December 1, 2015 · 10:41 PM

A tradition unlike any other

This is something.

One thing about the Georgia Way… never spend too much on a first-time coach.

48 Comments

Filed under Georgia Football

48 responses to “A tradition unlike any other”

  1. playmakers in space
    December 1, 2015 at 10:43 PM

    Not such a terrible track record, though, eh?

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  2. sectionzalum
    December 1, 2015 at 10:44 PM

    does that include Mason?

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  3. Hines Word
    December 1, 2015 at 10:45 PM

    I’m guessing Glen Mason doesn’t count?

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  4. Jim
    December 1, 2015 at 10:45 PM

    In a similar vane, when was the last time a Georgia head football coach ended up coaching elsewhere after his tenure at Georgia was over. We’ll see if Richt does or not

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  5. chilidawgnv
    December 1, 2015 at 10:47 PM

    Maybe now we can at least retire the “he ain’t never been a head coach pawlll!” talk for a bit.

    After all, Nick Saban was an assistant before he wasn’t.

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  6. Turd Ferguson
    December 1, 2015 at 10:54 PM

    All of those hires had an 80% chance of failing. Or so I’ve heard.

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  7. Derek
    December 1, 2015 at 10:54 PM

    How many national championships in the last 20 years have been won by coaches who were hired without prior head coaching experience?

    Fulmer, stoops and Larry Coker are the three that come to mind.

    Meyer- no
    Spurrier- no
    Saban-no
    Chizik- no
    Miles- no
    Tressel- no
    Brown-no
    Carroll – no
    Bowden- no

    That’s a 3 to 1 ratio the wrong direction. Oh no we’re making a horrible mistake!! Obviously this is probably meaningless. Never mind.

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    • Tronan
      December 1, 2015 at 10:58 PM

      You forgot Jimbo Fisher in the yes column.

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      • Derek
        December 1, 2015 at 11:16 PM

        I did at that. It also occurs to me that I may have left out Solich.

        What if we extended it to multiple national championships in the last 20 years? Then there are zero without prior hc experience, right? Saban, Meyer and Carroll, right?

        Of course this is an entirely meaningless exercise.

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      • Otto
        December 1, 2015 at 11:17 PM

        Jimbo was at least Head Coach in waiting and had much more responsibility, especially when compared to Smart.

        If you expect to be viewed as a top level program, I don’t see how you hire like a 2nd level program.

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      • Irwin R Fletcher
        December 1, 2015 at 11:29 PM

        Lloyd Carr, Tom Osborne, Bill McCartney, Joe Paterno, Vince Dooley, Danny Ford, Lavelle Edwards,nd Barry Switzer all went straight from coordinator to coach at a school where they won a national championship. Fwiw

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        • Derek
          December 1, 2015 at 11:48 PM

          All but Osborne were outside the last 20 years. However, even if you go back to say 1960 you will still have many more national titles won by coaches with prior hc experience.

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          • Irwin R Fletcher
            December 2, 2015 at 7:06 AM

            Carr was in 1997.

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          • Gaskilldawg
            December 2, 2015 at 7:43 AM

            Back in the 1960s there were years when more than one school could claim a MNT, such as Ole Miss and Alabama both, to this day, claim a national championship for the same year (I think it is 1963, but not sure the precise year.) A few years later one service (either the UPI or the AP) did the unprecedented step of waiting until after the bowl games to release it’s final poll, while the other released its final poll after the regular season and that allowed for “split” MNCs.
            So, the number of coaches who claimed MNCs back then could be greater than now.

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        • eethomaswfnc
          December 2, 2015 at 12:06 AM

          In today’s world, many of those guys (Dooley included) would have been out of a job before they won their first national championship. Today’s championship or bust segment of the fan base would have run Dooley out of Athens in ’73 or ’74 before the Junkyard Dawgs of ’75 & ’76.

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          • Derek
            December 2, 2015 at 12:10 AM

            I’m with you, but all we can do now is hope Kirby takes us to another level and hope that does it the right way.

            If he can lock Eason down the 2016 schedule sets up very nicely to have a quick start.

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            • eethomaswfnc
              December 2, 2015 at 12:21 AM

              I agree, Derek. While I’m not a fan of the hire, I’ll get behind the program (but not the AD). Over the last couple of years, I’ve tried with varying success not to tie my happiness to the performance of 85 18-22 year old men. Maybe this can make me better at it. 🙂

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              • Derek
                December 2, 2015 at 12:28 AM

                I think it’s ok to tie your happiness to it. The key is not tying your misery to it. I used to let losses ruin my life. Now I try and enjoy the wins and move past the losses as quickly as possible. It’s a bunch of teenagers you don’t know playing a game.

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          • Gaskilldawg
            December 2, 2015 at 7:54 AM

            I was an undergraduate at UGA in 1973 and 1974 and I remember well the “Dump Dooley” movement. Someone or someones even hired an advertising plane to fly a banner over the stadium one game day reading, “Dump Dooley. ”
            The was no Internet or social media to allow the echos of the small number of Dump Dooley folks to seem like it was larger than it was , as compared to today, and, most importantly, we had in Joel Eaves a great leader in a the Athletic Department chair who had the patience, insight, judgment and testicles to stick with Dooley. Now we have McGarity. By the way, I am glad he calls himself “The J. Reid Parker Director of Athletics ” because he damn sure does not deserve the title of “Joel Eaves Director of Athletics.”

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          • Herschel Talker
            December 2, 2015 at 8:57 AM

            Bear Bryant would have been fired in 1970

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  8. Denver94
    December 1, 2015 at 11:16 PM

    Good god, Bluto. Just roll with it. If sardonicism was a word, you would be its champion,

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  9. SAtownDawg
    December 1, 2015 at 11:23 PM

    Senator, for someone who claims to have no inside sources, you nailed this exact scenario months ago…no ambition and cheap are bad combinations in a coaching search

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    • chilidawgnv
      December 1, 2015 at 11:28 PM

      For Christ’s sake, dude. We got our guy. Clearly they knew who they wanted before they let Richt go and got him. Kirby has been a hot name for years now, he was the highest paid assistant in cfb and you can be assured he’s getting a big raise so it’d not a cheap hire.

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  10. rchris
    December 1, 2015 at 11:37 PM

    And Donnan was a 1A coach. Obviously Dick Sheridan or Glen Mason would’ve broken the mold but …..

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    • rchris
      December 2, 2015 at 2:05 AM

      To go back to the last (and only) time we hired a sitting coach away from a program now considered major, you’d have to go back to 1901, when we hired Billy Reynolds away from North Carolina.

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  11. Chuck
    December 2, 2015 at 12:18 AM

    Never spend too much? I’m thinking Kirby’s not working for peanuts, and hey, they could prior coaching experience at top dollar and get…. Charlie Weis.

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  12. JoshG
    December 2, 2015 at 1:05 AM

    Let the weening from Saban’s supple teet begin.

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  13. Sashko1943
    December 2, 2015 at 3:00 AM

    Let me be the first to welcome Coach Smart to town, “FIRE KIRBY SMART!”

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  14. Biggus Rickus
    December 2, 2015 at 5:37 AM

    They had a plan and executed it, apparently, and it’s not an obviously bad hire. I’d have preferred a head coach, and I don’t think it makes a whole lot of sense to fire Richt just to hire Smart, but we’ll see how it goes.

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  15. Normaltown Mike
    December 2, 2015 at 9:59 AM

    Coach Richt was an assistant and won the SEC 2 X in his first 5 years.

    Would that be a reasonable expectation?

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