A few tasty morsels I scrounged up for your morning enjoyment:
- While some of this piece by Dean Legge is over the top, it’s worth reading to the end for the comparison between Mark Richt’s Georgia career and the first fourteen seasons of Vince Dooley’s.
- The NCAA, bastion of amateurism, announces it will give $18.9 million to schools to help pay for cost of attendance stipends. That should make for some fun questioning in somebody’s antitrust case.
- Seven Georgia players are named to the media’s preseason All-SEC teams.
- Between the academic fraud scandal and this, North Carolina’s on quite the roll.
- Phil Steele looks at how often underdogs win outright.
- And Dave Bartoo looks at teams’ starting position in 2014. Georgia did well there.
- Did you know that the Carter-Floyd-Jenkins trio had a nickname? I didn’t.
- Dennis Franchione makes the curious comment that “scholarships used to be equal”. From a marginal cost standpoint, I agree, but I suspect those who like to trumpet how scholarships are full-blown compensation for student-athletes might not.
- Nice job in the ACC media guide by some disgruntled human being.
Get The Picture 
“It’s not fair…” John Theus…that is apropro, Johnny, apropro.
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Isn’t that the guy who bought AJ’s jersey?
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Yep.
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I prefer to call Carter, Floyd, and Jenkins ‘The Firm’. Can’t come up with a better name for a southern law firm.
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” That fact seems to give license to the idiot class of media members (and they are numerous… let’s me tell you) that suggest that he’s on the hot seat after any Georgia loss.”
Calling other writers idiots while making a grammatical error: Priceless.
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“Does that mean that he should be run off from a program that has won, at most four national titles in its existence? The delusion of the extreme college football fan seems to be reaching an all-time high. ”
Actually, Dean, its just one national title in the modern era…the other three? Well, Bama claims some of those, too, but really.
And, trust me, there were and are (although their numbers are decreasing every day) folks who just as often howled for Dooley’s head every year, especially after a loss to Tech. The only real difference is that access to the intertubes has offered a whole new venue for complaining about coaches.
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Does having this pack of wild dawgs at linebacker mean we can actually stop a power run game?
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Been there done that.
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Homez, baby, that Awbun thing, there ain’t no powah run game….watch the Georgia-South Cowlana game of the same year…powah run game. Defensive line looked like bowling pins.
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Wonder how Auburns rushing gamed got it a ranking of #2 in the SEC one spot below UGa? USC power rushing game placed it at #9. It was USC passing game that pulled their total offense numbers up and gave them some respectability in the SEC.
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“To say that Georgia has a talent advantage every week is… well – that’s the non-nuanced type of thinking that got this country into wars in Vietnam and Iraq.”
Dean wasn’t really going for subtlety here, was he?
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Yup. Couple that with politics and weak leadership. LOL.
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Are you talking about the nation or the University of Georgia with that comment? 🙂
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In regard to field position, I think we’re really going to miss Erickson’s pooch punts – unless we can find a suitable replacement or Barber steps up.
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If Georgia doesn’t go something close to +16 in turnover margin this season, I’m afraid we’re gonna miss that a lot more.
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Senator, you have actually put your finger on a real potential problem. Last season the team probably overachieved (games blown at the end notwithstanding) because of the positive turnover margin. I’m worried about a “return to the mean” this season which could really come back to bite us in the ass, particularly with a new QB again.
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The Legge piece . . . “To say that Georgia has a talent advantage every week is… well – that’s the non-nuanced type of thinking that got this country into wars in Vietnam and Iraq.”
So, a little more nuanced type of thinking would moderate expectations for Georgia football and save us from wars with Communists and sponsors of terrorism. Glad to know that. My stress levels have now declined. It’s peace in our time.
Yep, Senator, a bit over the top.
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Mr. Legge…you are clearly a Richtophile, enabler, one who settles for mediocrity and incapable of being a realist who knows, with certainty, that change always brings positive outcomes in excess of the status quo. You, sir, are why we lose a key game every season for not pressuring the powers that be into firing Mark Richt. It’s been 10 long seasons of not being able to exercise my God given right as a bulldawg to stumble out for my Sunday paper, hung-over, unshaven, wearing my tattered whities and faded #34 jersey from the 1980’s and scream to no one in particular “We’re #1 dammit!”.
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Beats Ohio State. Loses to Wake Forest.
Easy to see why the Va Tech fan was disgruntled.
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I don’t think Richt should be fired and if legge wants to say he’s the most successful coach Georgia’s had, he’ll get no argument from me.
That being said, national championships matter. There’s a reason Osborne, paterno, Carroll, spurrier, stoops, Saban, & Meyer all have played for and won at least one. It’s also not an invalid criticism when a huge reason Richt hasn’t even played for one is because you can count on his teams to get blown out (lose by 14 plus points) on an annual basis. Also, Before anyone goes there please spare me the we never got blown out in our 5 losses in 2013 so that’s progress! !
In regards to talent, all i have to say is the discussion of more with less or less with more is irrelevant. A program needs to recruit at a higher level than we’ve been doing to have a realistic shot at winning national and sec championships. A top ten class is good for middle of the pack in the sec. Richt does not get a pass because he mismanaged his own roster or is getting beat out for the top prospects.
Richt has done a good job. Playing in the sec championship game once every 3 years is great. But the criticism is valid and people need to stop acting like he’s just the unlinked guy around and any criticism is unfounded heresy when in fact s t lot of richt’s problemsare his own doing.
Also
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I completely agree. To invalidate anyone who feels UGA should be better than we are is ridiculous. I am not satisfied with our lack of SEC (not national) championships. That does not make me unreasonable or a hater or some kind of “troll”. Criticism and questioning should come to any UGA coach who does not win the SEC in a decade. Even the incredibly nice and sincere Coach Richt.
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2002, 2005, 2007 and 2012 all were legit teams….In 02 we didn’t get a shot, well because of luck….we would have been shut out had we won the FU game, IMHO. 2005 team might have gotten a shot during the midst of the SEC MNC Championship run, but alas, that run had not began yet. 2007, the rules were changed before the final vote…only to have them changed back for Bama a few years later, well, because it was during the SEC run….2012, we gave it a hell of a shot..Bama was just better…sucks to be the 2nd best team in the Nation and not your Conference Champs…but that is the way the cookie crumbled.
I guess my point is, keep knocking on the door, someone will answer. I will say this, we must win the East to have a shot…no more flub ups…we can’t afford to give Mizzou an advantage like did last year.
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Good post.
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I’m sympathetic with your post PTC but have to point out some flaws in the logic. 2002 we lost to an FU team that was inferior to the Georgia team it faced. Win that game and UGA is probably in the BCSNCG as undefeated champs of the SEC, so that lack of appearance was self-inflicted. 2005 really wasn’t a legit team–three losses by the end of the season–just won the right games to get into the SECCG then upset an underachieving LSU. 2007 was the best team in the nation by the end of the season but, unfortunately, that team didn’t show up for UT and lost to a mediocre USCe squad. 2012–What can I say? That was our year and it got blown by a bad decision at the end of the SECCG. (I refuse to say that Bama was better ’cause we had Bama beat, just let ’em wiggle off the hook.) But the coaches are part of the team–right? So the team lost. I agree we keep on keeping on though because we really have no alternative except to do that.
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Revisionist history there Mayor. That UF team in 02 wasn’t great but thery weren’t Muschamp bad either. Plus we were in the middle of the “pissing ourselves when we see Orange and Blue” era as well. Even if we had won that game we would have been in the Sugar Bowl just like we were. Ohio St was undefeated and the Big 10 still had more respect than the SEC at the time. Miami was undefeated for 2 straight years so we weren’t jumping them either. That season happens in ’06 onward and we jump one of them. The ’05 team was in the same boat, USC and Texas were the media darlings and we weren’t jumping either even undefeated.
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Not to mention 2003. If David Greene and a billy Bennett don’t both make mind-numbing mistakes in Baton Rouge, we trounce Ole Miss in Atlanta before facing Oklahoma for the title.
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I’m on board with the current coaching staff and the support they are getting from the university and athletic administration this year.
Yes. It’s been a long while since I could say this with confidence.
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+1. I agree wholeheartedly BJ and want to make sure that everybody understands my post above isn’t intended to be a negative commentary about our current situation but merely what I think is a truthful evaluation of those particular past seasons. I actually fell better about the direction of the Georgia football program than I ever have before.
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Call Jenkins-Floyd-Carter what opposing OCs say when they see them coming ; “JFC!!!”
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I see what you did there….+1
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Yep, you win!
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