Mark Richt walks a mile in Dabo Swinney’s shoes.
Richt understands what Swinney endured Monday, when he announced the dismissal of sophomore quarterback Chad Kelly. Before the spring game on Saturday, Kelly battled for the starting role with senior Cole Stoudt and freshman Deshaun Watson. A series of regrettable offenses, including Kelly’s verbal lash to an assistant coach on the sideline Saturday, provoked Swinney’s decision.
Richt said he does not need to know all the private details to understand Swinney’s motivation — the fundamental responsibility to protect the long-term interests of the program.
“I don’t know how good Kelly is. I don’t know where he was in their mindset, and I don’t even know what happened,” Richt said, “but somewhere along the line, they were like, ‘We can’t have this and sustain this program the way we want to sustain it.’
Uneasy lies the head that wears a headset.
According to Georgia coach Mark Richt, few truly grasp the responsibility required of his position.
Few realize the breadth and depth with which difficult decisions must be weighed. Few understand the complex duty of managing the consequences of those decisions in public when many of the details provoking them must remain private.
“People are like ‘Why is he doing that’ or ‘What is he thinking?’” Richt said Wednesday evening before visiting fans at the TD Convention Center in Greenville, the second stop along the Bulldog Club Tour with Georgia men’s basketball coach Mark Fox.
“There have been times where I wish I could just explain to everybody what I know, so they’d understand,” Richt said. “Until you sit in the chair you really don’t know what that’s like.”
All of which may explain why he often appears coy discussing player discipline.
Georgia coach Mark Richt said he may not announce any discipline including possible suspensions for the four players who were arrested on the eve of spring practice before the Clemson opener.
“Every time I discipline a guy I don’t tell everybody what I do all the time,” Richt said. “Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.”
Or maybe that’s what comes of us not being in the arena. It’s a fine line to walk between honest decency and patronizing the fan base. Richt handles that about as well as we should probably expect from a head coach these days.
Get The Picture 
Richt has dropped the hammer on truly bad apples, which reinforces this thought to me: I will be SHOCKED if “Trigga” finishes his collegiate career at UGA.
LikeLike
I really hope…er, uh I mean it would be a shame if Mr. Matthews was let go.
LikeLike
I don’t think he’s done anything that warrants being let go from the program myself. We will see.
LikeLike
Unless the funds from the check cashing scam were beig sent to a dying family member, I’ll respectfully disagree. I’ve been wrong countless times before, but my gut feeling is that he’s trouble.
LikeLike
I’ll have to agree that he knew it was wrong, did it anyway, got caught. He has to suffer the consequences. If he is allowed to stay, I want to know what Pruitt thinks……….
LikeLike
Sounds like Richt has already done a little disciplining. Good for him. Letting God and the press (i get them backwards most times) know your every thought and move is ludicrus. Hopefully, Dabo will use Richt’s words for comfort. While we take comfort in loss of players from Clemson who can be game deciders this fall, we many times don’t have the sensitivity shown by Richt for the coach’s situation.
Unlike Spurrier, Richt doesn’t sarcasmicise your fan base when things look sad..
LikeLike
Well put, Coach Richt. Keep the Faith.
LikeLike
Bullshit!
//slashes katana menacingly towards Butts-Mehre building
LikeLike
Wow, Scranton is a deep reach back into the archives of the dismissed. Hadn’t thought of him in about a decade.
LikeLike
I see this as a good sign.
We swung too far to zero tolerance / full transparency with the press after the last head coaching change.
I am confident this was a M. F. Adams condition under which Coach Richt was hired. Adams was embarrassed by the flimsy “injured thumb” and the other last-minute mystery injury cover-ups in the seasons immediately preceding Richt’s arrival, as well as his some of his own circumstances.
The zero tolerance / full transparency backlash accelerated farther after Adams was embarrassed by his own basketball hire. We lost control of public relations and gave the press free reign to define the program and the school’s image any way they wanted to. It wasn’t pretty.
Perhaps the new university leadership sees the damage these backlash policies have done to team performance and program reputation where the previous leadership did not. It appears they are giving the Athletic Department and the Head Coach more control of these decisions.
We can only hope.
LikeLike
You nailed some important points there. +1
LikeLike
“Few realize the breadth and depth with which difficult decisions must be weighed. Few understand the complex duty of managing the consequences of those decisions in public when many of the details provoking them must remain private….Until you sit in the chair you really don’t know what that’s like.”
The foregoing statement is:
(a.) a Marine Corps or razor blade ad;
(b.) a Seal Team 6 Mission Statement;
(c.) Classified; or
(d.) an ode to a chair in the arena
LikeLike
Reads like an excerpt from Blood Meridian, quoting Captain White or perhaps Glanton.
LikeLike
Excellent! How did I miss Col. Nathan R. Jessup, USMC, when he cracked with the back of an axe the shinbone of an antelope and ordered a blanket party for morale inside Gitmo….
LikeLike
When I read that I actually thought he was talking about being President of the United States. Talk about feeling self-important. Sheesh. Try sitting on an appellate bench wearing a black robe, deciding whether somebody is going to be executed or not before expounding on whether or not suspending a player is a really big deal, Mark.
LikeLike
Is Mark Richt related to Mark Emmert. Our coach needs to learn to STFU.
LikeLike
Executed?
Wow. I guess publicly kicking a kid off a big time college football team is no big deal to you. Ya know, throwing a disturbed, disadvantaged kid back to his community is no big deal. He might still have a future, but it is no sweat off your ass. You gave him his shot, and after all, you’ve got your paycheck to worry about and you don’t have time for kids who trusted you once they’ve screwed up. After all, appellate judges are the only ones who make important calls.
Mark Richt feels like he’s a father to 100 teenage sons. But I guess being a father is not an important job. It’s not like being a president or an appellate judge.
LikeLike
Read his quote again and then tell me with a straight face that wasn’t just as stupid as what Emmert said in the thread above.
LikeLike
Deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want him in that chair. You need him in that chair. We use words like “lumbar support”, “fine Corinthian leather”,
and “chair mats”. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent sitting on something. You use them as a punchline. We have neither the time nor the inclination to explain ourselves to a municipal dude who rises and sleeps under the blanket party of chair security that we provide, and then questions the manner in which we provide it!
(h/t DawgPhan, Normaltown who apparently is somehow related to me, Randle Patrick “Mac” McMurphy, Steelcase™ and Herman Miller © 2014 who is no longer a person)
LikeLike
That was beautiful.
LikeLike
You don’t think decisions he makes that are going to (very likely) have a significant effect on the future of an 18-22 year old are weighty? It’s easy to armchair quarterback and talk about how easy the decisions are when you’re not going the one who’s going to have to live with the consequences….
LikeLike
You miss the point 79. CMR gets paid $3 Million+ to run a football team in a state that Sports Illustrated says is the third best producer of football talent in America and one of the top 5 jobs in college football. All he has to do is win games to keep his job and even if he doesn’t and he gets fired, his employer has to pay him for the remainder of the contract which is always several years and many millions of dollars. Is it an easy job? No. But to make it sound like your decisions are similar in magnitude to the President sending men off to die in battle or a CEO having to downsize a company in order to save it and firing thousands of people, thereby taking away the source of livelihood from their families, is a little much. I don’t know what you do for a living but I’ll bet you have pressure on you to perform and have other people depending on you, too, including family members. Do you whine about that? Reread CMR’s “sit in this chair” comment 79. That’s whining. When you’ve got one of the cushiest jobs in all of sports you need to do that job without complaining. Particularly in light of how we on this blog are bashing Mark Emmert about his stupid comments in the thread above this one, it’s a little incredulous that we should give CMR a pass for his “pity me” comments. Cry me a river, Mark.
LikeLike
“whether somebody is going to be executed”
Not a big deal in Texas
LikeLike
We have a drive-thru lane for that. (h/t Ron White)
LikeLike
I saw him at a late show a few weeks ago and he was great from opening with, “If you think the people around you here tonight are stupid, you should have been with me last night in Vicksburg,” to the encore of the Dr. Phil yacht in Monaco, “****, yeah!” story
LikeLike
Richt is right, we don’t know what all he faces but I am confident he makes such decisions only after very careful consideration to all the factors involved. We are fortunate to have a man like him as our HC. I don’t particularly like all things about our disciplinary policies but appreciate that we are setting a strong standard when compared to other programs and don’t play games with the timing of disciplinary actions. If you had a son playing CFB, you would want him in the hands of a man of character like CMR. You could ask for nothing more at that vulnerable stage of his life.
LikeLike
That too is beautiful. “Richt is Right should be a new meme.
LikeLike