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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > July > 31
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Time for UGA to take notice of Tech
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For Georgia fans the game is an afterthought, assuming they’ve thought of it at all. With all the big names and exotic locales on the schedule — South Carolina in Columbia, Arizona State in Tempe, LSU in Baton Rouge, Florida in Jacksonville, Auburn at Auburn — who notices Georgia Tech?
By Nov. 29, Georgia would be wise to take note.
Understand: I’m not picking Tech to beat the Bulldogs. I’ve already written that Georgia will win the national championship, and I’ve expended my one self-allotted foolish forecast of the calendar year on the Braves. What I am saying is this:
Paul Johnson is a terrific coach, and the arrival of a terrific coach should always trouble a rival accustomed to owning a rivalry. (Ask Auburn people if they’ve heard of Nick Saban.)
By Nov. 29, Johnson will surely have found a quarterback, and his spread option, which struggled mightily in Tech’s spring game and which will suffer palpitations early this fall, will be beginning to purr. And for all the good work done by Willie Martinez, the worst game ever played by his Georgia defense came in the Sugar Bowl against West Virginia, which used…
The spread option.
Then there’s the timing. By Nov. 29, Georgia will (it says here) have positioned itself to play for the SEC title the next week in the Dome and, by extension, the BCS title. That’s exactly the scenario encountered by LSU last November, when it lost its regular-season finale to an Arkansas team that ran all over Tiger Stadium. (LSU still wound up playing for the national championship, but it needed West Virginia and Missouri to lose for that to happen.)
On Nov. 29, 2008, nobody in the world will be expecting Tech to win in Athens, a reasonable assumption given that the Jackets haven’t beaten Georgia anywhere since Nov. 25, 2000. But I get the feeling Tech is about to get really good again, and four months ahead of time I get the feeling that unassuming game is going to rise up and grab us all by the lapels.
It’s surely too much to ask Johnson’s first team to beat what should be Mark Richt’s best team. But wouldn’t it be something if what is being touted as Richt’s long-sought championship season gets spoiled by a coach who’s in place only because the previous guy couldn’t beat Richt? Well, wouldn’t it?
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