Tech Week or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Reggie Ball

The last week of the regular season is here. No more gameday trips to Athens until next fall. It's time to get fired up for our biggest rival, right? For whatever reason, I put this game below Florida, Auburn, and Tennessee in terms of importance. In the era of conference divisions and championship games, it just seems more important to me to beat the SEC teams. Beating Tech never seems like a big deal - until we lose. As we all know, if Kentucky takes care of the Vols, the Dawgs get to play LSU in the Dome. All things considered, that makes the UK-UT game almost more important to me than the UGA-GT game. But, I'm counting on both games going our way.

The Dawgs' biggest advantage this weekend is one of the laws of physics. I'm not talking about Rennie Curran's superior velocity, or Chester Adams' tremendous mass. I'm not even referring to Knowshon's abilitites, since he defies the laws of physics. Many of you have already learned about what scientists have identified as Chan Gailey Equilibrium. The Ancient Greeks credited Apollo and called it "Irresistible Mediocrity." Consider that since Chan has taken over the Jackets, their records have been:

• 2002: 7-6
• 2003: 7-6
• 2004: 7-5
• 2005: 7-5
• 2006: 9-5

You should note that every year, Tech ends the season with 5 or 6 losses. This year, they sit at 7-4 heading into this week's game. Since they will likely face some sort of sub-par WAC team in a bowl game held in Saskatchewan, we have a virtual guarantee from science that the Dawgs will win.


So what else should we be watching for this week?

Thanks to the record shown above, Chan is officially on El Asiento Caliente, which sounds like a quality Telemundo soap opera or a good place for enchiladas, but is actually a dramatic way to say The Hot Seat. Some pundits believe he is toast whether they win or lose this week. Personally, I think Tech fans should expect better than he has delivered, but not much better. Playing Samford, The Citadel, and a slew of ACC patsies pretty much guarantees seven wins for a decent program. We'll just have to watch and see if his players rally to their coach or if the team rolls over and dies.

The Jackets will likely lean on talented running back Tashard Choice. While Coaches Richt, Bobo, and Ball like to rotate backs and keep players healthy, Chan is hell-bent on making one of his star's legs fall off. Choice has spent the season either on the sidelines with a hamstring injury or getting the ball 35 times a game. The bizarre thing is the Jacket's have quality backups at the position, but that doesn't stop Chan from driving the guy like a rented Taurus.

At the QB spot, the Jackets have continued their struggles from last year. While Ramblin' Wreck fans thought the departure of Reggie Ball would be addition by subtraction, they've discovered that there is a reason that Taylor Bennett was the backup. On the season, he has thrown five touchdowns against eight interceptions, despite the team having a good running game and solid offensive line. If he struggles or if the Dawgs bottle up the run, don't be shocked to see Chan pull out all the stops and put in freshman Josh Nesbitt. He is a QB that can frustrate you with his scrambling ability, but like Bennett has had accuracy problems.

Speaking of Reggie Ball, I have to say that by the end of his career, I felt bad for the guy. He took more heat from his own fans than any college player should face, and Chan did him a huge disservice by not moving him to safety or receiver once it was apparent that he lacked the composure and decision-making ability to be a college QB. Of course, I loved watching his Keystone Cops routine against Georgia every year.

As for the Bulldog's, we will all be anxious to see how Stafford performs in his second test against Tech Defensive Coordinator Jon Tenuta's blitz-happy defense. Kentucky's defensive backs made sure that any deep balls would have to be perfectly executed, and it just didn't happen against the Cats. I have a lot of faith, though, that the team will be well-prepared, and the Jackets will have to respect Brown and Moreno.

Besides the Tech defense, the biggest threat might be chitlins. Columbus Ledger-Enquirer beat-writer David Ching keeps a fantastic blog about the day-to-day stuff. He notes this week that defensive line coach Rodney Gardner has a bunch of the players over for Thanksgiving:

Apparently he's got 10 gallons of chitlins for them with one rule -- all the chitlins have got to be gone when the players leave because chitlins are disgusting and they stink, according to coach Garner. It was amusing to hear some stuff about who pounds down the most food. Popular vote seemed to have Chester Adams in the lead.

The rule in our house is stinky food must be eaten in the garage. Let's keep our fingers crossed in hopes that everything is digested by Saturday.

One disappointing note is that senior running back Jason Johnson, a former walk-on who earned a scholarship and played a crucial role in the Florida game, suffered a spinal injury in practice and can no longer play. His health isn't jeopardized, but you hate to see that happen. Here is an interesting read about the guy.

One more thing - the basketball team faces their first big challenge of the year as they travel to Wisconsin on Saturday evening. A win in this one would go a long way towards restoring confidence after the dismissals of Takais Brown and Mike Mercer.