Lott Shots: Vote for the biggest hit from Week 13

The Lott Shots features the Top 5 bone-crushing hits from Week 10. The Legends Channel rated Texas A&M DB Trent Hunter No. 1 this week.

What do you think?

Watch the video and vote for your favorite hit by Tuesday Dec. 8.

The top vote-getter will be named the Lott Shot of the week!

Take Florida, Texas, Georgia Tech

Count Dick MacPherson among the many counting down the seconds until Saturday’s Florida-Alabama showdown. But if the former Syracuse coach had his way, fans would have to wait a little longer for the SEC’s division winners to meet.

Say, 38 days from now. In Pasadena, California.

Click on the image below to read the full story in SN Today

	Legends Poll
November 30, 2009 – Week 13

Blog: Dooley answers your questions

Since we’ve last talked, we celebrated two birthdays in the Dooley family. Mine was September 4, and we were in Montgomery where our son Derek’s team was staying and we had dinner with our three grandchildren (his three children) and his wife Allison. He has a tough job at Louisiana Tech, playing teams like Auburn and LSU, which are totally out of his league but are “money games” for the small school. I am confident he will do as well as could possibly be done at Louisiana Tech.

The great news about my birthday being on the 4th is that it reminds me that Barbara’s birthday is on the 8th of September – which is much more important. She celebrated a big one by checking in to the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta with our two daughters and they spent two days shopping and getting pampered. My son Daniel and I came over for a big birthday dinner, so it was a great, big (I won’t say how many) birthday celebration.

I still find myself with speaking commitments. I was in Atlanta last Thursday speaking to the annual meeting of the Action Ministries at the Dunwoody United Methodist Church. The next night I was in Birmingham speaking to Sanford University’s fundraisers. Their football coach is Heisman Trophy winner Pat Sullivan, who we know well, and their mascot is a Bulldog. Needless to say, I felt quite at home in that regard.

I just returned from Montgomery where I spoke to their Quarterback Club, and there was a good delegation of Georgia Bulldogs that came out, including two of my former players – Lawrence Craft, who caused a big fumble on the Florida quarterback to preserve the 10-7 upset victory over Florida on the famous Appleby Washington end around pass. I think that was one of the greatest upsets we ever had over Florida. Also Randy James, a walk-on and is now a prominent attorney, was there. Prior to the meeting I visited the Alabama Archives & History Center, where I had spent some time as a student working on my Masters in History thesis. I also had a memorable time visiting the gravesite and museum of country singer Hank Williams, who was my favorite in high school and college. Many of his hits are still popular today.

Now I’m back in Athens, catching up and getting ready for the big one this weekend. Just as a reminder, I am on the Legends Poll which consists of 17 retired football coaches – most all of them in the College Football Hall of Fame. Some of the members are Lavell Edwards of BYU, John Robinson of Southern Cal, Don James at Washington, George Welsh at Virginia, Frank Broyles at Arkansas, John Cooper of Ohio State, Pat Dye at Auburn. We watch games around the country, have a conference call every Monday discussing the teams around the country, and then vote each week in what is called “The Legends Poll”. The poll is picked up by Sporting News Magazine.

Ask the Coach:
Hello all! Like I said in the previous blog post, I am staring a new section of my blog where your questions will be answered by me. Please submit your questions by commenting on this post and I will try to answer them in the next edition of Dooley’s Blog. I may not be able to answer some questions, but I will answer as many as I can.

Here we go:

Kathy Farmer Hobgood writes, “Any new books for the 09 Christmas Season?”Kathy – The answer is no, but the good news is that the second edition of the newest book, Dooley’s Playbook: 34 of Georgia’s Most Memorable Plays, will be available in bookstores by next week. Just as a reminder, I am working with Steve Penley, the talented artist, on a gardening book entitled In Dooley’s Garden, a Horticultural Journey of a Football Coach that will be out this Spring.

Wade Alford asks, “You enjoyed a lot of success in Jacksonville, but what is your personal opinion about potentially moving the Florida game to a home and home? Do you feel UF has an advantage playing there?” Well Wade, we were fortunate to have a lot of success in Jacksonville, so if there is a home field advantage, it didn’t bother us. We always felt that Jacksonville was just an extension of South Georgia. Nevertheless, the fact remains that we have not done well in Jacksonville in the last 2 decades. While I have some personal opinions in that regard, I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to state publicly my feelings about the future of the game in Jacksonville. I do know the game has been a great tradition for over 70 years and has been very important to the Bulldog Nation.

From Aaron Jones, “Everyone talks about all the great games (1980 Florida, ‘78 Tech, ‘76 Bama) and great plays like the Shoestring play at Vandy. Any vivid memories from games that people don’t talk about? For example, what was it like taking the Dawgs to VMI in 1966?” Well to start with, 1966 was a generation ago. However, it was special to those that remember since it was the first SEC Championship that I was associated with that took place in my 3rd year at Georgia. I recall that the game against VMI, which was played at Roanoke and maybe was given a promotion name of “The Harvest Bowl”, was not the best experience that the team had that year. I recall that VMI took the opening kickoff, drove for a touchdown, missed the extra point, and the 6-0 lead lasted exactly 9.4 seconds. That was the amount of time it took Kent Lawrence to return their kickoff for a touchdown, which (after the extra point) put us up 7-6. We won the game easily, despite the fact that the lighting was not too good in the stadium which probably helped us on certain plays since the ball was hard to find. I also remember the locker room being less than adequate, and on a cool night in October, it was tough on the team taking a shower with no hot water. Suffice it is to say, that was the last Harvest Bowl that we ever played in. While talking about a generation ago I should add to the special highlights the flea-flicker, which we called it at the time, was the play that upset Alabama, the national champions, in the first game of 1965. That play is better described today as a “hook and lateral” from Kirby Moore to Pat Hodgson to Bob Taylor. Come to think of it, that play didn’t win the game but put us in position to win the game with a two-point play from Moore to Hodgson in a victory 18-17.

Drew Garverick and Janet Davis sent questions about the defense after the first couple of games of this season. There is no question that there is a real concern with the defense, and there are a lot of corrections and improvement that need to be made. But one correction that does not need to be made is the fighting spirit of the team and the defensive unit. They have hung tough in the last 2 games, particularly around the goal line, and actually dominated the fourth quarter in the Arkansas game – twice sacking the very talented Arkansas quarterback, Mallett, who had been unstoppable for 3 quarters.

Blog: Kush talks return to glory

I was recently asked which team (Nebraska, Miami, Notre Dame, Michigan, or Tennessee) I thought was closest to returning to prior glory by The Sporting News. Here was my response:

Regarding your question on which team I think is closest to returning to glory, it’s difficult to evaluate programs unless one knows the head coach. He in my opinion is the key to success at these institutions. He must be a recruiter, a teacher (football fundamentals), and a disciplinarian on and off the field in social, academics, and athletics aspects. All of these must be controlled by the head coach and he and his assistant coaches must follow his philosophy.

With that being said, after two weeks of football I am most impressed with Miami out of this group in regards to their players. They are an extremely fast and athletic football team.

Blog: Dooley ready to kickoff the 2009 season

So college football season is starting and there’s tremendous excitement. We’re going to watch our son’s team, Louisiana Tech, play Auburn in Auburn. As an Auburn graduate, people have asked me “who are you pulling for?” My response is that in order to maintain domestic tranquility with Barbara, there’s no question we’re pulling for Derek and Louisiana Tech. Incidentally, Derek is the only Head Football Coach & Athletic Director in Division IA (Bowl Championship Subdivision) Football. The good news is that his game is at night, so that afternoon I will be at a friend’s house watching the Georgia Bulldogs (LA Tech is also Bulldogs). I’ll be at all of the UGA home games and when the Georgia Bulldogs are away, I’ll go see the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs play.

I look out the window of my office at the Georgia football team practices all the time. With my coaching background, I can evaluate practice while sitting in an air-conditioned room. What stands out about the team more than anything else is the unity of “purpose” among the coaches and the players. There are no superstars on this team, and every player has a real commitment to one-another. I don’t know what kind of record that will produce, but I do know from experience that Coach Richt will enjoy coaching this team as much as any that he has ever had.

A good portion of my summer has been devoted to working on a new book, of all things a gardening book. The title is “In Dooley’s Garden – A Horticultural Journey of a Football Coach”. The talented artist Steve Penley, a Georgia grad, who did the illustration for Dooley’s Playbook, is also doing to the illustration for the gardening book. He is an incredibly talented artist. The book is scheduled to be out this Spring, at the start of the gardening season.

I’m starting my seventh year doing a radio show with 790 The Zone in Atlanta that I do live every Thursday shortly after 10:00AM est. We discuss college football generally each time. Meanwhile, three time all-america David Pollack was at my house yesterday broadcasting his show from 4-6PM. He is in amazing shape, just like Herschel, and I believe both of them could play 60 minutes. They are the only 2 Georgia football players to be 3-time consensus All-Americans.

I’m also starting my fifth year on the Legends Poll. The Poll is made up of seventeen retired football coaches, most all of whom are in the College Hall of Fame. All have a great love for college football and this enables us to stay in touch as we have a conference call each week discussing the teams from around the country. The following are a few members of the poll – On the west coast, Don James (Washington), John Robinson (Southern Cal), Lavell Edwards (BYU); Midwest, John Cooper (Ohio State); Deep South, Pat Dye and myself.

Starting this year, I want to interact with my “friends” on Facebook by answering a question or two on each of these updates. Send me your questions via a facebook message or in response to this note. Please include your name, and where you’re from. I’ll pick out a couple of questions to answer each time.

John Robinson on USC

USC is starting to look like the team we all thought that they would be this year.  The Legends Poll has had them ranked at No. 6 for three straight weeks, which is higher than any other poll.

SC is suddenly getting about eight starters back that have been missing. They have suffered from a phenomenal amount of injuries, having five defensive starters out early in the season.  To me, they have had a hard time figuring out who they are.  Over the past few years, they have been a team that ran a wide open offense that tried to throw the ball all over the field.  But this team is starting to understand that this year, they are just not the same as they have been and should try to win on defense.

I think that their defense might be able to get them back in the driver’s seat in the Pac-10, but Oregon has one of those offenses that makes you think, “Wow!  They’re faster than everybody!”  The fifth-ranked Ducks aren’t a great defensive team, but they are tough to beat if they can get you in a shootout.

To win games, the Trojans should be running the football and playing great defense, but they have been slow to recognize the personality of their team.  It seems to me that in the Pac-10, you have to take an oath that says you will to try to score 40 points and throw the ball 40 times per game.  I don’t think anybody wants to play that physical style of football that is played in the SEC week in and week out, but if the Trojans decide to do so, they will find themselves right back in the hunt, not only for the Pac-10 championship, but in the national title hunt as well.

The feeling around the country is that USC has been taking teams lightly and become complacent.  I don’t agree at all.  I don’t think the team has played with indifference, they have just had a frightening amount of injuries.  The SC defense has about five players that could be first round picks in the NFL Draft, but they have been out for the past three or four weeks (such as Brian Cushing and Hershel Dennis).

John David Booty has been hurt as well, and Mark Sanchez has taken over at quarterback.  He’s a good player, certainly one of the best high school quarterbacks coming out of Southern California in years.  He is starting to look like he can manage the team, which will be a difficult task on the road in Eugene. Oregon is a very difficult place to play, and it’s about time for the rain to start.  I think they have a faucet up there that they turn on about this time of year that should be running until April.  It will be tough for SC because some of their kids from may not have ever seen rain before.

This game should be a great one to watch and will probably decide the Pac-10 champ.  So, sit back and enjoy another wild weekend of college football.

Hayden Fry on USF-Rutgers

South Florida’s Cinderella story appears to have ended.  They had a great start, beating Auburn on the road and knocking off a Top 5 West Virginia team for the second year in a row, but they came up a little short at Rutgers.  Coach Jim Leavitt was on my staff as a Graduate Assistant at Iowa.  He is a heck of a coach and has done a fantastic job in building that program from scratch.  I may have taught him some things along the way, but he taught me something too…  Do not run wind sprints with your players!

Jim is a wild man on the sidelines and he still does conditioning drills with his players after practice.  And if you saw the game last night, he ran a few sprints to get ready to coach the game.  The only thing my metal knees are good for anymore is when I go to the airport everybody dives under the table when I go through security.  I’ve been using about a quart per day of WD-40 to get these knees of mine going.

I think that Coach Leavitt’s team lost last night for a couple of reasons.  They committed too many penalties in key situations and they got outplayed in the specialty teams.  South Florida was not helped either by the short week of preparation.  Both teams played on Saturday, but the Bulls had to travel all the way up the east coast on Wednesday and lost a day of practice.

Rutgers’ running back Ray Rice is a truly outstanding player.  South Florida has a tough defense, and that was just the second time in the last 15 games that a running back gained over 100 yards against them. Rice was the last player to gain over 100 yards on the Bulls when he gained 202 yards last year, followed up by 181 yards on 39 carries last night.

I thought Matt Grothe played well for South Florida, but the play calling really hurt his cause.  They could not pick up the blitzes and he continued to get sacked for big losses.  I think USF should have used the short passing game.  Rutgers blitzed on every play and an occasional screen or dump off pass to the tight end would have kept the Knights honest.  You have to give Rutgers credit because they played a very smart game and knocked off another Top 5 team on a Thursday night in Piscataway.

The specialty teams were really the difference for Rutgers.  Ito made 3 of his 4 field goals for Rutgers, including a 51-yarder and Alvorado missed one for USF and had another attempt blocked.  Early in the first half, Coach Schiano rolled the dice and faked a punt that eventually led to a field goal.  The three points proved to be the difference in the 30-27 win.  Schiano also dialed up a fake field goal.  The holder, DePaola got up out of his stance and threw a strike to Kevin Brock for a touchdown.  The pass dropped right over the top of the defender and that tight end made a heck of a catch on his way to the end zone.

I am really proud of Greg Schiano for using trick plays the way he did.  They were always base plays for me, because I though it was easy to catch the opponent sleeping.  I have been watching all of these triple overtime games like LSU-Kentucky, Nevada-Boise State and others that could have been decided much earlier.  All a coach has to do is fake a field goal on an extra point try and the game would be over.  I give Schiano credit for having the confidence in his team to execute the trick plays.

Chuck Knox discusses the Buffalo Bills

In light of the thrilling victory by the Dallas Cowboys over my former team, I thought I would share some of my thoughts.  I was very impressed with the atmosphere in Buffalo.  The Bills fans are really great fans.  When I first started coaching in Buffalo, they had only sold 18,000 season tickets, and we could not even get a home preseason game because people would not come out to see it.  But that changed once we won the division with an 11-5 record in 1981…we were selling the place out and it has been that way ever since.

I was completely shocked (just like everybody else) that the Cowboys came out on top in the game.  Very seldom do you win when you turn the ball over six times.  I give Wade Phillip’s team credit, though, because they made the plays when they absolutely had to make them, including the field goal as time expired.  The Cowboys will no doubt learn from their game in Buffalo, and I believe that they have as good a chance as anybody else (probably the best chance in the NFC) to make a run at the Super Bowl.  Romo has played very well, but he just did not play his best football on Monday night.  He was very inconsistent and erratic at times, but when he is on his game, he looks like one of the better quarterbacks in the league.  A lot has been made about the suspension of Dallas’ QB coach Wade Wilson and how that has hurt Romo’s play.  People tend to talk about coaching only when a guy is not playing well, but when he is playing well, they do not mention it.  Tony Romo played outstanding the first four weeks, and he does not deserve to be overly criticized for one bad outing.

Although the Cowboys did make the plays that counted, Buffalo truly gift-wrapped it for them.  The Bills could have used the ground game more often to milk the clock.  With another minute or two run off, they would have assured themselves the win.  As a coach, you can never allow yourself to get too far away from the running game.  You need to mix it in well to keep the defense from loading up with an 8 man front and committing players to the blitz.

Defensively, the late stages of the game were mismanaged as well, in my opinion.  The Bills could have played a Dime coverage with extra DBs and put a defender on either side to cover the short out routes.  The only place the Cowboys could have gone was to the out routes because with just six seconds to play and no timeouts, a deep out completion or a pass over the middle surely runs the clock down. Jauron’s team needed to have a plan in that situation, but they just missed the assignments.  They would not even have had to worry about the Dime defense if they had just recovered the onside kick.  Buffalo’s hands team needed to get their assignments correct and execute.  Sam Hurd broke through the Bills line and deflected the ball that Tony Curtis eventually recovered.  Somebody for Buffalo needed to block off Hurd, and the rest of the hands team should have pursued the ball with more urgency.  That play really hurt.

It was amazing to see rookie kicker Nick Folk for Dallas nail two straight field goals from 53 yards when his long in college was a 52-yarder.  Incredible as it was, I think the rules committee is going to have to take another look at the timeout rule.  The players on the field do not even know if the timeout is called because the coach is standing on the sideline in the referee’s ear.  The league has really opened up a can of worms by allowing the coaches to call a timeout just before the ball is snapped.  Pretty soon, a play like that will backfire when the field goal is missed on the first try, but the team is granted a second chance because of the timeout.  I may be old fashioned, but I like the old system.  I think the coach should signal the timeout in to his players just as he does a defensive or offensive play.

I am really looking forward to the game this weekend between Dallas and New England.  Romo and the Cowboys will have their hands full when they host the Patriots.  New England seems to have regained their spot as the top team in the league this year.  They have everything going for them: great coaching, great players and they have a great quarterback in Tom Brady.  With the off-season additions, they have become dominant.  The emotion of a win like the Cowboys just got over Buffalo will be too much to overcome on a short week…New England should come out victorious.

Stallings: Nick Saban is turning heads

The other day I asked my son, Johnny, who is his all-time favorite coach at Alabama. Well, he didn’t pick his daddy… he said Nick Saban. That just proves Coach Saban is doing a great job getting the Bama fans behind his program … even in our household!

Coming into the game against Georgia this past weekend, Coach Saban had Alabama playing with a lot of confidence. Against Arkansas, the Tide pulled off their first 4th quarter come from behind victory in five years. One of the main reasons for achieving the 4th quarter comeback is Alabama has some guys who are playing good football …. wide receiver DJ Hall and running back Terry Grant. DJ, who had 3 receptions for 46 yards against the Dawgs is the type of kid that can turn a bad play into a good one. He’s got blazing speed and can be a gamebreaker. Grant is the real deal, a really outstanding player. Against the Bulldog defense, he had 80 yards on just 11 carries for a 7.3 yd average.

Georgia allowed Alabama to hang around with some penalties and missed field goals, but made one more play than Alabama did. The Georgia receivers dropped passes time after time, but Bama could not complete a long pass. The Tide managed to hang around with stingy defense when they needed it and kicked a field goal on the first possession of overtime. Their lead wouldn’t last long though, because Matthew Stafford threw an absolutely perfect pass to Mikey Henderson on their first play and Georgia got a huge SEC win.

If you’re going to look at one statistic that will determine the outcome of a game, I would look at 3rd down effectiveness. Georgia converted 3rd downs 9 out of 16 times and Alabama converted just 3 of 15 times on 3rd down. Alabama seemed to get 6 or 7 yards on first down throughout the game, and then they would try to air it out. When my teams were ineffective on 3rd down, I would just run the ball on 2nd and short to get the first down.

The Alabama offense will definitely have to improve their 3rd down effectiveness and big play ability against a Florida State defense that had the week off to re-energize. FSU has struggled on both sides of the ball this year and is not playing with much confidence, so the Seminoles will search for anything to give them a spark. I’m speaking at the Quarterback Club in Tallahassee this week, so maybe that will provide some motivation. All kidding aside, it should be a great match-up for college football. Coach Bobby Bowden, an old friend, matching wits against Coach Saban. The game will be on a neutral field, but is being played in Jacksonville, Florida, so that could favor Florida State.