They’re through the roof.
That would be the expectations for Georgia’s 2019 football team.
As the Bulldogs prepare for the opening of preseason football camp next week, their ravenous fan base already is foaming at the mouth in anticipation of the season’s possibilities. Georgia is a runaway favorite to win the SEC’s Eastern Division and, with close calls the past two seasons, anything less than an SEC championship and competing for the national title certainly will be a disappointment.
You have to go back 38 years to find a time when expectations were this great. Georgia headed into the 1981 season fully expecting to repeat as national champions. Not only were the Bulldogs coming off an undefeated season, they were returning the greatest tailback in the game at the time and maybe of all-time, in Herschel Walker, then a sophomore.
The excitement surrounding the team as it trotted onto Woodruff Practice Fields for two-a-days that August was at an all-time high.
“I can’t speak for all the other teams that year but we were certainly going into ’81 thinking about (repeating),” said Buck Belue, a senior and returning starter at quarterback that year. “We looked around and felt like we had more talent overall. We were coming off that national title and we were confident. We knew we’d be right there.”
Even the cautious Vince Dooley felt good about the prospects.
“You couldn’t argue with the facts,” said Dooley, who will have the field at Sanford Stadium named after him before a game this season. “We were picked high based on what we had done and who we had coming back. It was just a fact of life. We knew we had to get ready for the challenge, because everybody we’d play would be at their best.”
They were. The Bulldogs came up short in 1981. The death knell came early as Georgia committed nine turnovers on the way to losing 13-3 on the road to Clemson in the third game. The Bulldogs spent the rest of the season waiting for the Tigers to slip up, winning all their remaining games by an average of 25.7 points apiece.
Alas, Clemson never faltered in becoming an undefeated national champion. Then Georgia fell dramatically to Dan Marino’s Pittsburgh Panthers 24-20 in the Sugar Bowl.
The Bulldogs came even closer to winning another national title in 1982, Walker’s Heisman Trophy season. But this time they were undone 24-20 by the late-game heroics of Penn State quarterback Todd Blackledge.
“You could argue that the ’81 and ’82 teams were more talented than the ’80 team, but they somehow, some way won them all,” Dooley said. “We did fulfill some of our goals, winning three SEC championships. But we fell short of that other one.”
Likewise, coach Kirby Smart’s past two teams have come agonizing close to winning it all. The fourth-year coach’s 2019 squad is considered the most talented of the last three he has fielded, including 2017 SEC champions and national runner-ups. This group consists of recruits that made up the nation’s No. 3, No. 1 and No. 2-ranked recruiting classes the past three years.
It also features one of the country’s best backs in D’Andre Swift, a returning starter in quarterback Jake Fromm, arguably the country’s best offensive line, a young but highly touted collection of defensive players and a proven scoring weapon in kicker Rodrigo Blankenship.
Including a championship-caliber schedule that will bring Notre Dame and Texas A&M to Sanford Stadium, all the ingredients seem to be accounted for.
“This could be their best team,” Dooley said. “They’ve certainly got some players. But there are a lot of little things that become big things if they don’t go right.”
One of the commonalities between those Dooley teams and Smart’s current one is who they’re trying to get past. Clemson was a nemesis in the 1980s as it suddenly is again today. Now, though, it’s SEC West-rival Alabama that represents the Bulldogs’ greatest road block. The Crimson Tide knocked Georgia out in overtime of the 2017 national championship game and came from behind to beat the Dogs again last year in the SEC Championship game.
“They’re trying to get over that Alabama hump,” said Belue, a sports radio talk show host at Atlanta’s The Fan. “So, they’ve got several things on the agenda, but that’s got to be at the top of the list. You figure if you’re able to do that, you’re right where you want to be, playing for the ‘Natty.’”
That’s a fact that Smart and the Bulldogs seem to have embraced, with the theme “Do More” emblazoned on the players’ workout gear and on wall graphics around the Butts-Mehre Football Complex.
“We know Alabama has been very powerful in this conference for a long time,” Smart said at SEC Media Days on July 16. “We respect the job they do. I’ve got a lot of respect for coach (Nick) Saban and his program. I probably wouldn't be here today if it weren't for him. I also understand we have a really good program, too.”
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