Are your Georgia Bulldogs coming off a deflating loss to their old nemesis the Alabama Crimson Tide, and facing down an opponent who persistently annoys them in a made-for-letdowns noon Jefferson Pilot special? Then you could probably use a drink. I can help you with that.
I endeavor in this space to walk on the sunny side of the proverbial street whenever possible. This week, that’s been a tall order. There’s something about losing to Alabama that’s particularly dispiriting, in a way that I imagine losing to the Auburn Tigers or Florida Gators might be. Not that anyone remembers what exactly that feels like, but you catch my drift.
If there’s any solace to be found in that ground glass and potted arsenic sandwich of a loss, it’s that a lot of the things that contributed to it are fixable. There’s nothing in particular preventing the Bulldog defense from being more unpredictable on third down. It’s not out of the realm of possibility for the offensive line (that actually acquitted itself fairly well) to play slightly better assignment football. And teaching Ellis Robinson, IV not to dive into piles like he just’s just heard “Evenflow” crank up at a mid-90s Pearl Jam concert feels imminently doable.
The grave problem, the real concern if you are a Bulldog fan, is that things which are easy to correct or not often in fact corrected in college football. Sometimes college football, like history, is t one thing after another but in fact the same darn thing over and over again.
This weekend’s home game against the Kentucky Wildcats won’t really tell us if Georgia’s problems are going to be fixed. But it will tell us a bit about the mental makeup of this Red and Black squad. This game is a perfect chance for a letdown, and if the Dawgs don’t take it I’ll feel an awful lot better about the state of this team and the world in general.
Putting away a subpar Wildcat squad at noon in front of an indifferent crowd and a hungover student section is what a championship team would do. Doing so isn’t singularly sufficient to establish that this vintage of Dawgs is championship-caliber. But it would be a pretty solid data point. Let’s slam down the ‘Cats and get on with the business of getting on.
And what’s the cocktail for dispensing with some mildly annoying cats on the way to bigger and better things?
A Scat Cat. You’ll need:
Add one if the pear slices and the maple syrup to a glass and macerate until the pear is mostly broken up. Add the bourbon, bitters, and cinnamon, stir and enjoy responsibly.
