UVA Football--Shitastic

"After seeing yesterday's debacle first hand, I'd suggest that anyone seriously considering going to Homecoming begin to seriously consider skipping it. [My girlfriend] Laurel and I drove all the way from NYC to see her first college football game. Charlottesville was in prime form: freshly minted coeds in sundresses, perfect weather, and tailgates galore. Since it was Laurel's first game, we did it in full style, meaning cocktails on The Lawn and straggling in after halftime because, of course, we were going to be ahead by a mile. Wrong. A 3-3 tie. Expletives empty from my mouth at sudden and violent rate. Our section is no longer family friendly. After enduring the little-league caliber of football for about 20 minutes, Laurel asks me, 'Wow, are they always this bad?' This, coming from a 49ers fan! UVA then finds the only way to make things worse: they take it to overtime. You gotta be kidding me. Finally, it ends mercifully after one round in overtime. They should have just pulled out my fingernails and saved me the ticket price."

This note came from your friend and mine, Andy Kellam, after witnessing the Virginia Cavaliers' 13-12 "victory" over the Wyoming Cowboys first-hand three weeks ago. I say "victory" because in a game that UVA was losing 6-3 late in the third quarter after having given up two fake punt conversions for first downs early on, you have to be honest with yourself when you win by watching the other team miss an extra point kick in overtime:

We didn't win; they lost.

I weighedAndy's advice seriously. I could very easily skip the game the following weekend, the homecoming contest between UVA and Western Michigan; the only real commitment I had made to that point was attending a bacon party at Monsieur Dave Storm's place in Charlottesville. I didn't even have tickets, but certainly, there would be freebies floating around. And, hey, there's always Charlottesville, damn near the most beautiful little town in the country.

So, I bit, and committed to drive down the morning of the game to get to town in time for the BP. The day started off so well; about eightpounds of pork (for just 15 people), three dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts, a bacon quiche, a few bottles of champagne, the Storms, Scott McGuffin (aka Crimedog), Karl "Money" Rothman and Tchaka "Glue" Owen were all hangin' out. The weather was crisp...overcast, but warm; the sun was breaking right around 1 PM, so after the BP Tchaka and I drove to Grounds so that we could chill out at the Rotunda, taking in the sights at the Lawn with coeds so young I had to break out the handi-wipes just to avoid being the dirtiest man in town.

(Side note: you know what's funny about the seminal moment in "Dazed and Confused", when our boy Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey) drops the now-infamous line "I get older...they stay the same age"? I realize that for the brief moments when I am standing around on game day looking at 18-to-22-year-olds in sun dresses that are getting increasingly more dramatic, skimpy, and everything in-between, I am Wooderson! Awful, I know. Worse--the fact that college women at UVA have no choice but to follow the trends, and apparently, the "trend" is to make sure that you want to err on the side of falling out of your shirt if you are large-chested, wear something skin-tight if you are not large-chested, and if you've got the legs to pull it off (or not), make sure that slit on the left side of your dress leaves nothing to my imagination. Tchaka made the point that if guys from the 1800s rolled up onto the Lawn this particular Saturday--guys that were used to catching just a glimpse of a woman's ankle as their only chance at skinseeing in the course of a day--there would have been multiple cardiac arrests on the Lawn that day. Random, but facts are facts.)

(Side note 2: Frat guys still look like dirtbags, and that still is okay with classier college women. One would think that being a guy with even an ounce of fashion sense could be bagging beautiful coeds left and right; not the case. This may never change...again, facts are facts.)

(Side note 3: No disrespect to the lovely women of the Orient, but are Asian women getting bigger? Tchaka and I commented later on that day that we ran into more thick Asian women than at any time in any place in America ever. I like women that aren't shy at the plate, but some of these girls looked like they just rolled out of the Golden Corral up Route 29...what the fuck?? I still remember knowing only one Asian woman in high school that was slightly overweight, Susan Chong, and she was overweight (in fairness, she wasn't even big, but in comparison to her Asian peers, she was) because she was the largest-chested Asian woman in school. College was similar; you had a couple of Asian women that were slightly thick but not, in the immortal words of my Dad, K-Bell, "Hefty Bags." Now, shit, the last racial classification of women that could always be counted on to be slim has bit the dust. Oh well...yes, I'll take two Number-sixes and super-size the fries, please.)

After walking the Grounds for a while, and hitting a couple of tailgates with Eric "Steak" Tracy, my friends Liz & Raymond and some guy named Terry Kirby, we proceeded to take our seats for the game. And then we proceeded to lose 17-10 on Homecoming Day.

As bad as this was, I had decided a few weeks prior to go the UVA/Georgia Tech game in Atlanta the following Thursday night. Already had a plane ticket; already had a game ticket. Going to Atlanta is fine by me--that's where Mom lives now, and with Karl Shin, Scott Bryant, Beth "Skillum" Phillips and That Guy Suhrid in the mix, the tailgating and the hangtime would be lovely anyway. And, in another stunning display of beautiful weather, decent coeds (GT's students aren't the best-looking in the ACC, but hey, it's better than Duke) and a tailgate loaded with the right mix of snacks, company and Crown Royal (Mr. Bryant's fuck-around level--zero), I KNEW that trouble was brewing. But how could I have known that it could be this bad? At least we only lost that game 24-7 (although I think Suhrid may have lost his voice creating daisy-chain profanities to describe our incredibly-inept offense), but being the only game on TV last Thursday night, the whole freakin' country knows that we are garbage now.

Here's what else I know, after watching the Virginia Cavaliers play in person for the first time since our lovely win over Florida State last year:

1. We absolutely fucking suck in every way you can suck at football. Of the four teams UVA has played so far--Pittsburgh, Wyoming, W. Michigan and Georgia Tech--only GT has anything resembling real talent, and they easily put up 24 points on UVA. (Had the GT coaching staff decided to throw long more often, it would have been much, much worse.) And, I think that defense is probably our strong suit right now. Why? The offense is bad and the coaching has been atrocious; in the two games I have seen in-person, it was strange to watch Al Groh, maybe the most overpaid coach in college football history given his accomplishments, get outschemed by W. Michigan all day and then decide to rotate three quarterbacks into the offense to try and "find a spark." The per-game offensive ranks for the team, through four weeks of football (I believe this is out of 117 Division I-A programs; one of you smart people will correct me if I'm wrong):

Total offense: 116th
Scoring offense: 113th
Passing offense: 90th
Third down conversion percentage: 115th
Rushing offense: 117th (i.e., LAST IN THE NATION, with 51 yards/game)
First downs per game: 117th (LAST IN THE NATION, with about 11 per game)

2. UVA fans were booing their team on homecoming weekend...in the second quarter. From a group of fans that can hardly be called passionate football fans--as much as I love UVA, even I have to admit that hardcore football fans don't attend our games--some of the heartiest booing I have heard in Charlottesville rained down from the rafters after the second interception thrown by one of our QBs resulted in a touchdown. The booing got worse when play calls seemed to be George Welshian in nature (first down: sweep left; second down, sweep right; third down and long, play-fake, hit the RB in the backfield for a gain of two, maybe three yards) and fans had had enough of our shitastic football operation. Wow, people in Charlottesville are not happy about this team, nor should they be.

3. Traditionally, UVA is a strong first-half-of-the-season performer. Normally, we're something like 5-2 or 6-1 by mid-October, and then we lose three of four to end up in the Poulan Weedeater SunTrust Radial Oahu Bowl, coming Tuesday afternoon at 1:30 PM the week before Christmas on TNT, presented by Your Fucking Local Car Wash. This year, we're so bad so early in the year that "Coach" Groh has decided to start Jameel Sewell, the redshirt freshman quarterback, for the rest of the season (he was the third-stringer literally two weeks ago; now, although the first two QBs on the roster are not injured, Groh has decided to throw in the towel and pronounce the 2006 season DOA).

Let's be honest--we should be 0-4. But even at 1-3, we may have only two more truly winnable games on the schedule (this Saturday, against the always-accommodating-but-slightly-improved Duke Blue Devils, and in a few weeks against North Carolina, which might be worse than UVA, if that's possible). Don't forget that we once again end the season Murderer's Row-style: at FSU; home against Miami, and away against Virginia Tech. Goodness, this might be our first 2-win season in a LONG time. Do yourself a favor--hide the kids whenever you see our 'Hoos on television; beating a child with the leather belt would do them a better service than making them watch our shitastic team attempt to play football this season. Yeah, I said it!

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell and Longer Community Trust:

Karl Shin's orange pants: Opening Weekend
Hearing people in the UVA bookstore boo as the final score of the Homecoming game was announced: Opening Weekend
Tailgating, any time, ever: Opening Weekend
Milkshakes at Chik-Fil-A: Opening Weekend
Hangin' out with Mom: Opening Weekend

bellview--when in doubt, shoot the three

UVA Football--Shitastic