From The AJC:
Knoxville — Wanna bet Mark Richt has Tennessee in his Top 25 now?
Actually, the more pertinent question is where will the Georgia coach, who left Tennessee off his ballot a week ago, put his team? Or where should anybody place Georgia?
If they watched the No. 12 Bulldogs (make that formerly No. 12 Bulldogs) fall face first on national TV, 35-14 to the unranked Vols (3-2, 1-1) in front of 107,052 fans at Neyland Stadium Saturday, the most likely answer might be the Sun Belt Conference.
Seriously, Sun Belt member Arkansas State, which scored 27 in Knoxville earlier this year, might have given Tennessee more of a challenge. This game was 28-0 before Georgia made its second first down.
And that's the main story. Not a column, the main story. The bolded line kind of made me want to stab myself in the chest with a fork. Where do I sign up for 8-4?
In college football, anything can happen. Look only to USC as proof on Saturday. They lost, at home, to a terrible Stanford team that was using a backup quarterback forced into his first start because the first stringer was having seizures.
So, yeah, things can get weird.
We're ridiculously young, and for my money undersized on defense. But the question is: Do we really have the young talent we thought, and is that talent getting coached up like it should?
We'll know for sure next year. For the moment we need to learn how to:
1. Block.
2. Tackle.
3. Cover. And by this, I mean at least be in the same zip code as the other team's wide receivers.
4. Matt Stafford needs to become accurate, but see No. 1 for a possible explanation on that one.
My buddy Joe said we looked hungover Saturday. Are the bars in Knoxville really that good? The Dawgs didn't look like they got drunk Friday night, they looked like me and my friends got drunk, then stole their uniforms.
Where was the meanness, the intimidation, the freaking pride? I took a nap during the second half. It was my second best decision of the day, just after not going to Knoxville to see this travesty in person.
Sigh.
Saturday was probably the worst loss of the Richt era, which I suppose is a positive. And we have the same SEC record as Florida, even if our losses are to all the wrong teams (SEC Eastern ones) and Florida hasn't looked like a bunch of girls wearing skirts.
I remember after one terrible loss of the Donnan era I heard Charles Grant on the post-game radio show.
"Come together like a family," he said.
That's really all you can do. And trust Coach Richt to right this ship. Forget the SEC. We were never good enough to win that this year anyway. Focus on beating Vanderbilt.
And, if that doesn't work, maybe we can hire Tim Tebow to run the program. I've got his cel number.
Finally, there is some comfort here:
Let us suppose that 2007 turns out to be as frustrating for Georgia fans as 2006. (We should remember that our definition of "disaster" has been upgraded considerably during the Mark Richt era; a 5-5-1 record in 1969 and a 5-5 record in 1970 generated much frustration in Bulldog Nation, which since has come to view a 9-4 campaign in 2006 followed by a 4-2 start in 2007 as cause for wailing and gnashing of teeth.)
If so, we may take some comfort in the knowledge that, in Coach Dooley's eighth season in 1971, the 'Dawgs rebounded to go 11-1. Georgia could do so again in Coach Richt's eighth season in 2008.
2 comments:
Your friend Joe would know the bars in Knoxville, wouldn't he?
What's the over and under on losses? If it's 4, I'll take the over. The Bulldogs look like Dogs this year.
They looked like drunken puppies Saturday.
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