It’s a Gurley-free buffet, if that helps.
- This is awkward.
- Steve Hummer’s assessment of the psyche of Georgia’s fan base is pretty good: “Georgia people habitually expect the worst. They can never relax. They can never wander the sunflower fields of blind optimism. They just know deep down that around every corner awaits a kick to a most sensitive area.”
- The advanced box score of the Florida-Missouri game is as amazing to see as the game was.
- And the advanced box score of the Arkansas-Georgia game is just what you’d expect.
- Devin Gardner’s comment about the number of racist fans he’s encountered this season puts me in mind of Randy Newman’s “Rednecks”. Hang in there, Devin. You’re a classy kid.
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“We found out that ball is an incredibly important part of the game of football and we didn’t secure it the way we needed to on offense and it paid off for them,” Arkansas offensive coordinator Jim Chaney said. Better late than never, I guess.
- When it comes to scoring this season, Georgia is a damned efficient team.
Get The Picture 
“They just know deep down that around every corner awaits a kick to a most sensitive area.”
Don’t like Steve Hummer all that much, but I must say, that assessment is spot on.
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I’d be interested to know where this mentality comes from. Is it from having Munson as our guy for so many years? Did we all become a little like Munson after listening to him for so long? Or is it from Dooley praising the other guy’s long snapper, convincing us that we’d never get a blocked punt because he could block all nine of our guys on the line?
Or is it something else entirely?
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It’s called the post-Herschel hex.
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Coming of age in the late 70’s at UGA, and then living the glorious early 80’s, I don’t remember when I crossed over to the dark side. But I’m pretty sure Goff had something to do with it. Never been the same since.
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Agree. I too watched the Dawgs as a kid in the 70’s and attended ’79-’84 (5-year plan) and don’t know if it was ingrained from Dooley’s “woe-is-us” lamentations before every game or just the fact that since the ’90s every time it seems we get positive momentum, something jumps up and bites us right in the gonads. I actually texted: “Bit in the dick AGAIN!” just two weeks ago…now waiting for the other shoe to drop….
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Post Hershel and the Jan Kemp Affair. Sanctions pulled the curtain back on our program, accelerated Dooley’s moving up and introduced us to the Goff era. Mix in the ridiculous run by FL, Bama, AU, LSU in the BCS era aided by blatant cheating worse than the Kemp disclosures and you have a fanbase that is beaten down to expect the worse at every turn.
For example…raise your hand if you DON’T now worry Gurley and Chubb will be injured before the Auburn game. See….no takers.
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As mentioned below, its simple: our last MNC came with Jimmy Carter still in office. Reagan was still a relative unknown, Apple was something you ate, and it was Datsun, not Nissan. On top of all of that, we’ve come very close getting to the MNC, only to miss out every time.
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For me, it comes from not having a defense for the last 7-8 years. When we have a good defense, I feel confident. I guess it goes back to Erk’s maxim, if we don’t score, we might not win (said pre-OT rule), if they don’t score, we won’t lose.
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Yep
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Floridas longsnapper does in fact concern me some, as does their holder.
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Most of it is from the last 9 years. That’s been enough, and consistently enough, to transform the mindset of any fan base.
To some extent, for some people, it goes back to the ’90’s, but I don’t think the ’90’s is all that significant. That was different. Most of that time, we knew we weren’t very good, and were often short on talent.
When Richt arrived, he began to establish a good mindset, beginning with the 2001 Tennessee game. We began playing solid ball and, as a result, began expecting to win. But unfortunately, it began to peter out in 2005, as we began to randomly show signs of ill-preparation and sloppiness.
For most of my early career, the mentality was very positive, couldn’t have been any better at times. Similar to Richt’s 2001 UT, Vince Dooley began pulling games out of hats early on, the 1965 Alabama and Michigan games being the signatures.
And except for a few down years, that mentality never changed. In those down years, Dooley would often say we’re not as good as we’d like to be, but we’ll keep working and fighting, and “maybe we’ll beat somebody we’re not supposed to beat.” And it seemed we always would. I can’t recall an exception.
And that’s an interesting thing. In those years under Dooley, we didn’t lose games because we gave them away, we lost because we just weren’t as talented and good as our opponent. We gave away, that is to say beat ourselves, very few games over those years. I actually can’t recall one offhand, with the possible exception of Clemson 1981, when Buck had an awful day and threw 5 interceptions. But the team didn’t play well either, so hard to say.
But there were many years when the whole stadium expected Georgia to somehow figure out a way to win the game in the 4th quarter, despite how improbable it looked. Boy, trust me fellows, that’s a great feeling when watching a game in Sanford, to watch a great game in the midst of that collective mindset.
It’d be nice to get back to that, and frankly that’s exactly what I’m hoping for. We’re a long way from that right now, but this is exactly the right track. Playing solid, fundamentally sound, opportunistic ball is the way you get there. Especially when you have good athletes.
Good things just happen when you do that, just as bad things tend to happen when you don’t.
~~~
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That 3rd quarter was a real stinker. Thank goodness we had 32-point lead. We can’t seem to learn that you can’t let the air out of the balloon early in the 3rd quarter.
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Agreed, but I didn’t realize how badly we got screwed on the 4th down spot until watching the replay. If we get that call, we probably go in to score and it’s a completely different half. Shouldn’t come down to one play like that, but I think that was critical.
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The mentality of the average UGA fan is indeed how Hummer described, which I simply chalk up to the fact that the last MNC we’ve won, Ronald Reagan hadn’t even taken office yet. Pathetic.
As for Michigan’s Gardner, that simply can’t be true, as only the south harbors bigots and racists. At least, that’s how the media surely likes to portray it.
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Steve Hummer’s characterization of the UGA fan is spot on. Our anxiety is the product of years of terrible luck, bizarre mishaps, self-inflicted wounds, poor timing, misguided administration, etc — all of which cause us to consistently fall just short of our big goals.
Many of us have learned that hope and optimism only make this inevitable process more painful.
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One fan base gets to win it all…no use being miserable if you aren’t that one.
Life is too short.
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UGA to request reinstatement of Todd Gurley this afternoon. Expect answer in 24 hours. Normally you don’t request the reinstatement unless you already know the answer.
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got a source or a link? someone else was saying the same thing last wk before the arkansas game and it turned out to be a bunch of hot air.
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http://www.georgiadogs.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/102214aab.html
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Weiser is tweeting about it over at the banner herald too.
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thanks for the link, i was a little skeptical cause i got burned by believing the guy last week. “fool me once…” kind of thing
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He’s BACK!
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I had heard yesterday that the number they came up with was $700 which translates to 2 games.
It would have been nice to not announce anything about anybody and then get a shot of Boom’s “I’m f**cked” face when #s 1,3,4 & 27 all run out of the locker room in full pads.
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There were clearly missteps in the PR campaign. But it is pretty damn clear that Todd immediately admitted he had done it for money. Hard to imagine how they could have handled it internally any better…but the public relations campaign was pretty flaky.
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amen.
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Devin Gardner is indeed a classy young man and I wish him only the best. I’ve lived in several different parts of the good ol USA, and there are racist idiots everywhere and in all walks of life. But it always bothers me to think that their stupidity adds to the “trailer trash” brush that is often used to paint working class white people as somehow particularly despicable. Since I grew up in that milieu, I know that many of those folks are warm and welcoming to all types of people–and you might be more likely to find people of color in their living rooms than you would in that of, say, a family in an upscale suburb of Atlanta. Just sayin’.
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Listen to the song the Senator referenced. Randy Newman skewers the hypocrisy of northern racism with his usual sarcastic wit. It’s a great song and album.
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Randy Newman is excellent. Short People is great too.
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I know the song well and love Randy Newman’s ironic wit songs (I was part of a pick up football team–a bunch of 5′ 7″ and under runts–who chose “Short People” as our “pump up” song back in the day)–much more so than his award winning movie themes. So far as I’m concerned, the classic “Im a Redneck” is in line with my point.
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I moved to Georgia from Illinois 30 years ago. The notion that the South has the market cornered on idiot racists is absurd.
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It absolutely is in line with your point.
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So, Oklahoma State and NCAA say “nothing to see here”. Right.
And Arkansas gave us the game. Mmmkay.
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So the NCAA is in bed with an oil man(T Boone Pickens). Sounds familiar…
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I guess I don’t understand hitching your self worth to 18-22 year olds.
Folks who follow this line of thinking, more power to you.
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Yet here you are bothering to seek out, register and comment on a UGA football message board.
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Oh I am a fan, no doubt, but a loss doesn’t ruin my day or weekend…
I’ll be in zfernandina Thursday week, having fun like everyone else.
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The mentality comments are spot on and our mentality is that way because frankly our team kicks us in a sensative area at least once a season.
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Based on what I just read, they just put ice on it. Ahhhhhh
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You thought that the buffet was Gurley free…but really it was FREE GURLEY!
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Seems like you could condense those fancy advanced box scores into one stat… turnovers, 6-1 and 4-0.
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I had the very same notion. Viva la Mark Twain!
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Said Bielema: “That’s 17 points in a quarter that you can’t spot. We lost by 13.”
Hard not to respect a coach who talks like that. I guess when you haven’t won an SEC game in two years, you’ll reach for anything.
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In the world according to Bert, “you’ll reach for anything,” grab it and Throw the ‘A’ after a moral victory
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“They just know deep down that around every corner awaits a kick to a most sensitive area.”
Steve doesn’t mention that nine times out of ten that kick comes from someone within our own University.
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The fact that OSU fans are screaming for the school to sue SI is a joke. The last thing that the OSU administration wants is discovery under oath. They basically stream rolled the already shell shocked NCAA Compliance Office and had enough to get the NCAA to go along with the cover-up. Apparently UGA is the last self inflicting college program in the U.S.
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