Georgia v. Michigan in the Georgia Dome?

. . . that there’s some sort of meaningful difference between the coach of a team whose fan base embraces him and his family as good Christian people who represent the institution well on the one hand and the coach of a team whose fan base contains a significant number of boosters who regard him as an outsider brought in to tear down the culture that remained unchanged for 40 years?

Surely you aren’t implying that there’s a legitimate distinction between a coach who has won two conference titles, been to three BCS bowl games, averaged ten wins a year, and gone 7-2 in the postseason in his first nine years on the one hand and a coach who has seen the wheels come off of his program, overseen the end of a lengthy run of consecutive bowl appearances, and presided over losing seasons on the other?

Surely you don’t labor under the misconception that there’s a reason for differentiating between a coach who imposed discipline upon the program he inherited, has demonstrated his character by dismissing players at positions of need prior to a pivotal 2010 season, and most often has had to deal only with silly stuff like emerging from an alley on a scooter with a suspended license on the one hand and a coach whose program just sanctioned itself for major violations for the first time in school history while he is in the midst of NCAA investigations of his current and former school on the other?

Oh, wait, you’re right . . . those are two totally dissimilar situations, aren’t they? My bad.

Georgia traveled to Ann Arbor in 1965. The fact that we were poor visitors might be what prevented them from being gentlemanly and visiting our home, as well. (I mean, they’re obviously not opposed to coming south of the Mason-Dixon line. They voluntarily traveled to Columbia in 1985.)

but the fact that Willie Martinez has been punted all the way to Norman has tempered things a bit. His “two thumbs up and hope for a tackle” defense in the first half wasn’t exactly a thing of beauty. And I think that the entire coaching staff bears responsbilitiy for that loss. We, by Mark Richt’s own admission, simply didn’t prepare like we should have for the Mountaineers…and were probably one more possession away from snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. In fact, the fake punt call was probably the last good thing Rich Rod has done coaching-wise.

Since then, we are perfect in bowl games:

2006 team defeated Va. Tech in Chik Fil A bowl
2007 team defeated Hawaii in Sugar Bowl
2008 team defeated Michigan State in the Capital One Bowl
2009 team defeated Texas A&M in the “Despair of a 7-5 regular season Bowl”

1. There is virtually no chance that Rich Rodriguez will still be the head coach of the Michigan Wolverines by the time such a game could be arranged.

2. My desire to avenge that embarrassing defeat is team-specific, not coach-specific. I’d love to get a rematch with West Virginia, but beating Coach Rodriguez’s much more storied but much worse Michigan team would do nothing to salve the sting of that setback. When Georgia beats a Steve Spurrier-coached South Carolina team, I don’t feel that we’ve paid the Evil Genius back for the 1995 flea-flicker, and I have several orders of magnitude more personal animosity for Darth Visor than I ever could for RichRod.