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Saturday, November 19, 2005
These Dogs not top pedigree, but good enough
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Athens — They hadn’t won a game in a month. That was the bad news. The good: When finally they did win, the Georgia Bulldogs became SEC East champs.
There was a time when we wondered if Georgia would even rule this division, and now they do. When the Bulldogs broke through at Auburn in 2002, it was seen as a moment of deliverance. When they clinched the East by beating hapless Kentucky on Saturday, it was greeted as something much less. Indeed, this title-yielding game began under such muted conditions that, as Mark Richt said, “it felt like a morgue.”
That’s what happens when you lose to Florida and Auburn by the aggregate margin of five points. That’s what happens when you rise to No. 4 in the polls and then play your way out of the Top 10. “We got to 7-0 and everyone got excited about the national picture,” Richt said, and then D.J. Shockley hurt his knee against Arkansas and the Bulldogs went from 7-0 to 7-2. But there’s a greater point to this Georgia season, and with time to reflect we’ll all able to grasp it: Picked to finish third in the SEC East, the Bulldogs finished first.
Said Danny Ware, the backup tailback: “People doubted us in the beginning, and we showed them.”
Back to that beginning. When September arrived, Tennessee and Florida were touted as heavyweights. Georgia, meanwhile, had lost its quarterback and its defensive coordinator and its two best receivers and its three best defenders, and there was doubt as to whether any of the replacements were up to snuff.
Said D.J. Shockley, Greene’s scrutinized successor: “People were picking out individuals — like myself — and asking, ‘Can they get the job done?’ “
They got it done. These Bulldogs won’t play for the national championship, but neither, for all their accomplishments, did David Greene and David Pollack. What these Bulldogs have done is prove that this program has reached the exalted plateau where even a perceived rebuilding season can generate a division title.
Said Russ Tanner, the center: “We never said this was a rebuilding season.”
No, the 2005 Bulldogs weren’t as potent as they seemed on that heady day in Knoxville — Tennessee, it turned out, was no measure whatsoever — but Georgia was good enough to beat every team it should have beaten, and this was one of those years when simply holding serve was enough to book passage to the Georgia Dome. Sure, it would have been nice to whip Florida and Auburn and to stand No. 3 in the BCS rankings, but the mission of every big-time SEC team is to play for the conference title. For the third time in four seasons, Georgia will.
Said Kedric Golston, the defensive tackle: “We would have liked to be undefeated, but the main goal was winning the East. If you’d have told us going into the season this is where we’d be, we’d have taken that.”
Truth to tell, this is the fourth-best Georgia team of the last four years. Truth to tell, Georgia will enter its game with Georgia Tech having beaten nobody better than South Carolina, and at the time the Gamecocks weren’t seen as anything but mediocre. The now-devalued Tennessee game aside, these Bulldogs still haven’t managed a signature victory. But they’re 8-2 headed to Bobby Dodd Stadium, and if they win in the Dome on Dec. 3 they’ll play in the Sugar Bowl. Even by Georgia’s recently heightened standards, that’s still a big deal.
Said Bryan McClendon, the receiver: “We were picked third, and we came out with a championship. If that’s a rebuilding year, then maybe every year should be a rebuilding year.”
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