Today started out a pretty good day. I had a ridiculously productive workout, my eggs were cooked to perfection at East Campus and the SportsCenter top 10 plays made me very happy. Lets recap.
Nate Robinson ally-ooped ALL OVER the Hawks in a game which I scored 5 bucks off Hans “Never Wrong” Appen whose beloved Hawks couldn’t handle the heat of Madison Square Garden. Speaking of heat, my favorite NBA player DeWayne Wade balled out of his MIND last night and nabbed the top play with a RIDICULOUS alley-oop pass (MVP?). Beckham was also in the top plays with one of the best free kicks I’ve ever seen. I actually yelped out loud in the dining hall. The only negative was that Sidney Crosby made the top plays (though to be fair his goal was sick-nasty). Little did I know that this minor blip in the top plays was a sign of things to come.
(No, I’m not a big fan of “Sid the Kid”. I don’t really think there’s anything he can do about it. He’s compared to Wayne Gretzky which makes me mad. He whines. He can’t fight. He can’t grow a playoff beard. (Before you say, “neither can you, babyface,” let me just point out that the Yankees are the only team of mine to consistently make the playoffs and they have a strict no-beard policy therefore excusing me from such dilemmas) In the battle between he and Ovechkin, I would take Ovechkin any day of the week and twice on Sundays.)
As I was walking home from East Campus, I started to think about Dennis Felton. I wondered, would it be appropriate to fire him mid-season? It would give us a jump on finding a replacement. No, that’s ridiculous. They would never fire him during the season because the team would quit and any chance of another SEC run would be over. Evans is a classy guy (Damon Evans is the AD at UGA). He’ll finish the season….Oh my God they’re going to fire him, aren’t they.
Sure enough, five minutes later I recevied 8 text messages (some simply informing me of the firing, some mocking me) one phone call, one facebook message and even a wall post. For those who were hidden under a rock last week, the Friday Pregame show now streams live over the internet at wuog.org/sports and we debated whether Dennis Felton should be fired with Red and Black basketball beat writer Fletcher Page. Though the points to fire Felton seemed to far outweigh mine, I stuck with it and defended my boy.
What’s strange is, it makes me look like a classy guy which is something I never thought would be protrayable. My points were that Dennis stuck with the UGA program after a disastrous situation with Jim Harrick, is one of 3 UGA mens basketball coaches to win an SEC Championship (only the second tournament championship) and stands up for his beliefs when dealing with character and academics (has kicked off 3 top scorers in recent years for academics/character issues). I said I’d give the guy another season and let him live out his contract because we owe him that much.
(Did I think that would happen? Not a chance. There was an over/under 14 games in Vegas on Felton’s head. I definitely would have gone under.)
I get that the program hasn’t been great. But after the scandals Georgia went through, they needed a facelift. Not only has Felton provided one, he even won a championship in doing so and it doesn’t matter how lucky you think it was. There is a banner in Stegeman that doesn’t care what the season record was. It will only remind us of how Georgia won three games in two days in a miraculous upset of…everyone.
But Damon Evans fired Felton today. I can only hope for a better future for Georgia basketball which is extremely possible with the talent in this state (Meeks, Lawal, Aminu, Nolte (what?), Singleton, Allen etc.). This firing better not be for a mediocre coach.
Until next time, Ball hard.
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