November 16, 2002

I can’t imagine any thinking Bulldog out there who could buy into this Georgia National Championship hype. I am as excited as anybody about this season and think CMR will have a very good team, but our friends in the media are setting up the Bulldog Nation for a fall. Articles like Mark Bradley’s in the AJC over the weekend and Tony Barnhart’s today are typical setups that I’ve seen time and time again from media types in all sorts of endeavors. Set expectations unrealistically high, then declare the season a failure when these totally unrealistic expectations aren’t met.

The reason this happens is simple: a team meeting its realistic expectations isn’t news! So we’ll just have to live with it in the media.  It will get worse.  Much worse.

Every year the national champion can look back at its season and pick out at least two, usually three, and sometimes four plays that made the difference between victory and defeat. Georgia has a great team and an awesome program headed in the right direction, but getting into the national championship game is much more a matter of sheer luck and happenstance due to matters completely out of the control of the team. Take 1980. But for a UT fumble on the Georgia 2 and Belue to Scott, we have a great 9-2 season. Also George Rogers’s fumble deep in Georgia territory sealed a near loss for the Dawgs. The Cocks punch it in there instead, and Georgia is 8-3 and playing Minnesota in the Tangerine Bowl in 1980.

So forget about Mythical National Championships, people.

Personally, I really would be surprised if Georgia makes it through September undefeated. One of Steve Spurrier, Arizona State, or Alabama is going to slip in and beat Georgia unless the team is ready for 60 minutes of hell in all three games. Steve Spurrier worries me the most, especially if the team blows the doors off Southern and Central Michigan to open the season. A loss to Steve Spurrier or Bama will require the Dawgs to run the rest of their SEC slate to get in the SECC Game, though obviously a loss to Bama is less dangerous because a sweep of the East would assure a win on tiebreakers. But a loss to either deals a serious blow to SEC Championship hopes, and MNC hopes (though you shouldn’t have them) would then hinge on not two or three, but probably six incidents of divine intervention (see LSU, 2007).

And you people are crazy that think Georgia is just going to waltz into that 100 degree heat in Tempe and stomp Arizona State. It is brutal out there and the team is going to be ready for us, and trust me PAC-10 fans hate everything SEC with all their hearts. I’d be very surprised at anything better than a 4th quarter comeback victory.

October looks to feature another loss among Tennessee, LSU, or Florida. If you have given our boys a better shot at LSU because of their situation at quarterback, read SMQ’s somewhat obligatory assessment and rethink. And if the team emerges unscathed from September, and they have an off week to read about how great they are, a letdown against Tennessee is virtually assured, the only question will be whether they can win despite the letdown (see Kentucky, 2007). Florida needs no introduction.

November looks to be easier, but with Auburn you never can tell, and every July any thinking Bulldog puts this game as 50-50 at best no matter what.

I for one am glad to see seven very losable games on the Dawgs schedule. Losing 3 of these 7 is a definite possiblity and would be a respectable campaign (depending on exactly how the Dawgs go about losing those games). Winning 5 of those 7 would yield a great season and a New Year’s Day bowl bid. Heck, if they lose the right two, they could still end up on top of the East. Winning 6 would virtually assure a spot in the Dome, but winning 6 (or 7) will require one (or two) of those Belue-to-Scott, Greene-to-Johnson miracle plays that go down in history.  Usually though, it takes at least one miracle play to simply make it to the Dome from the East. 

So forget about national championships. The only thing that matters is whether Georgia can beat Steve Spurrier after taking care of business in weeks 1 & 2. Then, and only then, will Thinking Bulldogs concern themselves with the most important goal for the team this year: winning the SEC East. That is the true, and realistic, goal for the season. Anything more will hinge more on the bounces of an inflated oblong ball, the relationship between cletes and turf, and the wild undulations of the regular season as it unfolds. Win the East. The rest of that stuff will then take care of itself.

And remember what Larry said right before David Greene hit Fred Gibson to set us up with a first down on the Auburn 16, “You’re not supposed to ever give up.”  Keep the faith, and if it comes to pass that a MNC is not in the cards this year, don’t let the bastards in the media get you down.