One choke over the line

I wasn’t going to return to Chokegate, but, pardon my French, Tony Barnhart’s lost his goddamned mind this morning.

… Grantham, Georgia’s first-year defensive coordinator, did something in the Georgia-Florida game that is so far over the line that it can’t even be debated. He gave a student-athlete from another school, Florida kicker Chas Henry, the choke sign as Henry was preparing to kick the game winning field goal. Grantham was caught in a screen capture and the image went viral in no time at all.  Jeff Schultz showed you the video where Henry told Tracy Wolfson of CBS that coaches on the Georgia sidelines were telling him that he was going to choke.

This is totally unacceptable on any level. And I don’t want to hear this “heat of competition” crap from anybody. I don’t care how intense a game is. A coach does not attempt to intimidate a student-athlete from another school. You don’t do it. Period.

“A coach does not attempt to intimidate a student-athlete from another school.  You don’t do it.  Period.” You mean like calling last-millisecond time outs on game winning kicks that insure a play won’t get stopped until after it’s underway?  Like this?

There are coaches out there that teach their players all kinds of dirty, borderline illegal play (do we really need to go into the Chop Block Hall of Fame to illustrate?) for the sole purpose of intimidating the opponent.  So what if the price is a few unnecessary injuries, right, Tony?  Or did I miss your call for fining and suspending a bunch of other coaches for encouraging that kind of activity?  Do you really think that when Henry was lining up to make the kick, he was keeping an eye on Grantham to see if he was going to run out on the field, or do something worse?

As I wrote the other day, this stuff is batshit insane.  The gesture wasn’t classy, but that happens in the heat of the  moment, as much as Barnhart might wish to dismiss that.  It wasn’t planned and it certainly wasn’t different from anything that 40,000+ fans were yelling at Henry at that moment.  Or that Georgia’s coaches and players were thinking.

Maybe Barnhart should start covering golf.  Things tend to be a lot more genteel at the Masters.

By the way, what’s with this fixation the AJ-C writers have about Grantham’s salary?  Would they be more accepting of his behavior if he were knocking down Al Groh’s paycheck?

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UPDATE: Chris Low, voice of reason – particularly this:

… And, finally, is it possible that the Florida-Georgia rivalry is simply one of those nasty rivalries that brings out the worst in people? I’ll answer this last question with a few of my own. Didn’t the Brandon Spikes’ eye-gouging incident happen in this game a year ago? Didn’t Meyer call two timeouts in the final seconds of a 49-10 rout just to rub it in two years ago? Didn’t Georgia’s whole sideline race into the end zone and start dancing, at the behest of Richt, and draw a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty after the Bulldogs’ first touchdown three years ago?

One thing we can all agree on is this: It ain’t a picnic when these two teams get together to play a football game.

Never has been and never will be.

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UPDATE #2: Apparently this was typed without the slightest sense of irony.

… On the same day that Mark Richt and Todd Grantham were making excuses for why it was okay for a coach to giving an opposing playing the choke sign and for yelling “You’re going to fucking choke” to the back-up kicker, Urban Meyer was making one of the kindest gestures I can remember a coach making. Maybe this is the biggest statement of the differences between the two programs.

Oy.