like the way Godsey has taken all those taunts from Georgia fans about last season being a "mirage" and thrown them back in their faces. That said, do I think he has a chance at the Heisman? Realistically, no. The top contenders at this point appear to be Rex Grossman at Florida, Eric Crouch at Nebraska, Joey Harrington at Oregon and Woody Dantzler at Clemson. Godsey just isn't glamorous enough or flashy enough to compete with those guys. The irony here is the role played by the Georgia Tech defense in two of the last three Heisman Trophy campaigns. If not for the shortcomings of Tech's defense in 1999, I think Joe Hamilton would have won the Heisman that season. George O'Leary has said much the same thing in some of his public statements. Conversely, this year's Tech defense also put Woody Dantzler back in the Heisman race after it looked like he had played himself out of it by fumbling away the Virginia game. Go figure.

1. I don't profess to be an expert on this, but Georgia Tech's tradition of wearing white jerseys at home dates back at least to the era of Bobby Dodd in the early 1950s. Tech has gone with gold, black and navy jerseys at various times over the years, but they always seem to come back to white jerseys sooner or later. The real expert on the history of Tech uniforms is a poster on the Hive called Goldtimer - if you go to his website at http://gtw.swiki.net/1, and you'll find out more than you ever wanted to know about Tech's uniform color schemes.

1. Tennessee fans are unhappy with Casey Clausen for his performance at quarterback this year, but I think the real problem with the Vols is their offensive coordinator, Randy Sanders. He called maybe the worst game I've ever seen called at the Division I level last weekend, an absolutely putrid choice of plays. With 107,000 fans behind them and a better level of talent than the opposition, Tennessee should have won by at least two touchdowns. It's unbelievable they let the game get away against such a second-rate team.

1. Sad to say, Joe Pa should have retired last year, even if he did fall a little short of Bear Bryant's mark for career victories. He's obviously old, tired and out of ideas - not to mention talent. At the rate he's going, by the time Paterno finally wins his 323rd game, he'll also have 323 losses on his career record.

1. In a word, no. Nothing against Barry Bonds - he's among the best players of his generation and a lock for the Hall of Fame, but his home run performance this year was one of those wild aberrations that falls way outside his normal career range and is unlikely to be repeated. Bonds had never hit more than 49 homers in a season before this year, and at his age (he'll be 38 next season) I don't think you'll see him hit more than 49 again. Baseball is the kind of sport where a player will go completely off the charts in a statistical category for one season and never come close to matching it again. I call it the "Norm Cash syndrome" after the old Tigers' first baseman who had one incredible season in 1961 and won the American League batting title with a .361 average. Cash never hit higher than .286 in any other season and wound up with a career average of .271, but for one magical season, everything he hit dropped in, just as Bonds was able to go yard 73 times this year.

   Bonds now has 567 career homers, which still puts him 188 short of Hank Aaron's career total of 755. He would have to average just under 38 homers a year for the next five seasons to pass Aaron, and that means hitting 38 home runs a season from age 38 through age 42, a time of life when baseball skills erode rapidly. Add to that Bonds' penchant for incurring injuries. He was able to play most of the schedule this year, but in the three seasons prior to 2001 he missed a total of 85 games with injuries, which is more than 28 games a year.

   Aaron and Bonds had similarly productive careers. Like Bonds, Aaron had his best season for home runs when he was 37 (hitting 47 of them that year). In the five seasons he played after turning 37, Aaron hit a total of 116 homers (an average of just over 23 a season). I can't see Bonds doing much better than that over the next five years, and that would still leave him about 70 homers short of the career mark. Someone may break Aaron's career home run record, but don't bet any money that it will be Barry Bonds.