As I’m sure you figured out from yesterday’s post about the latest version of Stewart Mandel’s national powers rankings, he reached out to me for a quote about Georgia finally ascending to king status. He used my short and sweet reaction in his piece, but I gave him a longer answer, which you can hear on his podcast with Bruce Feldman here. (Dial it up to the 3:40 mark and listen for the next five or so minutes.)
Here’s what I wrote:
The ingredients for sustained, elite success have been there for decades. UGA enjoys one of the best recruiting bases in the country and the program has been extremely good at generating revenue. What’s held UGA back — subjectively, objectively, take your pick — has been the four power bases (school administration, athletic department administration, boosters and head coach) not working in sync and sometimes working at cross purposes. That’s not the case any more and Kirby Smart deserves the lion’s share of the credit for that. It’s an underappreciated aspect of his head coaching tenure and it’s why things feel more sustainable for the long term than they’ve ever seemed for Georgia.
I think back to so many bumps in the road along the way after 1980 — the complete botch job the school did trying to replace Dooley when he stepped aside in 1988, Michael Adams’ treating the athletic department as his own personal fiefdom, the petty way Richt was treated with regard to his assistants’ compensation, the embarrassing presser after the 2015 Belk Bowl win, etc. — and I’m always drawn back to something I posted in the wake of Richt’s firing that continues to ring true even as the program has ascended to the highest level we’ve seen in four decades.
If you manage an SEC football program, there’s a difference between being committed to winning and being financially committed to winning. Everybody wants to win. The hard part is figuring out how to allocate resources to make sure that happens. And, no, that doesn’t mean spending money like a drunken sailor. (We’re looking at you, Tennessee.) It simply means that if you think your rightful place is among the Alabamas, Floridas and LSUs of the world, you’d better take a hard look at what they’re doing and make sure you’re giving your coaching staff the opportunity to keep up with them.
The simple truth is that Georgia wasn’t doing that for the better part of forty years. Instead, the powers that be spent much of that time smugly wrapping themselves in the blanket of “we do things the right way here” (aka The Georgia Way) when they didn’t have the first damn clue about what the right way actually entailed. At least not until Kirby Smart showed up.
Sure, I’m thrilled where we as a fan base are now. But it pisses me off a little to look back and see how much of our passion (and money, sure) was wasted by a bunch of folks who had no business directing an SEC football program. Let’s not do that again, aight?
Get The Picture 
Don’t forget the tremendous job AD Joel Eaves did righting things. Those forty years started about the time his hand left the wheel.
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Indeed.
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…”and a great man in Joel Eaves.
Sets a real great example
and the mad Dawgs of Junk
aim to please!”
Brown, James
1975
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it’s actually “the Mad Dogs, the Junk aims to please.”
Nobody but me (maybe Matt Robinson and Ray Goff) remembers this, but the D picked up the Junkyard Dogs (note the spelling in the original) in 75 and going in 76, it still stuck. The offense picked up the nickname “the Mad Dogs” because UGA’s veer attack was very explosive (to use a currently popular term). The Mad Dogs didnt really stick, despite being rhymed into James Brown’s underrated masterpiece, performed live at Homecoming, and then again in Jacksonville. The Dogs were down 14 at the half, but came out mad in the 3rd, scored a quick TD, and then Doug Dickey made the infamous 4th and dumb call (RIP, Johnny Henderson). We won the SEC, and got curbstomped by Pitt, Tony Dorsett (for my money, the finest RB I ever saw who wasnt named Herschel) and Matt Cavanaugh in the Sugar. TD gets that spot because we were 0-2-1 against him in his career, and he turned a program that was 2022 Vandy bad the year before he arrived and helped lead them to national prominence and a national title. Hated the guy, but give him his due.
and now you know…the rest of the story.
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Thanks 81Dog. Always good to have a refresher.
I’ve lost a few things over the years.
I miss my mind the most.
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Coach Eaves does not get enough credit. He would walk through the dressing room two or three times a week just to see how we
were doing. Just to see how a bunch of freshmen were doing.
He and Coach Dooley were good friends and it showed.
Senator, I have not realized (have not thought about) how much that ability to work together made for a winning program. It was more than just money (money was very important), but there was more.
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Greg McGarity’s MO of “Richt has to bring us a title, then I’ll open up my wallet” was so backasswards and infuriating.
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There’s 50 other factors in play, but the 2 that will always kills me, specifically in Richt’s era are –
Intentionally choosing to have the most punitive drug/alcohol policy in the conference. And….
Choosing the oversigning issue as a hill to die on. I always wonder how much of this was Richt and how much was the administration. It’s not over signing when you know inevitably you’re gonna lose some guys, and miss on some recruits. But as has been hammered here, you can’t intentionally put yourself on scholarship probation every year, then wonder why the Bama’s of the world are always so much fresher in the 4th qtr.
Again, there’s 50 other issues at play during that era, but I believe if those two had been handled correctly, Richt just might have gotten over that hump at least one time. Oh well.
Glad you’re getting some national recognition, Bluto. You deserve and have deserved it for quite a while. Thanks for all you do with this blog.
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With regard to oversigning, Richt was slow to realize how Saban was changing the recruiting game in that regard, but the administration was on board with it, too. Not to mention that some of it stemmed from having a recruiting budget that lagged behind other SEC powers…
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I will never forget that the size of Saban’s support staff at Bama became evident that GM’s reaction was that it wasn’t legal, which when combined with not supporting over signing was AD/Head Coach malpractice. those that would say that over signing was not fair to the players who were “run off” didn’t get that keeping unproductive players is unfair to those that were there. If you are a head coach and you ask your players to make the sacrifices needed to win in the SEC, you best be ensuring you are doing your best to put them in position to succeed. Having a smaller staff for the sake of pride at adhering to the spirit of the law instead of identifying legal alternatives based on the letter of the law was an epic failure on UGA’s part.
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I’m not sure Richt had a hand in the drug policy. Kirby even said in his press conference when asked about that topic that we would do things the right way … The Georgia Way. Remember Adams and McGarity tried to get the entire conference to adopt the same stringent drug policy. I’m not going to get into whether that was right or not, but Il Duce wanted that.
Oversigning is something I still don’t like, but once again, I’m not sure it was Richt’s decision.
Everything bad that happened between 2008-15 was the result of a decision made in a corner office on North Campus.
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Richt publicly defended it. The quote I recall is:
“I don’t want my players to smoke marijuana.”
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I’m not sure he was terribly excited about what appeared to be mandatory suspensions for it.
I’m guessing Kirby makes a kid who tests positive for MJ spend some extra early morning time with Scott Sinclair in Sanford Stadium rather than sitting him for the next game.
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Yeah I never heard an official announcement that our policy was changed on failed drug tests…….but I’m quite certain that there aren’t less kids smoking these days, and we sure don’t see those 1-2 game suspensions at the beginning of the year anymore. Not sure exactly who changed it, but I’m guessing Kirby had a hand in explaining how stupid it was, relative to our peers.
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Nobody enjoyed our 1-2 game suspensions more than Steve Spurrier.
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I don’t think our football players should be smoking. Any kind of smoke is not good for your lungs and hurts fitness. It also lowers Testosterone.
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Agreed RugbyDawg. Butt I figure it’s like if you wipe your nasty asshole from the t’aint up or backcrack down. It’s a personal decision and nobody else’s fuckn business.
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Back to front ain’t Christian
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I remember a great deal from my days as a toddler. I don’t remember who taught me how to wipe, but according to the Rumpel Foreskin school of thought it was a Christian.
While we’re hijacking the thread, again, the bidet has made life much simpler and sanitary since surgery on both shoulders. I’m still wondering where the hell all the toilet paper is going? I’ll never ask the wife as I was advised against this by a non-Christian officer who also taught me that a smart man learns from his mistakes while a genius learns from the mistakes of others .
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Shitter etiquette is a lost art form these days…back in my Italy days…those skinny guineas knew how to clean a proper undercarriage…a bidet that shot a cool stream to the pucker hole was refreshing. But the temperature and climate made it so…now a bidet in Feb in the frozen tundra would be like having the ol dirt box being impaled by a White Walker from Game of Thrones … no bueno…
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Btw, I ain’t volunteering for honeywagon duty…That’s Uncle Got’s doody…
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You got to have hot and cold just like a sink on the bidet. And remember, you ain’t got to wash your whole ass, just your asshole(h/t Reed Foxx). Of course getting the temperature optimal allows you to wash your entire package.
I’m thinking Uncle Got delegates honeydew duty. But, sometimes you pay the cost to be the boss.
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JFC. Bow to stern.
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Its actually a matter of national security:
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What about gummies?
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No coach is going to get in front of a camera and say he wants his players hangin’ with Mary Jane. But there’s a difference between not wanting your players to smoke weed and thinking they should face the harshest, most immediate punishment in the conference for doing so. I really think the policy was driven by administrators who would’ve rather gone 8–4 with choir boys than win titles with normal, fallible 19- and 20-year-olds.
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My point simply is that the response I quoted was a defense to the suspensions not a random opinion on drug (ab)use.
He could have gave some response that indicated that those decisions were made elsewhere giving a hint that he wasn’t totally on board. Instead, for better or worse, he indicated pretty clearly he was on board.
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I’ll add one more thing and this came down from Birmingham.
You can’t tell me UGA would not have laid waste to the SEC if Richt was allowed to run his HUNH offense that he ran at FSU. The powers that be in the conference office clutched their pearls, crowed “we don’t play football that way” and banned him from doing it. It was revolutionary for its time and I don’t think the rest of the conference could have effectively defended it.
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Sorry to rain on your sentiment but:
If Fred Gibson catches a routine pass in 2002, we play Miami for a title.
If Billy doesn’t miss 3 FGs and Green doesn’t fumble inside the 10 in Baton Rouge, we play Ole Miss in the SECCG for a shot at a Oklahoma in 2003.
That was Richt’s window. Players blew it, not his roster management.
(For the record, I lay 2007 and 2012 on him. Both title-worthy teams undone by awful coaching errors).
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Fred Gibson don’t drop shit.
That was Terrence Edwards.
Billy made the first one, but there was a flag thrown. Then he went to shit for the day.
Biggest coaching mistake that day? Kicking off to Devery Henderson after taking the lead with near nothing on the clock.
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I call it the “Herschel” effect. I became a fan in 1991 which was Zeir’s first year. From that time until 2017 or so we as Georgia fans looked at the team as each year there was one player or maybe two or three who IF things went perfectly then they would be the next Herschel and lead us to great success. We have had so many great players that it has worked or almost worked. This is analogous or indicative of Senator’s point to Mandel. It was a team and program sort of half assing it. Because of the cool uniforms and being in Georgia we could go 10-2 doing things halfway. Now we are really focusing on the entire program and every position and can win National Championships with Bennett.
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Great post Senator. Adams to me was the most deterrent against the athletic department there was. As long as Kirby gets what he wants and the suits leave him alone we will be king’s for along time. Nd to think he was close to being South Carolina coach!
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I could be wrong but I don’t believe Kirby would have taken the South Carolina job. Saban wisely advised him to not take the DC job at Georgia and I think he would have advised him to not take the HC job at South Carolina. I think Kirby knew what he wanted and that was the head coaching job at The University of Georgia.
South Carolina is a coaching career graveyard. South Carolina is the eastern version of Mississippi State, a program with a history of mediocrity in a small state playing second fiddle to the other football program in the state. In 114 years of playing football, South Carolina is 22 games above .500, 2 games per decade. Kirby would have ended up being another in a very long line of coaches who struggled to win 8 games a season in Columbia and ultimately ended up as a DC at another program.
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Kirby’s agent played UGA like a fiddle. He forced our monied overlords hands by publically seeming interested in SC, but he knew where he wanted to be. He knew said overlords wanted to bring him in, so it was risk losing him to SC or make a move. They made the move. CMR was gone either way, and there is no point relitigating that part of it. Kirby has worked out splendidly, but that was never guaranteed (and right up to the 2017 season, game 2, perhaps in doubt in a lot of places). A lot of people (true, many of them at SC thought Muschamp in Columbia was as good or even better as a hire.
Kirby waited too long to throw his shot away at SC, but he leveraged them brilliantly. Spurrier made SC somewhat competitive, Beamer seems to be doing a nice enough job, but they wont ever be able to make the machine hum year to year like some other places can (if said other places have the right coaches).
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Spurrier caught lightning in a bottle recruiting wise for a couple of years when he signed Lattimore, Alshon Jeffery and Clowney. Spurrier had 3 good seasons at South Carolina. Outside of that, he was plain as unsalted grits. Even the year he won the East he had 3 conference losses. The main thing Spurrier did at South Carolina was get them more media attention.
Unless Beamer can recreate some of that recruiting magic I think he will be a 7 to 8 win coach like Spurrier was at South Carolina.
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Smart was never close to taking the South Carolina job. I have a client who is a football coach at a Southern college. He knows Kirby well from their young coaching days and have remained friends.
He talked with Kirby right after we hired him. Kirby confirmed to him that he was never going to take the South Carolina job but Jimmy Sexton floated that rumor to create a sense of urgency in Butts-Mehre.
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Outsmarting the Butts Mehre crowd doesn’t take a Mensa level of intelligence.
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An often overlooked factor IMHO is the Jan Kemp scandal. That really killed the reputation of the school and there was an attempt to do anything and everything to reclaim the academic reputation of the school and often at the expense of winning. So the “Georgia Way” was really a long term rebranding effort and its not coincidence that the commitment to football has followed the tremendous success of that process. I still think (hope) there are welcome residuals of that post Kemp process around and that we never “sell our souls” as it were for a W or a trophy. And if you get caught chipping away at the reputation of the school, I’m looking at you Harrick, you will be dealt with harshly and swiftly. May that never change. As much frustration as we’ve experienced getting to another title, at the end of the day I glad that we went the way we did as opposed to becoming Clemson or Auburn.
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I was surprised not to see that mentioned in the Senator’s response to Stew when bringing up the ’80s. Things had to change, but we kneecapped ourselves and Spurrier (who, like Saban, revolutionized things) and Fulmer shortly thereafter caught us while we were flat-footed.
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This. So much changed after the Jan Kemp affair. We spent a lot of time shooting ourselves in penance while others prospered with the new TV money.
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After Jan Kemp we would lose handfuls of players every year to academic disqualification. Seems that we also had a policy not to take partial qualifiers in those days also. Pat Dye gladly took them and always had better OLs and DLs than Georgia did for about ten years.
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Yep. And when suburban Atlantans are sending their kids to Auburn because Georgia is “football factory” what choice do you really have but to overcorrect? (And yes I heard that back then if you can fathom it.)
Ex. A in how badly things had gone down at UGA? My 1987 acceptance letter. You knew then that they had to take just about anyone.
A rededication to academics and the Hope and now my sheepskin means something. So I’m happy its over now, but I struggle to be too strong in my condemnation of the Georgia Way. It cost us Erk and that’s a wound that won’t go away, ever, but you play the hand you’re dealt.
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Self deprecating humor becomes you, Derek.
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‘when they didn’t have the first damn clue about what the right way actually entailed“
That’s an important quote and it applies to a bunch of people, including richt. Adams and McG were jerks but Richt didn’t show anything that suggested he knew how to compete with Saban. He was from the Bowden school of putting better skill players out there and letting them do their thing. That worked ok until saban got things rolling at lsu, then Meyer at uf, then saban at Alabama
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That’s not totally fair. First off, the original model worked, until it didn’t.
But in the last couple of years of his tenure, pushed by Bobo and Pruitt, Richt began adopting more of a ‘Bama approach to recruiting. And the school upped the recruiting budget significantly in 2015 to allow him to do so.
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The last time Saban brought an LSU team against UGA this happened:
I don’t think anyone worried about Nick Saban leaving Sanford on that Saturday afternoon.
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But that team was sandwiched in between a national title team and a team that would have likely won the title had Saban still been the coach (they lost to Tennessee in a weird fashion and then we killed em in the SEC Championship game).
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Maybe … but that Georgia team was a knee injury to DJ and a Tra Battle bell rung away from being undefeated in 2005.
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And whatever happened in the Sugar Bowl.
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Ugh. I was talking about the regular season, but point taken.
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That was a classic “IF ONLY!” season. IF ONLY! became the battle cry of Georgia football under Mark Richt.
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Thanks for that video, Double E, which once again proves my theory that Saban is a broke dick loser.
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Some opinions of Richt will never change. The money boosters, President and AD were all aligned differently from CMR. Of course he knew this, but Mark Richt has proven time and again he doesn’t back down from a fight. But changing “The Georgia Way” was not one of those he could win on his own. If one argues he should have used his only leverage of quitting, you don’t understand the man…never a solution for him. And if he did quit, we don’t have Kirby today. We’re Florida, Tenn, Auburn…on our 5th coach and saddled with huge buyout debt that would make the ‘90’s look like our glory years. Mark Richt made a lot of coaching and personnel mistakes…he was young when he started. But perhaps his biggest legacy is not quitting and thus taking “The Georgia Way” down with him at the end.
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After 2009, Richt wasn’t going to do anything to upset the gravy train he was on. He saw that he could have a horrible season and the fans and BM wouldn’t care as long as he was “a good man who is a great representative for the University of Georgia and does things the right way”.
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You’re getting off subject. The important thing is whether people in Montana know and can explain all the scuttlebutt about our football team.
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Thanks for writing out your full reply, as the last thing I want to do is listen to that insufferable prick’s nasally whine.
Seriously, you just know Mandel is the kind of guy who never threw a ball in official competition in his entire life.
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As Lewis would say “Tell it all Senator tell it all.”
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To go back to 1988-89, we hired Ray Goff hoping he would become that era’s Dabo Swinney. He had never even been a coordinator prior to being elevated to head coach. We could have had arguably the best coach of the 90s instead with a guy who was making things happen at Duke. That guy returned to his alma mater a year later.
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Spurrier wasn’t coming to Athens.
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We don’t know because we didn’t interview him.
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I still argue that he would have come just to run the place completely into the ground.
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There is no way we would have hired Spurrier then. Dooley was not going to allow the next coach to be as good or better than he was. While Dooley publicly claimed to have no part in the hiring of the next coach (an interesting position for the AD to take), Dooley was neck deep in the process. I personally know several people involved and they said Dooley was never in a meeting but his wishes were well known and generally not negotiable.
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Vince said he wanted Erk.
How’d that go?
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.The boosters certainly got it right with Kirby, but that was more luck than skill. Maybe a little bit of skill, because they ignored McGarity.
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Effective allocation of resources. That’s the most important skill set a college head coach can have. In fact it’s the most important thing in all areas. Kirby has it in spades. The Senator is absolutely correct. We are set up for long term success. Kirby is the John D. Rockefeller of college football and UGA is the new Standard Oil mutha fuckers!
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Oh hell yes!
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40 years of beautiful tradition from Herschel Walker to Matthew Satfford, you’re god**mn right I’m pissed about the past!
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Excellent name, friend. Nice reference.
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