No, I’m not trying to feed anyone’s Mark Richt fixation here, but it’s almost eerie to read this piece about what’s being going on at Miami since he got there and hear a lot of echoes of what’s been going on at Georgia since he left.
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“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
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Get The Picture · Bloviation for the Dawgnation
Get The Picture 
There are also some similarities with how last season went as well:
“It’s hard when I know any bad decision I make on the field is going to affect my coach,” Kaaya said. “If I throw a pick, or if I do something that’s going to lead us losing this game, there’s going to be a banner up at our next home game. We’re 3-0 and I’m going into the Cincinnati game and there’s a banner. I’m just thinking, ‘I hope we don’t lose this game. I hope I play well so my Twitter mentions aren’t going to have, ‘I hate coach Golden’ or ‘Fire coach Golden.’
“We put in all this work and there’s a banner saying, ‘Bring back Butch.’ … ‘Throw it in the tank for the season.’ Geez you’re giving up on us, too? That part right there, it was hard to take at times as a player. It was a bit nerve-wracking.”
Apparently there are some chili’s in Miami too.
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Didn’t read the piece but is it about being a anti-aggressive, faith based program instead of on field accountability, on field discipline and destroying your opponent?
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Jeez, man, let it go.
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+1,000,000
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Yeah, you obviously didn’t read it.
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I hope both coaches keep enjoying immense success.
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Agree, Debby. This could be the right move for everyone involved, and I sincerely hope it is, leading up to us beating Miami and Richt in the championship game in about 3-4 years. 🙂
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Ditto.
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So either Richt has caught his second wind (a little too late to save his job in Athens) or Kirby is making McGarity his beyotch and calling the shots… or maybe a little of both.
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^ This!
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I’m happy for Miami and Coach Richt. I’m sure it’s a relief to be out of the UGA pressure cooker for him, and perhaps this will all work out for the best. Hope he has great success there.
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The UGA pressure cooker?…..really?
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Wait until The U’s former players go a few years without a championship…….
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and access to Nevin Shapiro’s credit card.
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Richt is in the ACC now, and he’s been recruiting the area his whole coaching career. It’s a much easier path to the championship now he’s out of the SEC. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him there before us…
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No man that is not gonna happen. His recruiting class last year was not very strong and he already has 15 commits this year and VERY few are highly rated. I think the world of the man but winning a natty at the U now is a whole lot harder than it used to be. He needs exceptional athletes and he has to fight off everyone without the advantages of being a public U. Also these kids will see a Half empty stadium most of the time. He has a harder job than Kirby without facility advantages. I hope he does great but it’s gonna be rough!
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He might…might win the ACC but I don’t see a National Title. Miami needs facilities and a stadium closer to campus to be the power Irvin and company things they should be.
I thought Nebraska would be the perfect job for Richt (culture and family ties) but timing did not work out.
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Half empty stadium to meet your “president” and new savior??
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Or, double the attendance of last year, pick your spin.
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Lots of parallels. Will be interesting to see where each program is in a few years. I know which situation I prefer and it isn’t close
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All snark aside, I’m happy for him. Now let’s see how he fares against Jimbo every year.
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I’ve never really thought Jimbo was that good of a head coach. He looked the other way while his QB was being more than a knucklehead during their championship run. The last two years his team got their pants pulled down in New Year’s Day games especially two years ago when Oregon beat them senseless.
I’m not saying Richt is going to go down there and wake up the echoes of the Miami program, but I don’t think FSU has this invincibility about them.
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This article is affirming of the decision to let CMR go. Clearly, with the hire of CBS and the dissension with CJP, CMR’s future at UGA was limited in almost a lame duck kind of way. There was just not a way forward. How do you replace an entire staff, while you have a recent 10 year championship drought behind you? At the same time, this opening at Miami is there for the taking, and CMR now gets his chance for redemption at his alma mater. This is the most “win win” coaching change I have ever seen. Best to CMR, a fine man, who now has his way forward.
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I wonder if McGatory will consider this a tax deductible “gift.”
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I really hope it works out for CMR at Miami, and he’s able to turn the program around while restoring it to national prominence. With that said, I just don’t see it happening, and a year or two from now we’ll start hearing some grumblings about CMR down there.
Mind you, I wouldn’t necessarily blame CMR for not being able to restore Miami, as IMO its a shell of a program living on past success. For example, the Orange Bowl is now a baseball stadium, and the team now has to take a 30 mile bus ride up to Ft. Lauderdale and play in a rather boring NFL stadium in the suburbs. As former players have even noted, when they tore down the OB, they ripped the soul out from the program, and its just not the same anymore.
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Their last game in the Orange Bowl they lost 48-0 to Virginia…
So not sure there was much magic in the falling-apart OB.
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I used this term a number of times during the “should we fire Richt” debates, but the biggest obstacle at the end, beyond any actual shortcomings as a coach, was simply this strong feeling of “inertia” within the program. No matter what new things were tried, the same issues kept coming up. Sometimes when that inertia has gotten so strong, you just can’t overcome it, even if you change your approach as an individual, because that inertia extends beyond you as well (to the admininistration, as an example). As a fan base we had become accustomed to the annual face plant games, the brain farts at the most inopportune times, and they almost became self fulfilling prophesies because they had happened for so long.
I mean, if Richt were still here, and he tried to get 93k at GDay, odds are it wouldn’t have happened, and probably not even been close. And there’s probably lots of other things that if Smart tries, they’ll work, whereas they wouldn’t have gotten the same response from Richt. That doesn’t make Smart “better”, it’s just that Smart isn’t having to fight that inertia, or at least not nearly as much of it (it looks like Mr Sexton may have broken a good bit of that inertia for him, as far as the administration goes). If Richt tries new things at Miami, he’ll get a much better response than if he tried the exact same things at UGA after 15 years, because there’s no inertia to overcome. And like Muschamp at Florida, once things started rolling down hill, he just couldn’t change that inertia, no matter what he tried. I think he is actually potentially a good coach, but once that inertia set in, it was just too much. Will be interesting to see what he can do, being at a school with nowhere to go but up (even Spurrier told him that he doesn’t have a very talented roster to start with), rather than taking over a program that had nowhere to go but down after Meyer left.
Richt has an opportunity now to create a new, and hopefully better inertia at the U. And I hope he’s successful there. I agree with the folks above who have described this as win-win. Both programs needed a new inertia, and both have former letterman to do that, and hopefully both see great results.
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You put it in much more detail but the day we all heard the news I went down to the local coffee shop and in a conversation with another customer my response was “I think change will be good for UGA and Richt.”
He then took the Miami job, I am not sure any coach can win championships like The U alumni expect.
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I guess it remains to be seen if Kirby can win championships like his most ardent supporters expect, too. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
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Even if Smart fails it has brought Championships to the conversation front for UGA.
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Richt had become the Charlie Brown of College Football. No doubt. After a face-plant moment I’d often think of the Peanuts line: “Of all the Charlie Browns I know…. your the Charlie Browniest.” It was uncanny how UGA fans could count on things breaking down in the worst-possible way and at the worst-possible moment over the last eight years. Of course, I always liked and kind of identified with poor ol’ Charlie Brown.
A few days ago I YouTubed the ending of the 2012 SECCG and watched it several times. I love me some Aaron Murray, but why the hell didn’t he spike that ball?
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Please let’s not get into this debate again … About to spike or not to spike …
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I completely understand the arguments on both sides. And I can’t fault Murray, because I think it was his call (regardless of what Richt says). I guess the real question is why did Conley catch it? Either way, doesn’t everyone in the universe agree we would’ve stomped a mud hole in Notre Dame?
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CMR wanted to continue without a spike because he felt like he had Bama on the ropes. An argument could be made for spiking or not. As an armchair QB/Coach myself I was standing in front of the TV screaming spike the ball!!! Spike the ball!!!! If memory serves me CMR also said he didn’t want to let Bama substitute some players. I felt like he could have spiked the ball and then hurried to the line of scrimmage and Murray could have made the call there and Bama wouldn’t have been able to substitute.
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Except Alabama had a timeout left, so there was no “having them on the ropes”. If Saban wasn’t comfortable with his personnel, he could have called timeout and changed it.
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He didn’t spike because Bama was on its heels.
Bama guy made a great play. If that ball’s not tipped, it’s going into the endzone, and then who knows.
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agree. The spike decision is completely logical.
What’s more, Chris Conley (literally, the smartest guy on the field) made a bone-head decision catching it.
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In the heat of the moment when you’ve been trained your whole life to catch the ball to decide not to try to make a play is almost impossible that quickly. Conley did what he was taught to do and his instincts took over.
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Dammit. Dude, if you don’t have an answer to that by now, you never will.
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I was in Palm Springs working the day of the Alabama beatdown last year. Guy I was working with, who I had never met before that day, spotted by Georgia shirt and said, “Are y’all gonna step up today, or do what Richt’s teams always do in games like this?”
Understand this: he’s a west coaster and wanted us to take down Bama. They really don’t like Saban and Bama out here.
I laughed sheepishly.
We were eating lunch a few hours later, and the score was 10-3. I was watching on my phone with a buddy and the Saban-hater. We went three and out, and I said, “The game is over.”
My buddy called me out for poor mouthing, and the Saban-hater did too.
Seconds later, the score was 17-3. Blocked punt.
Keep the faith, they said, it’s still early, they said.
Another painful three and out ensued.
Then Kiffin went for the jugular. 24-3.
You’re right…Charlie Brown.
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My Udub and UCLA friends are the exact same way — they view UGA as some sort of vast underachiever, and for the life of them can’t understand why we haven’t been more successful in recent years.
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UCLA people calling UGA underachievers? That’s worse than the pot calling the kettle black. The head coach at UCLA literally doesn’t have to leave the LA city limits to put together a football team. At least the head coach at UGA has to get in his car and drive 75 minutes to Atlanta.
UDub hasn’t been relevant since Don James retired. We took the best HS QB recruit in the country right out from under their nose.
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…once things started rolling down hill, he just couldn’t change that inertia..
Hmmmm. Let me ponder that for a moment.
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Re: Muschamp, I think he’s in a very, very difficult spot — more difficult than Florida. The cupboard is bare, nearby rival Clemson is in its best position in 35 years with outstanding recruiters, UGA recently hired a top recruiter who is building momentum…even UNC to the north is doing well with Fedora. With that said, I don’t see them recruiting to the level they need, regardless of Will’s recruiting prowess.
I also don’t think TPTB at SCU will give him ample time to turn things around. Heck, the president himself said at Boom’s opening PC that he expects championships soon. Honestly, I see SCU as a 5-7 win type program for the foreseeable future, with the days of winning 9-10 games under SOS quickly becoming a cherished, desperately held onto memory for SCU fans.
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I was in the Columbia airport yesterday. The university had an advertisement in the terminal that included top 10 in football. I laughed as I walked by.
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There is inertia to the reverend’s post.
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Good for him.
Hope he does well. I suspect that he will have Miami back to rocking and rolling.
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Also there is a part of me that loves to watch things burn that would enjoy the aftermath of CMR getting a title and for Smart to just fall short.
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I know I’ll be waiting for what comes from the ashes. I cannot enjoy georgia football until McGarity is unemployed.
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It’s fans like you, and Rick below, that almost makes me root for Richt to fail miserably at Miami. And that’s something I never thought I’d do. It’s funny that you two are grouped right together here, the two commenters who are definitely the most bitter about the change. Absolutely nothing but snark from you about anything to do with the new regime. He ain’t coming back. Either get on board or go root for Miami full time.
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you gotta do you, bruh.
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I know, right? #ALL-IN #AUBURNFAM…er, I mean UGA.
I criticize other schools when they are the bad guy, and can’t bear the hypocrisy of looking the other way when it’s my school. Sue me.
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The “bad guy”?…..really Rick
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I hope he averages 10 wins a season and takes a bite out of UF’s recruiting pool
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Same for that criminal-enabling coach in Tallahassee as well
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Seems a good time to bring up these words.
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Excellent, Senator
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I love it. Love seeing Mark Richt energized and happy at his alma mater. I hope they win every game on their schedule this year, and I hope they set a visiting scoring record when they visit Bobby Dodd Stadium. I’ll only root against them if they end up lined up against Georgia.
And for those of you Georgia fans hating on Mark Richt, that’s a real bad look. You got what you wanted, he’s gone. He’s also responsible for a LOT of success here. Kirby’s in a great position to do some special things here, and it’s because Mark Richt did one hell of a job setting the table for him. Grow the hell up, keyboard warriors.
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I really don’t think there are many UGA fans who wish CMR ill. I think love and appreciation for him unites us, even though many of us are glad now that he is at his alma mater.
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I think there are a lot of UGA supporters who comment here who wish him ill. Some have commented on this post.
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I’m with you. I’m totally onboard with criticizing the actions (or inactions) of the man’s tenure. That’s all fair game to me. The personal vitriol some around here spew at the man is just petty.
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who cares about Miami. Only time to care about them is if we play them.
Time to let Richt go and focus on the future. history is just that learn from it and move on….
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Apparently me plus 45 or so commenters care.
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Having won his requisite 9 regular season games, I was shocked when CMR was let go. But gotta say I’m happy, even grateful, for all that has happened since then.
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Hope it works out well for Richt and Miami. But at this point, I can’t think of any good reason to expect that it will — except, maybe, the fact that it’s the ACC.
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I’m just happy he’s gone from Georgia.
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I’ll wait and see on Ole Mark, have really good feelings towards the guy. He left UGA better off than he found it and was a great ambassador of the program and I was never a huge fan of his coaching. As far as Muschump running his mouth, I hope he buries SC under the road.
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Miami plays as tough a schedule as Dawgs do this year will be interested to see how they do with less talent there than he left us with(am including Eason, Cleveland and a few others 16 class. Believe they play Notre Dame, North Carolina on road and FAU at home. Wish him well and like someone said above hope we meet in a playoff or championship game at some point. One other point several of their recruits are 3’s, but by year end will be higher as several schools are after them. Lot of talent in S Fla hope he keeps Gators and FSU out of there.
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Miami plays more cupcakes, Florida A&M, FAU, App St. They don’t play Florida. Virginia was 4-8, NC state 7-6 (3-5 in conf.) I’m not buying into Miami’s schedule being as tough as UGA’s.
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WHATEVER DISNEY DUCK!!
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When Al Golden is your coach, Mr. Magoo could be your next coach and it would be a gift. As bad as Mark Richt is, anyone is an upgrade over Al Golden.
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