Branches on the coaching tree

I sure hope somebody asks Mark Richt for his thoughts on the South Carolina-Tennessee game.

Tennessee is opening its 2020 college football season Saturday night against South Carolina inside Williams-Brice Stadium, so why is tape of Alabama, Colorado State and Georgia being studied so intently?

It’s all about the background.

Georgia’s 2014 team in Mark Richt’s next-to-last year as head coach went 10-3 and finished No. 9 in the Associated Press poll. The Bulldogs had Todd Gurley, Nick Chubb and Sony Michel in their backfield, and they also had Mike Bobo as offensive coordinator and Jeremy Pruitt as defensive coordinator.

Bobo left Athens in December 2014 to become head coach at Colorado State but returned to the Southeastern Conference last January as the offensive coordinator for Gamecocks head coach Will Muschamp. Bobo’s first task will be trying to top Pruitt, who is in his third season of guiding the Volunteers.

“Mike’s a competitor, whether it’s playing against him in college, coaching against him, coaching against him every day in practice, playing golf against him or shooting pool,” Pruitt said this week. “He wants to win in everything that he does. He’s going to have a great game plan. His kids are going to play hard.

“They’ll play together, so it will be a challenge for us.”

No, I don’t mean I want to hear a prediction on the final score.