I'm still in no mood to think about the College World Series, whether Josh Horton is going pro (getting a lot of Google searches about that) or anything else related to this weekend. Luckily, I have a nice little distraction - Dawg Sports' Fredoesque support of Oregon State complete with the usual tropes about universities being founded and Carolina Blue.
First a little correction for Kyle. The College World Series isn't a double elimination tournament. It's two double elimination regionals with a three-game series for the title. It's been two brackets since 1987, and a three-game series since 2003. Both Oregon State and UNC could have made it to the tile game with one loss, or no losses. This year it happened to break down that UNC needed five games to Oregon State's three. Last year the situation was reversed, and the Heels didn't whine about it. (Nor did OSU this year. Just Georgia fans.) You play the hand you're dealt.
As to Georgia's claim to being the oldest university, I don't need to even dignify it with a response, since the first comment on Dawg Sports does it quite well:
Suppose I have a good friend in the State of Georgia's General Assembly. For laughs, I get him to author a piece of legislation chartering my company (LD's Awesome Stuff) to make time machines. I make no time machines, and I have no technology in hand to make time machines. In fact, I don't even have to make an attempt to make time machines. If, decades down the road, someone else (probably in the Google headquarters) does invent a time machine, it'd be utterly ridiculous for me to say, "nice try, Google, but LD's Awesome Stuff is the first state-chartered builder of time machines in the country."
Point is: It's not good enough just to have a charter - you have to actually do something with it. UNC opened first. They deserve the credit for being first. And as a UGA fan, I've always thought the "-chartered" qualification was an undeserved piece of braggadocio. If anything, the fact that the school was chartered in 1785 and didn't open for 16 years speaks to a failure on the state's part - and little to be proud of.
There's talking about something, and then there's going out and actually building it. UNC did the latter. Georgia didn't. (Oh, and the "we took longer to do a good job" excuse would work better in UNC didn't routinely trounce you in school rankings, both for value and overall.)
Now, as to the purported girliness of the school colors. It's an old slam against UNC, and although it's interesting to see old Wolfpack talking points are the height of fashion down in Athens, I have to admit I've never seen it. Maybe it's just growing up in a Carolina household, but our shade of blue has never struck me as anything but manly.
The sky is Carolina Blue. The thing constantly over all of our heads, where we look when we aspire to better things, the last sight you see before the black nothingness of space, is Carolina Blue. It's the color of Oxford shirts and faded jeans - if you actually work for a living, no matter what shade your collar, you're doing it in our colors. It's the color of William Wallace's Scots and the Israeli Defense Forces - if you're beset by enemies on all sides and yet still winning, you're most likely in Carolina Blue. And when you first came into this world, this is the color they slapped on your head to signify you had a dick. So I've got no compunction against meeting you on any field or any court in Carolina Blue and White, no matter what sartorial choices you need to make to remind yourself what's swinging between your legs.
The ironic thing of course, is that UNC's tradition of Blue and White go back almost to the University's founding. Yes, there's a good chance Tar Heels were declaring themselves Blue and White before Georgia even got around to opening its doors.
I'm sure you guys have a storied history behind your choice of red and black though. Here it is. Your colors represent a time in 1893 when Georgia Tech stole your women. It's that kind of storied tradition that makes college...
Wait. Georgia Tech stole your women?
Georgia. Tech. Stole. Your. Women. And you folks commemorate this?
I'm beginning to see the obsession with "manly" school colors. That must have been a great story to tell the grandkids. You know, if Grandma hadn't run off with an engineer from Atlanta.
I guess when you steal your mascot from Yale, your logo from Green Bay and can't even come up with an original name for your town, you desperately latch on to any sort of tradition you can find, can't you?