It's time to change the way we think

I’m not sure why I haven’t posted anything since the SEC Championship Game. This season has been absolutely amazing, the best season in my lifetime for sure, and it’s not over yet!

There is plenty of time to talk about the Rose Bowl matchup, but I wanted to take just a minute to address a narrative that I have heard in a couple of places over the past week.

It goes something like this:

“Georgia has had a great season, and even if the Dawgs come up short in the Rose Bowl, the program is looking up. Georgia is going to be good for a long time.”

Now, you may have had these thoughts too, or maybe you have even said something like this to a friend. I want you to know that I completely understand this type of thinking, but I need you to do me a small favor.

Shut up.

That is a loser’s mentality. There are four teams that can win the National Championship and Georgia is one of them. Why in the world would we be thinking about how great of a season this has been when it’s not over? Why would we think we can’t win it all?

I know the reason, it’s because we haven’t. Winning it all doesn’t happen at Georgia. We have been conditioned for many years to find the positive in a season with a certain level of disappointment.

There is another reason that this thinking is flawed; we were all saying the exact same thing 15 years ago.

In 2002, Mark Richt was in his second season, Georgia had won the SEC title, and heading into the bowl season, Georgia was ranked 3^rd nationally. Sound familiar?

Georgia beat FSU in the Sugar Bowl, and the program was on the rise. You would not have been able to convince me or any other Georgia fan that was going to be the high water mark for the program under Richt.

2003 and 2004 were disappointing seasons because a team that should have been primed to win big found a way to lose games to lesser teams to keep them out of the conversation. In 2003 it was Florida and in 2004 it was Tennessee.

2005 was an SEC title season, but Shockley got hurt late in the game against Arkansas and didn’t play against Florida. Georgia lost. Shockley returned against Auburn, but the Dawgs fell 31-30 in a heartbreaker. Even though Georgia upset LSU for the SEC title, they were never really in contention because of those two losses.

2006 was a rebuild year.

2007 could be thrown in there as a time when Georgia was in the conversation, but early season losses to South Carolina and Tennessee kept Georgia from having the chance to win the SEC title and ultimately left the Dawgs out of the title picture.

2008-2010 were complete and total disappointments at different levels.

2011 was a bad team that beat other bad teams. They went 10-4, but lost to every decent team they played that season.

2012 was the outlier in the second half of the Richt Era. The team was very good, but suffered a humiliating loss at the hands of South Carolina on the road. Of course, we all remember how close Georgia was to beating Alabama in the SEC title game, but close doesn’t count. So it was another year of saying “wait til next year.”

2013 through 2015 were also terribly disappointing on different levels and those seasons are ultimately what cost Richt his job in Athens.

So from 2002, when Georgia seemed to be ready to ascend to the upper levels of college football’s
elite, until 2015 when the coaching change was made, we had 3 seasons that could be called successful, but they were all followed up by abject disappointments the very next year.

My point is this: in sports, as in life, you have to take your chances when you have them. The first one is always going to be the hardest to get. We need to get it this year.

Yes Kirby seems to have Georgia headed to places we haven’t been in nearly 40 years. The recruiting is at all-time high. The Athletic Department is investing in ways they never have before. The energy around the program has never been higher.

And for all of those reasons, this needs to be our year. From the coaches, to the players, and to the fans, we need to be bought in 100% that this is a now or maybe never proposition for Georgia.

We are one win away from playing for the National Title in our home state. When will that ever happen again? This is our year. This is our time. I don’t care who else is in the playoff. It is title or bust for Georgia.

No more talk of where we might be going, let’s take advantage of where we are.

Go Dawgs!