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Friday, November 23, 2007
Richt’s ascent began vs. Tech
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
The coaches are a study in contrasting perceptions, and it’s not just because one has had better quarterbacks than the other, or one seems to go only to second-tier bowl games, or one secretly placed an order for black jerseys.
Perceptions of Mark Richt and Chan Gailey, and of their respective programs, have been formed largely because of this game: Georgia vs. Georgia Tech.
Hard to imagine. Tech actually won three straight before Richt came to Athens.
“Yeah, that’s what I heard,” Georgia’s A.J. Bryant said.
He spoke like it was ancient legend.
The Bulldogs have several perceived rival-
ries. They are 4-3 against Auburn and Tennessee under Richt, 5-2 against South Carolina, 3-0 against Alabama. Florida, the win this season notwithstanding, still tilts the other way (2-5).
But against Tech, Richt is 6-0. Against Georgia, Chan Gailey is 0-5.
Keep everything else the same: If Gailey had beaten Georgia at least a couple of times, his job security wouldn’t be nearly so tenuous. If Richt, for all of his accomplishments, had struggled against the Yellow Jackets, his approval rating wouldn’t be nearly so high.
Jim Donnan lost his last three games against Georgia Tech, two of them in Athens. Exit, stage left. (Donnan went 25-8 in the other games those three seasons.)
When Richt arrived in 2001, it didn’t take long to set priorities. The Bulldogs won at Tech 31-17 that year. Then came a 51-7 blowout in Athens. Then 34-17 back on The Flats.
Richt had re-established the pecking order.
“It was a big deal,” he said of the 2001 game. “Georgia had lost three in a row. When we won that first game, that sort of made our season, really. We were 7-3 going into that game, and if we had lost and gone 7-4, and lost to our in-state rival for the fourth year in a row, it would’ve been a lot tougher. Winning that game, especially for that being our first season, made everything OK, so to speak.”
It did more than that. It started a trend that has set a new bar for Georgia coaches.
Richt is the first Bulldogs coach to begin his tenure with six consecutive wins against the Yellow Jackets. Vince Dooley (1964-88) won his first five before losing at Tech 6-0 in 1969. (He more than recovered from that defeat: Dooley went 19-6 in 25 seasons.)
Ray Goff lost his first two, then won five straight. Donnan won two, then lost three. Not good enough.
Richt’s dominance in this rivalry has filtered down to his players. It touches recruiting, alumni, fans.
“It would be a lot different if we had a coach who was like, ‘OK, we’ll win one this year, then you can win the next one, then we’ll win two, then you win two,’ or something like that,” safety Kelin Johnson said. “No. It’s not like that. We want to have power. It says a lot about your program, it says a lot about recruiting. We’re gonna fight for every recruit, we’re gonna fight for every player.”
If Georgia wins today, it will be the fourth straight group of four-year seniors — or three groups of fifth-year seniors — who will have never lost to Tech. What must it feel like on the other campus?
“I can’t imagine, because I’m not in their shoes — and I definitely would not want to be in their shoes,” Johnson said. “If I was a senior over there, I’d probably feel guilty. Like, ‘This is on my watch. It’s up to me.’ I’d probably be down in the dumps about it.”
Some believe Gailey’s future at Tech depends on the result of today’s game. Regardless, there’s little question that Georgia’s direction during Richt’s tenure began with this game.
Permalink | Comments (57) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Tech about No. 4 on Bulldogs’ list
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
While the Yellow Jackets are obsessed with Georgia in football every millisecond of their existence (“Yeah, Georgia is always in the back of your mind,” quarterback Taylor Bennett said), the Bulldogs save their deepest passion for others.
Auburn. Tennessee. Those Gator chomp people, and then Georgia Tech.
So this makes no sense: Georgia goes into Saturday’s game at Bobby Dodd Stadium with a six-game winning streak in the series, and you can make a case that the Bulldogs are the least-motivated party during most years when it comes to wishing to knock the chinstraps off the other guys.
“Every game I play in, I try to play my best, and I don’t look at it as a different feeling, because I’m going to try to hit you hard whoever you play for,” Tech linebacker Philip Wheeler said. “People try to make it sound like that we’re just excited for [Georgia], but I think that everybody on our team is just as excited about the other big games also. It’s the same excitement, and the same enthusiasm, which is very high coming from us.”
With apologies to Wheeler, Tech’s Great Satan really is Georgia. No question about it, which is why the Jackets must sting the Bulldogs this time. That is, if Tech wishes to enhance the quality of life for those into old white and gold from now until the teams’ next meeting in 2008.
Bennett nodded, while admitting that he is so anti-Bulldog that he doesn’t wear red. Added Tech coach Chan Gailey, when asked if he tells his Jackets about the importance of disliking anything in shoulder pads from Athens. “Not if they’re from the state of Georgia, I don’t [have to tell them],” Gailey said. “If they’re from out of state, you have to get those guys to understand a little bit. I think our players have done a good job of conveying the point.”
Whether that suggests this underdog group of Jackets will upset sixth-ranked Georgia is debatable, but this isn’t: Don’t believe the politically correct hype in the air around each Thanksgiving that wants you to believe that the Uga of the moment barks louder when Tech is the opponent.
Losing too often to the big three of Tennessee, Auburn and Florida has gotten Georgia coaches fired. Auburn is the Bulldogs’ oldest rival, and Tennessee is Tennessee. Then there is that squad from Gainesville, and we’re not talking about Georgia. Kelin Johnson mentioned before this year’s Florida game that the Bulldog Nation is significantly more concerned with the Gators than anybody else. “I know people who have their whole week messed up when we lose to them,” said Johnson, Georgia’s strong safety. “It’s like those people can’t even function when they get up in the morning.”
Sounds like Tech fans. Not when it comes to Clemson, the Jackets’ nearest opponent in the ACC, or to Florida State, Virginia Tech, Miami or any of the conference’s other elite teams through the years.
For those throughout the Yellow Jacket Nation, it’s always about Georgia. So it makes the Bulldogs’ dominance of Tech during most of this century even more striking. After all, the Jackets obsessed with whipping one opponent each season, and they still haven’t done it as of late. That’s among the reasons why Gailey (0-5 against Georgia) is in trouble on The Flats.
“Man, it’s everywhere. It’s something I have to deal with when it comes to everything I do,” Tech running back Tashard Choice said. “I umpire games with little kids, and they’re always coming up to me and saying, ‘Beat Georgia.’ You hear it at school on campus, and inside the classrooms. Teachers, everybody wants us to win the Georgia game.”
Tech hasn’t done so since 2000, which means Georgia has spent that stretch with more talent, stronger coaching, better luck or a combination of all three.
Now it makes sense.
Permalink | Comments (58) | Categories: Tech / ACC, Terence Moore, UGA / SEC
Falcons actually did the best they could
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
This one bore all the trappings of a holiday embarrassment. You know, like the time your Uncle Pete had too much sherry and wound up face down in the cranberry sauce. Or, to cite an infamous chapter in franchise annals, the time the Falcons closed a 3-13 season in the chill of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium before an intimate gathering of 7,792.
The date: Dec. 24, 1989. I was among the few on hand that wretched afternoon — indeed, I interviewed every hardy patron sitting in one section of the lower deck, all three of them — and en route to the Dome I had visions of something similar besmirching this Thanksgiving. Which only goes to show: As bad as this season has been, it can’t hold a candle to 1989. Give thanks for small favors.
Not to say this campaign has been chock-full of fun and frolic. It’s never a good sign when your franchise player spends Thanksgiving in prison, and it’s hard to anticipate glad tidings when you’re playing the Super Bowl champs with half your roster hurt and the other half wishing it were. But say this for these Falcons: They gave a decent account of themselves, at least for a while. They made Peyton Manning work to beat them.
He did beat them, of course. (What, you were expecting, “Miracle on Northside Drive?”) But he had to clamber from a 10-0 hole to do it, and when you’re the Falcons and your last 10-point lead came 53 days ago … well, you’re tempted to take a picture of the scoreboard for use in next year’s media guide, the way Division I-AA teams do when facing one of the big boys.
Such a photo, it should be noted, would show a surprisingly full Dome. Attendance was announced as 69,845, and the actual crowd seemed pretty close to that. That means an awful lot of folks left hearth and home to venture downtown for this glaring mismatch. Who knew so many among us had an Uncle Pete to duck out on?
The Falcons gave the paying public as good a show as they’re apt to give. They led by 10 after one quarter and were in decent shape midway through the second. Leading 13-7, they’d forced the Colts to punt for the third time in four possessions. Alas, referee Mike Carey suffered a hallucination. He thought he saw Demorrio Williams run into Hunter Smith. What really happened was that Hunter the Punter gave a little hop and landed atop Williams, which shouldn’t have been a penalty but was adjudged as such.
The Colts took their gift and put the Falcons to bed. Indianapolis led 21-13 at the half but only 31-13 at the end. So now you’re asking: “Is this all we can reasonably ask, that the Falcons be semi-competitive against a really good opponent for a little while?” And the answer is …
Yes. What transpired Thursday night was the depleted 2007 Falcons playing at something approaching maximum capacity. They might win another game — some tepid teams remain on the schedule — but they can’t line up and play against anybody of consequence for long. They’re as lousy as we thought they’d be when Michael Vick was indicted.
“We felt like we had an opportunity to win,” said Bobby Petrino, but coaches always think that way when they’re fiddling with their X’s and O’s. And then the game begins and theory yields to reality, and that’s what keeps happening to the Falcons — an underwhelming team gets overwhelmed by the cold, cold truth.
There aren’t supposed to be any moral victories in the NFL, but the Falcons aren’t capable of much more. They could have lost 45-3 Thursday night, but they did better than that. They actually came closer against the Colts than they had against Tampa Bay five days earlier. Give thanks for small favors.
Permalink | Comments (107) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
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