Tony Barnhart spends most of his effort in this post telling anyone who will listen that Mark Richt is a stellar coach (which echoes something Michael Elkon posted recently), but then ends with this punch line:
… Now, should Georgia fans be concerned that Florida has won two of the last three national championships and will be just about everybody’s preseason No. 1 in 2009?
You bet. Based on what I saw in my two days last week in Gainesville, everybody in this league is going to have to step it up to keep pace with the Gators. And there is the challenge for Richt and every other coach in this league…
Oh, well. At least he didn’t mention Troy.
Get The Picture 
I guess no one should even bother playing the games next year. Let’s go ahead and get the crystal football shined up and sent down to Gainesville because no other team should bother because it’s a waste of time.
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Barnhart is a Dawg and has had many good things to say about Georgia football over the years-which I appreciate.
But be that as it may, in his role as “Mr. College Football” he is the THE voice of conventional wisdom and the Powers That Be, particularly when discussing the SEC.
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Really you can’t argue with that article. We are the Turd’s whipping boy (along with Tennessee) until we prove otherwise. Georgia as a team has to man up and beat Florida down in Jacksonville if we want respect. It is not enough to continue to have a 9-10 win season with losses to Florida and occasional losses to Tennessee and Auburn if you want to be a NC contender. As much as I hate to admit it (removing rose colored glasses) Richt is a good coach but Meyer is better.
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Truer words have not been spoken. However we have to start beating them with consistency. I doubt we’ll go on a long winning streak any time soon but we need to win on a more consistent basis, a couple of back-to-back wins wouldn’t hurt either. Winning two out of the last five is OK [emphasis added].Yet that’s still only 40%. We have to be more competitive in the series than we’ve been the last 18 years. Until we start doing that we won’t get much respect.
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What I don’t get is how the media continues to constantly harp on how Florida has dominated their series with us (even though we’ve won twice in the last five years) without ever mentioning how much Florida has dominated series with their other rivals (LSU, Tennessee, FSU).
Tennessee and FSU in particular have performed just as badly if not worse than we have in recent years, yet it rarely seems to be mentioned.
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Just as a frame of reference, since people always like to use an arbitrary year to point out our struggles with Florida in “recent years” (the ’91 season onward), check out UT’s sterling track record since the totally arbitrary year of 1993:
http://cfreference.net/cfr/school.s?m=allTimeHeadToHead&schoolId=341&oppSchoolId=443
4-12 is not so far off what we’ve accomplished.
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LSU and UF without the breaks. painful. We go 13-1 in 2002 with a Sugar Bowl win and a loss to Florida. LSU does the same thing the next year but wins the MNC. Lose to 2 division opponents and we’re out of the race in 07.
No question Florida is the head of the pack, but me thinks a good pass rush makes Timmy cry.
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If Vandy’s field goal at the end of the game against Tennessee is a few inches to the left and goes through the upright instead of off the upright, Tennessee loses, Georgia makes it to the SEC championship game to play LSU for a shot to be in the BCS title game. A few inches potentially makes all of this talk moot. Where’s Lady Luck when you need her? Smiting USC, apparently.
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er, that should be right. If the field goal was a few inches to the right.
Oh well.
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The UK game was even worse. Kentucky had what would have been a winning field goal blocked in OT and Tennessee got the winning score on a 40-yard TD pass that converted a first-and-25.
Talk about pulling one out of their asses…
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Also: UK had 1st and goal from the 1 with seconds left. Didn’t get it, had to call a TO, ended up kicking the FG for the tie.
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And I think I tried to block it out, but didn’t the ’07 UT-Gamecock game come down to a missed FG? I’m pretty sure Suxup missed a game winner toward the end. That UT/UK game was the most excruciating college game EVAH.
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Yeah, he missed a tying field goal in OT.
But the real killer in that game came at the end of regulation. UT’s kicker missed a FG to tie, but got a mulligan due to a motion penalty called on his own team. He hit the redo.
The Vols dodged a lot of bullets in 2007.
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Yep. 2007 was the year it should have happened for us.
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I’m going to block it out again. I don’t feel so well…………..
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And, didn’t we miss a FG at South Carolina? That’s just a few points here and there … but, damn.
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Barnhart makes the point that I’ve been sticking to since the whole Auburn debacle in 2004. It takes a whole lot of luck to win a national title. Like he says, if USC takes care of business in 2006, we’re looking at Florida having only one national title rather than two. If West Virginia doesn’t faceplant in 2007 LSU doesn’t sniff a national title. You have to be good, but you have to be even luckier. Unfortunately, the luck hasn’t made it’s way over to Athens when we’ve needed it. Damned Vandy/South Carolina/Kentucky field goal kickers in 2007.
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You need luck but we need to stop acting like it is just luck we don’t have a NC
Beat UF in 2002 and we are playing Miami
Beat USC or UT in 2007 and we are playing in New Orleans
We have had our chances and failed
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You know, I gotta say, we had our share of luck in 1980. Tech ties ND. Belue to Scott. Maybe they’ll fall our way again soon.
It still doesn’t suck to be a Georgia Bulldog.
Woof!
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That’s a fair point. My argument was that luck is a huge point. Do I think we’d have more of that needed luck if we started beating UF more consistently? Of course I do. All I’m saying is when we’ve positioned ourselves to win a national title, the bounces just haven’t gone our way to get us to the game.
You make the point about beating UF in 2002 and we’re there, but LSU did the same thing as us in 2003 by losing to Florida yet they still made the title game.
Luck isn’t everything but beyond winning your conference championship, luck is inherently involved.
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That ’07 Tennessee team was, without a doubt, the luckiest team to ever win the East. Or, if you prefer, the weakest team to ever win the East.
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Or that ’98 Tennessee team may be the luckiest to win a national title. Clint Stoerner fumbling?? He could have run that play 100 times and maybe fumbled once, but somehow it happened in that game. I still get sick to the stomach thinking about that.
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That last statement is right on.
Two NC’s the last 3 years = 0 NC’s in almost 30 years now
It isn’t even close.
UF is having more national success than us and until we win a NC, we won’t get any real elite status articles like UF, Texas, USC, etc…
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“Tennessee and FSU in particular have performed just as badly if not worse than we have in recent years, yet it rarely seems to be mentioned.”
I’d say they’ve performed demonstrably worse. UGA lost quite a few games against UF that could have easily gone the other way. 2008 was really the only one under Richt that wasn’t close. UT and FSU, however, routinely get torn apart by Florida.
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