mike-shula Stories - Team Speed Kills
RBR Reading Room: Crimson Storm Surge
It was the dust jacket of Crimson Storm Surge that deceived me. I picked up Christopher J. Walsh’s 2005 book on Alabama football expecting a minutely reported overview of Alabama football and, indeed, that’s how it started. For eight chapters and 64 pages that’s what I got; a...
Don't Bet On It!: Week One College Football National Game of Disinterest
College football season begins tomorrow, so I had better wrap up my week one forecasts and get down to the serious business of preparing you for the Georgia Bulldogs’ opening outing between the hedges. I’m almost done after having taken you around the SEC and run down the national games of...
SEC Trap Games: Florida
The Game: Florida vs. Mississippi State Date: October 16 The Setup: Florida at Alabama, October 2; Florida vs. LSU, October 9 Thanks to the rotation of the SEC West schedule, Florida has a very tough back-to-back to start October. First comes the Armageddon game at Alabama (where Urban Meyer...
From Bryant to Saban: Alabama's 25 Years in the Wilderness
In the wake of Alabama's victory over the Texas Longhorns in the BCS National Championship Game last January, the comparisons between Paul W. Bryant and Nick Saban have been pretty much constant. While there are certainly similarities between the two men's approach to the profession, it seems...
'Dawgs by Decades: One Man's Odyssey as a Georgia Bulldogs Fan
(Author’s Note I: Originally, I had intended to publish this posting on Sunday, but, because I inadvertently touched off a small controversy in the meantime, I decided to delay this posting, out of fear that it would not be well received. I hope that series of minor misunderstandings will not...
Ranking The Last 100 Years of Alabama Football
In 1958 Paul W. Bryant returned to the University of Alabama to begin rebuilding the football program he once played for. He was 45 years old and had been a head coach at three different schools leading them all to new heights of success. But the National Championship had eluded him. He started...
RBR Reading Room: Crimson Slide
A few weeks ago I read one of the best books about Alabama football ever penned and, as if to even the karmic scales, the next one I had the chance to peruse was one of the worst. The premise of Mike Flax's 2003 book, Crimson Slide: Why Alabama Football Fell and How It Can Climb Back On Top is...
RBR Reading Room: Alabama Football, Stallings to Saban
Donald Staffo's first book on Crimson Tide football was published in 1992 and the team immediately won the National Championship. The follow up, Alabama Football: Stallings To Saban, A Roller Coaster Ride, was published last year and Alabama proceeded to bring the crystal football back to The...
College Football's Biggest Under- and Overachievers of the Last Decade
One of my favorite stats is Pythagorean expectation. It looks at a team's points for and points allowed, and then estimates what we should expect that team's winning percentage to be. If you then look at the difference between how a team did versus its expectation, you can get a sense as to whether...
Debacle on the Plains: Georgia Gym Dogs Fall to Auburn for First Time Ever
The eighth-ranked Gym Dogs arrived in the so-called Loveliest Village on Friday night trailing a two-meet losing streak and needing a win in the worst way. Based upon past performance, Georgia could not have picked a better opponent than Auburn under such circumstances, as the Orange and Blue were...
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