Raise your hand if you thought we'd whup Auburn

Everyone but Coach Richt and Coach Grantham, put your hands down.

Well done, all around, Bulldogs.

Evil Richt Returns

Awesome.

Update: It sounds like the question asked was "Any suspensions that we need to know about?" Yeah. Because that would be ridiculous. Coach Richt may not have had a pleasant Wednesday.

GATA, Coach

Welcome home Coach Richt. I like where your head's at.

“He’s a good kid, but I’m not going to help Boise State."

Coach Richt: Operating since 1986

From Coach Richt's press conference in Hoover:

Q: Does it bother you, having a 90-27 record and being on the "imaginary hot seat?"

Coach Richt: "I can control my attitude. I can control my effort. I can control, you know, certain things, and that's what I focus on. And then the things I can't control I just trust the Lord with that. And that's kind of how I've been operating since 1986."

Hale: Richt to be more involved in offense

Yes.

Richt said he has sat in on every offensive team meeting and quarterback meeting this spring, and he’ll continue to do so throughout the season after taking a more reduced role during the past several years.

Tech game saves the season, not jobs

This blog isn't calling for anyone's job at Georgia.

Sure, we can see the problems same as anyone. And I fear they run deep. For a while there I was wondering whether Coach Richt's "in the arena" line would eventually be analogous to Coach Jim Donnan's "I've waited 55 years to coach a team like this" epitaph.

But I'm nowhere near close enough to this program to say who should and shouldn't be fired. So I'll place my trust in Coach Richt, as is appropriate.

I just want him to fix it. And I'm hopeful that whatever decisions he and his staff will announce in the coming days were made some time ago.

But, for now, thank you for the Tech game. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Lockdown mode in Athens.

Awesome. From David Hale:

Mark Richt didn't hold his regular Sunday teleconference today because he was out of town for a family function, according to the UGA sports information department. ...

-- Rennie was at the Falcons game today. He said he got plenty of dirty looks from Tech fans who recognized him, which was by far the highlight of his afternoon.

Life officially = Joe Cox

Part of me thinks I saw this coming.
Image: Daniel Ussery.
...

"I guess the point I’m making is that is where we are right now is a culmination of everyone. I’m not pointing the finger at any one individual. I’m pointing the finger at all of us as a whole. We must all improve, period.”

- Coach Mark Richt Sunday teleconference (Hale).

Mikey Moore in The AJC:

"The way I feel is we're playing for the fans right now. I know they're getting beat up, they're torn up and I just feel like we've got to put on a better performance for them."

Richt Saturday, in The ABHDN:

“My only true concern right now is to get back home, watch the film, see what the heck happened and make corrections and move forward getting ready for Vanderbilt. That’s what I’m worried about.”

We're at a moment where we're worried about Vanderbilt. And not Munson worried. Actual worried, and telling people.

A crack in Coach Richt's cool

This commercial came on last night during a Signing Day wrap up show.

Two things: 1. It's pretty difficult for me to imagine Mark Richt spending an entire day shopping for carpet. 2. What the hell is the deal with those apples?

More from the Stafford / Moreno press conference

Technical difficulties here in the home office have delayed our team coverage, but LIABC (Lucid Idiocy Athens Bureau Chief) Brian Huff was at todays Stafford/Moreno "Death to the 2009 Season" press conference.

He was struck by something that David Hale, and I'm sure the rest of the press corps, notes in his report: That Moreno never even looked into where he'd be drafted.

He apparently forgot to submit his paperwork to the NFL and didn't really talk to anyone to get a sense of his draft value.

So incredulous was the press corps, Huff said, that "they asked him like three times."

No kidding. But that's how Superman rolls.

All press conference images courtesy Brian Huff:

That Richt, he's a jokester

I was in Athens yesterday for work, and the speech I was covering was close to the practice fields.

So I'm walking by and see Coach Richt in his hat and I've got my camera, so I go to snap a picture. And, jokingly, he points and yells "Hey, are you from East Lansing?"


No, sir. I'm from Macon.

I only watched a few minutes, but Massaquoi made a sweet catch. What else is new?

A great A.J. story and a few other Richt lines

All from Coach Richt's visit to Macon this evening...

A.J. Green committed pretty early, but of course he was a big-time prospect, so other schools kept recruiting him. And the in-state schools, South Carolina and Clemson, wanted him bad.

So one day Steve Spurrier was going to be at Green's high school to try to talk him into coming to South Carolina.

"He skipped school that day so he didn't have to bump into him. ..." Richt said. "So I knew he was my kind of guy."

Of course, Richt noted that he generally does not approve of skipping school.
----
Richt on a playoff:

"I think it's gonna happen. I don't know how quickly. I was thinking, if the president elect of the United States wants a playoff, there's probably a pretty good chance we're gonna get a playoff. I would think the president of the United States might be the only person who might get a playoff system.

"I think four might be the starting point. I think eight, in my opinion, would be the most that will happen any time in the near future. I'm afraid if you go to 16 teams you might devalue the regular season to the point where games are not nearly as meaningful. I think it would really disrupt the post-season and the bowl season. I think four would be extremely simple to do."

----
Tatnall Square Academy here in Macon has apparently averaged 37 points a game and they're giving up 5 a game. So Richt turned to one of their coaches and said: "That seems like a pretty boring game to me. ... Don't you want to take it down to the last play, couple weeks in a row? Keep the T.V. ratings up? Raycom loves us right now."
----
In his opening remarks, Richt said the last time he was at a Macon Touchdown Club meeting, they were raising money to drill wells in Africa. They drilled three and one of them has a "big fat G" on it now.

"Some people don't even have water to drink," he said. "So now let's talk about being 9-2."
----
On the Florida game being in Jacksonville: "It's not very neutral. ... I wouldn't hold my breath (on the location changing)."
----
The number of scholarships Georgia will have to give this year is hard to predict, "but I doubt it goes to 25."

"You know we've won the last two games. I don't know if anybody's noticed that"

- Coach Mark Richt tonight, at the Macon Touchdown Club.

You can tell this season has been tough on Coach Richt. He was in Macon tonight and, though he almost seemed his normal dinner-speech-circuit self, you could tell he was tired.

And maybe a little defensive, though he belied it with humor. I think he said "9-2" about a dozen times. He noted that his teams are 30-4 in opponent's stadiums. He talked about how Auburn hasn't given up a touchdown in the 1st quarter all season.

He acknowledged that it's "really been tough" for fans the way we lost to Florida and Alabama. But he seems... I don't know. Like he wants something more from us. Some understanding that we haven't been willing, or able, to give.

Maybe we feel that way, too. We'll work it out like a family, but David Hale did a Q & A with Coach Richt before the event, and it made me want to respond:

Q: What about all the fan reaction to the past few games? Has it been hard for you to hear some of the criticism?

CMR: The thing that is interesting to me is that everybody wants to – I think people are missing the fact that we've won nine games so far. We're 9-2. We lost to a No. 1 and the No. 3 in America. That's not too shabby. It's not perfection by any means, but I'm proud of this team. I'm proud of how they've battled and fought. The coaches, too. We've had some games where we certainly didn't finish the way we wanted to or play the way we wanted to, but it's like life. You get some disappointments and you could certainly just sack your bats and go home, or you can get back up and fight. We've gone that, and there's a lot to be said for that.

Q: How different do you think people would view this year if you had started the year ranked No. 24 instead of No. 1?

CMR: They'd be doing cartwheels right now.

Coach, do you think we should have started the season ranked No. 24?

Beat tech and get us to 10-2. Ten-win seasons are nothing to sneeze at, and every fan I respect knows this. We remember the 1990s. We appreciate you. Hell, we love you.

But we don't set our expectations by the media, or the voters. And even when things were low, 10-2 was not the goal. I hope it will always be a stepping stone, however a lofty one.

Please make the defense remember how to tackle so it's noticed. And fix the special teams. And crush Georgia tech.

You have my trust, and the expectations that go with it.

The humiliation of St. Richt

AKA: The blog most likely to offer metaphysical reasons for a loss...

Is it possible that Coach Richt got away from his core last year, goodness and humility, and that now he is paying for it?

We celebrated against Florida. We blacked out Auburn. And it boomeranged. That which was once our savior, now must kill us.
----

I continue to think that asking why you lost a football game is a lot like asking why God allows bad things to happen to good people. It simply is.

What if we hadn't had a penalty on that interception in the first half against Florida? Would that have been the butterfly flapping his wings in California and causing a cyclone in Japan?

Maybe. Or maybe we really do just go to sleep for some unknown reason under Richt. I'd like to see the phenomenon compared to other teams before I decide, but it's a reasonable question.

Maybe Florida and Alabama were just better, and it snowballed on us.

Or maybe we just can't block and pressure the quarterback very well. Those two things will lead to blow outs, I don't care who you are.

Maybe we started the season with the toughest schedule in the nation, relying on a freshman kicker, with question marks at defensive end, with a young offensive line, then lost our best O-lineman, and our best D-lineman, and still said "Oh, yeah, National Title - definitely."

Also, Saban and Meyer are probably in league with the devil.
----

Our time will come, and quite possibly next year. But since other SEC powers (Florida, LSU, and perhaps now Alabama) were able to win a National Title so early in their current head coach's tenure, it makes things seem oh so very urgent.

But you don't have to look hard for butterfly effects in Richt's second year (2002) to see that year's National Title within our grasp. For that matter, imagine that Stafford doesn't overthrow that wheel route against South Carolina last year. How would that change the 2007 season?

Because of the 2008 squad's youth, or for other reasons, it has seemed to lack leadership. We seem unable to stem the tide of things gone wrong before the game gets out of hand. Even the players have commented on this.

But the fire of this season may forge the steel we need in years to come. And I think that, this time next year, we may be talking about the redemption of St. Richt, and a season won without any gimmicks.

The Lucid Idiocy Alabama prediction

You've seen the comments. I've seen the comments.

Evil Richt brings the black veil of reality down on Alabama Saturday at Sanford Stadium.



UPDATE: Turned out it really was a funeral. Who was the fool being pitied by Mr. T, here?

One vote's a landslide

Another typical South Carolina game. Why do I keep thinking we'll outgrow that?

The o-line looked rough, the pass rush is a major concern, Stafford missed some reads, we dropped a ton of passes... basically it's going to be hard to win that National Title without getting a lot better.

So, if the coaching staff could get on that, that'd be great.

They did last year. In related news, Ford truck sales in Georgia shot through the roof today.

Coach Richt.com

Coach Mark Richt now has a Web site. Though pretty awesome, it appears to be run by the folks who handle Fox's NFL football graphics.

www.MarkRicht.com.

Coach Richt in Macon July 17

He'll be speaking at the Macon Centreplex. Program starts at 7 p.m., social hour starts at 6 p.m.

It's free and open to all UGA fans, according to the card I got in the mail.

Coach Richt will be in Jacksonville July 15, Valdosta July 16, at the Cobb Galleria Centre July 28, in Columbus July 29 and in Chattanooga July 31.

Richt, soldiers, still awesome

David Ching has posted some photos of Coach Richt and company's trip to the Middle East. They were taken by University of Auburn photographer Todd Van Emst.
















I'll let the yellow jerseys go... this time.

Peace within four quarters

As cool as it is that Coach Richt and other college football head coaches are heading to the Middle East to visit the troops, Coach Richt ought to just leave the other chumps at home, skip the military bases and get involved in peace negotiations.

And if you think I'm kidding, you just don't know me.

Hat tip: The man.