Mark Bradley links to an ESPN rumor that’s worthy of footballcoachscoop.com’s attention:
“Tuberville seems very happy to be at Tech and to be coaching again. But you do have to wonder, if he has success in Lubbock and a lucrative SEC job were to open up in the next couple of seasons, whether he’d be able to turn that offer down. Disgruntled LSU and Georgia fans might have to start paying the Red Raiders a little more attention.”
Who comes up with that stuff, Ed Orgeron? Or maybe it’s this astute observer of the college football scene, who opines that “… Mark Richt has gone from looking like the next great college coach the first half of his career to a bumbler who can’t develop talent, win big games, or manage his staff ever since losing to West Virginia in the Sugar Bowl after the 2005 season.”
Yeah, he’s some bumbler, all right.
There have been 22 programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision that have experienced a change in coaches in this cycle of the college coaching carousel.
That includes Florida State, where Bobby Bowden’s 34-year run ended because he wasn’t winning enough games anymore.
That includes at South Florida and Texas Tech, which fired coaches because of their treatment of players. USF’s Jim Leavitt was fired after 13 years and Texas Tech’s Mike Leach was ousted after 10 years.
All of which makes Georgia’s Mark Richt, already the SEC’s dean of coaches, now tied for 10th among longest tenured at an FBS school.
That this Mark-Richt-isn’t-long-for-this-life-in-Athens meme keeps cropping up after making the changes on the defensive staff that the fan base was restless for makes you wonder how much of it results from wishful thinking, outsiders’ lack of understanding of the program or a desire to stir things up on the recruiting trail. Depends on the source, I suppose.
Get The Picture 
That’s what I keep wondering. If Corch Richt had not made the necessary personnel moves this offseason, then I could see where he would have used up all of his goodwill with the fan base. Now that he has done what was necessary to move the program in the right direction, I don’t think any mainstream Georgia fans are looking for his ouster any time soon.
Even if for some wild reason Corch Richt was not retained, who would replace him? The only coaches ahead of him on the wins list are guys like Saban and Meyer and Carroll… all of whom are not gettable. It would certainly be a downgrade no matter who was chosen… but it would be a riot in the streets akin to Knoxvegas if it were ole Tubbs.
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Don’t click on Bradley & Schultz. The headlines are just for shock factor so they can prolong their jobs until the last moment the lights go out at the AJC. WE LOVE COACH RICHT! http://www.wedgeorgia.com
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I have always maintained when Mark Richt leaves UGA it will not be due to pressure to leave from boosters or the administration, it will be to escape the crazies we have in our fanbase. The very fact anyone even thinks there is a groundswell to remove him is the result of outcries from internet fanatics who don’t realize how great things are going. Give me four SEC East titles, two SEC Championships, 90 wins, and a classy approach every nine seasons and call be ecstatic.
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Boosters run most programs. Line up enough zeros behind a name, and they generally cause things to move in a program.
That being said, I don’t think we have to worry about a populist groundswell pushing CMR out
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After this seasons coaching lunacy, I fully embrace the intelligent, quiet, professional way that Richt handled a poor season (by his standards), the dismissal / hiring of essential staff and recruiting. Why would we trade excellence and professionalism for instability slimy coaches and swirling drauma. I’ll take Coach Richt, thanks…
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+1, as they say.
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+ another 1, as well.
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Saban and Meyer have both won two NC’s in this conference. Dooley, Chizik, Phillips, Mullen and to some extent Petrino are still relatively or completely untested. SCar will keep Spurrier as long as he’s willing to coach there. The same is probably true for Ole Miss and Houston Nutt, unless he takes them places that would significantly raise expectations.
I think it would take two more bad seasons, or one more mediocre season and a really bad one, to get Miles out of LSU. In any case, beyond him, who else is there to speculate about? Only Richt, whose lack of a NC (something even Miles has) certainly colors national perceptions.
Speculators have to speculate; they need someone to speculate about. Mark Richt fits the bill best at the moment, but I think it’s mostly because there are no other viable candidates for the “hot seat” in the SEC this season. Of course, 2010 could change a lot of that.
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A lot of this “meme” is coming from inside Bulldog country. I live in Atlanta and have found that on one level, most Georgia fans appreciate the job Richt has done and admire the character of the man. But then they compare his accomplishments with that of Saban and Meyer, and to this point of his career, he comes up far short. That is when the grumbling starts.
Most Bulldog fans see no reason that UGA should not enjoy the successes that Meyer and Saban have brought on the programs they lead. Is that realistic? I don’t really know the answer to that. I have been a college football fan since the late 70s and will say that since then, UGA only had a brief moment of football greatness. And that was primarily during the Walker years.
In any case, Richt has 4 big opponents and the impression I get is that he better go no worse than .500 against in most years, and once every 3 to 4 years, got at least 3-1 against.
Those programs are of course, in no particular order, Florida, Auburn, Tennessee and Ga Tech.
He went 2-2 last year, in a down year for UGA. I would not suggest this year will be any better.
For his career, he has never gone 4-0. He has gone 3-1 three times and the rest 2-2. He has never done worse than 2-2. So I guess so fat, he does go 3-1 on occasion, but never does worse than 2-2.
Will UGA fans be happy with this? Who knows? If the next 9 years are the same as the last 9, UGA will win 2 SEC Titles, go to the SECCG 3 times and lose to Florida 7 times.
Not sure if the Bulldog faithful can put up with that last part.
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Mike, I can’t say that I buy all of that. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. Who’s Georgia gonna get that’s appreciably better?
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Not to mention that you’d have to sell off part of Athens-Clarke County to fund such folly. News Flash: Any established head coach “appreciably better” than CMR is going to cost about a bagillion dollars not necessarily including the extra bribe you’d have to spring for just to assure this coach that you’d just run off Mark Richt because of his coaching and not because of a crazy fan base.
See also: Philip Fulmer/Lane Kiffin/Derek Dooley
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Sorry for the misunderstanding. I am not saying UGA will or even should get rid of Mark. Not the least for the reason you point out. If not Mark, who else indeed?
I am just suggesting that many of my friends who are Georiga fans are very frustrated with the success of Florida, Alabama and even LSU. They wonder; if they can do it, why not us?
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MNC’s require a lot of luck as well. The year LSU won with 2 losses, they jumped our 2-loss team the last week of the season to make the BCS championship.
In 2002, we finished 13-1, but there were two undefeated teams in the mix. Auburn got shut out in 2004 with an undefeated team.
We’ve had two teams that easily could have been in the BCS championship game, but the timing wasn’t right. Miles and Meyer benefited from having great teams at the right time. One you can control, the other you can’t. Our time will come with Richt.
People used to question Mack Brown the same way until Vince Young came along and made him a genius.
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great Kiffin sighting from the AJC:
http://blogs.ajc.com/recruiting/2010/01/25/frostproof-ad-nickell-robey-probably-not-going-to-sign-with-georgia/
“He’s not answering phone calls or returning messages right now,” Loveless said. “He had a visit from West Virginia this morning to follow up on his visit up there. Skip Holtz [the new South Florida coach] was here last week and is trying to get him to come down there. He’s planning to visit Southern Cal next week. Monte Kiffin has been very persistent. He’s probably been in here more than is legal. Of course they don’t pay attention to the rules.”
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See the Mike and Ben comments above to see why I hate not having a playoff. Their comments hit on the only fault anyone ever says about CMR, he doesn’t have one of something that doesn’t exist. Under a playoff, UGA would have gotten a chance to earn as many titles as anyone else in CFB was “given”. I would say UGA would have been in an 8 team playoff in 2002, 2005, and 2007. Then you could honestly point to something CMR hasn’t achieved that others have. UGA 2002 had the same record LSU had in 2003 and that UF had in 2006. And our 2007 team had the exact same record that LSU had in conference, and regular season that year. All we needed was an invite. But how can you knock someone for not having a MNC when you are denied the opportunity because the process is slimy.
Either have a playoff, or drop the pretense. Fact is, NO ONE, nada, has a NC…..evah.
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Why on earth would we have needed an eight-team playoff in 2005? Wire-to-wire undefeated teams (the only two undefeated D-1 teams at season’s end, mind you) ranked one and two facing off in what turned out to be the best BCS title game ever – yeah, an eight-team playoff would have validated that. Totally.
If you can argue that we needed a playoff that included a two-loss team in 2005, I can’t imagine how large a field you could suggest for the 2007 playoffs.
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While I will say that is exactly the way I would love for all college seasons to end, a great team between two unbeatens, no one can say either of those teams were definitely the best.
1. Texas had two three point wins that year, and SC had a loss and another 3 point win.
2. Penn State had one loss, very close on the road to Michigan, and West Va. had one loss and a win over over UGA, regardless of how questionable that may have been under different circumstances.
3. I consider no MNC that has not beaten the SEC champ in a meaningful game to be “undisputed”. The SEC champ is undefeated in the current “playoff system”. It is every bit as logical to assume this would continue as it is for those who argue about the inevitablility of playoff expansion because it always has.
Do I think every year it would take eight teams to know you have all the potential winners? No, but allowing the 6 conference champions and two additional debases all the viable arguments since we can never solve the conference strength arguments. It makes the winner “legit” for those who do not accept we can do this with ballots. That is why I say you can make a reasonable argument for every year since this was the strongest year for BCS proponents.
I reiterate, we can never say someone is clearly the undisputed best team , but we can say we gave the best teams a shot to make their case (with 98% certainty, and that is good enough) and declare them the winner of that tourney. That is all we do in other sports. You can say National Champs with no argument in all other NCAA sports, but that doesn’t mean you were clearly the best.
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Sorry, meant a great “game” between two unbeaten teams in the opening sentence.
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Three things I love about CMR that also stand out among SEC Coaches. He doesn’t let his ego rule him. He appears to be a well rounded, well adjusted individual. He acts like an professional of any persuasion should act…Oh yeah, he wins a lot of games, so make it four. It ain’t near about time to shut the door on Coach Richt. He is going to win many more games before he hangs it up here.
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Coach Richt is great. There’s no hot seat. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to move along. We’ve had enough stupid thank you.
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