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AJC > Sports > UGA > Blog > Archives > 2008 > January
January 2008
Who looks the most dangerous?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s been kind of a crazy week, what with Fred Munzenmaier flagging down a cop car thinking it’s a taxi, Suzanne Yoculan trying to pink-out the Steg, and the latest installment in “Where in the World Is Brian Van Gorder?”
You know Steve “No Bowl” Superior has got to be plenty peeved at Van Gorder’s latest career lurch and, as has been discussed elsewhere on the site, that might make this year’s trip by the Dawgs to Columbia a little less complicated.
They can use all the help they can get, because the 2008 schedule, with 10 teams that were bowl-eligible this year, is going to be one of the toughest (if not the toughest) in the nation. The late-season stretch of consecutive games away from Athens (meeting defending national champion LSU in Baton Rouge, Heisman winner Tim Tebow and Florida in Jacksonville, a probably less dangerous Kentucky in Lexington and a new spread offense at Auburn) looks like a real Murderer’s Row.
One thing in the Dawgs’ favor is that the past couple of years they’ve tended to finish strong, so running that late-season gauntlet doesn’t look undoable.
But early in the season if Georgia doesn’t maintain the head of steam they had at the end of this past season, there are other potential stumbling blocks.
Which game in the first half of the schedule looks the most dangerous?
Barring a Michigan-like lapse against a 1AA team, Georgia Southern shouldn’t be one of them. Central Michigan (where Mark Richt got some of his original coaching staff) was the MAC champ, but the Chippewas got hammered by Clemson. They did push Purdue in the Motor City Bowl before falling 51-48, though, so the Dawgs certainly need to take them seriously.
Then there’s South Carolina. Ah, the Gamecocks and Spurrier. The Bulldog fan’s lament is that but for a couple of dropped passes in the 2007 game, the Dawgs would have been playing a week later in New Orleans earlier this month. Both teams looked pretty awful on offense last year but the Gamecocks defense was the difference. This year? Never underestimate the Prince of Darkness, but considering how the respective teams finished the 2007 season, if UGA doesn’t lay a major whuppin’ on the Cocks, a lot of us will be very disappointed. And surprised.
After that comes the road trip out West to Arizona State, which shocked a lot of folks this past season under new coach Dennis Erickson and got as high as No. 6 in the rankings before collapsing late in the season. Assuming the Dawgs have taken care of business up to this point and aren’t caught looking ahead, it should be an early-season statement game for Georgia.
Then comes a visit to Athens by Alabama and St. Nick, who will be looking to avenge last year’s OT loss and make their own statement. Despite a great recruiting year, it’s likely the Tide is still at least another year away from a return to greatness.
After an off week we get the game that many Georgia fans are circling in red: Tennessee in Athens. The Vols have embarrassed UGA two years in a row (and I’ve still heard no credible explanation for Georgia’s total lack of performance this past season in Knoxville), so this is a game you know the Dawgs want badly. And Erik Ainge is gone (thank goodness). After that, we get Vandy, which upset Georgia two years ago and gave us a scare last year in Nashville before the Dawgs turned things around. It shouldn’t be that close this year.
And then that Murder’s Row before another off week, and then we wind up in Athens with the Yellow Jackets. The main question: Will Georgia fans love the much-hyped Paul Johnson as much as they did Chan Gailey?
At this point, the odds against Georgia making it through all of that without a stumble or two look long. But if the Dawgs can do it, there shouldn’t be any question about who’s the No. 1 team in the land.
Playoffs and prognostications
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On some recent subjects of interest to the Bulldog Nation:
THE ADAMS PLAN: Did anyone ever seriously think Michael Adams’ eight-team playoff proposal was likely to get anywhere? Sure, a lot of us would love to see such a development, but it’s going to take more than one grandstanding university president trying to show up LSU on its coronation day to gain any traction for such a plan. (I thought it amusing and instructive that almost immediately after Adams, a former PR man, launched his suspiciously timed trial balloon, old nemesis Vince Dooley, who has a much better idea of what’s likely to actually happen in the NCAA, came out on the other side.) The previously offered “plus-one” idea favored by Dooley and many of the conference chiefs, with the four BCS bowls having the teams seeded 1 vs. 4, 2 vs. 3, seems to have the most chance of actually getting anywhere if they can figure out how to overcome the Rose Bowl’s intransigence. Here’s an idea: Let the Rose wallow in its Pac 10/Big 10 mediocrity, but drop it from the BCS. (It already has a separate TV deal anyway.) Replace the Rose in the BCS with the Peach-fil-A or Cotton or Capitol One and move ahead with the plus-one plan. Don’t you think the Pac 10 and Big 10 ultimately would fall in line? After all, if you were a Pac 10 or Big 10 team with a realistic shot at the BCS, would you rather play in the Rose for tradition’s sake or have a shot at the national championship?
PRESEASON POLLS: In the past, I wouldn’t have been too comfortable with all this talk about Georgia possibly being rated No. 1 or No. 2 going into the season. Too much pressure, too distracting for the players. But recent years have proved that starting out the season ranked No. 1 or No. 2 definitely gives you a leg up (no doggie pun intended). If you win out, even a hot undefeated team (like Auburn a few seasons ago) is unlikely to displace you. And even if you lose, you have a better chance at getting another shot at it (or even two or three shots at it like LSU this year). As long as the Dawgs continue to play with confidence and enthusiasm, I don’t think an early high ranking would be a problem. (The much bigger problem is that killer road schedule we have next year.) But despite ESPN.com and others predicting UGA will start out at No. 1, I agree with my son and some other fans I’ve discussed this with that it’s more likely the AP and coaches polls will put USC in that position (as long as Pete Carroll stays put), with UGA at No. 2. Really, it doesn’t matter whether you’re No. 1 or No. 2 at the start as long as you’re in one of those spots come December.
COACHING CHANGE: If Dave Johnson jumps to West Virginia, as seems likely, UGA’s tight-end recruits just need to ask themselves one thing: Which matters more, who my position coach is or the overall program and its prospects?
Just like football
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
That was the chant from the UGA students tonight at the Steg as the struggling Bulldogs pulled out a tough win over the Jackets.
I don’t have the record book handy, but they said on the Bulldog Radio Network broadcast that Tech is 0-12 in Athens since 1976.
Dennis Felton may have trouble holding on to his players, but at least the Dawgs’ mastery over the Jackets at Stegeman Coliseum still holds.
Well done!
They don’t call it Big Easy for nothing!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fran Tarkenton got it exactly right when it came to this year’s Sugar Bowl.
“A total mismatch.”
That’s how the legendary pro great and former UGA quarterback, acting as a Fox analyst, summed up Georgia’s total domination of the much vaunted Hawaii Warriors on the postgame show early Wednesday morning.
And after USC’s demolition of favorite son Illinois in the Rose Bowl Tuesday, you’ve got to wonder if the folks in Pasadena were kicking themselves hard (as they should have been) over the fact that they passed up the chance to match the Trojans and Dawgs because of their desire to cling to a traditional but antiquated Pac 10/Big 10 lineup.
I wasn’t alone among Georgia fans a couple of weeks ago when I said amid the nonstop media buildup of Hawaii that I smelled another Boise State overhype, but that didn’t stop ESPN, Fox and, yes, even the local media from portraying the team from the islands as some juggernaut that the Dawgs would be lucky to even slow down. Heck, even with the game in the bag for Mark Richt’s team and humbled NCAA record holder Colt Brennan weeping on the sideline as his backup finished out the game, Fox still kept up the stream of heartwarming anecdotes about the suddenly sainted June Junes and his team. (Sometimes they were too busy with the stories to even describe what was happening on the field!)
Hey, why let the facts and the real story get in the way of a colorful myth? After all, we’d been told that as many as 30,000 to 50,000 fans from the Five-O state were in New Orleans for the game and that they and the team were sky-high and Georgia was hobbled and the Bulldog Nation and its players less than enthused and so on and so on, yadda yadda yadda. The facts: The Superdome was about three-quarters blacked out by the UGA faithful, and even with Knowshon Moreno at less than full speed he had two touchdowns by the time he’d handled the ball five times.
The real story was that Hawaii’s undefeated record meant nothing because they had not played an SEC-caliber defense before Tuesday. Welcome to the big leagues, bruddas.
And then Fox’s Thom Brennaman made a complete ass of himself by lambasting Richt because, with 10 minutes left in the game, our second, third and fourth-stringers were still playing hard. So we threw for the end zone on fourth-and-goal. If we’d taken the gimme 3 points of a field goal, he no doubt would have still accused us of padding the score. What did he want backup Joe Cox to do, take a knee?
If it had been the likes of Steve Spurrier coaching the Dawgs, our starters still would have been in the game and the final result would have been even more embarrassing for Hawaii than it was.
I said here before that Georgia needed to make a statement in this game. Well, they did. LOUD and clear. Let’s hope the folks who vote in the polls were listening.
BOWL BITS: That preening jerk Keenan Jones of the Warriors, who kept losing his helmet to get more screen time, should have been ejected from the game for that blatantly illegal and quite obviously deliberate helmet-to-helmet hit on punt receiver Mikey Henderson, who suffered a concussion. And Thom Brennaman wondered why the Dawgs were still hitting hard in the fourth quarter. … I’ve had problems with some of Willie Martinez’s defensive game plans in the past, but he and his players did an absolutely masterful job against the Warriors. You just know that somewhere Erk Russell was grinning ear to ear. Eight sacks, without even blitzing. Six takeaways (a BCS bowl record). Colt Brennan held to career lows. Now THAT’S Georgia defense. … That was great for Brandon Coutu to close out a stellar career with a performance that included kicking the longest field goal in BCS bowl history. … I guess you can understand Mike Bobo going conservative in his playcalling once Georgia was up 24-3, but even so if it hadn’t been for some DROPPED PASSES, including a couple in the end zone, the score would have gotten even more lopsided. (Too bad no points resulted from Ramarcus Brown’s great long kickoff return.) … Man, that third quarter seemed to last FOREVER! And what with the Fox-mandated late start, the fourth quarter didn’t even begin until after midnight. Ridiculous. … Nice touch letting the soon to depart Blake Barnes kill the clock at the end. Good luck to him at Delta State. … It was entirely fitting that a defensive player got the Sugar Bowl Most Outstanding Player trophy for the first time in many years. Congrats to Marcus Howard on playing a terrific game. … After a day of watching football with me and my family in Decatur (except my son, who was at the Superdome), my brother Tim headed home to Roswell at halftime. As he got there, a dusting of snow was falling. Or, as he put it, look at the sugar falling out of the sky!
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