UGA blog finds new home
Morning all. As I’ve said a couple of times this week, we’re converting this blog over to a WordPress platform and it will be a permanent move the first of next week.
Those of you who are regulars probably know that I’m not what you’d call techno-wizard when it comes to these things. But from what I understand the technology offered in this new format should make the blogging and commenting experience better for all. Of course, I’ll be learning as we go along, too. But I’m hoping to provide more pictures and video and things like that which should bring the blog more to life.
Of course, this blog is nothing without all you guys so I want to heartily invite (read: beg) you to come over to the new site by CLICKING HERE ON THE NEW ADDRESS and save it in your browsers. As of Monday, Feb. 23rd, this will be the permanent home of the UGA blog you so love or, in the case of some of you, love to loathe. If you’d prefer to copy and paste or just memorize, the new address is: http://blogs.ajc.com/uga-sports-blog/.
See at the new place!
AJC > Sports > UGA > Blog > Archives > 2007 > February > 28
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Football, basketball or UGA?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s nice to see all the lively and interesting banter about basketball in this forum this week. Certainly a lot of that can be attributed to the team itself, which if nothing else is more competitive this season and, therefore, is giving us more to talk and write about.
As most of y’all know, I’ve been covering Georgia’s basketball team for the past three years (and several other times off and on over many years). As it so happens, I was around for most of the Bulldogs’ best years. I was covering Hugh Durham’s team in 1990 when it won the SEC regular-season championship and I followed both of Tubby Smith’s Georgia teams into the NCAA tournament, the first of which lost to Syracuse in one of the greatest Sweet Sixteen games of all time.
I was also around for the Ron Jirsa era and for the tail end of Jim Harrick’s regime, too. But that’s another story.
More recently, I’ve had to chronicle some pretty bad seasons as Dennis Felton labored to rebuild Georgia’s program. It’s been a long, tough road for Felton but I have witnessed firsthand the internal rejuvenation he has overseen and you can see him starting to reap some external rewards as well. By that I mean better players, better teams, more wins, some notoriety for his coaching ability.
All of which brings me to this. I truly cringe when I hear so-called Georgia fans say that they could care less about what the basketball team does. I’ve never really understood why there is not the passion for basketball that there is for football. Isn’t it, after all, about supporting your school and/or the state university?
I say that to get to this. Florida to think of itself as a “football school.” So did Tennessee. They’re not anymore. The Gators are defending national champions and one of the nation’s truly elite programs under Billy Donovan and Bruce Pearl has got his Vols right on their heels.
Vanderbilt’s pretty darn good, too, and South Carolina is just a couple of years into a brand new arena. Oh, yeah, then there’s Kentucky.
In case you haven’t noticed, all those schools compete in the same division of the same conference Georgia competes in. So in my humble opinion, Georgia people who say they don’t care about basketball are saying they don’t mind losing to those teams year in and year out. And if I know anything about Dawg fans, that’s never the case.
Florida and Tennessee are proving you can be successful at both sports. Why in the world wouldn’t Georgia fans also want that?
Regardless of what happens in these last few games, Felton has Georgia’s program on the right track. He’s building it back up the right way, slowly and deliberately getting better players, getting them on track to graduate and becoming increasingly competitive. I don’t know if it’s this year (likely not), next year or the year after that, but they’re going to have a breakout season soon and make a little postseason run.
The Vols come to Athens on Saturday for Senior Day and one of the most crucial games to be played at The Stegosaurus in a long time. These are the same Vols that ran up and down the aisles of UGA’s facility last year to congratulate their more excitable and boisterous fans for making the trip there and helping UT pull out a hard-fought road victory.
I’m just wondering if Georgia fans will sit by idly again and let a more passionate group grab the gold. Or will they show up and say this is our team and this is our house and you ain’t coming in here and leaving with anything?
Until Dawgs embrace this, March Madness is going to continue to be for everybody else.
