ESPN Insider’s national college football writer dishes out some Jeremy Pruitt love.
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UPDATE: In case you’re interested, Pete Roussel says there’s a GA who will follow Pruitt to Athens.
Get The Picture 
I’ve quit drinking Kool-Aid since it has soured on my stomach the last 5 years.
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Try mixing in some rum, like me.
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Here’s something that probably deserves to be said:
It’s a common refrain among Georgia fans — I’ve even been guilty of this myself, from time to time — that Mark Richt is too much of a “good guy” to win big. Now, obviously it would be to get way ahead of ourselves to assume that Jeremy Pruitt will turn out to be the difference-maker for this program, and that we’ll be contending for a national championship soon enough. But of course, we all hope that’s the case. Well, suppose for a moment that it is the case. If so, then some credit for that will have to go to what a “good guy” Richt is, since that is apparently one of the things that most attracted Pruitt to the position in the first place — namely, working for a guy like Mark Richt.
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True to all that, Turd. And what should not go unappreciated either is the stark reality that Pruitt has seen up-close and visceral what the scene is like when working for a Saban-style character. Mayhaps he liked the look of affairs on the other side of the fence. Wonder what The Bandit makes of all this.
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Richt and his “good guy” demeanor has not yielded a national championship so far. If, by some minor chance, UGA wins the national championship next year, I think it would be unreasonable to correlate that outcome to Coach Richt’s fine character, especially since we have all watched so many coaches of arguably very poor character win the big one since the BCS started.
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“Richt and his “good guy” demeanor has not yielded a national championship so far.”
And the same can be said for literally hundreds of other college football coaches during that same time period, many of which are every bit the asshole that Nick Saban is. Your point?
“… I think it would be unreasonable to correlate that outcome to Coach Richt’s fine character, …”
Except for the reason that I suggest.
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There’s still time.
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Since Richt became a head coach there are only four guys still head coaching who have won bcs championships. If winning a bcs crystal football is the yardstiçk to define whether a coach issuccessful the about 97% of the head coaches marching the sidelines in 2014 are not successful.
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Agreed…that’s what should happen in that scenario. Sadly, it probably won’t. More likely, there will be a push to make Pruitt HC.
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I am cautiously optimistic that our defense will be better. Now I am worried about the OL most of all followed by QB. If the OL is better and Gurley healthy I can see SEC East ours to lose. And oh yeah, forgot about special teams – surely we will improve some?
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Special Teams improvement? Only if UGA hires a ST Co-ordinator. “The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing yet expecting a different result.”
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There already has been different results. Richt has pretty much approached ST the same way since he has been here and they haven’t always been a source of concern.
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I think Richt’s past approach was to be completely hands off and let the assistants handle things. If you have a coach like Belin, that’s a great plan. If you have a coach like Fabris, not so much.
I don’t know if Richt is planning to be more involved personally, or if he’s relying on the new coaches to be more competent than the old coaches. Whatever it is, I hope it works.
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To oversimplify (hey thats what blog comment sections are for), I hope our D improves at least as much to offset the drop off at QB
…oh lets put it this way: May our d suck less, our ACL’s stay strong, our test results stay negative and our fair catches remain true. SCREW the officials! Lets drink!
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The Grantham nickname listed in the article is priceless. M.O.T.O.
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Re: Update
Third year as a GA for Helow or as a full-time assistant? Anyone know how many years the average coach works as a GA?
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Was wondering the same. I always thought you could only be a GA for 2 years. I don’t know why I’ve thought that tho, could be completely wrong.
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It said he was an intern at Alabama. Then a GA at FSU. This would be his second year as a GA at UGA.
The Saban staff tree seems to be blooming not only at the top, maybe only on the offensive side, but also in the roots with all of the young talent at the high school level moving into big time college. Trickle down athletics or economics at work.
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It said he was an intern during 2012 at Alabama in this article, http://www.olemisssports.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/010614aaa.html
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Thanks
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“Helow went to Alabama and met with the coaching staff when they had their junior day in 2012, and they invited him to serve as an intern in the weight room…”
That is quite interesting…
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I’ve always wondered if GA’s are a way around staff limitations. Is there a limit on how many you can have? What you can pay them? Wondered if Richt ever thought of adding a former kicker or punter as a GA to help his kickers with their mechanics
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You can have 4 GAs in FBS. You can only pay them the amount of grant-in-aid for a full time grad student. Probably around $20k. And they have to be enrolled full time as grad students.
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Thanks. I guess they foresaw the potential to hide staff members.
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