This blog has moved! Yes, already!
As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
New features: Bigger type, more graphics, comments that load 10 times faster and a larger and more recent photo that makes me look pretty doggone old. I think you’ll like it (the blog, not the photo). But I am, as we know too well, often wrong.
Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > July > 17
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Why UGA will win it all in this season
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Citing the 10 reasons Georgia will win the BCS national title drew the predictable responses: Bulldog fans figured I’d jinxed them, while non-Bulldogs hooted and pointed to that road schedule as the reason this touted team will fail. And while I’ll admit to being wrong once or twice in my so-called life - the Braves were not, alas, in first place on the Fourth of July - I’ll also note something else:
Mark Richt is a pretty fair road coach.
His record on the opponent’s field is 25-4. More than simply good, that’s obscene. He’s 2-1 at Auburn, 3-0 in Columbia, 3-1 in Knoxville, 2-0 in Tuscaloosa. (OK, so he’s only 2-5 against Florida in Jacksonville, but that’s about to get a lot better.) Of those four road losses, one was to a team (LSU in 2003) that finished No. 1, and another (Auburn in 2004) was to a team that went undefeated.
Urban Meyer is, I believe we can all agree, an outstanding head coach. (His performance in the BCS title game against Ohio State was the single greatest tactical job I’ve ever seen.) In three seasons at Florida, Meyer has lost more road games (five) than Richt has lost in seven seasons at Georgia. Think about that.
I’m not saying the Bulldogs will win all five of their road games. Playing at South Carolina, at Arizona State, at LSU, at Kentucky and at Auburn is a daunting assignment, not to mention Florida in Jax. But Georgia seems stout enough to negotiate that path with only one loss - coming at Auburn on Nov. 15, I’m guessing - and one loss against that schedule will almost surely book passage to the BCS title game.
Back to Florida: The 2006 Gators had a rather testing slate themselves - they played at Tennessee, at Auburn and at Florida State, and they also faced LSU and Kentucky and Alabama and Georgia and South Carolina - and they got through with one loss. (At Auburn, wouldn’t you know?) They wound up playing the aforementioned Buckeyes in Glendale, Ariz.
Georgia in 2008 seems every bit as loaded as Florida did then, and those Gators taught us one essential thing: If you’re good enough, you can win anywhere. Georgia, it says here, will be good enough.
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