Here’s an example of how Greg McGarity gets it:
To some, it is a tough call: watching the third round of the Masters or attending G-Day. You won’t have to make that choice next April.
Plans are “being finalized” to move Georgia’s spring football game back a week to April 16, UGA athletic director Greg McGarity told me as we waited at Hartsfield-Jackson for a (delayed) flight to Memphis on Monday. The Masters will be played April 7-10.
The G-Day game has been played on Masters Saturday the past couple of years. McGarity figures G-Day will benefit in terms of attendance and media attention by avoiding a conflict with the Masters.
You’d think that was obvious, wouldn’t you?
Get The Picture 
This is terrible to say, but in many ways, I’m so thankful Damon got in trouble so we could get McGarity.
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I hate it for Damon. It was nice that a Georgia player got the opportunity to excel. However, with opportunity comes responsibility. I hate it for Damon, I really do. It was a bad way to go out. He has some character issues but I’m sure he has what it takes to make the best of this tragedy and move his career forward.
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I agree wholeheartedly. I genuinely liked him as AD, and he was good.. but we got a real upgrade IMO.
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It’s amazing to me that G-Day was never moved before now. It was embarrassing to have the stadium mostly empty the year G-Day was on ESPN. That said, I liked a lot of what Damon was doing with the schedule. I’ll miss him when I’m watching UGA play Sisters of the Poor three times a year between the hedges.
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I am absolutely convinced that UGA now has the best AD in the SEC and maybe in the entire country.
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I’m glad this frees up some Dawg fans, but I honestly would rather watch my own hernia surgery than golf
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And you’re IRISH?!
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I think the headline should be “For Golf Fans…”
Not all Georgia fans like the mind numbingly boring abomination that is golf.
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Now I get to support a McGarity decision. Never understood how CMR didn’t get this, so simple. I will get to attend my second Spring Game since Richt arrived. While some may not appreciate how spectacular an event The Masters is, to schedule G Day in the same time slot every Spring is like playing it at 3:00 AM. Sure some will still come, but why build an obstacle course in front of your fanbase when an unrestricted path is open? Plus, I think this eliminates all Easter weekend conflicts. A true no brainer, but give him credit, he listened where others didn’t.
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I agree 100%. As an Augusta area Dawg, I appreciate that I won’t have to miss watching the Masters.
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I hope that you also support the Ohio State-UGA home and home agreement. That would make 2 decisions McGarity made that you approve of, meaning that you might just be becoming one of his fans (without realizing it or admitting it of course).
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Mayor, you know that I will support the scheduling of any quality OOC opponent for UGA football. But it is hard to look at the 2012 schedule and find any way to rationalize that. A few years ago, Bama had one that was just as ugly. Fans deserve better than that, football Saturdays are too few, and too precious, to waste on crapola games.
With a 12 game schedule, there is no excuse for not having 2 quality OOC opponents every year. This makes 2020 & 2021 look a lot better than many before it….just hope I live long enough to enjoy this home and home series.
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Irishdog and bort.. I actually agree with it.. but the Masters is different to me. Can’t really explain why.. it’s the only tournament I care to go to/watch.
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I wouldn’t ever watch a lick of golf until I got the opportunity to go to one of the Masters practice rounds. I almost passed the tickets up because I just didn’t care for golf at all, but then I decided what the heck, I’ll go see what all the fuss is about. Just walking around that course, being part of the atmosphere and just seeing how beautiful it all is, it totally changed my mind. I still don’t play golf, but I watch all the majors now, and a few of the bigger non-majors every year. Also got to go to the TPC a few years later, and while not the same experience as the masters, still had a blast.
Also, I’ve gotten pretty dang good at Wii golf, that’s pretty much the same, right? 🙂
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Hey, no offense to people that watch golf, but to me it’s like watching “Jersey Shore”; I get that some people like it, I just don’t get why.
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Ouch! I appreciate some don’t like golf, no problem, there are 200 other channels. But don’t ever, ever put Jersey anything in the same sentence with The Masters. As others have said, it is much more than just golf. As someone who is a Dawg fan, I assume you appreciate tradition, and well-mannered civility in a beautiful setting with lovely lasses around.
Regular Dog above is a good example of how many non-golf fans are struck when attending and seeing first hand. I hosted many top execs in Augusta during that week, these were guys we had entertained at the Olympics, Super Bowls, World Series, Final Four’s, etc., to the person they rated The Masters the single most impressive event they had ever attended. The scenery alone causes people’s jaws to drop when they first see it in it’s full glory. If only we had maintained other sports as well.
Understand you don’t think watching/playing golf is anything significant, but comparing it to the Jersey Shore thing…..man, that is just wrong. Either way, glad it will allow more of us to see the Dawgs one more time every year, surely we can agree on that.
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Yeah, Jersey Shore is epically entertaining. I mean, a guy called “The Situation”. A girl named “Snooky” that eats pickles in a suggestive/skanky manner.
Two words: Awe Some! Only a reality show could produce such a cruel caricature of Italians livin’ in Jersey. If a writer did this, he’d get blacklisted.
I only wish they would do a spinoff set in PC. Instead of Italians, the cast would be made of muscle bound red necks with Bama Bangs and dirty hot girls recruited from tanning salons across Dixie. I imagine they could “work” at LaVela and get into all sorts of romantic hijinx and fisticuffs.
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The one thing that did make me laugh quite a bit though, being a non-golfer attending my first tournament, was the number of male spectators wearing their golf shoes WITH their spikes in. This was back 15-20 years ago with the metal spikes, so you would hear the CLICK, CLICK, CLICK as the guys would walk down the sidewalks. It just struck me as akin to wearing cleats to watch a baseball or football game. Like maybe one of the pros was gonna need one of these guys to run out onto the course and take a shot for them. I know there are hills on the golf courses, but I made do quite well with my tennis shoes!
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If you go in the morning the dew is pretty heavy. If you wear tennis shoes you will bust your rump going down the hill or in the pine straw. I thought the same thing the first year I went and wore sneakers. Sure enough the back of my pants looked like I shat myself after I slipped down a hill. Now I am one of “those guys” that wears golf shoes (rubber spikes). One additional note, where else can you go and get $2.50 beer and $2 sandwiches?
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“where else can you go and get $2.50 beer and $2 sandwiches?”…
It’s Vodka instead of beer, but you get the idea.
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Love golf but for the life of me can’t get soccer or NASCAR — To each his or her own I guess. Good move by McGarity.
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Since I don’t go to G-Day (and don’t really get that worked up about a scrimmage), it amazed me to find out that it was on Masters Saturday. Just an incredibly dumb decision to put the two on the same weekend, and I’m glad that G-Day is moving back to where it was in the past.
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Now Russ, don’t be fibbing. The Seiler’s had you there this year.
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Regardless of whether or not you enjoy watching golf, the decision to have the game the same weekend as The Masters was dumb. Sure, there are people who prefer to watch the G-Day game than The Masters, but why even give the choice? When one of the largest, most well-known, and most popular sporting events in the world is taking place less than two hours from Athens (and is run/supported/attended by many Georgia alumni/fans), you don’t schedule anything to try to compete with it. End of story. I’m glad to see McGarity recognizes that.
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“You’d think that was obvious, wouldn’t you? ”
Yes, but then there is a reason that Common Sense isn’t a course of study at any institution of higher education.
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+1
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At long last we seem to have somebody in the athletic department who has his ship together. I sometimes wonder how, in the motherload of talent that is Georgia, that our generously supported flagship university doesn’t compete for the mnc on a regular basis. No detail seems to be too small for McGarity’s scrutiny. I believe he is the guy who can get us to the top, though he’ll have to drag some of our athletic staff & coaches kicking and screaming along with him.
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We might talk about how our staff coaches don’t get it, especially the small details, but I remember that the very first thing that endeared me to CMR upon his hire was that we would only play in silver britches, and we would take that damn black stripe out of the helmet. It was simple, but you knew he “got it”.
On a personal note, I hope CMR continues to remember that among the combinations that have occurred in the fake juice era. Small stuff. Might not make a difference in how they play, but it matters to me.
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I have a question: by “compete for the mnc on a regular basis” do you mean every single year? If so, we can remove Texas, Alabama, Florida, USC, Michigan, and Penn St from the discussion. Or do you mean every few years? If that’s the case, we were the top ranked team in the country as recent as two years ago. I wonder how many teams in the country can boast that?
Just curious what you mean there.
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Per “top ranked team”, I’m not talking about rankings, though it was nice to be #1 for, what was it, the first week. And we finished with 3 losses – which in retrospect was the highpoint of the program over the past 5 years. Though we won 10, I think most fans would consider the season somewhat of a failure due to expectations.
I think Dawgs should be in the hunt for the mnc. CMR/BVG proved it can be done earlier this decade. #1 or #2 in the sec east every single year. But we need the athletic dept/coaches to get serious about building a top organization and quit screwing around. Changing the G-Day game doesn’t register much on the richter scale. My point is he sees a problem and takes steps to fix it NOW, whereas others (in our program or recently dumped from our program) would just let the problem fester – as if it was going to fix itself. He’s proactive.
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Fair point about McGarity jumping on issues he thinks need to be addressed. I assume you are referring to Richt hanging on to CWM et al for too long. However, and I’ve said this before, and I know I’m in the minority here, but I don’t really blame Richt for keeping CWM in 2009. We were prob the best team in the country at the end of 2007 and we were decimated by injuries on defense in 2008. I’m willing to give CMR a little good will on this for several reasons, one being his massive success early on in his career and the other being my fear of turning into the new Tennessee or Michigan. We all have our own opinions on this, but I’d rather be sitting here 25 years from now watching Richt chase Joe Pa than swap coaches every couple of years trying to win a national cham,pionship that is completely out of our control. In my opinion, Richt did everything in 2002 and 2007 that Meter did at UF or Miles has done at LSU – only difference is he was unlucky to be shut out of beauty pageant in those years. He is a good coach and he’ll find his groove again. He is a great ambassador for the program and I’m willing to extend benefit of the doubt his way so he can recapture the magic, which he will, IMO. I am not happy where the program is and I am not ok with mediocrity, but I am not going to flip my lid because we have a couple of down seasons. Can Richt improve? Hell yea he can. But so can Joe Pa, Meyer, Saban, and all the other great coaches out there.
With respect to being in the MNC hunt every year, I’m not sure you addresssed my question, but again, Richt has had his teams in the MNC hunt, even as recently as 2008. We suffered some devestating losses that year, but we were in the hunt. Look at Florida 2010. Hell, look at Bama 2010. Even better, look at Tennessee. Or Michigan. Teams go thru cycles. We’ll be back.
I hope you take my comments seriously and don’t blow me off as a “Richt Apologst.” Remember man, it’s supposed to be fun. that’s why we’re fans.
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Pretty unrelated, but speaking of scheduling, what moron is responsible for the Jan 1 bowl scheduling. All three SEC games (pretty decent matchups at that) at the same time, then Wisconsin TCU then Uconn Oklahoma? Really?
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$$$$$
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Amen. The WWL does the same thing during the season scheduling SEC games on top of one another. Ratings would be higher if they split conferences into separate time slots so fans would always have something that interested them. I always thought the Cap One, or Outback should be against the Rose Bowl. While this year’s matchup is pretty good, there are many times it is much less interesting to me than a secondary SEC team.
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what moron is responsible for the Jan 1 bowl scheduling
ESPN
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I was running into the Masters problem. But bigger than that was people trying to get out of town with the kids for spring break. A no-brainer move shows us that GM has common sense.
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The change to the Senior Gala this year was brutal – no cash bar and no warning before hand. Sweet tea for two hours. I understand it was a McGarity change, and I hope he can find it in his own wise self to restore a good time to its former glory.
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CPAs everywhere rejoice!
Now if someone had a little more clout in Augusta…
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“As someone who is a Dawg fan, I assume you appreciate tradition, and well-mannered civility in a beautiful setting with lovely lasses around.”
I do, but I find the sport incredibly slow and dull. Even more dull are the tedious golf drones who prattle endlessly about their handicaps or their new clubs or whatever because they have zero other outside interests. Not that I’m implying that anyone here is like that, but I’ve met enough of these guys to sour me on the whole golfer subculture.
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I understand that, the key thought is it was an unnecessary conflict. There are optional dates that do not cause passionate fans of both sports to give up one for the other.
I don’t care about hockey, not one bit. I think I lack an appreciation of the skill level of skating on ice and making athletic moves against an equally skilled opponent. People said ‘you have to go to a game in person, it doesn’t translate well to TV”. I did, to one of the best matchups the NHL had. I was bored to tears, thankfully they served beer. I even got to know Bobby Orr very well in the 80s, and played a lot of golf with him. As great a superstar as he was, and a class act to boot, it didn’t change my view of hockey.
I can imagine how bored you are with golfers talking non-stop about a sport you don’t relate to. I would feel the same around gamers talking about the newest video gadgets. I would say The Masters is as much “a happening”, an event, as it is a golf competition, but that is something everyone has to determine on their own. If you ever get the chance to attend on a nice Spring day, I will say it would be surprising if you weren’t very gald you did. Put it on your “bucket list”. But even if you don’t, at least we can now both enjoy the Dawgs in Sanford to see how the new Pups are doing!
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Plus the Diamond Dawgs are home that weekend versus the damn Gators.
Make a day of it.
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Perhaps McGarity should have called Billy Payne and told him to stop scheduling the Masters on G-Day weekend.
🙂
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