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AJC > Sports > UGA > Blog > Archives > 2007 > December
December 2007
Building up the ‘Bows
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Checking in from vacation, I see that the media pumping of Hawaii’s Warriors and the sniping about this Sugar Bowl being a lose-lose situation for Georgia continue.
I know Hawaii has a fine quarterback who’s got an impressive stat sheet. But I can’t help but be reminded of the similar buildups of Boise State and Oklahoma State before the Dawgs met them.
Granted, Hawaii looks to be better than either of those teams were. And, yes, Oklahoma learned the hard way last year that these non-BCS conference intruders can smack you upside the head if you’re not careful.
But I think maybe some folks are getting a little carried away here in painting Hawaii as some sort of unstoppable force. Yeah, they throw the ball a lot and have scored a lot of points against questionable opposition.
Georgia also has scored a lot of points. Against much better teams. The Dawgs’ defenders also seem to have gotten up to speed in the latter half of the season and have gotten a lot of sacks, even against highly touted QBS.
The only real danger is if UGA sleepwalks into this game (and we all know that has happened occasionally in the past). But I think Mark Richt will do whatever is necessary to see that isn’t the case this time.
As for the lose-lose business, I understand the line of thinking: Hawaii is a largely untested WAC team. If Georgia doesn’t beat them badly, it’s an underwhelming win. And if Georgia loses, it’s a gigantic upset.
Such thinking overlooks the third option, however. If Georgia wins big in a BCS bowl against a previously undefeated media darling team, it’s a GREAT way to start the new football year.
The Dawgs can make a statement with this game. That’s what the SEC’s new Great Motivator needs to be stressing to his team.
Time for a blackout on whining
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
All this moaning is getting old.
First we had to endure a week of Les Miles’ bellyaching about how Georgia shouldn’t be ranked ahead of his team because the Bulldogs weren’t playing for their conference championship. It worked, of course. With the help of slobbering Lou Holtz and most of the other ESPN chattering heads, Les managed to lobby his tottering Tigers into position to play for the national championship, despite the fact they couldn’t hold on to the No. 1 spot twice earlier in the season.
Yeah, the Dawgs got jobbed by the whichever-way-the-wind-is-blowing-this-week “system” that’s called the BCS. But a whining Bulldog Nation isn’t doing the Georgia team any favors by focusing on that disappointing fact.
Likewise, the Dawgs themselves need to realize they never really stood a chance of being elevated into the game (no matter whether they deserved it) and instead celebrate that we’re still going to New Orleans!
Let’s face it, last week when Georgia stood at No. 4 we all understood that it was a VERY long shot for the Dawgs to move up to the champiønship game if Nos. 1 and 2 lost, because it was perfectly obvious from past experience that if LSU, Virginia Tech and Oklahoma won their conference championship games the “what have you done in the past six days?” mentality of the BCS electorate would give them a boost that was likely to leapfrog them ahead of the idle Bulldogs in the rankings. That’s why I wrote last week that I was pulling for LSU to lose the SEC game.
No matter that LSU hasn’t exactly made a strong case on the field. The ESPN crowd (and Miles) put a lot of weight on the fact that the Tigers’ two losses were in overtime. So what? They were still losses. Had two Georgia receivers not dropped passes against South Carolina, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion; Georgia would be playing for the national championship. Period. But somehow LSU’s losses carried asterisks in the minds of the BCS voters.
Of course, it’s natural that in the heady hours after another trainwreck Saturday in which the top two teams lost again that a lot of folks got caught up in the POSSIBILITY of the Dawgs moving up. It doesn’t matter that Georgia is one of the two hottest teams in the country and deserved a shot. If there was a playoff, as Kirk Herbstreit noted Sunday night, Georgia would be one of the teams people would be putting their money on to advance. But there isn’t. Instead, we get the mumbo jumbo of computer polls done by a half-dozen geeks and politicking by whining coaches.
So two teams that lost to unranked opponents in their next to last games end up backing into the national championship. That’s the BCS.
It just wasn’t in the cards for Georgia. So let’s forget it.
The Bulldogs and their fans should focus instead on the fact that Georgia turned its season around in spectacular fashion and made the BCS as the SEC’s representative in the Sugar Bowl (a Georgia fan favorite) a mere month and a half after folks were worried about whether we would even get a bid to one of the also-ran bowls in Nashville or Shreveport. Even slobberin’ Lou (who couldn’t resist jabbing Georgia as not even having won its division) said Sunday that Mark Richt has to be a strong candidate for national coach of the year for his midseason reinvention of his team and himself.
Georgia’s focus should be on finishing the season in a spectacular fashion. Hawaii may come from the WAC, but they know how to score points and they’re going to be sky-high in New Orleans. The last thing we need is for them to be met by a Georgia team that’s still fretting about what might have been.
Instead, the Dawgs need to make a strong statement in that game. One that the even the fickle BCS voters will remember come preseason.
OTHER BOWL NOTES: The Bulldogs will be wearing their black jerseys in New Orleans, and Richt said Sunday night he hopes to “blackout the Dome.” The Bulldog Nation always travels well to New Orleans, so let’s hope everyone embraces being back in black. … The real loser in the BCS bowl-selection shuffle was the Rose, which had a chance to pair Georgia with the nation’s other hottest team, Southern Cal, but balked and couldn’t get past its nonsensical Big 10 vs. Pac 10 tradition, opting for three-loss Illinois, which certainly did not belong in a BCS bowl. So instead of having probably the most anticipated BCS game, the Rose ends up with the most irrelevant.
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