Putting the Georgia Bulldogs' 2008 Season Into Perspective
by T Kyle King on Aug 11, 2009 12:15 AM EDT
in Football
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PrintI had a nice moment of synchronicity over the weekend, when my 2009 football media guide arrived in the mail and Paul Westerdawg put up a posting about how many games Georgia has won over the last decade. Leafing through the former impressed upon me just how high our expectations have become because of the latter.
If you’re like me, you think of last year more or less as a disaster, but a few minutiae leapt out at me off the pages of the media guide to help put last season, and the seven years that preceded it, into perspective. Consider:
- In 2008, Knowshon Moreno gained 1,400 rushing yards and scored 16 touchdowns. Those were the best numbers in both categories by a Bulldog back since Garrison Hearst in 1992. Before Hearst, you have to go back to Herschel Walker to find figures that good. The last four times a Georgia running back had a year as good as Moreno had in 2008, the tailback in question was a Heisman Trophy finalist.
- In 2008, Matthew Stafford passed for 3,459 yards and 25 touchdowns. No Georgia quarterback had ever before thrown more than 24 touchdown passes in a single season, so Stafford broke the school record previously shared by D.J. Shockley and Eric Zeier. Stafford also tallied the second-most passing yards ever put up by a Bulldog signal caller, falling just 66 yards shy of matching Zeier’s 1993 numbers. On top of that, Stafford’s 2008 passer efficiency rating was the second-best single-season mark in school history, trailing only the QB rating posted by Stafford’s position coach, Mike Bobo, in 1997.
- Georgia’s won-lost record for the 1980s was 89-27-4, giving the Red and Black a .758 winning percentage for arguably their most successful decade ever. Georgia’s won-lost record for the 2000s is 90-26, giving the ‘Dawgs a .776 winning percentage for that period.
- Since the start of the Associated Press poll in 1936, the Bulldogs have gone 86-113-8 all-time against teams ranked by the sportswriters at the time of the game. Prior to Mark Richt’s arrival in Athens, Georgia was 59-97-8 (.384) in such games; since Coach Richt came to the Classic City, the ‘Dawgs have posted a 27-16 (.628) record against teams in the AP top 25. Better than three out of every ten wins by the Bulldogs against ranked competition have come during the Mark Richt era.
That’s not to say last year was a success; it wasn’t. However, even disasters are relative, and the fact that Bulldog Nation now (rightly) views a ten-win season with a January bowl victory as a colossal disappointment confirms Paul Westerdawg’s point about the elite level at which the Red and Black are competing.
Go ‘Dawgs!
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Good stuff
I think points 3 & 4 make a strong argument. I think a lot of people realize that UGA is winning a lot of games and that Richt has quickly ascended the ranks of Georgia coaches (as you regularly note). However, critics or more cautious fans point out that Richt’s Dogs play 12-14 games a season compared to 10-11 that most of his predecessors played. Furthermore, while the recent trend has been to load the schedule with more ‘losable’ games, as the NCAA has added regular season games, UGA, like most NCAA teams has feasted on more cream-puffs to pad winning stats. This is where point 4 offers a counterbalance to that argument. The wins aren’t just against Georgia Southern, they are against LSU, Auburn and whoever the Big10 throws at us (a carryover dig from a PWD post).
Good stats but years in which we get
beat down by UF and lose to GT are not successful years by any stretch and very few if anything makes me happy about the year, even great stat years
Wow
PWD’s post really made me think. It truly is a great time to be a DAWG.
Now TKK, when do we get your expert opinion on this whole SEC/ESPN contract buzz?
by knowshon loves legos on Aug 11, 2009 11:40 AM EDT reply actions
When it comes to legal advice . . .
. . . you get what you pay for, but, that said, I’ll have something up about that before the end of the week.
Go 'Dawgs!
The problem with 2008
If I’m a Georgia fan (which I’m not), the problem I have with the 2008 season is that, even though there were 10 wins, nothing other than the LSU win would be satisfying in the slightest. I still don’t know what UGA’s 2nd best win was – a romp over a decent Central Michigan team? Struggling to dispatch a terrible UT? Was it really a 17-point win over a Pac 10 team with a losing record that was beaten by UNLV the week before?
I can only speak for myself...
… but I didn’t even find the LSU win satisfying. The scoreboard said that we romped all over the field, but there were more fluke plays and missed penalties than I’ve ever seen go Georgia’s way in my entire life. I suppose that’s what brought about the karmic retribution of the Florida game, when the exact opposite happened, so that makes the LSU game feel even worse to me. (Not to mention that we gave up 38 points.)
During the regular season, i felt the best about the Arizona State game, but that was really more because of the fans than anything else. I was excited about traveling to Phoenix/Tempe, but wasn’t sure how the UGA crowd would travel, especially since we hadn’t made a long regular season trip like this in a long time. The Dawg fans literally took over downtown Tempe, though, on Friday and Saturday night, and showed the town how great SEC fans can be. There was loud, vociferous support of their team, but there was also friendly interaction with the ASU fans, and everyone felt comfortable about enjoying a beer together (proverbially for me, but not for thousands of others) before the game. Georgia fans made up about 40% of the Sun Devil Stadium crowd that day, and far more stayed through the whole game than would have stayed at Sanford Stadium in the same situation (when the game was effectively iced pretty early).
I felt good about the Central Michigan game, too, but that was more out of relief that we didn’t give them a chance to stay way too close like we’ve done too many times in the past with mid-majors.
by vineyarddawg on Aug 11, 2009 8:46 PM EDT up reply actions
Upside and downside potential
The direction in which we move is a function of our standing. Last year, we could only go down if we didn’t stay at number 1, which is exactly what happened. There are 120 Div. 1A teams. If you consistently sit in the top 10, there are at least 110 spaces below you to move down and at most 9 places above you to move up. It’s all a zero sum game. Assuming no Div 1AA games, there are just as many numbers in the win columns for every team as there are numbers in the loss columns. It’s a bell curve (which is easier to identify within a single conference, particularly the Pac 10 with it’s round robin schedule). Sometime that bell curve is more traditional (in the statistical sense of a bell curve), with one 8-0 team (in conference play), one 0-8 team, and many in the middle with a pack at 4-4. Sometimes you get a taller, skinnier curve like the ACC experience last year, with most teams at 5-3, 4-4, and 3-5 in conference play. The reason I am pointing out the obvious is that I believe the law of averages is a force in play here, pulling higher teams and lower teams towards the middle. It is teams like ourselves (and Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, USC, Ohio State, etc.) that defy this pull and make them truly special teams. Sometimes we falter and move down, but what makes us special is our ability to pull ourselves back to the top. As Kyle points out, our ability to do so has become more pronounced and more consistesnt recently than it was in the past. On the flip side, that is why teams like Temple and Duke are who they are. Temple is a perennial bottom dweller, but Duke has recently shown itself to move higher than it’s historic place among the 120 teams. Will Duke resist it’s pull to the center moving back to (what some consider to be it’s rightful place at) the bottom? I don’t know. But if it does, it will show that Duke’s recent relative success is a fluke, just as Georgia’s 8-4 season was in 2006 (sans bowl game). That is what truly does makes us an elite team (despite Stewart Mandel’s idiocy). Our ability to resist the pull to the middle has made our expectations higher as time goes by, shown by our collective disappointment in a 10 win season. I personally do believe we will continue to maintain our position among the elite (a word that implies many pundits’ assertions that College Football today is undergoing an increased level of parity are inaccurate). The ultimate test to Georgia’s ability to prove it’s place among the elite is to win ‘em when it counts. Last year was a step back (albeit a relatively small step). We will continue to place in the Top 10 with some outliers (including a #23 finish in 2006), and Coach Richt will be the one to keep us there. I’m looking forward to that victory watch starting back up this season, as the number will surely rise much more often than it will stall.
GO DAWGS!
Well stated....
And I had never really thought about it that way before but you’re right. That resistance to the pull toward mediocrity is what makes season’s special and what gives us this sense of high expectations/entitlement.
Those who think Coach Richt a) is washed up, b) doesn’t have the killer instinct, or c) is on the hot seat should look at our SEC finishes throughout the 90’s and get a little perspective.
Behold, this year's College Gameday Sign:
"Joe Cox -- He circumcises ANGELS!"
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