Bill Connelly spills the beans in this week’s edition of Podcast Ain’t Played Nobody: he occasionally checks the comments section here to see what kind of reaction he’s gotten to something he’s posted, and he’s amused by some of your takes on his Georgia preview. Dial it up to the 27:20 mark and listen to the next four or so minutes of discussion. (I can’t argue with what they have to say about the hiring process, either.)
You are somebody, guys. Wear it and be proud.
Get The Picture 
Who were all these fans thinking we were going to be really good last year? I was pretty disappointed with the play in several games (particularly Nichols State, which we won), but always had us in the 8-10 win range.
Every fan base has folks who are NC or bust every year, but I don’t think the consensus was that Georgia would win the division last year. Maybe I missed it because I don’t listen to sports radio.
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Everyone that listened to that needs to eat a lot of fish for the next few days.
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Love that he calls out all you “we got no players” crybabies who were on here echoing Kirby’s excuses last year.
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Looking for a list of the ALL SEC players we had last year…..is it out there?
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I didn’t see any all SEC players on Nichols team either… should I check GT?
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IF you think the Nichols game is the way things are going to be going forward, then you might as well quit being a fan.
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+1000
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For rizzle my shizzle!
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HVL’s feet have got so much tar on them, they’re turning Carolina Blue.
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In fairness, the quality of coaching (or effect of a coaching transition) can have a pretty big impact on whether player make All-___ teams or win awards.
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He mocks Georgia fans for saying the team wasn’t talented, arguing in effect that it was very talented, but then he also mocks Georgia fans for having high expectations for last season.
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Not trying to mock anyone..but did folks really think this was a championship quality team? We haven’t been for a while…
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Exactly. My expectations were tempered for the transition itself, let alone a transition with a rookie coach.
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*@PTC 10:48am
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Well maybe you’ve never heard of the Championship of Life where Butch Jones has a trophy case.
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I didn’t believe we had Championship level talent, but I allowed myself the guilty pleasure of thinking that Kirby had a 10-3 team with some nice talent coming in. How could we do worse than 2015? Others allowed the same thinking, it seems.
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Me too. But see comment below, I ignored good advice about some tainted Kool-aid.
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Is anybody going to give a shit what the hiring process that brought Kirby in was like if he is successful? Of course not. Winning cures all.
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Hell, Mike, most people don’t care now. 😉
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Expectations of those wanting Kirby were sky high until he got hired. Then they immediately were tamped down.
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Mine were tamped when I realized we had a Rhode Island Transfer win the LT spot…that did it for me…
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Yep. My Dad, Got Sr., called it as well. It went something like this:
” If all we got for a tackle is a transfer from Rhode Island, the offense is in deep shit.”
The current Got Sr. observation: ” If they don’t find some decent tackles, the offense is in deep shit”
He’s harshing my buzz, y’all, ’cause he’s usually right.
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He sounds pretty wise to me…
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Not to plug a blog I don’t keep up with but… this is what I wrote when Wine Mixer announced he was coming.
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“Richt left them with a shaky offensive line and a freshman quarterback…..otherwise they were LOADED.” That is some damn fine sports podcasting there. Sheesh.
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Ikr smh
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Towards the end of UGA part he was talking about “…all those 5 star Defensive linemen”. Well, we have one. We’re so loaded we have no All SEC first string players.
No particular fuss about Bill because he has a lot of useful insight but… the “I’m right” seems kind of out there in context.
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Yup, sounds more like sports talk radio take than any serious analysis. Expect more from him.
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EXACTLY what I jumped on here to say. You criticize the fans for saying we are lacking in talent, then you mention the lack of talent and inexperience in the positions that are CRITICAL for winning games in the SEC.
If you are going to patronize UGA fans, at least try to acknowledge that they have a little bit of a point.
Look I didn’t expect a seamless plug and play with the new coach. I agree with that sentiment.
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This is the only blog I read on a regular basis and the only one I ever comment on. I figure if it ain’t on GTP, it ain’t worth reading.
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I love GTP too! But Senator needs to lay off McGarity a bit. No one loves him, but I never want to see my university fail. And if that means supporting him to continue to get better is the best choice, then I am all for it. With that said, I sometimes get the impression this author does want him to fail. Bring on the arrows…
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RG, I learned a long time ago that when it comes to UGA athletics, what I want doesn’t matter in the slightest. 😉
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Truth hurts. Swapping Richt for Smart was arguably the dumbest move any program has made this century, until LSU said ‘hold my beer’ and swapped Miles for Orgeron. Both programs deserve the resulting misery, but it f*cking blows as a UGA fan.
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dumber than Maryland firing the Fridge for Randy Edsall?
What about USC getting Lance Kiffin?
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They shouldn’t have fired Fridge, but Edsall was an excellent hire at the time that didn’t work out. Some times a good hire goes south for reasons that are hard to predict ( Charlie Strong).
Kiffin was a laughable hire, worse than Smart, but USC didn’t consciously swap Kiffin for Carroll. Carroll left for the NFL and future super bowls, and USC made a terrible decision when replacing him.
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“Swapping Richt for Smart was arguably the dumbest move…”
Ok, swapping a known ‘good’ coach for an unproven coach may not in and of itself be a smart move, especially when there were other ‘proven’ coaches to interview, but we don’t really know if the swap will turn out to be bad. Let’s let the smoke settle, it may yet pay dividends. Kirby has shown that he will put energy into areas that have been lacking, so in the long run, he may turn out to be a good coach and take us to the next level…that being winning championships and 9-10 wins the ‘bottom’ of our achievements every so many years. Let’s give this a little time before etching the results of the decision in stone.
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Absolutely, but the point isn’t that it will turn out bad, only that it is likely. Smart could launch the greatest career of any coach in history starting today, and I hope he does, but it won’t make the decision at the time to swap him for Richt any less stupid. It will have been random, blind luck.
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Random blind luck. Right. You act as if they hired some guy through a newspaper add. Maybe he works out and maybe he doesn’t, but they knew who they were letting go and had a really good idea of who they were getting in return. Luck has nothing to do with any of this, on the field or off.
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Give me a break. McGarity was rushed into hiring Smart by some boosters who panicked over Jimmy Sexton’s maneuvering with South Carolina.
Smart may turn out to be a great head coach, but the process that led to his hiring will always be a joke.
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Sure. They fired a 15 year guy and who won games because they got nervous about who South Carolina was going to hire. What fantasy world did you just step out of?
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At least in my fantasy world I can tell the difference between firing Richt and hiring Smart.
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Richt had many who wanted him gone before Smart was looking like he was going to S. Carolina.
It was all a perfect storm, failed OC hire, blown out by Bama again in Athens, blowing the East with the WLOCP loss, and OT to GSU in Athens under the lights.
You can’t pin this on just Smart to S. Carolina, if Richt wins the East, he is still in Athens.
Yes I do agree, the hiring process had only 1 candidate from the very beginning.
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It isn’t inconsistent to be okay with the decision to let Richt go and object to the process that resulted in Smart’s hire.
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You can also add B-M was looking at paying out Schott and likely Pruitt which leaves 1 major contract which would have to be paid out (Richt) to make a change at HC.
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Great point. Hadn’t heard that pointed out before.
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Honestly, the South Carolina explanation is among the least stupid I can fathom for this coaching change.
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Like Richt did as an unproven career coordinator when he was hired?
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Program was in a different place then. After Donnan we most likely couldn’t get an established coach worth a damn.
Unlike now where we could have had Tom Herman or another established coach.
We were sold a bill of goods about taking the program to the next level when we took a step back last year. I am optimistic about this year being better however another 7-5/8-4 year with losses to Tech and another weak sister team and Kirby better start dusting off his resume
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This was also a yr after Stoops went from DC to national title, and UGA was coming off a HC from a lower level program.
Richt was widely thought to be a good hire. Who were you going to get in ’01 that was a Saban level hire?
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I don’t have a crystal ball to say is or isn’t a good hire. I just get amused by everyone who thinks the sky is falling because this particular unproven coach was hired; when UGA has a long history of hiring unproven coaches.
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YES
If coaching hires across time were possible, trading the known quantity 2015 Richt for the unknown quantity 2001 Richt would have been similarly moronic.
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Nobody knows what’s going to happen, whether the hire was CKS, or the most “proven” coach on the market.
I loved Richt as our coach, but there was a good reason that thousands upon thousands of Dawg fans filled out of Samford Stadium early in the third quarter of that infamous Alabama game.
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Hmm, did Miami try to interview Smart?
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Does Connelly at least have the courtesy to click on ads while perusing GTP for content?
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A shaky offensive line that wasn’t very good in 2015 (or 2014, 2013, etc. due to recruiting OL at a Sun Belt level for a decade) and needed a transfer from a one-win 1-AA team to play LT. Chubb returning from a horrific knee injury. No experienced, play-making WRs over 5’6″. A true freshman QB. And a third offensive coordinator in three years. How that didn’t earn an SEC championship appearance is the truly baffling part.
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You win the internet today sir! That’s damn funny. Sadly, I see more of the same this season.
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“[D]ue to recruiting OL at a Sun Belt level for a decade”
I went back and looked at the last 10 years of the previous guy’s recruiting classes. The numbers don’t back up your opinion according to Rivals. We signed 1 guy who wasn’t a 3+-star player during the last 10 years (Nathan Theus – who ended up as a 4-year long snapper and led to the signing of the only 5-star OL during that period – his brother John). 37% of the OLs we signed were considered blue chip (4+ star).
Did we not sign enough offensive linemen? Yes. Did we sign guys many P5 programs wanted? Yes. Did we miss on some evaluations and have some bad luck? Yes. Did we have some failures to develop the talent we had recruited through coaching and S&C? Yes
Were we fighting Georgia Southern, App State, North Texas and Troy for OLs? No way.
It sounds like Kirby is turning that battleship. Hopefully, he can keep that up.
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Winning a championship is one expectation I guess. Getting absolutely slammed by Ole Miss, barely hanging on against an awful FCS team, somehow figuring how to blow games against Vandy, Tennessee and Tech are unfortunately more telling. It is without doubt far too early to pass judgement on Kirby and for damn sure I hope he turns out to be what so many were expecting. But to pretend that last year was anything other than a major disappointment would be kidding one’s self.
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Exactly where I am.
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Yep, spot on. I wasn’t expecting a championship, but I was expecting improvement through the season and using the talent we had to their best advantage. I didn’t see that consistently last season.
This year, I think we have a reasonable shot of getting to Atlanta as I expect the defense to be much better this year. If the coaching and offense show typical improvement from the experience and better talent, then I think my expectations are reasonable.
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Yeah not expecting a championship here either but after beating UNC expectations were higher for considerable improvement until the Vandy and Tech debacles….
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There you go. Winning the UNC game and Chubb churning out 222 yards and a QB hitting deep throws will crank up the expectations.
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I agree it was a disappointment, but in regards to the Old Miss game, they took FSU to the wire and then Louisville slapped FSU around for 63 points.
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Yeah, and for as good a person as Richt was, he seemed to recruit a lot of kids with character issues (ah hum Crowell, ah hum) that always seemed to come back to haunt us. He achieved a high-level of mediocrity. Connelly also forgot to mention the downward spiral of the offense after Bobo left. We were NOT on an upward trajectory with Richt..
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A one-year downward spiral? Okay.
BTW, Connelly mentioned the 2015 offense in his Georgia preview.
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I suppose there wasn’t much spiral involved (and it’s now 2 years).
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Every school in this region recruits a lot of kids with character issues. It has been the Georgia Way to not put up with their antics. Almost all other schools just cover it up…Some of us admired CMR for his staunch belief that rules were to be enforced. Some of us resented CMR for not having more influence with the police, judges, etc. But everyone recruits the same kids. CMR was just honest enough to enforce the rules in a serious sense.
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Amen Senator, perhaps Dawg prayers are not answered as soon as We would wish. The coaching em up any more, if it’s Bama, the Ohio State of Urban, or UGA technique be damned there is no technique coached. The game has gone the way of the NBA.
I will simply out athletic you, anyone every heard of CONTAIN, CMR’s teams did not know technique. You have a DE with a 9 technique on the TE. You never EVER would let the TE cross your face, hence the old reach block technique on the DE when there was a toss sweep. Now the TE releases clean, untouched to wham the OLB, the 9 technique goes straight inside. What ever in the world coaching up contain to be on the outside shoulder of the QB go ?
Call it technique, call it undisaplined. Call it NBA fast break basketball. Coaching up one 9 technique to be a pass rusher, while covering the back in the flat or dropping into pass coverage. I call it put the best athlete on your best athlete and who ever has more athletes stand the best chance of winning.
Until you play a athletic team that is disaplined ehhhhh kind of like the Crimson Tide who did roll like toilet paper to those Orange #^^#^*^#{{% 45 minutes up the road from Athens.
Was it not 3-5years ago ( pardon me for memory loss due to watching crap ) we handed the orange their Stripes back to em. Perhaps it was longer but it’s hard to pay attention, evidamntly not money to our UGA fund, with the product on the field.
I’am a Dawg and will be when aI’am put in the ground. We have lost direction and leadership only at the cost of corporate unity of the University of Georgia. Tear the bridge down and let them corporate buttheads sit on the tracks like we all did when UGA Football was a priority instead of a skybox, air conditioned, catered, and no parking woes or even knows What the Hell TAILGATING and UGA was born of and for. Total identity loss of Who We Were and no Idea of Where We are Going. ” God Bless The Dawgs”. Like our country those who represent our US of A have forgotten their ROOTS. Thank You Greg and our corporate sponsors for OUR Place in Medortic History. As those who fought and died for OUR GREAT COUNTRY from France to Germany to Japan and now the Countless Souls of our Brave in the Middle East. God Bless our Country and the University of Georgia. May The Lord help us find our Way Back to Where We came from !
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