God's Garden

Oh herro. It’s good to be back. Austin and I spent the last week in the Outer Banks enjoying paradise. All I did was lie on the beach, eat delicious home cooked meals, drink beer and play a glorious round of golf. It was quite spectacular. And while it was hard to come back to the working world after such a serene week, at least I had something to get me through it: Game Day. Football season is finally here after a long hibernation through the end of winter, spring and most of summer. I’ve had an extra bounce in my step in anticipation of Game Day, when UVA takes on Southern Cal in an awesome home opener. You bet your ass the Oceanliner will be back in God’s garden to watch the Trojans take on the Cavs in Scott Stadium. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.

I love that we scheduled such a high profile opponent for the opening game. Even though we will most likely lose, everyone I know is excited about watching us play USC. It’s an elevated sense of hype and interest in the program heading into a new season that the like of Wyoming and Middle Tennessee State can’t build. So kudos to Littlepage and Groh for throwing their nuts on the table. The excitement on Game Day is going to be palpable.

Speaking of baller scheduling, one needs only to look at the opponent on Saturday. First of all, the PAC 10 does it right and has a true round robin during the regular season, with each team facing every other one. That leaves three non conference games for the Trojans to schedule and in 2008 those teams are Virginia, Ohio State and Notre Dame. That’s so ballsy it hurts. The Buckeyes are no scheduling pansies either. This is their second home and home series with a top 5 team in the last 4 years (epic games with Texas in 2005 and 2006). Go big or go home, Sallie.

A number of people ask me how I think the Hoos will fare in 2008. We will certainly not win 9 regular season games like we did last year. The 2007 Hoos had one of the best seasons in program history and it will not repeat itself easily, especially considering the 2008 Cavs have only 10 returning starters (5 each on offense and defense). Only seven schools in the country have fewer starters returning to their teams, and it’s not like UVA exactly loaded up on 5 star talent in the off-season. But I don’t think we are going to fall off a cliff either and finish 11th in the conference, which is where the ACC media voted us. I think we are going to finish 7-5 or 6-6 and go to a mediocre bowl, which is completely reasonable considering we are coming down from a great season. People need to realize that UVA is NOT going to contend for national championships. We’re just not. The absolute pinnacle of what we can do right now is win the Coastal Division, have a chance to win an ACC title and play in a BCS game. But there’s no way we go undefeated and play for a national title, or have one loss and be considered. The way UVA is made up its just not going to happen. But we aren’t going to finish 2-10 either.

Hopefully on Saturday we will break the single game attendance record at Scott Stadium, which is 63,701, when we lost a heartbreaker to Miami in 2004. After perusing the top 10 attendances in Scott Stadium history, I realized with pride that I had been to the top 9 attended games in UVA’s history. Hopefully this Saturday will break the record, and secure that I’ve been to all 10 of the highest attended football games in UVA history. The top 10 games (not in order) occurred twice my first year (Duke, Florida State), four times second year (Clemson, Carolina, Maryland, Miami), twice third year (Tech, Florida State) and at last years Tech game. Personally, I’d like to see us go above 65K.

I’m not counting us out completely against USC though. UVA has always played well at home since I started following the program in 2003. In fact, no ACC team has won more home games than UVA since 2001, which was Groh’s first year as coach. We have only been blown out at home once in the last five years, the Tech debacle in 2005. This means two things. One, is that we could possibly give USC a game. Two, it means we are absodutely atrocious on the road.

So I had to call China recently for work, and was surprised to find out that the whole country is on a single time zone, even though it is almost exactly as wide as the United States. Bizarre. I guess you can do that when you are communist. What’s even weirder is that, because of the single time zone across such a large country, if you are in western China and go directly south into India, you will jump back 2.5 hours in time. One would think going directly south would keep you in the same time zone, but not in the Orient apparently. I bet people who live right on that border game the system to get the longest days possible. But they are probably living on 13 cents a day and have more things to worry about than time zones.

I like Mark Schlabach of ESPN.com, but I hate it when people take college football games for granted. In his season preview he states that an Ohio State “victory over the Trojans will probably punch Ohio State's ticket to the Jan. 8 BCS Championship Game.” Oh, so those eight conference games are suddenly cupcakes? Conference games AT ranked Wisconsin and ranked Illinois are afterthoughts. Home games against Penn State, Purdue and Michigan are in the bag? Please, anything can happen in college football. Saying that a team in a power conference will “probably” sweep their remaining 9 times is ludicrous.

From the “there’s something else going on here” department, the article about the death of the author of 100 Things to do Before You Die was very strange. The CNN.com article led with “Dave Freeman, co-author of "100 Things to Do Before You Die," a travel guide and ode to odd adventures that inspired readers and imitators, died after hitting his head in a fall at his home. He was 47.” That was it. The rest of the article went on to tell of Freeman’s life accomplishments, but nothing more on a very weird death. Everyday people don’t just fall in their homes and die. I see more coming out of this.

Even though this rain in DC is pissing me off, the weekend in God’s Garden is going to be glorious. Austin and I are having a tailgate on Saturday starting around 11, so feel free to come on by. Also, we are going tubing on Sunday and leaving Cville around noon, so give me a shout if you want to go. So until next time, stay safe, keep it real and go Hoos.