A masterpiece of its kind, from “The Curious Case of Big Game Georgia” (thanks, W.H.):
If you think I’m tilting at windmills, Google “Georgia doesn’t win big games”. You’ll find countless articles detailing the Dawg’s inability to win when it matters most.
He heard it on the Internet, so it must be true.
There are even many of them from less than a month ago, from just before Georgia faced Clemson in the season opener. They all had a similar tone; this is Georgia’s chance to prove they can finally win the big one. Guess what? They did. Georgia took down the second-ranked Clemson Tigers, and they got their big win. Or did they?
A day after the game, everyone was convinced that the Dawgs had overcome that obstacle, but three games later, that game looks like a stain on Georgia’s record. Clemson has looked abysmal following that game, barely scrapping by a .500 Georgia Tech team and then losing to NC State. Clemson doesn’t look like the team it’s been for the last half-decade of football, and Georgia’s narrow victory now casts doubt on them as a team.
You can’t defeat the narrative, Dawgs. Don’t even try.
If we roll the hogs, it will be dismissed as a trivial win over a lesser opponent in its second year of rebuilding
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Correct. There will be no mention of their #8 ranking going into the game
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Beat everybody.
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The narrative would then become that this was a down year for college football. Never mind the extra talent from all the super seniors.
You’re absolutely correct though, GTG. Just keep winning.
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If Georgia goes to the playoff as the SEC champion but didn’t have to play Alabama in the SECCG, I can almost hear Herbie, Corso, and others saying “but they didn’t have to go through Bama” leading up to the playoffs.
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If Georgia wins the NC without having to play Bama that would be the same drumbeat.
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I don’t care what they say.
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Me neither. The only way we can satisfy some of the internet geniuses is to play and beat everyone on our schedule and then beat Bama, Ohio State, Oregon, Iowa, Notre Dame and Oklahoma this season.
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I don’t give a damn what they say either. But I can hear the addition of an asterisk next to national champion if Ohio State and Bama aren’t in the playoff.
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If ESPN wants them in, they’ll be in, regardless of record or how they’ve looked.
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PSA, one of them ain’t making it.
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Never mind that Georgia is the only team that has ever had to go through Bama to make the playoffs. And ND went to the playoffs after losing Clemson.
The hypocrisy is ridiculous.
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I mean, it’s all that matters. Everything else is just noise.
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^^^ this cures everything.
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Yep, single best solution
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Going vertical babeeeee…15-0…
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Just win baby
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This is the plan. There is no alternate plan.
FTMFs.
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Exactly, who gives a crap who we beat. If UGA wins all their games, I will not give a crap who we beat.
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Undefeated
Untied
Undisputed
Undenied
GO DAWGS!!
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We have always been at war with Eastasia State.
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I’m a sucker for an Orwell reference.
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It reads like the author agrees with you, and even uses the word “narrative ” correctly.
“It’s not the fact the Dawgs never win these games. Georgia is 11-6 against Top-10 teams under Kirby Smart. The reason Georgia doesn’t win big games is that, of those 17 games against Top-10 opponents, 11 of them don’t count. They don’t count to opposing fans, they don’t count to media members, and they don’t count to a sizable contingent of Dawg fans.” There’s an awareness of Dawggrading without using the term
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Yeah, it sounded quite sympathetic to me… Maybe I’ve just been reading too much satire lately, but the “11 of them don’t count” and “Google it” lines seemed to scream “Y’ALL STOP IT” in reference to the Georgia narrative spinners.
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Same here. I was prepared to dismiss it, but it seems like a “get off Georgia’s ass” take instead of a lazy takedown.
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Just have to win. Nothing quiets these narratives quite like winning. Run the table, beat Alabama (assuming they are in the SECCG), and win the National Championship, and people will quit questioning. Easy, right?
Although, I can picture the talking heads starting the new countdown of the next 40 years as soon as the last bit of confetti hit the ground while Kirby hoists a trophy. There’s a part of me that thinks Dawgrading will be an unending aspect of fandom as long as I live.
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“Jimbo has 1, heck even Ed Orgeron has 1…….if Kirby wants to prove..”
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Didn’t seem to have worked with the Clemson win. They were the No. 3 team in the country with Mr. Dr. Pepper in the driver’s seat for Heisman. We beat them, then 3 weeks later the media regards them as another bottom dweller in the ACC.
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acc needed klempzen to be their shining star, cause now, the acc is a bottom dweller and can’t get near the cfp…
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It took the Dawgs beating them like a ginger step child for the rest of the nation to grok what we all knew. That’s right.
Clemson sucks.
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We need a new word to describe these shallow thinkers.
I suggest “Dawgjealous”, or maybe more fun, :Dawgelous”.
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Win the big game at the end of the season and they will move on to the next reason to dawgrade the dawgs.
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I read this article earlier and I agree that the writer is actually conscious of the way dawggrading happens. But its odd because he doesn’t actually refute the treatment and article seems like it is missing the second half.
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Games aren’t won or lost based on what people are talking about on the internet.
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There’s a reason the Senator added “big game” to the Lexicon.
In some of our fans’ eyes and the media’s perspective, there is no such thing as a big win at Georgia.
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Georgia could defeat the aliens from “Alien” and the idiots out there would talk about how much tougher and smarter the “Predator” is.
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Who the hell is Robert Crosby?
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I agree. Dawgs win a “big game” and that win gets Dawggraded. It’s in the dadgum lexicon for a reason.
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If people shit-talk you for beating a top-10 opponent just as hard as they would have if you’d lost to said opponent, it almost makes you wonder what the point of playing the games is.
Really impressed at how close the writer veered to recognizing that the whole “Dawgrading” concept is biased bullshit, but still did a handbrake 180 and bought into it wholeheartedly anyway. That’s the kind of intellectual curiosity and critical thinking that really sets you apart from the pack.
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That’s called an agenda when a person won’t change their ideas even when presented with facts that conflict with their position.
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What people fail to account for is that the reason wins generally don’t look as good in retrospect is because that, by virtue of beating said Top 10 team, it is now merely a Top 25 team instead.
One of the reasons Clemson is barely a Top 25 team now is because they lost to us (and the other is they lost to NC State). But if Clemson had beaten us and lost only to NC State – in a squeaker in overtime the MSM narrative would say – they’d still be a Top 10 team today!
If Arkansas’ first two games had been against Georgia and Alabama, they wouldn’t be ranked today; but by virtue of not losing to two decent teams and two meh teams, they’ve managed to ascend to the Top 10….
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What’s also going on here is that there are entrenched assumptions that AL, Ohio St, OK, and Clemson are perennial playoff programs and there is no reason for that to change in the eyes of the media. A down year for any of them is an anomaly in their eyes. So, this season will be the season where if Georgia wins it, it means that all those “real” teams just had a down year. They’ll still get all the press and Georgia will get a pat on the back for being in the right place at the right time.
Count me in as another WGAF what they say. They all have too much air time to fill and too many Vox media online takes to post.
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If I ever start caring what people like Herbstreit, Corso, etc think I’ll know my mind has begun to slip. Caring what those people think and caring what the people who care what they think think sucks all the joy out of college football. Seasons like the one we seem to be having don’t happen a lot. Why would anyone spoil it by listening to that crap? Some people just can’t help themselves. They want those people to validate their team for them.
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Aw, bullshit, guys!
We can’t win for winnin’!!!!!!!
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Clemson was good when we played them. We just broke them. it’s not very hard to see.
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Agree and I said as much at the time. Their young new O players got shocked and thought “damn, what’s the CFP gonna be like?”
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Broke out a case of Ivan Drago all over they country asses. NOW WE MUST BREAK YOU, DJ UKULELE!
Oh, he broke alright. They struggled with Georgia Bleeping Tech? They’re broken. We broke them. They’re like Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense. They’re dead, they just don’t realize it yet.
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I was just scrolling down to say the very same thing. I really do think that the Dawgs broke Clemson. DJ Uiagalelei played well last year in place of Trevor Lawrence and their defense was at a high level. Once they lost, I think the team realized their chances of getting to the playoffs were over.
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Looking at MIA-UVA, both are just so dang slow. I think out edge is speed and execution this year. Power being the lil extra “get up, go ahead, get up and let’s do it again”.
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