Jim Donnan wants you to know there’s one thing he really would have liked during his coaching career.
Q: What game do you wish you could have back in your five years?
A: “I would like to have had instant replay. There were a couple of games against [Georgia] Tech I would like to play over, but they deserved to win.”
No they didn’t.
Get The Picture 
I’ll believe my lyin’ eyes on this one.
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Tuck Fech!
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Remember Donnan wasn’t even supposed to be the coach. Glen Mason took the job then changed his mind to stay at Kansas of all places.
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Mason backed on Christmas Day, alledgedly because his daughter threw a fit on Kansas’s flight back from the Aloha Bowl.
That was after (alledgedly) Vince’s first choices, Brewer at Southern Miss and Gary Barnett both said no.
I know VD is royalty on these boards, but he botched two head coaching hires about as badly as possible.
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That’s not the only thing VD botched. Not much of an AD in my opinion.
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“he botched two head coaching hires about as badly as possible”
Two FOOTBALL head coaching hires.
He botched numerous hires in other sports.
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“I know VD is royalty on these boards, but he botched two head coaching hires about as badly as possible.”
Absolutely. Just the idea of hiring Glen Mason at all…
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That call still chaps my arse..
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Neither Mason or Donnan were right for the Georgia job. W’eve got the right one now.
One thing that the video that strikes me is how I actually had some admiration (in a sense) for George O’Leary. Yeah…I hated GT..but the man can coach. He’s a far shot from the guy they have now.
I wonder if he’ll ever get (if he wants it….he may be happy with the job he has) a shot at a really high profile job, i.e. Florida.
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He’s up there in years, his program has a high-profile player death associated with it and you’ve got the whole resume thing.
He won’t be coaching at UF.
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You say that now, but when Coach BEWM is 3-9 this year…
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They’ll find another guy without as much baggage.
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Like Louisville? 🙂 (not that Louisville is “high profile”).
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You think “ImmamanImforty” isn’t gonna take that call?
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I remember my thoughts that day at BDS…ok call it a fumble, a GT player picked it up at the 1, ran backwards into his own end zone and was stopped there. Give us 2 points, please.
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Yep.
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I know Chris Young personally (the Tech player who picked up the ball and after the play ran over and handed it to O’Leary)…He still laughs about it because he KNOWS (but won’t come right out and say it, but hints) that it was horse shit. And yeah….he picked it up on the one or two and ran it back into the endzone where, while in the grasp of a UGA player it was blown dead….Not a fumble…Not in the endzone…(or it would have been 6 points when the ball broke the plane) and not a win GT people ever want to talk about.
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That’s why they ruled it Tech’s ball…because the guy ran off the field with it and handed it to the coach. I was there and the officials had no clue what was going on.
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… and the ball to finish running out the clock. Joe Hamilton fumbled the year before in Athens, too. But if both of those had occurred, would Richt be the coach and Georgia right now? I don’t think Dooley would have fired him in 2000. Richt would probably be the coach somewhere else. Maybe not having instant replay was a good thing …
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I don’t believe that Donnan was a good fit at Georgia. Prickly and abrasive. The whole Loran Smith pickle juice/ dehydration thing post uSC victory and pointing across the field at the pumkin King post uT butt whipping soured him with my Dad and a whole lot of older fans like him.
Great song!
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He was extremely abrasive, but I don’t think Dooley would have fired him for that. After that 1st half against Tech in 2000 and in the context of facing a 3rd straight loss to them, Adams & Dooley made the decision to end it.
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I didn’t need the whole first half. Just this:
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It was that play which led to me crafting a song the entire second half that got quickly got off on the post game call-in show, “All I want for Christmas is a new head coach”
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Dooley didn’t fire him in 2000, Adams did. Dooley wanted to give him another year.
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Good point – I had forgotten that
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This.
And this was after Adams went around Dooley’s back and negotiated a bigger termination payout to JD.
The trio would fit right in with clown shoes and red noses.
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Yeah. As bad as Adams was, I always felt that Dooley was just as much of an assklown as an AD.
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+1
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Oh sweet dear baby Jesus. I had duty that day and ended up watching the game in the barracks with a bunch of Mid-westerners(Okla and Neb fans). I’m pretty sure between the botched fumble call, then the no call for a safety they were considering disarming me for the day.
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The refs blew the whistle ending the play when Jasper was tackled.
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The fumble tht wasn’t. The refs before the game took their time machine to the future and saw the celebration and came back and called it against us. Was that Wagers’ uncle’s crew? I was there and couldn’t believe the call.
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I have yet to forgive Tech fans for the way they acted like they were the new kings of the state after this game. At least when they did that in 2008, they’d won fair and square. Maybe two or three more decades of going 9-1 against them and I’ll be over it at last.
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C’mon, now, Doug, why would you concede them the 1 game per decade? 🙂
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He had terrible PR skills and didn’t even try to embrace the political aspect of the position. That being said, the Loran thing might be the most overblown thing about the program ever. Loran asked an stupid question after a big win for Donnan and the team, and got called out on it on the air. Donnan didn’t want to talk about “damn cramps”. That’s hardly something that should have been held against him.
Additionally, Ask anyone that’s dealt with him: Loran isn’t the most pleasant person in the world either.
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And to be honest, his reporting sucks.
Classic Loran: “Larry, it’s about 95 degrees down here on the field. I just asked Jonas Jennings if it was hot, and he said “yes”…..back to you Larry!”
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Loran is part of the history of Georgia football.
http://blogs.ajc.com/junkyard-blawg/2009/06/30/in-praise-of-the-other-loran-smith/
….but sometimes I squirmed a bit with some of his sideline comments and other times I chuckled.
Larry Munson: “WhaddyaGotLoran?”
Loran Smith: “Well, I’m upside down in a French cornfield. The corn has attempted to surrender to me, and I’m sore as hell. But I’m indestructible so I’m fine. Back to you Larry.”
Larry: “WhaddyaGotLoran?”
Loran: “Well, I’m on the sidelines here with Charles Grant. Charles, you’re from South Georgia. You like Boiled Peanuts don’t you?”
Charles: “Yeah.”
Loran: “Well, back to you Larry.”
Larry: (Pause) “Third and Six….”
h/t Paul Westerdawg
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“You like Boiled Peanuts don’t you?”
That’s a trick question. Loran knows everybody likes boiled peanuts
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I thought that it was a euphemism.
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A whut…
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psst: he’s talking about ‘pandering’ whatever that is.
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To Marcus Stroud during his NFL days, “Are you the richest man from Barney, Georgia?”
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Why did the clip stop before the multiple replays showing him down? Must have been posted by a techster.
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Yep. I hate that the endzone angle isn’t on youtube. I guess all the Dawg fans threw away their VHS copies of the game.
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It’s great that a few of you addressed which was picked up by the Techie who ran into the end zone and was stopped. That’s been bugging me for years and no one ever addressed it. Give UGA 2 and the victory!
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It’s because they blew the play dead when Jasper went down.
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Those Zebras got suspended after this game. Didn’t do us any good, though. What a screw job..
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Al Ford was the referee.
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This is the reason I get so ill with fans hating on Mark Richt. There were 12 seconds left in a tie game. It’s basically an extra point. Kick the field goal and win. Donnan always wanted to cut some ones heart out rather than “just win.” Richt gets so much junk about playing conservatively in the fourth quarter with a lead. 99.9% of the time it gets us a win. Tech is still celebrating the Jasper “win”. It’s the W that matters. Style points are for ESPN. The year Tech broke the long drought with a last second field goal…. maybe a year earlier? They should have never had a chance. We were up 2 scores in the fourth quarter and Donnan was throwing the ball all over the field which is what gave Tech the time to score the points necessary to be in position to win late.
I’ll take Richts conservative approach any day.
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Good comment. Perhaps a bit overstated, but I enjoyed it.
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I later heard Gaston’s explanation of that botched call. He said the SEC, and SEC alone, had decided that, based on statistics of a fumble near a short yardage play, the majority of time it was a fumble so they were instructing refs to rule fumble if they didn’t see what occurred in the pile. So it was deliberate, the on-field officials ruled as their GT boss had instructed them. Made me want to gag, still count that as a UGA win.
I still like the decision to run the play and lick the FG if it wasn’t successful though, never faulted Donnan for that (although in hindsight, I can say now I wish he had kicked the FG.)
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OK, everybody. Here, feel better about life:
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Yeah, OK. FF to 42:57. You’ll love it.
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