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Georgia beats Auburn to clinch SEC East; more late Snap Judgments

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Ty Flournoy-Smith (80), Ken Malcome (24) and the Bulldogs clinched the SEC East title by beating Auburn. (AP)

Snap Judgments from the Week 11 late slate. For more, check out early Snaps, midday Snaps, our recaps of Texas A&M-Alabama and Kansas State-TCU and our complete Top 25 review.

• No. 5 Georgia 38, Auburn 0. Aaron Murray constructed four touchdown drives on Georgia’s first four possessions in Auburn tonight, first throwing three scoring passes to three different receivers, then handing off to Todd Gurley for a rushing touchdown late in the second quarter. Murray finished 18-of-24 with 208 yards and three touchdowns. (You’re not hallucinating, watching replays of that third touchdown pass: Tavarres King played wearing No. 15 tonight to honor injured teammate Marlon Brown.) A breakaway 62-yard run by the other half of the Dawgs’ freshman tailback tandem, Keith Marshall, marked Georgia’s last score late in the third quarter. Gurley and Marshall combined for 19 carries totaling 221 yards.

On a Saturday that saw two of the six undefeated FBS teams fall (so far, that is — Oregon and Cal are tied 7-7 as we’re writing this), the one one-loss team in the AP top five sealed its regular-season conference fate. Georgia is your 2012 SEC East champion and will make a second consecutive trip to the Georgia Dome in December, presumably to face Alabama out of the West. Until then, the Dawgs are finished with SEC play, hosting Georgia Southern next week and Georgia Tech the week after that. Auburn, too, will stay in-state, getting Alabama A&M at home in Week 12 and (presumably!) providing a second division title-clinching game at Alabama in the Iron Bowl.

Said Murray in his postgame remarks: “ Like I’ve been saying all year, you just never know who’s going to win.” That may not be entirely true today, but it’s  a nice sentiment. [BOX | RECAP]

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  • Published On Nov 11, 2012
  • A Thousand Points of Spite: Week 10 awards

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    Assorted bests and worsts from college football’s week that was:

    • Best throwback (see what we did there?): Can’t go wrong with a classic, can we, Aaron Murray?

    Unofficial Heisman winner of our hearts: AJ McCarron, but not for the football-related reasons you might think. No, Alabama’s quarterback won our undying allegiance much earlier in the day, after dropping this little number on GameDay:

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  • Published On Nov 05, 2012
  • Designated Read: No missed field goals?

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    • So this makes Nick Saban the Mandarin? LSU’s crack video crew has made a trailer for the upcoming Tigers-Tide game in which Les Miles is Tony Stark, or something. From that, we can infer Saban to be the Sir Ben “Thunderbirds” Thunderbirds-Kingsley in this nonexistent movie, for those of you scoring at home.

    • Big morning reading material. Major Tuesday morning movement from the NCAA: “The Division I Board of Directors today adopted an overhauled enforcement structure that creates additional levels of infractions, hastens the investigation process and ratchets up penalties for the most egregious violations.” (We know what you’re about to ask, and we believe Mark Richt’s butt-dialing incident would be a Level IV.)

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  • Published On Oct 30, 2012
  • Stanford sweats out Arizona; more midday Snap Judgments

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    Josh Nunes led Stanford back from a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit vs. Arizona. (Jason O. Watson/Getty Images)

    Snap Judgments from the Week 6 afternoon slate. For more, check out our early Snaps, late Snaps coverage of LSU-Florida, Georgia-South Carolina, West Virginia-Texas and complete Top 25 review.

    No. 18 Stanford 54, Arizona 48 (OT). Stanford wasn’t the only ranked team to be threatened by a less well-regarded program in Saturday’s second flight of games, but it certainly wrapped up its Week 6 contest in the most entertaining fashion. Trailing Arizona 48-34 early in the fourth quarter, quarterback Josh Nunes pioneered two touchdown drives and rushed for one- and three-yard scores to force overtime.

    From there, as Bryan Fischer succinctly put it, the Cardinal began to play defense when it counted. Chase Thomas intercepted a tipped pass from Matt Scott, and Arizona’s defense, content to remain as languorous as it had been for much of the afternoon, allowed Stepfan Taylor to run for a 21-yard touchdown on the Cardinal’s second ensuing play from scrimmage.

    Let us speak now of what was done well: Scott, whose existence on the Widlcats’ roster was the most compelling reason to watch RichRod’s Arizona tenure from the jump, completed a school-record 45-of-69 attempts for 491 yards and three touchdowns. The occasionally maligned Nunes turned in a performance to be proud of, completing 21-of-34 attempts for 360 yards and two passing scores. Each team boasted a 100-yard rusher (Arizona’s Ka’Deem Carey had 132 yards and three touchdowns on 29 carries; Stanford’s Taylor had 142 yards and two scores on 31 carries) and an 100-yard receiver (Arizona’s Austin Hill had 166 yards and two touchdowns on 11 catches; Stanford’s Levine Toilolo had 141 yards and a score on five grabs). Nick Saban does not approve. [BOX | RECAP]

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  • Published On Oct 06, 2012
  • Week 1 Laff Riot: Crimson Tide carcharhiniformes

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    Tracking the zeitgeist through college football’s opening weekend.

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  • Published On Sep 02, 2012
  • Eight days to the 2012 season

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    In one week and one day, the 2012 college football season kicks off, and we already know exactly what Les Miles will be thinking: “marshmallow sunsets mark twain balustrade otter tuscany tinderbox chimera flarglenargle.”

    Eight days.


  • Published On Aug 22, 2012
  • Could Bolden blossom as a Bayou Bengal?

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    A group of high-profile Penn State recruits reaffirmed their commitments to the Nittany Lions over the weekend, joining their voices to those of current PSU players from the previous week. Not among the blue believers: quarterback Rob Bolden, whom the Times-Picayune reports is checking out LSU. At the very least, he’s done in State College:

    This is not an obvious win-win situation Bolden is (reportedly) thinking about walking into. Both Bolden and post-spring starting quarterback Matt McGloin were frequently maligned throughout the 2011 season (the Nittany Lions ranked 96th nationally in passing offense), and while we’re all familiar with the state of LSU’s recent passing attack, the Tigers get two more seasons of eligibility from projected starter Zach Mettenberger. Still, PSU scribe Ben Jones thinks Bolden’s career could still right itself in the correct situation:

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  • Published On Jul 30, 2012
  • SEC Media Days 2012: Les Miles doing Les Miles things

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    LSU’s Les Miles called Twitter a “fine, pleasant pastime” during his Media Days appearance. (AP)

    HOOVER, Ala. — Les Miles, it will not surprise you to hear, opened his session onstage at SEC Media Days by talking about fast-pitch softball and other pleasures of softball. Moving on!

    • On his now-famous “You’re like a son. A Tiger son.” ad: “The lines were narrow so that I could perform them effectively.” Miles praised Mike the Tiger for “working the camera.”

    • On Tyrann Mathieu’s highly emotive social media tendencies: “I do recognize that there’s some verbal squabble, if you will, at times.” Miles isn’t about to ban his players from Twitter, however: “I will tell you that no game is won on the Twitter page. It’s a fine, pleasant pastime, like Media Days.”

    • On the also pleasant pastime of playing an SEC West schedule: ”We play everybody but the Green Bay Packers.” No word on what Miles or the LSU administration has to fear from the Green Bay Packers.


  • Published On Jul 18, 2012
  • Weekend Whimsy: Try 14 wolves, son

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    Lovingly curated light reading to speed you through your Friday:

    • This is not Texas A&M’s new helmet. And we are all poorer for it. Which will be the first school to crack the Three Wolf Moon uniform barrier?

    • We solved this bowl thing. That will be $300,000. Thanks so much. Will middle- and lower-tier bowls be marginalized as the Big Six grow in prominence? Will any resort to gimmickry to maintain a high media profile? We have a solution: Bring Sky High Sports to, say, the Alamodome. Trampoline football! (This is not a paid endorsement, but if we were famous we would totally endorse this place.)

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  • Published On Jul 06, 2012
  • Novak Djokovic’s crossover botanical appeal

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    Novak Djokovic was already an ideal tennis rooting interest for college football fans. He’s brahsome on the court, gives massively entertaining post-match interviews and has parents who wear airbrushed T-shirts with his face on them in the stands. But now that he’s made a tradition of last year’s Les Milesian stunt at Wimbledon, your choice is clear. Djokovic posted the following photo from the All England Club:

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  • Published On Jun 25, 2012


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