Bulldogs move on -- to Tennessee

By Tim Tucker

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – As Bulldog Nation continued in recent days to fret over the finish of last week's game – the celebration penalty, the poor kickoff coverage and the missed tackle that combined to turn a lead into a loss -- Georgia's football team had to move on.

The season has this way of not slowing down for anguish.

There's always another game that requires attention – Saturday's at Tennessee, for example.

"There is just not a whole lot of time to let your emotions get going," Georgia coach Mark Richt said. "Because one loss can cause you a second loss if you don't let it go.

"Now, I have had many times in the offseason where I have felt like I got kicked in the gut. It'll come out months later sometimes. I'll be reviewing TV [video] of a game in the summer and start to grieve then sometimes, but in the middle of the season, you just got to keep moving forward."

So one week after the last-minute loss to No. 4-ranked LSU in Athens, the Bulldogs will be in Neyland Stadium for a 12:21 p.m. game against Tennessee, trying to prevent one debacle of a defeat from snowballing.

It'll be the first time in 25 meetings since 1937 that the Bulldogs (3-2, 2-1 SEC) and the Vols (2-3, 0-2 SEC) play each other with neither team ranked in the Associated Press or coaches' polls.  Like the Dogs, the Vols are coming off a loss -- 26-22 to Auburn last week.

"I guess people are looking at it as we both have something to prove," Georgia cornerback Brandon Boykin said.

Actually, the game is largely off the national radar and has been overshadowed even in Bulldog Nation by the continuing fallout from last week's loss – the admission by the SEC that the excessive-celebration penalty against A.J. Green should not have been called and the criticism of the kickoff-coverage and tackling breakdowns that exacerbated the problems posed by the penalty.

As painful as last week's loss was, the Bulldogs see their upcoming stretch as potentially season-defining. They play their next three games away from Athens: the Tennessee game followed by games at Vanderbilt Oct. 17 and vs. Florida in Jacksonville on Oct. 31.

"We can make our name and get back to the position we want to be in if we take care of these games," Boykin said. "Just because we're not ranked right now doesn't mean anything. ... We can correct the things we did wrong and be back where we're supposed to be. I'm very confident of that, and so are my teammates."

The stretch starts at loud and large Neyland Stadium, college football's fourth-largest venue with 100,000-plus seats.

"The big orange house," Richt called it.

"The only experience I've had with it is on video game," said Boykin, a sophomore making his first trip to Tennessee. "It's always, like, the loudest stadium in the video game. I'm sure it'll be like that in real life. I'm looking forward to it."

Georgia's last visit to Knoxville, in 2007, was hardly pleasant. The Bulldogs fell behind 28-0 in the first half and lost 35-14.

"I don't think there has been any game that felt more empty than that day," Richt said this week.

Georgia didn't lose again that season, by the way.