No. 247 - Poor Man’s Game Notes XVI: UGA vs. Vanderbilt, 10/3/26

I’m coming to you from an old log cabin in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Actually, it’s a 1930s motel, one of the few remaining in a town where a milkshake goes for $32.

When I spent my college summers working out here in the nineties, Jackson was relatively unknown. Roughnecks and bikers drank at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, and the old theater still played movies. Amazing what a few billionaires and their buddies can do to a perfectly good town.

I started the week camping in Grand Teton National Park, but after one night of freezing my butt off, I traded my tent in for this cabin. I used to enjoy hostels, communes, and campsites, but I guess I’ve gotten older, which is another way to say pickier.

Anyway, Harvard vs. Brown is on a television with only a few channels. Had our first opponents played one another, it would’ve resembled this Ivy League monstrosity: empty stands, dropped passes … there’s a pee-wee element to it.

But you can’t argue with Ivy League statistics: more than 50 national championships, with Yale alone claiming 27 (take that, Alabama). Of course, they were playing in leather helmets, and most of those titles came before the forward pass was even legal.

While Ivy League football is nearly irrelevant, and, as much as I hate to say it, Jackson Hole has lost some of its luster, our Dawgs are three standard deviations the other way.

We’re 4–0 with an “Ivy League” strength of schedule. But according to all sorts of media reports, including The Wall Street Journal, Florida is back … well, I don’t buy it. Kirby lives rent-free in the minds of every Florida fan … very Spurrier-esque, circa 1990s.

I’ll put my money on the Dawgs playing in the SEC Championship.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the top of the Tetons for a bacon and peanut butter waffle.