If it’s true that life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass but learning to dance in the rain, Mark Richt is once again channeling the footwork of Nureyev and Astaire and moving to the beat of Zig Ziglar.
His football team has slipped from BCS title contender to 4-3. Georgia has lost two consecutive SEC games, the last one to Vanderbilt, and in this conference, that translates somewhat to, “Coach, how ’bout you pour this marinade over your head until the coals are ready?” Injuries have red-lined starters, and backups, and maybe their backups, from the depth chart. The unfortunate lifeforms that swim in the cesspools of message boards and sports-talk radio want the head coach out. Again.
Richt? He’s cracking jokes. He smiled and chuckled when asked at his news conference Tuesday what wide receivers would be available for the Florida game.
“Good question. Let me look at the depth chart,” he said. “Normally I can rattle off names and tell you our top six or seven.”
He claims to be generally oblivious about speculation of coaching firings. (Doubtful, but it was amusing.) He says he never has heard of the “Dawgvent.” (Point in his favor.) He smiled again when asked about his email’s inbox.
“I really don’t see it,” he said.
Nobody knows your email address?
“Oh, people have my email address. But I don’t look at my email.”
This is the public Richt. It can be a little different behind the scenes.
Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity saw Richt before anybody else following the 31-27 loss at Vanderbilt two weeks ago.
“He was as disappointed as I’ve ever seen him,” he said.
“I think it’s hard for anybody to understand the range of emotions these coaches go through. The lows in the business are way too low. The highs sometimes are more relief than joy or jubilation. Think of the swing that he’s been on — from the highs of post-LSU to post-Vanderbilt.
“How you deal with that is so important because you have 120 kids looking at you. What’s his body language? Is he all doom-and-gloom? When we were 0-2 in 2011, if Mark didn’t remain positive around his players and coaches, we never would’ve been able to flip the switch.”
Ten days had passed since the Vanderbilt loss. National-title hopes have flat-lined. SEC East hopes are only slightly north of that, even if more promising than before Missouri’s late-game implosion to South Carolina. Richt was between group interviews on media-swarm Tuesday, standing in an quiet area of Georgia’s multipurpose facility.
“It has been tough — as tough as anything we’ve gone through,” he said. “But as fast as we went from where we were to where we are, we’ve got a shot to get back there. It’s not over. So I’m fighting for a chance to turn the season around.”
Note how quickly he transitioned from the woe-is-me opening to his remarks.
He acknowledged there has been some suffering in the past few weeks: the Tennessee game, when Georgia escaped with a win but lost several players to injury; the Missouri game, a home loss and another defensive collapse; the defeat at Vanderbilt, the program’s first loss in Nashville, Tenn., in 22 years. This followed the win over LSU, which elevated Georgia to No. 6 in the national rankings.
Georgia is a slight favorite over Florida, but that’s more about the Gators’ own injury problems and anemic offense — last in the SEC; yes, even behind Kentucky — than it is what kind of shape the Dogs are in. The offense has been so dented by injuries that offensive coordinator Mike Bobo felt gun-shy about calling any long pass plays at Vanderbilt. (Richt’s admission: “If we had to play the game again, we would’ve taken a couple of shots downfield.”) Special teams have been dreadful, defense even worse.
It’s raining. But Richt is dancing, and processing.
“My natural bend has been that if something bad happens, I have just never been the guy to want to blame somebody or find out who did what at the moment,” he said. “Now, when you watch film, there’s a time for that. But if something bad happens, and that happens a lot in football, my thought is, ‘OK, where are we now and what do we have to do to win?’ You understand in life things will happen.”
At his post-Vanderbilt news conference, he looked as if life had been sucked out of him.
“Tired, disappointed, all those things,” he said.
How long did the defeat stay with him, especially given the bye week that followed?
“Not long. Now, winning would’ve made the bye week more fun. But I didn’t dwell on it. I watched film, we talked about things and we moved on. For some reason, even when I was younger, when something went wrong I would always look inward. I’d ask, ‘What could I have done to keep that from happening?’ I guess I just felt anything else was a waste of time.”
What rain?
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