Despite his appearance in the paper's "Political Insider" blog, the Atlanta Journal-Consitution doesn't have to actually tell you what made-up-sounding person "Tex Pitfield" actually does for a living to get across that he's no politician. He never could be, in fact, because no one with any political ambition in the state of Georgia -- or any of its neighbors -- could ever get away with the sort of blasphemy attributed to the Atlanta oil honcho during a radio interview on Thursday:

Pitfield: If I was governor, I’d cancel the [UGA-Alabama] game. That is just a huge amount of gasoline, that this structure, this system, this state cannot handle the expenditure on right now.

That gas needs to be used for people to go to work, and for people to take care of their families. I did the same thing with my tennis team yesterday. I told them that I wasn’t going to start wasting gas to go play tennis.

And I’m sorry. I know I’ve got a target on me right now by a couple hundred thousand football fans. Game should be canceled. People need to stay home…
[...]
I don’t think we have even begun to see the blood on the streets that this is going to produce. I think you’re going to see a number of small gasoline stations fail. I would think you may see some distributors fail.

Blood on the streets! S-E-C! S-E-C! S-E-C!

Of course Tex Pitfield's politically-motivated barb (he's not so tight with the governor, Sonny Perdue, it seems) affects the game not a whit and it will go on as scheduled. But is this a remotely valid argument? Actually, yeah -- incredibly seems Athens is not exactly equipped for 120,000 people to gas up at the same time on their way home.

However -- this here is the SEC, suh, and we don't take too kindly to matters of political, economic and environmental realism interferin' with our footbaw. We may be exporting what little of our economy remains to people who'd cut our throats as soon as they'd look at us. Our financial system may be in the throes of chronic failure. Our energy consumption habits may be disintegrating the superficial layers of the Earth. But let's keep out eyes on what's really important here: can Georgia establish a running game against Bama's ferocious front? Can the defense put heat on John Parker Wilson? Prioritize, Mr. Pitfield.

Because you can take our oil. You can even take our freedom. But Georgians will be damned, suh, if you'll ever take their footbaw.

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Photo of crazy Georgia fan via US Presswire.