I don’t know if you caught Mark Richt’s comment about the SEC going to a nine-game conference schedule in football, but it seems he’s not a fan of the concept.
“These other schools have nine but they’re not going to have that 10th game that is a team that is BCS-quality or ACC-quality or whatever you want to say,” Richt said. “I wouldn’t be shocked to see that happen. I voted against it because if we have nine, plus Tech and then if we want to do something like Clemson like we did this year, you’re talking about 11 out of 12 games that are pretty stout.”
Richt does acknowledge that if the conference adds two more schools, a nine-game schedule is inevitable. Groo wonders what that all means for the future of the Georgia Tech series.
Is the Tech game untouchable in the world of nine conference games? I’d like to think so, but let’s ask the Aggies and Longhorns. If it came down to it with nine conference games, would you prefer to keep the Tech series so that interesting nonconference games are less frequent, or would you rather drop the series if it meant a larger variety of quality opponents?
If and when the SEC goes to nine conference games, Georgia would be crazy to drop the series. Let me show you why, in a nutshell.
SERIES RECORDS 2001-2012
- Georgia 11, Georgia Tech 1
- Florida 7, FSU 5
- South Carolina 6, Clemson 6
One of those is definitely not like the others.
Georgia gets the benefit of perception – Tech is a rival game, Tech is a major conference opponent, etc. – without taking on the burden of playing a team that mounts a serious long-term threat. The two worst teams of the Richt era notched wins over Paul Johnson’s two best teams. That’s pwnership, peeps. Why give that up as we move into an era of postseason by selection committee, when the Dawgs’ two biggest division rivals are giving up a head start almost half the time?
Get The Picture 
Hear Hear!
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Wait … I thought we didn’t like cupcake games.
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We pwned you in 2008! You can use all the math you want but this series is about 9 points away from being tied over the last 15 years. Vad Lee is going to go undefeated next season,will win the Heisman, and reclaim this seriess for the school that produces something other than Wal Mart cashiers.
Triple option till I die, bitches!
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Yuck, yuck, yuck. UR such a kidder, whoever UR. Thanks so much for brightening our morning.
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Yuck, yuck, yuck. UR such a kidder, whoever UR. Thanks for brightening our morning.
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Oops
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That’s ok. It was worthy of two posts
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I was about to post that this is an obvious fake troll, but then I realized it might be my brother inlaw.
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Everyone who wants 9 conference games, be careful what you ask for. A 9th conference game means that either Jax or Tech will go away. It will be Tech because Uncle Verne wants to spend the last weekend in October on the First Coast.
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Why would Jax go away?
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You give up a home conference game every couple of years – because of unbalanced scheduling, you could end up with 3 conference home games on a year where we have 5 on the road and we’re the home team in the WLOCP = 5 away + 1 neutral + 3 home. There’s no way McGarity can afford to allow that to happen if he has any desire to keep his season ticket base happy. Let’s play that out further if that year has us playing at Tech, it becomes at best ==> 6 away + 1 neutral + 5 home (3 conf game + 2 cupcakes). 9 conference games frankly becomes a scheduling nightmare for both the Gators and us with the WLOCP and the ACC rivalry game.
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That’s a lot of explaining and I appreciate it. But the “upside” to playing in Jax is even when Georgia’s not the “home” team, they get half the tickets/gate. I know this isn’t as lucrative as playing in Athens, but it is something. I agree that it’s unimaginable to only play three out of nine conference games in Athens. What a crappy situation. Should the SEC just invite GT into the conference? That would put UGA on the same footing as Bama/AU, Ms\Msu, Tn/vVandy. While I don’t really think they belong in the SEC, it would be an answer (they could play the games in the Ga Dome or whatever replaces it..or be required to build a real staduim of their own). Man, just look at the things we’re having to consider..
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Again, Jax is actually more lucrative over a two-year cycle.
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For the University. For the Athens and even N. Ga. economy, the game would mean $$$. However…just as we’re talking about tradition, the tradition of the WLOCP is pretty awesome…and it’s always going to be on TV even if both teams don’t have a win.
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…and who is making the final decision to play in Jax?
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Only because the City of Jacksonville bribes both schools to play there to help out its local merchants. Ug has a real point here. Also, to those who say that we would end up with 4 SEC home games, 4 SEC road games and 1 neutral site game (the WLOCP) every year I say, that’s up to the conference office. There absolutely will be UGA seasons of 3 SEC home games, 5 SEC road games and the WLOCP (a de facto road game) to make schedules of other schools fit. That’s 6 conference games away from Athens. How do you like the Dawgs’ chances in the East division the years when that happens folks?
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What difference does it make where the money comes from or why? Still spends the same, doesn’t it?
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Just ask former Congressman Pat Swindall about that. Borrowing laundered drug money to finance his palatial home got him in dutch with the feds and a prison term so I guess where it comes from does matter. This whole “money above all other things” attitude is what is ruining CFB–and the entire nation for that matter.
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Why do you hate mercantile Jacksonville? What you call bribery, they call bidness.
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In the south that’s what a hooker calls a john–bidness.
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The best solution to this would be to require all opponents to establish a permanent neutral-site game–especially since several already exist. It would be lucrative for the conference and schools and solve the schedule imbalance issue that nine games creates.
I’m telling you, we will never hear the end of it if Saban, Spurrier, or Miles has to have 5 road games versus 4 home. NEVER hear the end of it. And I can’t fathom they’ll let it happen to begin with, honestly.
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As long as it pays better than a home-and-home, it’s not.
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Senator, what about the scheduling angle?
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Money trumps everything.
Besides, what have the two years in a fourteen-team conference told you about scheduling per se? It’s simply not as high a priority anymore.
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If the Tech game became a less frequent series…say two years on and two years off, it would add excitement and expectation to a game that has become very one sided. It would be hard for GT to find a replacement that would buy tickets the way Dawg fans do, though..(so solly). The down side would be the loss of what the Senator describes as Georgia’s “getting the benefit from the perception..without taking on the biurden…” Also, who are you going to schedule in GT’s place? Who else gives you that “benefit” ? Plus the benefit of having them so close by makes it a cheap trip for Georgia and for Dawg fans.
What’s sad is that schools are having to consider giving up traditional rivalries because of the expansion gold rush.
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Love Cheap Trip. My first concert. Dream Police. Awesome.
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Rotate Tech and Clemson every two years.
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Play Tech every year….in Athens.
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You want Athens to play the role of Jacksonville?
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No. I want Athens to play the role of Athens.
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And Tech to play the role of Western Carolina.
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The thing that stands out to me the most from Richt’s quote is “a team that is BCS-quality or ACC-quality.” Perhaps unintentional, but nice little poke at ACC football.
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As long as they run the triple option and keep playing with an ACC defense, this will be like having a cupcake on the schedule. Because their athletic department is so underfunded, I’m just waiting to hear we’re going to start paying them like we do our cupcakes.
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Drop the series. Schedule games against the Service Academies instead. They are always looking for games to fill out their schedule and it would be roughly the same thing.
Or schedule Middle Tennessee State. They seem like a good program.
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The service academies want a lot of tickets to give to the troops.
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We would have to play Tech at home every year to make it work. Tech wouldn’t like that because they need us on their home schedule to sell tickets, but maybe we could pay them $1 million every other year.
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Absolutely not. Thanksgiving would never be the same knowing that I get
1. A week off
2. A lot of great football on Thursday and Friday
3. A lot of great food on Thursday with leftovers Friday and on into the weekend.
4. Another humiliation of Georgia Tech on Saturday.
Knowing that the UGA game is all they live for and the ticket sales angle, I highly doubt Tech is in favor of it.
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We can’t beat Tech bad enough or often enough for my tastes. No reason to drop the Tech series. UT-Aggies was a case of UT getting their panties in a wad and dropping the series. I expect it to start back up in a couple of years when Johnny Football has gone.
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I agree with Russ 110 % …Beat Tech at every sport, every time, as much as possible
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A potential solution to Richt’s 11 of 12 complaint? When the big boys break off from the little guys, we’ll be having a 12 major programs out of 12 games schedule anyway, so no longer a problem. That might actually allow for the old timers to get the cherished Clemson series back on a regular or semi-regular basis.
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Why would they stop playing lower division teams? I-A and I-AA separation does not prevent it and “Super I-A” and I-A separation shouldn’t preven it either. There will still be a market for cupcakes, and those cupcakes will still take their $800-$1MM pay day gladly.
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Not sure we get much benefit from “perception” of GT. They have no national status any longer, they are middle of the pack, at best, of a conference that is below middle of the pack. There are some fans on the national level who remember the 50s and 60s when GT was decent but who are we kidding here, GT is a mid-major football program who brings more risk than reward. The 11-1 domination alone proves the networks right about assigning it low priority broadcast and promotion status. I know this isn’t going to change the minds of those who really dig this annual game but if you ever went 100 miles from Atlanta and talked with CFB fans about UGA/GT versus other rivalries you would see why it should be judged objectively.
Texas and TAMU was far above UGA/GT as a rivalry and they walked away from it so maybe we can eventually put Tech into the “helping the needy” category like GSU and give them a money trip to Sanford every few years to help them pay off Fish Fry and his staff. But I do miss the A&M/Texas rivalry game, hope they restore that one as there is quite a split in Texas between those two fanbases.
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“they walked away from it” which was no DeLoss for Dodds who fancies himself as a latter-day DeJesus who wants to see an Aggie beg for forgiveness
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/texas-ad-deloss-dodds-says-rivalry-m-could-190725114–ncaaf.html
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Everything has to be on the Longhorns’ terms, that is the primary reason A&M bolted, along with Nebraska. They are truly the group you want to buy for what they think they are worth and sell for what they are really worth. I met Dodds many years ago whern he was a young AD, cannot imagine how much more of a pompous ass he has become in 20 years at that snooty school. He is definitely their kind of guy. No other conference will accept them on “their terms” so he sits there as the Big Fish in a small pond. Whoopty do.
I would love to see Oklahoma leave the conference too, would help their record again. You can damn well bet Texas fans wanted no part of A&M last year, or this coming year. The Cotten Bowl really wanted that match up in January.
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Don’t know whether that’s my lysdexia kicking in or that your second sentence got twistfied. Don’t you intend to say they are worth less than they think they are worth? Assuming that, it’s good to see someone getting to the heart of the matter and the “…take my ball and go home…” attitude by Texas is what precipitated the entire mess. This is Texas petulance not shared by A&M.
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What was he like then and what happened that made him so arrogant? At least Bob had one Big Game each of the past two seasons
2011 Oklahoma (#3) 55 Texas (#11) 17
2012 Oklahoma (#13) 63 Texas (#15) 21
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Boy that was back asswards Cojones. Also screwed the wording up on Doods too, I was trying to say he had gotten even more arrogant, which is hard to believe. His attitude at the private party I was attending was already indicating UT might grace a few teams with their presence but there were no equals to them. He was looking down at other national schools and never even acknowledged that Texas might have a rival within their own borders. I get it with Joe Sixpack the fan belittling a rival but Dodds as an AD should be smoother than that.
Damn, that was a badly written comment, even for me…..who never wastes time on proofreading.
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What the hell is proofreading?
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Look guys all of the fretting over the 9 game conference schedule will take care of itself when the following happens:
1. Division 1-A NCAA members opt to move beyond a scholarship model and athletes begin to take a portion of the revenue pie either in straight salary or some sort of stipend-trust fund arrangement.
2. Schools unwilling to participate in the new model will drop out of Division 1-A. Division 1-A football will have 5 major conferences with 16 teams each @ 80 teams.
3. In order to add clarity for an expanded/tournament selection committee AND to bring additional revenue to pay the players, D1A members will expand the schedule to 13-14 games. Teams will have from Labor Weekend through mid-December to complete Regular season (roughly 9/1 – 12/15).
4. Conference Championship games will be held the following weekend (12/22). Tournament selection will be the day after conference championship games – all conference champions + runners-up get automatically qualification into a 16 team tournament. There will be 6 at large selections.
5. Teams not in tournament can be selected for bowls not participating tournament. Bowl season will run from last week of December to 5th of January. No bowl games will be on New Years Day or 1/2 which will be the opening rounds of the football tournament.
6. Football tournament runs until 3rd week of January. Games will be on Friday night and Saturday afternoons to avoid head to head conflicts with NFL playoffs.
UGA will be able to keep GaTech on the regular season schedule even with conference expansion to 9 games since there will be 4 out of of conference games. In return for some teams dropping out of D1A, D1A teams execute agreement that at least 2 non-conference games for each D1A member will be played against former D1A teams.
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I question the sanity of any bulldog that wants to end the tech series. Beating them is a thanksgiving tradition and it definitely isnt hurting our schedule. The only thing that sucks is getting tickets to that high school stadium every other year.
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Agreed concerning the NATS.
And if trying to be fair to players means to pay them for their likenesses and additionally opening up all the other CFB changeling scenarios, why in hell don’t we solve that problem that creates multiple other problems?
The simplest way to solve the CFB player images problem is not to let anyone use their images as CFB players. Are we trying to maintain here that we are willing to change CFB radically in order to placate universities and companies who are making money from them? Everyone has to think about the simple solution (no likenesses used) instead of radicalizing the foundations of CFB. Everyone should stop this unreasoning Pome ‘D Rue. Now. Quit wrapping them together such that fuzzy thinking pulls one idea of fairness along with another. Unless a cease and desist is placed in the CFB player’s suit (O’Bannion) as a resultant remediation, none of this will work out well for CFB and deflects good reasoning toward other issues.
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At least Georgia Southern drops off the schedule. I hated facing a good option team…
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good one!
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I wish we played Ga Southern every year the week before the Tech game like we did this past season. Good planning.
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“The Yellow Jackets aren’t a bug. They’re a feature.”
Excellent! That’s entomologically worthy of some kind of Lexicon entry or Jeopardy question or answer (such as, “What would it take to make the windshield of the Ramblin’ Wreck spongeworthy ?”) to join the slow-swarm of a few of other noteworthy bug entries such as Chantastic; 4 tickets, 4 hot dogs, 4 cokes; Dragon*Con ;_IAR,B!; 51-7; Reggie Ball; Reddinged; Flag Boy; Touchmybaby and World’s Smallest Outdoor Cocktail Party (trifold h/t to Jim Donnan)
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“a team that is BCS-quality or ACC-quality,” was that a dig at the ACC by Richt?
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Oh, he’a a sly one. Tells you he knows where he stands with that team from Atlanta.
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If AU can drop Tech, UGA can.
Sad to see AU drop Tech. If UGA did it would cause a state representative to submit a bill forcing the teams to play.
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Let GT win a game vs UGA, and they will sooner or later, and the hatred will come back again.
I spoke of this the other day in regards to the 9 game schedule, and many didn’t get it. I for one do not think the 11-1 will continue forever vs GT. They will hire a real coach sooner or later.
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THIS
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PTC…hush yo’ mouth!
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We could just render them obsolete. Suck on this, N.A.T.S.
http://onlineathens.com/uga/2013-04-18/nasa-names-star-system-uga
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It could be a play call….”OK, for the game and the Universe, UGA-1785…on ‘Hut!’ “.
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