Fourteen years ago today, Jim Donnan relieved Kevin Ramsey of his duties as defensive coordinator.
You can bitch all you want about other coordinators, but I’ve never sat through a worse Georgia defensive showing than the first half of that ’99 Auburn game. I didn’t approve of the halftime booing, but I could sure understand why it happened.
Get The Picture 
Best part of the article after the chart on yards per pass attempt Ramsey’s defense gave up and it’s performance against our rivals:
“Speaking of overrated defensive coordinators, you’ll notice Georgia’s recently departed was at the helm for two of the worst six averages in UGA history. And, speaking of 156 points given up, that’s the same total Grantham’s defenders allowed to Clemson, LSU, Auburn, and Georgia Tech in 2013. Nevertheless, back to Ramsey… ”
Priceless.
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Senator, that performance was embarrassing on both sides of the ball. I didn’t boo that night, but if there was a time where booing was acceptable, that night was it. ’95 Florida was bad, but we knew what was coming. ’08 Bama was frustrating, but you saw a team that was a deer in the headlights. ’99 Auburn was one of the few times I ever left Sanford Stadium just downright embarrassed at what we had become.
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At least the Braves won the World Series a few hours after the debacle against Florida in 1995. /silver lining’d
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Tech 2000? I sat in an emergency room waiting to have my thumb put back together after almost cutting it off and believe me, there was not enough morphine to calm me down after Godsey mockingly ran all over that defense.
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Didn’t Donnan pull Ramsey in the Outback Bowl and put the defense in Kines control? That was the rumor. It was a terrible start for Georgia but it gave rise to one of Larry’s memorable quotes…
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The rumor also including Ramsey getting violent on Jimbo.
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I’ve also heard that Ramsey basically was having a nervous breakdown during that Outback Bowl game, but who knows. That 1999 season was a precursor to the cloak-and-dagger, wtf is going on, 2000 season which has as many unanswered questions as anything I can think of. Frankly, we might not want to know the truth about some of what went down in 2000.
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For all the Disney Dawgs… Georgia is a sweet 8-4 against the Barners since 2002. It should have been 9-3 but “ole lady luck just looked down and laughed out loud.”
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good point
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I would say twice in that time. I still haven’t gotten over 2005.
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The sense of shock was felt throughout Sanford that night..
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Made for a looooong drive home.
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Ain’t dat the truth!
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If that game/experience wasn’t rock bottom as a UGA fan, then I never want to find out what is. I was a freshman and had a ton of hometown high school friends come up for that game. The environment of the stadium and downtown afterwards were utterly embarrassing. Just a bad, bad night.
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Look up Homecoming 1994 – that was the rock bottom. An embarrassing loss to Vanderbilt that pretty much sealed Ray Goff’s fate. Rumors that the team threw the game because of things that had nothing to do with the game itself.
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I had the pleasure of being in attendance on both occasions and can assure you it was much uglier at the ’99 game.
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The other thing to remember is that the 99 Auburn game was the only night home game that year. We’d already wet the bed against Tennessee and Florida that year and barely squeaked by UCF and LSU. Add a whole day of drinking, a season of underacheiving, and throw in a completely unprepared, don’t give a shit performance, and you had the recipe for diaster.
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+1 – I had forgotten the UCF disaster – ugh, thanks for the reminder
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Senator, I was at both games as well. The atmosphere at the ’99 game was much worse, but losing to Vanderbilt at home any year should almost be a fireable offense. If CMR loses to Vandy in 2010 at home like we did in 2006 after an SEC championship, the wolves would have come out of the woodwork.
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Losing to UVA In 1979 at my very first Homecoming I think 31-0,with all my Dad’s frat buddies from UVA was my low point-although the WLOCP in Grambling uniforms is close.
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Those two are really bad as well – yuck! Senator, can you shut the comments down on this thread before people start jumping off buildings? 🙂
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I almost got the crap beat out of me at that game. It was only the second or third time I’d seen Virginia win a football game in person, I was seriously inebriated and I kept apologizing to all the Georgia fans around me. That evidently go over too well. Or at least so I’m told.
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That was a demoralizing game for me but it wasn’t quite the heart breaker the 95 Peach Bowl was. Our little group of Dawgs went from sky high to low down quickly at the end. The little contingent of Virginia fans in front of us just turned around and smiled quietly. We ran into them again as we searched for the van. Again with the smile. Not rude or gloating. That might have made it easier. My group was very quiet. If life were fair we would have run into them in ’98. I would have Barked!
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Had The Home Depot Box for that game. Got so wasted, did not feel a thing!
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I can still see Ronnie Daniels stiff arming his way to a long TD reception. That was the only time I’ve left in the third quarter.
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I was at that one too, but was too young to completely grasp it and certain didn’t have the same attachment as actually being a student while it was happening. I know about re rumors of players not be if happy bc their wasn’t a black homecoming representative, but I don’t know that I buy that. It’s just as likely to my that Goff didn’t have the team prepared and they got beat by a hungrier, grittier team. Call it the 2006 or 2009 Kentucky games of a different generation.
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We gave up 40+ and 400+ yards rushing to a team that day to a team that had no business competing with us. It wasn’t a last minute victory or one that we gave them. They came into Athens and absolutely kicked our butts up and down the Sanford Stadium sod. Something happened behind the scenes that week – the rumors about the Homecoming court persist to this day.
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I was a junior in 99 for that game… I somehow snuck in a liter of Beam in my pants, and me and a couple other dudes drank it all. By the end of the third quarter, everyone had cleared out for 30 feet around me, save a dude and his girlfriend three rows behind us and many feet over.
As the liquor finally ran out, probably somewhere in the 4th, I absent mindedly threw the bottle behind me (kind of a sidearm, under my left arm chuck). To my horror, I really hucked the thing and it took off, flying silhouetted through the air, spinning slowly, gaining height and distance as though the Auburn Band’s sound waves were directing it. The girl, thirty feet away from me and three rows behind me, was hit square in the face with the bottom side of the plastic bottle. Her dude, understandably, wanted to kill me, but he was outnumbered 7 to 1. Regardless, I was really apologizing and had to convince him that no, I never intended to throw it at them, despite the absurdity of the shot happening randomly. The odds of something so stupidly catastrophic happening with an empty Beam bottle are pretty slim.
I think that pretty much sums that game up.
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That was you?
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How big was the bottle?
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It was a plastic bottle but it was either a liter or a liter and a half. It remains to this day my most impressive sneak-into-game moment, trailed slightly by the unmentionable south Carolina game (Quincy). I had two plastic bags of Beam in my pockets. The security guard at the entrance stopped me, demanded to know what was in my pockets… I boldly stuck my thigh out, he patted it, and told me to go in. How to bags didn’t break form him hitting it, I don’t know.
It’s nice to have a wife now, because apparently bras work wonders for getting liquor into games. I wonder if I had known this back in college if I would have considered wearing one or two and brought in more beer.
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Another thing that works for women is wearing your tennis panties and putting the pints where you put your tennis balls when serving.
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That was the season after I graduated. My first job out of college was at the daily newspaper in Lynchburg, Virginia, and I drove all the way down from the L-Boogie for that game (after having bragged to everyone in my office how we were going to kick Auburn’s ass). To this day it is as close to a waking nightmare as I have ever experienced.
And I’m still not convinced Ramsey wasn’t a Tennessee sleeper agent assigned by Fulmer to destroy the team from the inside. I mean, with that much talent on hand, you’ve got to try to field a defense that bad.
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Thank God I was overseas and couldn’t watch that abortion.
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Me too, I was enjoying a bevy of LBFM’s in Panama at the time. Can’t say I regret missing this particular game.
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Me too.
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Somebody wanting to punch Jim Donnan in the nose? I am shocked, just shocked. Donnan’s people skills were legendary.
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Judging from the way he suckered those folks into that Ponzi scheme of his, he must have had some people skills. 😉
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Some coaches (see Tuberville, Tommy) apparently warmed up to him…alumni and fans at schools were he was coaching…not so much.
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Ya think Tommy might have learned anything from his experience with Jimbo?
http://hedgefundoperationalduediligence.com/tommy-tuberville-claims-connection-ponzi-scheme/
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No. “I love music. I love NASCAR. I call myself a True American….Talladega….chopper ride….I can recognize beauty as well as talent.”
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’99 was before my time (I was a freshman at UGA in Richt’s first season), so for a more recent example, I nominate the second half of the ’08 Nerd game. Specifically THAT Reshad Jones play.
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I saw the Reshad Jones tackling style employed again this year. I think it was the the bowl game and it resulted in 6 points.
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It was definitely present in Clemson.
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I can’t remember why we weren’t there, but I was watching that game on tv with my dad, just sitting there dumbfounded at how bad our D had become. What was that AU receiver’s name that lit us up that game? Last name was Daniels or something like that. Seems like he was only at AU for one year, and he was a good athlete and all, but not only did we not cover him well, but once he caught it, nobody could tackle him.
Made Ben Leard look like a first round draft pick. And Quincy looked like……well, Quincy. 🙂
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Ronny Daniels was the name – Instead of Beyond Crompton, maybe the lexicon entry should be Beyond Leard …
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1999 was good to Mr. Leard. He threw only one int all year. A Hart County HS product, he was motivated against the Dawgs for not recruiting him. Ironically, we picked up his HS back up, Cory Phillips, as a walk on. He would later start against Kentucky after Quincy “throw it over their head” Carter went down with a rotator cuff injury. That’s remarkable in that Cory played only 4 games as a HS junior before tearing every ligament in a knee. As for Mr. Leard, he was waived by the Patriots one day removed from mini camp.
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I was at that 94 Vandy Homecoming game. We should have run Goff’s ass off right then…
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+1
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Hogtown in the rain 1994. Worst trip ever. My tailgating buddy got kneewalkin’, “that sumbitch looked-at-me-wrong”, fightin’ drunk. All he could say for an hour after the debacle was “Goof’s gone.”
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