Give Mark Bradley credit for nailing the sucker:
… Georgia’s celebration, which didn’t go according to Richt’s script and for which it was penalized twice and for which he keeps apologizing, is the single smartest thing he has done as a coach. It changed the dynamics of a series that, from the Bulldog perspective, was past due for a change. It served its purpose leading into last season’s game, turning his team’s focus from the usual Jacksonville gloom and doom to something brighter — how are we going to celebrate? — and it has become the gift that keeps on giving.
Not quite complying with his coach’s gag order, the famous Tim Tebow admitted to the Orlando Sentinel that the Gators have a photo of the dancing Dogs in their locker room. Think about that: A team that won the 2006 BCS title is concerned with the team that, until 2007, was its personal doormat. And the run-up to this year’s game will be dominated by one line of discussion:
How will the Gators respond? Have they planned something themselves? What if Georgia springs a new “spontaneous” display? Does Urban Meyer have a counter-counter-celebration in his famous playbook? And will Tebow and Co. be so bent on vengeance that they forget to execute those famous plays?
Of course, Meyer is on record as saying the Celebration has no bearing on this Saturday’s game, so there’s that…
Get The Picture 
For the life of me, I hope Georgia beats the ever living sh!t out of the lizards.
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Obviously, I hope UGA wins, but I hope that Richt realizes what this game can mean as far as the big picture for this rivalry. Next year, UGA gets a bye before UF, which has historically been a very good thing. If UGA can win on Saturday, then you’re going in to next year having won two in a row and coming off a bye. We can really turn the tide of this series this week. Also, do you realize the egg that’s going to be on Urban’s face if he loses on Saturday. With all his third-person quotes and posting pictures in the weight room and everything else the snake-oil salesman disguised as a coach has done, he BETTER win on Saturday, or he will find out how the other shoe fits in Gainesville. Let’s not forget, he is a blocked kick away from just being a good coach instead of the genius he acts like.
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Learned today that the Penn Wagers (spit, cough)crew will be working the WLOCP. If Urban has something planned to counter last year’s celebration, Penn can be a vindictive SOB, as we know so well. Perhaps Penn’s famously thin skin will work to our advantage this time. Expect at least two inexplicable calls, at least the TV guys will be happy, get the long commercial break and gives the guys in the booth something to talk about. I wonder if the SEC plans it that way……?
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How can it have no bearing on the game?
Urban swore it would “be a big deal”.
He would never lie.
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That’s the biggest point about what happened last year. Whether you thought it great or classless, depending on what side of the aisle you stand, it was brilliant if you are a Georgia fan. For the better part of Spurrier’s tenure his teams were just head and shoulders above anything Ray Goff or Jim Donnan could bring down to Jacksonville. But all those wins started getting into the heads of everyone involved with the program. You didn’t expect to go down there and see the Dawgs’ best game. As a fan, you were always waiting for the other shoe to drop, something bad to happen, Florida was expected to win that game. Does everyone remember in 2005 when Milner dropped that 30 yard pass on Georgia’s first offensive play? Was anyone surprised? I surely wasn’t. My first thought was, “Well, here we go again, season was nice until Jacksonville once again.” What Mark Richt did last year by sending those Dawgs out on the field was change that whole dynamic. For so long Florida believed that as long as they showed up, they were destined to win. The celebration has shaken that belief to the core. Maybe Florida will win this year just because they play better. But what won’t happen is a Georgia team that’s going to roll over just because it’s Florida. Sure, they might get beat, but not because it’s Florida, but because the team across the field was just better.
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Auditdawg +1
I want to win this game so bad, I have literally been throwing up in my mouth every time I think about it.
It is like Sweet Dee from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia dry heaving every time she goes up to perform.
Go Dawgs!!
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My wife is 8 months pregnant and I have instructed her to leave the house so my insanity Saturday doesn’t send her into labor. I’m not sure that I have ever wanted the Dawgs to win so badly.
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“Maybe Florida will win this year just because they play better. But what won’t happen is a Georgia team that’s going to roll over just because it’s Florida.”
+1 to you, sir.
And although it might be pushing it, I’m even hoping that the corrollary might be true…that even if Florida is the better team on the field that we’ve reversed the psychology enough that we’ll have the upper hand. I mean, if this year Percy Harvin drops a 30 yard pass on the first play of the game, I’m turning the TV off and booking tickets to Miami….
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If I hear one more person use the word “brilliant” in describing what happened last year it will break the record for lazy thinking amongst one fan base.
The celebration isn’t why Georgia won last year. It’s because UF had an atrocious defense that couldn’t tackle Moreno and got lit up in the secondary for the better part of the afternoon (and the year). No one seems to remember it now, but UF scored two plays later to regain the lead, and that was that for the celebration.
I don’t know who’s going to win the game this year, but whoever wins it, once again, it will have nothing to do with the celebration.
And Mark Bradley has got to be the biggest spooge-guzzling douchebag of a columnist I have ever read. How do you guys read him? I don’t care who you’re for.
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“Nailing the sucker”, Blutarsky? Really?
That column and this entire post = extreeeeeeeme reach
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Bobby, you’re missing the point.
Nobody is making the argument that Georgia won last year because of the Celebration.
What has changed is the mindset of both schools and their fan bases.
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No one seems to remember it now, but UF scored two plays later to regain the lead, and that was that for the celebration.
I disagree. I think UF fans ( and players) seem to have forgotten that they scored 2 plays later to regain the lead. Hence all the talk about the posters of the celebration in UF locker rooms and it being played on a loop on the TV’s (some where in the UF training facility) and Urban Myer talking about it in his autobiography. I think every UGA fans remembers UF scoring on that next drive. However the difference was that in the past that would’ve killed the dawgs momentum and UF likely would’ve rolled to a blow out win. However the celebration changed that. It changed the perspective of the fans and I believe the players as well. Instead of the “here-we-go-agains” I felt like we were going to step up answer that TD with our own. We did and went on to win a hard fought football game, which was something we hadn’t done in Jacksonville very often the last 18 years or so. You’re correct in saying the celebration was not the reason for the outcome of the game. Coaches still had to coach and players still had to play but it broke UGA out of that spell Spurrier put on us all those years ago. And for that reason I thought it was brilliant. 🙂
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UF scored two plays later because Reshard Jones didn’t go up and pick off a waddling duck of a ball thrown by Tebow. THAT still ticks me off.
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http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/102908/mic_481314.shtml
It’s a shame that such blatant UGA homerism can get printed in what is supposed to be an objective, journalistic institution.
But seriously.
“Florida, however, still takes it as a sign of ‘disrespect.’ Whatever. Do the Bulldogs have any regrets?
‘Nope,’ said Knowshon Moreno, whose touchdown sparked the stomp and romp. ‘That was last year and that’s what we came up with. It’s just a game this year.'”
This fills me with such beautiful hope….
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“Florida, however, still takes it as a sign of ‘disrespect.”
Yeah, well I still take some umbrage from Spurrier running up more than 50 in Sanford just because no one else had.
Tit for tat asshats.
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If it changed Georgia’s mindset, then that’s great and everything, but the slant of the post still seems like it was to insinuate that the celebration is indeed in Florida’s heads even if everyone wants to deny that, and that this is a bad thing.
If it is on anyone’s mind in the UF program, I would argue it’s a good thing anyway. Why would motivation be a bad thing? Bradley makes it sound like it’s some big secret that they have that picture hanging and that he “caught” UF. I say go with it.
But like I said, I think by the time there are 8:00 minutes left in the 1st quarter Saturday, the business at hand will have already taken over.
And I do like your blog, Bluto.
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Bobby,
I appreciate your comments, but I believe you’re taking my use of the word “brilliant” out of context by labeling it as lazy thinking. In no way, do I believe the celebration provided some magic reason for why Georgia beat Florida last year. Knowshon Moreno was the magic. As a Bulldog grad that came of age in the latter Dooley-Jim Donnan years, all that negative goodwill that Spurrier built up over the years inherently pyschologically affected Georgia teams. In 2002, Terrence Edwards drops a ball over the middle that he catches 99 out of 100 times that was a certain big play if not TD. In 2003, Billy Bennett misses field goals throughout the game. In 2005, Milner drops the first pass play of the game. In 2006, Kregg Lumpkin fumbles the ball at the 10 yard line that Florida scores a defensive TD on. You could argue these are just bounces of the games, but inherently they all went Florida’s way. I think this was not a matter of bad luck, but a matter of Georgia teams playing tight and waiting for the mighty Gators to impose their will. The celebration, if nothing else, changed the mindset that these Florida is just another football team, not some might Goliath that can’t be overcome. By my post earlier, I meant that this 2008 Georgia team is not going to come out and play tight and wait for the other shoe to drop. They are going to be lose and aggressive and don’t have the pyschological black cloud hanging over the heads. To repeat my earlier comment, they may lose this game, but it will be to a football team, not to a football myth.
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Welp.
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