In a recent comment, skigator93, you made the perfectly reasonable observation that you were glad to be living in the now, at a time when Florida football (which saw its standards raised substantially in the 1990s under Steve Spurrier) is reaching new heights under Urban Meyer, who probably is the odds-on favorite to win a second national championship in a three-year span.

While, obviously, Georgia does not have a national title to show for the Bulldogs’ recent success, that is the lone accolade they have not earned during the Mark Richt era, which has seen a similar upswing in the Red and Black’s already lofty historic expectations. If the ‘Dawgs can beat Georgia Tech and win a New Year’s Day bowl game—-neither of which I consider a given, incidentally—-a second straight 11-2 season will demonstrate that Georgia now occupies the position of a perennial power that seldom will be down, and never will be down for long.

A record that would have caused dancing in the streets under Ray Goff or Jim Donnan causes mild (only mild, mind you) grousing in Bulldog Nation under Mark Richt, just as last year’s 9-4 season was disappointing to the Gator faithful, who quite happily would have accepted such a campaign less than two decades earlier.

Georgia is a good team, maybe even a very good team. Georgia will have a good season, maybe even a very good season. However, Georgia, like Florida, has all of the institutional advantages of a year-in, year-out conference and national contender: an excellent coach, consistently top-shelf recruiting, top-notch facilities, good weather, a history of success, a scenic campus (if you know what I mean), an expectation of consistent achievement at the highest level, and a large devoted fan base that is prepared to support its team, financially and otherwise.

Georgia and Florida each enter every autumn with a reasonable expectation of winning the Eastern Division and going on to contend for the conference, and perhaps national, crowns. Because they play one another every year, either the Bulldogs or the Gators are going to go home disappointed. Obviously, the Saurians have enjoyed the lion’s share of the recent success in head-to-head matchups (although, in the post-Spurrier era, the Red and Black have made three S.E.C. championship game appearances to the Orange and Blue’s two, counting their upcoming date in Atlanta this year). The final score of this year’s Cocktail Party notwithstanding, these are two elite programs that can expect to enjoy many years of a rivalry that is on a par with what Florida State-Miami once was.

In other words, we’re disappointed with this year the way y’all were disappointed with last year, not because either was a bad year, but because it was not unreasonable for our respective expectations to reach at least as far as Atlanta, if not beyond.

Good luck the rest of the way. We’ll see y’all in Jacksonville next year for the renewal of a rivalry which, if anything, is only going to grow in significance as an annual showcase of perennial top ten teams who deem nine-win seasons unacceptable.

Regarding the Big 12, I haven’t broken it down team-by-team, but you may be right. Personally, I tend to think it’s a bit like picking a mutual fund . . . you don’t go with the one that performed the best last year; you go with the one that has performed the best over the last several years. This year, the Big 12 is the better league, top to bottom; over the course of the last five or six seasons, the S.E.C. has the better claim.

Not to worry; I was just pointing out that both schools recently have made questionable decisions about running off capable coaches. It was a surface comparison for the sake of humor and wasn’t intended as a nuanced comparison. Nuance is something I do, but, when I’m kidding, I’m just kidding.

That said, when a guy goes 4-1 in bowl games, produces five straight winning seasons in his first five years on the job at a school that had posted a losing record six times in the 12 years just prior to his arrival, and gets fired after his first losing season, the school that let him go deserves to catch a little flak, even if the fan base didn’t file F.O.I.A. requests for his cell phone records.