Mark Richt is almost certainly not on any kind of real hot seat at Georgia, and doesn't deserve to be: Since 2000, he's ended the Bulldogs' 20-year SEC championship drought in 2002, added another conference title in 2005, led a struggling team out of a midseason slump to a No. 2 finish in the final polls in 2007 and won at least 10 games six times. The Bulldogs finished in the top 10 four years in a row from 2002-2005, the longest streak of the decade in the SEC and matching the Herschel Walker years from 1980-83 as the best run in school history. He's well on his way to becoming the most successful coach Georgia's ever had, and is already the longest-tenured boss in a trigger-happy league. . . .
The rational, skeptical half of my brain (the half I tend to trust) dismisses the Fulmer/Tuberville template as a timely but outlying coincidence, and negative recruiting as simply "in the game" – lord knows what the same coaches allegedly undercutting Richt were telling recruits about Urban Meyer's uncertain future at Florida. (And lord knows it didn't work.) At the same time, the credulous, pattern-seeking, "where there's smoke there's fire" half of my brain is thinking the perpetual hot seat is just "in the game" now, too, in a conference whose financial and emotional stockholders demand consistent returns from multimillion-dollar CEO coaches on their increasing investments in tickets, lavish facilities and outsized television contracts. With great salaries come great expectations, etc.
Richt is widely perceived as the most decent guy in the business, like Fulmer, a far cry from the burgeoning mercenary model that's paid such dividends for Florida and Alabama. If the defensive overhaul under new DC Todd Grantham doesn't take, or if new quarterback Aaron Murray struggles as a redshirt freshman, this could be the year we find out if nice guys can still afford back-to-back five-loss seasons at places with a bottom line like Georgia's.
Go 'Dawgs!
about 2 years ago
T Kyle King
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Wow
A reasonable and well thought out response to the coaching situation at Georgia. But the Finebaum’s and Mandel’s of the world disagree so Dr. Saturday must be full of crap.
by RedCrake on May 4, 2010 11:14 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
Finebaum is the Glen Beck of sports news
And Mandel is the the Colin Cowherd. If you see what I mean.
I'm assuming Finebaum and Cowherd don't read Matt's stuff
these “facts” and “balanced perspectives” are strictly amateur stuff. Plus Hinton’s hair makes both of them self-conscious.
Precisely....
I think Elizabeth Banks guest starring on 30 Rock said it best:
“Its a 24 hour news cycle, Jack…. we can’t really afford to do it right anymore”
Which gives me the opportunity to provide this little Wednesday treat for the gentlemen of Dawgsports:
Personally, I think she can give that Davis woman Kyle’s always going on about a run for her money.
And in keeping with the 30 Rock theme, I guess I could give podunk and the other ladies something as well…..
I’m certainly no expert…. but ya’ll like this….. right?
Posted child for a chest wax
That is, Alec Baldwin…not you, RC.
"If we score, we may win. If they never score, we'll never lose."
-Erk Russell
I’ve always felt that I fall somewhere between Alec Baldwin on Tom Selleck on the DavetheDawg Chest Hair Scale.
Its like a damn chia pet.
by RedCrake on May 5, 2010 2:23 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
I fall somewhere
between Ron Jeremy and a Chupacabara. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwuuuuu.
Somehow, I have degraded this entire post to it’s loweste common denominator. I apologize.
"If we score, we may win. If they never score, we'll never lose."
-Erk Russell
I don't know man . . .
I’m a big fan of the chupacabra, at least partially because I’m not in the goat business, so it poses no immediate threat to me or mine.
However, sometimes when I’m listening to Finebaum on the way home and laughing at the callers I like to take a brief halcyon moment to imagine the chupacabra breaking into the studio and chasing old baldy down like Ray Lewis attacking a tailback. Is that wrong?
Well if it's wrong...
I don’ wanna be right. My best friend’s ex-pat grandmother (Abuela) down here in hell south Florida is from rural interior Cuba and she has all kinds of Chupacabra stories and I had one in my garage about a month ago. That’s what happens when you throw out perfectly good pork loin and forget to roll out to the curbside.
"If we score, we may win. If they never score, we'll never lose."
-Erk Russell
With apologies to our Ole Miss friends . . .
. . . hotty totty, gosh a mighty, who the heck is she?
I could have done without Alec Baldwin, though. He does fine work in “30 Rock” (although the third season—-the last one I have seen, on DVD—-wasn’t as good as the first two seasons), and I never bought Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan after Baldwin’s performance in “The Hunt for Red October,” but, when he’s not playing guys named “Jack,” Alec Baldwin is best described by a verse (NSFW) from DBT’s “Steve McQueen.”
Go 'Dawgs!
It was either that...
Or a semi-nude portrait of Tracy Morgan (which are surprisingly plentiful).
I’m comfortable with my choice.
by RedCrake on May 6, 2010 12:27 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions
I don't know about Finebaum...
…but I’m pretty sure Cowherd reads the blogosphere pretty often.
http://www.talkingnfl.com/colin-cowherd-making-friends-one-blogger-at-a-time/
by hailtogeorgia on May 5, 2010 12:56 PM EDT up reply actions
Just some general thoughts ...
I really don’t like this idea that head coaches should be retained only if their teams have long periods of the highest kind of success. Just the fact that we were horrified by last year’s 8-5 is a bit disturbing to me.
I’m a Georgia fan for life. I want it to be a positive experience over all and from the broadest of perspectives. There are a lot of factors that go into whether the experience is positive. Most important is on-field success (and that also can be broken down into lots of factors: national championships would be great; conference championships are awesome; I really want to win the next game; holy cow! I love being in my lifelong Sanford seats watching Rambo’s pick-six!). Feeling good about how the program is run is another important factor (is our coach a good man? are we given interesting opponents? how’re the Redcoats doing? have we had to substitute “best record in the SEC” for actual championships? how long will I have to lie awake at night worrying about whether some dude in Helena knows who I am?).
My idea of “sustained success” is formed by my age and my expectation (hope?) that I’ll live to be much older. I think we had pretty good sustained success under Dooley (and I’m not the biggest Dooley fan). I have no reason to think Richt won’t be at least as successful over time.
From 1892-2000, we had the 15th best winning percentage in all of Div IA. From 2001-2005, we were 6th. From 2006-2009, we were 15th. Under Richt, 2001-2009, we’re tied for 7th.
If a four-year period where we matched our pre-Richt W-L percentage ranking (and, by the way, significantly exceeded the actual W-L percentage) is reason to fire the head coach, then we’ve arrived at a standard I don’t like at all. Sure the game has changed, but I can’t help thinking whether canning Dooley after ‘74 would have cost us the ’76 and ’80-’82 SEC championships and the ’80 national championship.
Would it be worth the “growing pains” of losing to Louisiana-Monroe or hiring a schmuck who’ll bolt after one year for the chance that the next guy will do better? And “better” would have to be winning at least at a 77% clip. Forever.
Am I really that old-fasioned or naïve or ignorant to think Richt is capable of making the appropriate decisions to keep an 8-5 season at the floor of our teams’ performance levels, especially in light of the decisions we’ve seen him make?
Time keeps flowing like a river to the sea, my friends. The last short stretch may have been less than smooth, but we didn’t sink, and it’s still been a very enjoyable ride if your memory is longer than a couple of miles. The notion that we should consider changing captains now is completely ludicrous to me.
by NCT on May 5, 2010 10:20 AM EDT reply actions 3 recs
Your post
Is worthy of an adult beverage. Happy Cinco de Mayo to you, sir.
"If we score, we may win. If they never score, we'll never lose."
-Erk Russell
by DavetheDawg on May 5, 2010 3:30 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
No SECCG since 05, losses against UF, bad last 2 years, etc...
Yea, I get why some would want him on the hot seat
I get it, too.
Well, I get it to the extent that “get it” means I recognize the facts upon which the assertion is based. I just disagree with the conclusion. Four years is a long time, sure. It means all the kids in the class of 2010 who started their academic careers at UGA in the fall of 2006 have never experienced an SEC championship. And during their times as students, they’ve seen three other schools win that prize.
I enrolled at UGA in the fall of 1984. I remembered very well the Herschel years when I was in high school and the three consecutive SEC championships. I was hopeful that I would be able to enjoy something approaching that kind of success during my time as a student. Well, we didn’t. Not even close. I graduated in 1988 after four falls of 0 SEC championships. One of the reasons I went to law school (ok, maybe not really, but it’s part of my story) was the chance to be close to the school for three more shots at it. I’d been to Orlando to watch us tie some relatively unknown independent in a pre-Christmas bowl game my freshman year. My sophomore year, I went out to El Paso and saw us tie some middling Pac X team that wasn’t even 10 years removed from the WAC.
My first year in law school was Dooley’s last season. By the end of that season, we were six years removed from our last SEC championship and went to the Gator Bowl. But hey, a new era was dawning, and a new coach was hired. So my second year in law school, with Goff at the helm, we went 6-6 (barely beat Syracuse in the Peach).
And to cap off my seven years in Athens, some of the Best Years Of My Life, I got to watch the football team crash and burn to a 4-7 finish (the first losing season since I was in 6th grade), including losses (some ugly) to Clemson, Ole Miss, Kentucky, Florida, and Tech. For the record, during my seven years as a student, we were 3-4 against Tech, 4-3 against UF (which was a HUGE drop-off in domination), and 1-6 against AU. By this time, it had been nine years since our last SEC championship.
So, with this new coach in charge, I became a young alumnus and started buying season tickets. Ten years without a conference championship. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. … You know the story.
So now we’re four seasons away from our last SEC championship and two seasons away from our last major bowl appearance (and 10-win season and final #2 ranking). Forgive me if I don’t think that’s the end of the world. I’ve seen the end of the world, and I’ve seen us come back from it. This ain’t even close.
by NCT on May 6, 2010 9:09 AM EDT up reply actions
As I've said on these pages before . . .
if watching us lose at home to Southern Miss in Donnan’s first year didn’t do me in, 8-5 won’t do the trick either. That was the low point for me.
We should ixnay this "hot seat" talk as soon as possible.
Other schools are just going to use it to recruit against us.
http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/.Pictures/quiet.jpg
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