That quote won’t go down in history as being in the same class as Jim Donnan’s infamous “I’ve been waiting 55 years …” pronouncement, but I don’t think this is exactly what Mark Richt had envisioned for his team when he made that observation.
- Bloviation for the Dawgnation
-
Quote Of The Day
-
“We remember the Sugar Bowl, I think it my junior year of high school, we let Alabama beat us twice,” Brinson said of a team that also lost to the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship game. “We’re not letting Alabama beat us twice. In the Sugar Bowl in 2018, they… thought they should have been in the playoffs and lost to Texas.” -- AB-H, 12/27/23
Search
Categories
Archives
Blogroll (ND)
- 82 Sluggo Win
- And The Valley Shook
- Banner Society
- Black Heart Gold Pants
- Black Shoe Diaries
- Blatant Homerism
- Braves & Birds
- Brophy Football
- College Football Talk
- EDSBS
- Eleven Warriors
- Lost Angeles
- MGoBlog
- RazorBloggers Network
- Rock M Nation
- Rocky Top Talk
- Saturday Down South
- Saturday Tradition
- Shakin The Southland
- Smart Football
- Team Speed Kills
- The National Championship Issue
- The Wizard of Odds
- Tide Bits
Dawg Blogs
Dawg Links
Media Links
Stats/Info Links
- All-Time Division 1-A CFB Standings
- American College Football
- American College Football – Rankings
- cfbstats.com
- College Football at Sports-Reference.com
- College Football by the Numbers
- College Football Data Warehouse
- College Football Recruiting Map
- College Nicknames
- Football Outsiders – College
- Football Study Hall
- GBE College Football Ratings
- MapGameDay.com
- NCAA Division I Football Statistics
- SEC Statistics
- Statistically Speaking
- Strangestbrew's College Football Schedulizer
- The Helmet Project
- Varsity Numbers
Useful Links
Time, time…
GATA
Blog Stats
- 73,803,261 hits
Get The Picture · Bloviation for the Dawgnation
Get The Picture 
I don’t know about all of the rest of you out there in the Dawgnation world but I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired of looking at the dawgbone every morning and being affraid to find news of another athlete arrested. What do these guys need to know, too know that they can’t act like retards and drive drunk, or hit girls, or smoke the weed, or whatever’s gonna get them caught doing something stupid next? What is the freakin deal? I know The coaches can’t hold their hands but what aren’t they doing so these numb nutts don’t get it?
LikeLike
………..they can’t make the kid grow up, which is basically what this is, did you make mistakes when you were 19? I am not excusing Taylor’s situation, there is never a time you should strangle anyone
LikeLike
Stop looking at the Dawgbone every morning then. Seriously, Im working on cutting out all sports media, its just a waste of time. Just watch the games and be happy (or sad).
LikeLike
Look, the bottom line is that if Auburn had our rules they’d be sitting Mincey and Marshall for the first 2-3 games.
It happens everywhere. Clemson has 4 suspended for our game. They don’t really do that suspension thing in the west and in Columbia.
LikeLike
It is most certainly not that 19 year olds get arrested for doing goofy shit. They do, I did, you did, we all did goofy shit and got away with it or somebody called our daddy or the cops just took us home. In extreme cases, the cops called daddy to come get us out of jail.
But this ain’t then, and daddy’s phone is off or busy cause these guys are in in Athens, Georgia, not Auburn, Alabama or Tuscaloosa, Alabama or Gainesville, Florida.
It is the University of Georgia which decided to remove calling daddy from the option list.
At the University of Georgia, athletes live by a set of rules no other college athlete in the SEC has to live by.
At the University of Georgia, there is no room for coaches to handle discipline if the cops are involved. Period.
It ain’t easy being a Dawg fan.
But it really ain’t easy playing for the Dawgs.
There is very little room for teenage behavior up here on the moral high ground.
You can be happy about this or not, you can believe our tougher rules are good for the kids or not.
And you can be happy you are not 19 any more, or not.
What’s amazing to me is, on the whole, how well-behaved our kids actually are in the face of living in Draconia.
LikeLike
Exactly, I’d bet their are multiple frats in Athens with worse arrest statistics than the football team.
LikeLike
Preach on, Scorp. I mean, think about Nick Marshall. Can you even wrap your head around that being Hutson Mason?
LikeLike
Scorp, I love ya man, but listen – and this is not just directed at you, by any means:
I’m not necessarily saying the cops don’t look the other way in other SEC towns or whatever (although I think that’s potentially over-stated). However, we’re starting to get a holier-than-thou and somewhat whiny victim complex about how the arrests interfere with our ability to compete, with how the refs mistreat us and jack up our ability to compete, how ESPN keeps us out of national championships, the AJC hates us, etc, etc.
Some of that may be true – or at least it feels true, I grant you. Still…
I guarantee you Athens is not “Draconia”, although Halloween would be off the hook regardless of the cops. Bellamy was drinking underage and driving. What makes you think ACCPD is not simply applying the laws equitably to all citizens – as they should? Why complain about cops not doing their jobs in Gainesville? Do we want special treatment for these kids? Is it really that big of a competitive disadvantage vs say, the competitive advantage of having a coach like CMR or the recruiting advantage CMR has when talking to folks’ moms about his program and how he’s tough on crime?
These rules are not mysterious or unknown to the kids on the team. He’s 19 or whatever and was drinking. Big deal. He got caught and is gonna sit out a few games – it sucks, but other schools actually do suspend or dismiss players. This is the way the school he attends deals with this kind of thing. The cosmos are not against us…
…wait a minute…Davin Bellamy…another DB!!!…scratch all that, we’re doomed.
LikeLike
Hey, 28 stayed and 16 left. Shit, LSU lost 12 (mostly starters) from their D two years in a row. Yet you don’t see a bunch of Cajuns layin’ on the ground, drinking and whining about their lot. Most of’em are layin’ in batous or didn’t make it out of the stadium.
LikeLike
Hey! Everyone below: I was just being snarky about Cajun fans, not chastising any UGA comments. I realize that “whiney” is an inflammatory word and I sincerely apologize that it was taken as aimed toward bloggers. It wasn’t. I hold almost all of you in great esteem and agree with you, but sometimes my jokes aren’t crafted very well. Nevertheless, I shouldn’t have used it there while trying to project a mind scene that I thought humorous. Thought the last sentence qualified that they indeed grumble and drink because they lost players (even though most went to the NFL), but the only difference was that they were layin’around drinking in boats or forgotten while passed out in their stadium.
LikeLike
Cos, I am sorry, but I do believe Georgia athletes have to be better behaved than athletes at most, if not all, other SEC schools.
Yes, Bellamy was drinking under age, for which there is no excuse. But, if Bellamy had been caught in Tuscaloosa, would the University of Alabama have forced him to sit down 20 percent of the season. NOPE.
Athens may not be “Draconia” for the average Joe or Jill Student, but the combination of University of Georgia rules and the ACC police seems pretty Draconian to me.
Most of this moral high ground thinking is a remnant of the over-reaction to the fucking Kemp deal, which the former president of the University of Georgia, he whose name shall never pass my fingers, took great glee in enforcing to the max cause doing so made him look better. To him.
But hey…the air is mighty thin up here on the high ground, maybe the lack of smog is making me delusional.
What’s actually amazing to me is the number of games we win in spite of our football players living in Draconia.
Now, the stuff about ESPN hating Georgia and blah ba blah…that’s just Black-Helicopter craporino triggered by the reaction you mention when some of our fans whine about perceived bias in one of the many places ESPN scans every day for raw material for its bullshit factory.
Anybody who reacts in any way to anything the AJC says about anything needs to go into a treatment program.
LikeLike
You can also beat the crap out of a fellow student at Alabama and make your way back onto the team, so let’s let that sit for a second. As for what happens in Athens with our discipline, yeah, it sucks. Richt has said, though, that he’s about helping these guys grow up into good men who will have opportunities, and there’s no reason for him or the staff to keep burning cycles on a guy like Jonathan Taylor (Jenkins County: Making Burke County look good for over a century), and Bellamy got caught doing what almost every other college kid has done before, too. And it sucks for him; good for him to own up to it, though.
At the end of the day, though, I’d rather him suspend a guy a few games to teach him that his actions have consequences because if he gets his degree and doesn’t go on to the NFL, it’s going to help him a lot more to know that if he screws up, he’ll have to pay. How many of us know well-to-do kids who have never learned this lesson but haven’t had any problems because of their financial background? Like it or not, most of our ball players don’t have that cushion. Maybe, just maybe, two more guys would be alive today if Meyer had done something about Hernandez or the guy in Miami wouldn’t have been abused by his teammates if the Pouncey kid hadn’t been used for only his size and if Meyer had taken a stand on him.
Richt is a human being and a leader and molder of men; I’m glad he’s our guy; I’m glad he gives second chances; and I’m glad he cuts the rope when he needs to. I’ll take that over Meyer, Miles, Saban, or Spurrier any day of the week. I like knowing that there’s “A Georgia Way,” and we should be proud of it instead of wringing our hands about it.
LikeLike
Athens is pretty similar for Jack and Jill Student too. You must be pretty removed from the school if you don’t recognize that ACCPD’s actions make it appear that they are much more concerned about revenue than the serious crime that goes on in a lot of areas pretty close to downtown and campus.
LikeLike
After attending UGA previously my wife and I moved back to Athens in 2009 and I went back to school and got my degree in 2012 – so I’ve lived here twice, including the last five years, and have had quite a bit of interaction with the kids. Never heard the kids grouse about the cops, and while I’d agree they’re somewhat more heavy-handed here I don’t think it’s to the extent that it’s particularly noteworthy.
I will also point out how effing ridiculous and stressful it would be to be a cop in this town – this is the social services hub for NE Georgia, it’s a huge drinking town, gamedays, etc, etc.
When I was younger I drove when I shouldn’t have more times than I can count, but policing for drunk drivers in a town like Athens would be a pretty high public safety priority if I were chief.
To your point about revenue, though – my libertarian side did come out (probably too vocally) when I got a seat belt ticket a couple blocks from my house a few years back, though… 😉
LikeLike
Scorp is right Cosmo, that isn’t being whiney, it is a simple fact. We lose more playing time that any other team in the SEC directly because of our policy/enforcement differences, but that doesn’t mean I want it to change, or that I want to be them. But if you tell me your eight cylinder car runs better on five, you aren’t facing reality. We can, and have, won with fewer players available. It is the other schools that need to step their game up to us.
Here is a new metric for you: I will bet you UGA has more wins per available scholarship player than anyone in the conference in Richt’s tenure.
LikeLike
I’m not arguing that Richt does a good job bringing up young men – I like the standards he sets. My point was we Dawg fans might make more of our hindrances than are actually there – your metaphor of a car running on five cylinders instead of eight is not a bad example of that.
Yes, we often have a player or two suspended when another team does not, and yes, that may cost us a game every few years, but often those teams have suspended players, too (Clemson 2014) and as Cannon Dawg suggested it may also push these kids to work to a higher standard, help with recruiting good kids like Marshall and Gurley, etc, etc.
And your new metric may also point to CMR’s recruiting shortfalls as much as our team discipline. If the suspensions and dismissals were really impacting us to the degree you feel, wouldn’t the logical thing to do be to fill the roster to the max?
Look, I’m not saying it may not have an effect on us, of course it does, but if this is the kind of program we want to be, let’s just be proud of it instead of using it to excuse or explain away our losses – it just seems like poor form and a little bit of self-congratulatory sour grapes.
LikeLike
It is time for the AD and the Athletic Board to get involved!! I am damn tired of being embarrassed by these athletes. Everybody wants to make excuses because there was no dad around; HOGWASH!! That is no excuse for bad behavior. Everybody is accountable for bad decisions.If you do the crime, you do the time! It is time for this to stop(Charlie Strong at Texas is an example).Put their butts on the road;Period.
LikeLike
“Everybody is accountable for bad decisions.If you do the crime, you do the time”
Bullshit. ne pas nourrir les trolls
LikeLike
Oui. Pomme ‘d Rue.
LikeLike
Mark Richt has won 126 games in 13 years. If he had not dismissed any players where the discretion to do so was solely his, how many more games would have been added? Five? Ten? Twelve? Twenty?
I can’t believe the number added would be significant. I’m not sure but what the total might actually be negative, given the overall influence of the assorted collection of thieves and miscreants that have come our way (as they have other schools).
Recruiting is not now, nor will it ever be, an exact science. Even the pros miss badly. If Georgia makes a mistake in judging a kid’s character, and by his actions the kid demonstrates that indeed he has little or no character, then send him on his way.
Urban Meyer didn’t have the stomach to do the right thing at Florida. Malzahn and Petrino and Stoops might be the same way. Screw ’em.
Richt’s doing the right thing.
LikeLike
yep.
LikeLike
I can see that on def we lost a lot of quality in quantity. I don’t know if I think a bad apple spoils the bunch. Ray lewis didn’t spoil anything, can newton hasn’t spoiled anything. The list goes on and on. I.e. big Ben… So yeah. I think Pruitt has the right mind state and simplified scheme. I put a “so called” murderer, cheater, and rapist in a bunch. And they are winners. In college those crimes equal suspension or go away…. I know richt hasn’t won the big one yet, but the guys who made it through our system I’m comfortable speaking with face to face. I respect there courage and steadfast. Its a tough road kids. I had a hard time myself walking the line. But richt is right. It will pay off in the long road for his kids. Our team. Winning isn’t everything. …. And man I hate saying that.
LikeLike
Yeah, but you’re right. It’s not everything. It’s more important to do things the right way, to be a University and football team with integrity.
That said, it’s also very important to win, and win consistently. Richt has done his best, but so much could have been done better. And he has been saved from himself several times, most recently this year.
But he has always been willing to change if he can be shown a better way. And to his credit, he’s made them. He made a lot of changes himself from 2009-2010, into early 2011. When Pruitt came in, he listened, and a lot of changes have been made this year, as we know.
But one thing we can be certain of, that we can count on and never worry about, is whether or not Richt will do the right thing when situations arise, and temptations come. We know, without question, he will. To me, that’s worth a lot.
Yes, other teams win, and many are willing to do most anything to win. But Richt can win without compromising one thing, and I’m more convinced of that now, than ever.
When he wins his first NC at Georgia, and he will win at least one, it will be so much more gratifying, and satisfying, for all of us, knowing that it was done the right way, with integrity. It’ll mean more.
We’ve been patient with Mark Richt. But I believe it’s going to pay off. And sooner, rather than later. Even if we don’t win a NC, I’ll be happy if we simply play to our potential while doing things the right way.
But the great thing about that is, should we play to our potential, or at least to our talent level, it’s going to be hard NOT to win a NC pretty soon. Or even more than one.
~~~
LikeLike
Cheers! Good man
LikeLike
“Even if we don’t win a NC, I’ll be happy if we simply play to our potential while doing things the right way.”
Ivey, that is exactly my point of view on this whole situation. If we play to our potential, we will win an SEC championship, and in today’s world, that more likely than not gets you a slot in the play-off. In terms of doing it the right way, I really believe CMR would rather go 5-7 knowing he was making a difference in the lives of his players than to go 15-0 knowing he wasn’t carrying out his purpose to do it.
LikeLike
I fear soon, some big name 5star athletes will no longer be interested in coming to UGA BECAUSE of all the problems and dismissals we have that other SEC just don’t seem to have or they deal with it in a different way without the severe punishment that UGA dishes out! It’s sad but it going to hurt recruitment at UGA
LikeLike
Many will come because they want to play for a team where the bad non-team shits have been weeded out and people who err are still given a chance. I think it will enhance recruitment. And if you can’t stand this heat, you may want to hit the friggin’ road.
LikeLike
You’re right. College football is a test of manhood. CMR cares. He wants to teach these kids to be a part of society. We as football fans want to see wins. These kids want to show there abilities and win! But winning at a cost is not something I’m OK with. If dawgs win a national championship I know that there will be NO question!!! We do it the right way. We win and lose by the book. We don’t play cheaters. I’m proud. Very proud of CMRs beliefs. I’ve heard a lot from everyone about how he can’t do it …. But you know what. These kids life’s and learning life is more important. My dreams of championships fail in comparison to these kids learning how to live. And richt is a great teacher. We will always recruit good while he’s there. Parents love him. . . . . college football is the toughest game to win the right way. Period. If we do it again ever. I know we did it right. (No religion or race biast here. Ever). Go dawgs
LikeLike
That’s a bunch of BS about our discipline policies’ effect on recruiting. Let’s go through this off-season, shall we?
JSW – got arrested for possession within 2 weeks of his injury. CMR could have said he’ll serve his suspension during his injury but knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. It wasn’t within the spirit of the rules. He’s sitting out, and JSW has taken responsibility.
JHC – got busted for possession again after the season. He left the program voluntarily rather than take a 4-game suspension under the policy. It didn’t help that CJP seemed to think he wasn’t working hard.
Checkgate – Lemay transferred after (not surprising since his brother had left already). The other 3 were being dealt with internally. Notice you haven’t heard anything about DeLoach (I think he’s a potential star). These guys got 2nd chances with no suspensions.
Wiggins – transferred of his own accord (no problems but apparently CJP doesn’t appreciate show tunes while he’s teaching)
Matthews – if he showed the disrespect to the professor, CMR had no choice other than to dismiss him in the wake of Checkgate. I think this is another case of CJP isn’t lying awake at night on how to deal with the departure.
Taylor – if the girl were my daughter, I would want him out. Checkgate didn’t help, but if the facts are what they have been presented, he has more important problems than if he’s playing football next year.
Top talent isn’t avoiding Athens because of our discipline policy. We have a commitment from one 5-star and have multiple others including the state’s best player/nation’s best defensive tackle seriously considering us. We have commitments from 2 5-star prospects in 2016 including the country’s best pro-style QB and possibly the nation’s best offensive lineman. 4-star prospects flock to Athens. I’m not worried about recruiting.
LikeLike
The really interesting game-changer will come when an SEC state legalizes pot, IMO.
LikeLike
Look, kids make dumb mistakes. Do players have a sense of entitlement? Some do (Harvey-Clemons, given how he approached his community service last fall), others don’t. They aren’t any different than the students whose sense of entitlement comes from being mummy’s precious snowflake from the suburbs, the primary difference being that when little Ashlyn gets pulled over for misdemeanor DUI, it doesn’t get on ESPN.
Do I think UGA is harder for our athletes than at Auburn or SC? Yes. I really think some of the alcohol and drug rules could be lighter and still make a point–no player wants to miss a game–BUT, I also think that when a player graduates from Mark Richt’s program, he has proven himself in a lot of ways, not just on the field or in the classroom.
We bring in good players. The ones that make it through will have degrees (or close to it), a network of support for further education and career opportunities, and possibly an NFL gig. We’re #3 in colleges sending players to the NFL, despite having a pretty low average draft position (122). These are guys who know they have to prove themselves, and couldn’t if they weren’t disciplined and focused athletes.
LikeLike
Right on, ma’am.
LikeLike