PD’s Picks & Pans: Week 9

GC columnist David Parker previews this weekend’s Florida-Georgia game and other big matchups.

One week removed from correctly picking the Gators’ win over the Gamecocks, PD sets his sights on The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party and all things “Jawja.”

PD breaks down the Dawgs’ coaching hot seat history heading into the matchup and also delves into what is perhaps the greatest meltdown caught on camera.

Oregon State at Washington

The winner of this game every year gets to hold the Oaken Beaver.

….that can’t be right….

Buck-toothed forest-dwelling rodents: 12

Oregon State: 23

Notre Dame at Oklahoma

This is the week that Notre Dame students can finally say that their football program is back … at least if all goes well in their phonetics classes. They’re at a very tricky juncture having just mastered all the vowel sounds (and sometimes “Y”). Next week, the best pick-up line in South Bend will be, “Are you sore? Because you just fell all the way out of the Top 10.”

Sooners: 42

Laters: 17

Baylor at Iowa State

Waco, Texas and Ames, Iowa are separated by over 800 miles of monotonous, vapid nothingness that saps your will to live. After watching about three quarters of this game, that landscape will look like the Chocolate Room at the Wonka factory.

‘Clones: 30

Is there an RG4 we can talk to?: 27

Slippery Rock at California University of Pennsylvania

The team affectionately known as the “Calupas” (well, who could say they aren’t?) try to get a piece of the Rock. Seriously, Slippery Rock’s nickname is the Rock. They are the Slippery Rock Rock. Their game cheer is “Rock Pride,” their slogan is “Pride of the Rock,” and their mascot is Rocky (presumably not the movie, the squirrel or Jim Rockford’s dad). Shockingly they offer no undergraduate classes in creativity. Meanwhile, California University of Pennsylvania doesn’t even know what state it’s in. They may also be confused as to what planet they’re on, as their team nickname is the Vulcans.

Score Long and Prosper: 27

The Bird Man of Alcatraz in an Oil Spill: 30

Yeah, okay, that one was a long walk…

Tennessee at South Carolina

Derek Dooley has thrown down the road kill: if Tyler Bray plays poorly against South Carolina, he will be benched in favor of whoever else they got. Dooley’s not sure. Word out of Tennessee is that there is nobody willing to take the job. Correction, that was the word about Dooley’s soon-to-be-vacated head coaching position. I’m sure Steve Spurrier must miss playing Phil, The Great Pumpkin, so close to Halloween, but this has to be a big red-circled game on Stevie’s calendar: the Tennessee Vols coached by the son of the Jawja coach who spent so many Saturdays sticking it to his alma mater on the same weekend of The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. Also, Lane Kiffin sucks.

Scary Stevie: 27

Dooley-ing Banjos: 13

Washington State @ Stanford

The Washington State logo looks nothing like a cougar. It looks like Gamera with false eyelashes. The Stanford logo looks nothing like a redwood. It looks like they’re going to destroy the Cougars.

Cardinal Fang: 25

Ohhh, There Goes Tokyo, Oh no!: 19

Syracuse @ South Florida

It’s been a long time since the ‘Cuse had guys like McNabb and the Pocket Rocket. Now they can’t even compete with the Pocket Holtz.

The ‘Cuse: 23

The Blues: 17

Duke at Florida State

This edition of the ACC Game of the Week features the vastly contrasting fan and alumni bases of Florida State and Duke. One of the school’s alumni are called a word that means “poop” … and the other school’s alumni are called “Dukies.” As Florida State once again stares up at the national title contenders this season, it has sunk in anew that with their feather-weak conference schedule, just one loss eliminates them from the BCS title race. That’s because outside of Florida, they have no other quality opponents to help boost their BCS ranking. So this week, for the fourth-straight year FSU has formed a committee to decide which new conference they will align with long-term. This is equivalent to Ron Perlman and Jonathan Goodman meeting to decide which super-models they are going to marry.

After the game, F$U fans will be chanting “SCORE-BOARD! SCORE-BOARD!” … Duke fans will be chanting, “BOARD SCORES! BOARD SCORES!”

Semis: 30

Put down your Dukes: 20

Boise State at Wyoming

Cowboy’s head coach Dave Christenson will be spending this week in time-out, having been fined $50,000 and suspended one week for his spot-on impression of Mount Vesuvius following Wyoming’s 1-point loss to Air Force. The AP reported that he confronted Falcons coach Troy Calhoun and accused him of directing his quarterback to fake an injury to save a time-out in the fourth quarter. To say that he “confronted” him is a bit like saying that Rocky and Clubber Lange exchanged unpleasantries in the ring or that George Brett expressed displeasure to the umpire who called him out for using too much pine tar. The ironically named Christenson dropped more F-bombs on the Air Force coach than all of his last graduating class dropped real bombs in their four years of bomber training. In addition to calling the coach of the United States Air Force Academy unethical, amidst the rambling tobacco-slurred diatribe that would even make professional winos correct his grammar, he demanded between profanities that he get into his locker room and then get into his press conference. He called him “fly boy” as well as “Mr. F****** Howdy Doody,” and — my hand to God — ended it by throwing his arms in the air and doing a Rick Flair signature, “WHOOOO!” If you have not seen it, do yourself a favor and look it up — censored and non-censored versions are available. You’ll see that when Calhoun approached, Christenson was already in the middle of carpet-bombing someone else with the F-word. This will go down as one of the most epic meltdowns in sports history. Hal McRae and Kevin Borseth, you can go home now. Lloyd McLendon, don’t worry about returning that base. Christian Bale, breathe easy again. There’s a new knight who will guard the holy grail of meltdowns for the next few millennia. There’s a new sheriff of embarrassment in town. And his name is Dave Christenson. Y’all be cool.

Smurf Turfers: 32

Yippie Ki Yay, Mother F***** Howdy Doody: 17

TCU at Oklahoma State

Apropos of nothing, Mike Gundy sent Dave Christenson a fruit basket Sunday.

Horned Toads: 20

Okie State: (I’m a MAN! I’m) 40!

No 10 Georgia vs No 2 Florida at Jacksonville

This has been one of those years that most Gators fans have been rooting for the Dawgs to win most of their games heading into The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. Firstly because they want the Cocktail Party to have some atmosphere and buzz around it, as well as help the Gators’ BCS points total, but mostly so that UGA’s under-achieving head coach — whomever that happens to be from year to year — retains his job. They’ve had four different coaches since Vince the Prince retired, and conventional wisdom suggests that eventually by random chance they’ll hire an Erk instead of a Goff. But if they do, there’s no reason to think they’ll stick around. One of those four coaches was Glen Mason, who after being hired, flew to Athens, took one look around, sobbed a little, quit and ran back to Minnesota. Yes, he preferred the genitalia-freezing backdrop of Grumpy Old Men to spending even one full day on the UGA campus. Regardless, these days the coach on the bubble is Mark Richt. In the Goff years, when Jawja played South Carolina, UGA fans would say, “If you can’t beat the poultry, go back to Moultrie,” Ray Gump’s hometown. After their latest loss to the henhouse masters, they’re saying, “If you can’t beat the foul, go back to Omaha.” They’re Georgia fans; they don’t know from rhyming. And these days it isn’t Sparky Woods or Brad Scott across the field; it is Darth Visor himself, the Freddie Krueger to all their football nightmares: Steve Spurrier. In the 90s, there was a Florida fan brother and sisterhood called, “Gators for Goff” … these days it’s, “Reptiles for Richt.” After being clobbered and nearly shut out by the same Carolina team that one week later was eviscerated by the Gators, Dawgs fans were wishing they were still playing a different South Carolina team, the likes of last year’s patsy du jour, Coastal Carolina. You know why? They’re the Chanticleers. Yes, the Chanticleers! I had to look it up, too. It’s a damn rooster — just like South Carolina. They’ve really got a thing about chickens in that state, don’t they? If you can’t beat the Chanticleers, go back to serving beers.

Meanwhile at Florida, fans are falling hard for their second year coach, and the team is taking on his personality. And this week, while Jawja players jaw off to each other and the coaches through Twitter, Facebook, and local media microphones, the Gators are laying just below the surface of the shallows, preparing just like they did for LSU and South Carolina, staring at Georgia with one of the many blood-chilling expressions that Coach Boom used to try to incinerate the officials in the first half of last week’s game in The Swamp.

Good Guys: 32

Bad Dogs:  17

David Parker
One of the original columnists when Gator Country first premiered, David “PD” Parker has been following and writing about the Gators since the eighties. From his years of regular contributions as a member of Gator Country to his weekly columns as a partner of the popular defunct niche website Gator Gurus, PD has become known in Gator Nation for his analysis, insight and humor on all things Gator.