Yep, he went there.
“Our past success or wins will not determine what happens in the future,” Smart said. “The only thing that will determine the future is how we work and how we prepare. As long as these kids buy into that and they don’t get tired of that message, and they don’t start believing all of (the media’s) messages, then I think they’ll be OK. But it’s really important they understand they are going to get everybody’s best shot.” [Emphasis added.]
Get The Picture 
Who gives us their worst shot? Who do we give our best shot to?
I’m hoping Mr. Conventional Wisdom will help with this.
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The answer to both is obviously Auburn. Who’s always there to lift our spirits after a Vandy loss? It’s Auburn. That meltdown against Florida got you in the dumps? Well, have this 34-7 win. Auburn is the most generous program on Georgia’s schedule.
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Like UT. And Vandy. And Mississippi State. Best Shots all. It’s mind-bogglin’ how much Best Shot is being thrown at us.
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More interestingly, according to Kirby (and I agree with him), we haven’t given anyone our best shot. Hopefully, we can give both Auburn and UF something very close to what one would consider our best shot.
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Shots are all around us
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I think something people missed with the “Kirby: just another Saban assistant?” angst was the length of time he spent there. No, I am not talking about extra time with Saban. I am talking about the way that operation is set up like a Department For the Advanced Study of Football. Visiting lecturers, consulting psychologists, an army of research assistants, you name it, they are trying it. The trick, of course, is keeping all that energy and information flow from turning into just a lot of noise. But Kirby had a front row seat for all of that at the game’s highest level.
I mention it because the team really seems to be feeding off his self-assurance that he’s seen this before, and he knows what will get them to next week with another W.
When you reach this spot in the polls, teams typically relax a little at the very moment their opponents see an opportunity to do something special. We see it time and time again. It’s one of the things that makes the sport special and leads to weekends like last weekend. But when you are killing people with talent and execution, versus just talent, the upset becomes a lot harder for the underdog.
Georgia’s execution this season has been phenomenal as well as consistent. That has a high chance of paying off when they run into a team that might be used to winning on physical superiority alone.
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“…when you are killing people with talent and execution, versus just talent….” I appreciate your optimism ASEF but did you not watch the Mizzou game? I saw a lot of misses in execution against a team that was 1-4. I think Kirby and the coaches did too.
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I agree with a lot of what you say. I think the biggest difference is that CKS has gotten BM and the boosters to commit to the Process on all fronts. I think CMR gave those entities more than they gave him (results vs resources) and we’re finally seeing what UGA can be when all sides of the university are fully committed.
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Hey, I know this is a fun way to highlight how juvenile the headgames can be, but considering that head coaches live and die by results they achieve with teen aged males we can’t take this stuff too seriously. And I know you get it bluto, it’s just I fear some folks won’t recognize the silliness and use it to be overly critical.
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Which teams get UGAs best shot every year?
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Auburn
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We may be good but we aren’t number one. Does that provide any incentive?
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Speaking of memes…I hope no one starts that “We Want Bama” shit.
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Will you settle for “we want to be an unbeaten team playing for the SEC Championship, which in all likelihood requires us to play Bama”?
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I’d buy that t-shirt.
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I’ll take that. An get all Ricky Bobby…”if you ain’t first…you’re last.”
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This “best shot” thing is a paraphrase/extrapolation on something Vince Dooley said almost 40 years ago and I think there’s a lot of truth to it, and that is that Georgia has a lot of rivals. Now you may say, “all SEC teams do”, and there’s some truth to that also, however I would argue as Dooley did, that year in and year out Georgia is way up on the hate-o-meter for a ton of schools, if you consider Auburn, Georgia Tech, Florida, South Carolina, and probably Tennessee and Clemson as well all would place us in probably top 2 of teams they want to beat in a given year. We obviously don’t have room for 5-6 teams in our Top 2, but that’s basically half our schedule or more of FBS teams in any given year considering us a top 2 rival. Not a lot of other schools have that situation. 4 out of 5 of the games left in the regular season are against those teams, the “best shot” meme has a lot of truth particularly with our season in its current posture, whether it was uttered by Dooley, Richt, or Kirby.
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Traditionally, Georgia’s been Florida’s and Tech’s number one rival, and South Carolina’s, Clemson’s, and Auburn’s number two rival. Since the divisional split, Tennessee’s become much more of a rival, but I still think they consider Florida a bigger rival because of how meaningful the games in the ’90s were. And Alabama is their number one.
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Sometimes I wish they had put Auburn in the East and Tennessee in the West. I think something out of Georgia-Auburn when they moved them. We still want to beat them of course, but in the 80’s I hated them almost as bad as Florida. I think it also took something out of Bama-Tennessee.
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I think the notion of UGA getting many of our rivals “best shot” was simultaneously grounded in truth but intellectually lazy, and it goes both ways. For all the talk about “let downs”, UF certainly got our best shot in the 70s and 80s. Clemson and Tech did as well. South Carolina has always been a “little brother” game for us that meant more to them than to us. There is no evidence to suggest we got Ole Miss’ best shot when they were on our permanent schedule up until 2001.
Dooley scheduled an out of conference cupcake the week before UF. There were a few times we played down to the cupcake’s level, which fans nervous for UF. In the late Dooley era, we rarely played well against Auburn after beating UF. Part of that was due to the fact that Dye’s teams were simply better than ours most of those years.
The great thing about Kirby is that he is coaching the team to minimize the swings. Further, facing a team that is as mentally and physically tough as us should lead to some games where we benefit from teams just folding in a similar to our games against Bama in 2008 and 2015. This year’s UT game was a perfect example of an opponent wilting in the face of our physicality. I was actually SHOCKED that ND did not wilt in the face of our physicality. Hopefully, we can really make UF feel the pressure of such as well.
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I’ve always understood some of the evidentiary basis for Auburn, Clemson, and South Carolina’s particular antithesis for Georgia was the large number of Georgia players on their roster whereas the inverse is not necessarily true. Those schools historically have a greater need to recruit heavily out of state than Georgia does. Tech is obvious and Florida is more of a tradition (and the fact that FSU used to be a girl’s school).
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Smart read my post yesterday! Awriiight!
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I’ve always thought this was one of the funniest UGA fanbase things ever.
Hey fellas. We aren’t playing UGA this week so let’s take it easy out there.
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And you don’t think your guys play with a lick more emotion against Bama than against everyone else?
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““Our past success or wins will not determine what happens in the future.” But Kirby’s on it, right…
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Here’s the thing about memes and cliches: they are usually true. You might wish for something catchier or something that sounds more erudite. But it’s still true. I want our guys to expect a lot out of Florida and still want to drain their swamp. # MUGAGA!
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Love this season…
In the previous years, about this point in season, we were bitching about a vandy performance or sluggish UT game, etc
Now all we have to bitch about is meme and cliches.
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I noticed the resurrection of the “best shot” meme so e to last week. Then I heard it again when I went outside and listened to the post game in my truck (a new tradition I started this year) and Kevin Butler mentioned gettingMissouri’s best shot and said we would get everybody’s got forward. I really thought that was dead and buried. Like herpes, it’s back.
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Oh No! Herpes comes back?
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Hell yea. She didn’t tell you?
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