It's Our Night

 January 1, 1981 was a Thursday. It was 19 days before Ronald Reagan would be sworn in as president of the United States. The number one song in America was "(Just Like) Starting Over" by John Lennon. The number one movie in America was 9 to 5, staring Dolly Parton.  It would be two years before return of the Jedi was released. Kirby Smart was five years old, and my parents hadn't even started dating. It has been a long, long time since Georgia won the National Championship.

 There are a lot of storylines heading into Monday night's game;  37 years since Georgia has won the title, the student versus the teacher, Alabama with a chance to win another national championship, Saban looking to tie Bear Bryant with his 6th National title.

To me, the student versus the teacher storyline is the one that I just can't buy into. In a way, it feels like Kirby Smart can't get credit for what he has done at Georgia in just two years because he learned everything he knows from Saban. You hear all the time that he has brought the "Alabama Formula" to Athens.

You know what the Alabama Formula is? Have better players than the other team. It's not that hard to figure out. Of course Saban is a great coach, and given a month to prepare he can probably get his team ready to beat any team in the country, but there is nothing easy about whatKirby has done at Georgia.

Just look around to the other coaches that come off the Saban tree. They aren't in the title game Monday night. McElwain just got fired at Florida, Lane Kiffin is at some C level school in Boca Raton, Florida. If copying Alabama were easy, then everyone would have done it 10 years ago. Georgia is not Alabama, and Kirby Smart is not Nick Saban. To steal an idea from Harry Potter, it is not how they are alike that matters, it is how they are different. Kirby works as hard as anyone, but when the game is over, he enjoys winning and shows it. When Georgia went into the Victory Formation against Tennessee the cameras caught Kirby giving the V signal while sticking out his tounge. When Georgia won the SEC, a Gatorade soaked Kirby was jumping around on the sideline like a 10 year old. When the Rose Bowl ended last Monday, Kirby gave a fist pump that would have made Tiger Woods jealous.

Conversely, Saban is a robot who believes winning titles gets in the way of recruiting. When Bama won its first title in 2009 over Texas at the Rose Bowl, he got angry at the players who poured the Gatorade on him because there was still time left on the clock. In 2012, after beating Notre Dame, he complained about how it was a real disadvantage in recruiting to play for the National title. Saban's inability to show the basic human emotion of happiness makes him less likable, in my opinion.

The reality of this game is that even though these teams don't play that often, when they do, the games are typically very good, and have long-lasting ramifications.

Going all the way back to 2002, Georgia got a huge road win against the Tide on a Billy Bennett field goal late to win by 2. That was the week when Pat Dye, the former Auburn coach, said that Georgia wasn't "man enough" to beat Alabama. The Dawgs went on to win the SEC and the Sugar Bowl.

In 2007, Georgia won on the road at Alabama again, this time in overtime. The Dawgs carried that momentum to a number two national ranking in 2007 and another Sugar Bowl victory.

In 2008, the Alabama Dynasty was born on a Saturday night in Sanford Stadium. Georgia was ranked third in the nation and hosted the ninth ranked Tide. Georgia pulled out the black uniforms that had worked so well in 2007, but the magic was gone. Alabama crushed Georgia. The Dawgs never won the SEC again under Richt. Meanwhile, Alabama would win 3 out of 4 national titles from 2009-2012.

In 2012, Georgia faced Alabama in the SEC title game and was completely out-matched talent wise. This was a time period when Georgia's top 22 (the starting 11 on both sides of the ball) was as good as anyone, but the Dawgs didn't have the depth that Alabama was known for. Of course, Georgia came up just short of winning that game, while the Tide went on to crush Notre Dame and keep the Dynasty alive.

2015 was the last time Georgia and Alabama played. Georgia was undefeated while Alabama had already lost at home to Ole Miss. It was the first time in 72 games that Alabama was not favored. There was a lot of talk leading into the game that the Dynasty was over. Alabama killed Georgia, proved that the Dynasty was still going strong, and eventually won the National Title again. Georgia would go on to fire Mark Richt and hire Kirby Smart that December.

This game is the most evenly matched game between these two teams since that game in 2002. Georgia has almost as much talent as Alabama, and with the senior leadership of the Dawgs, there is not a huge gap between the teams like there has been in the past.

The breakdown of this game is pretty simple. The team that runs the ball will win the game. Hurts will make a few plays, but if Georgia can make him throw, they can slow down the Alabama offense. If the Georgia offensive line can hold up, then the Dawgs will have their day.

Wrestling great Ric Flair always said, "To be the man, you have to beat the man." Tonight, Georgia has the chance, not only to win their first national title in 37 years, but to do it beating the only dynasty of the modern era. Alabama has been the King of College Football for the past decade. A win tonight doesn't mean that Georgia is the new King, but it will mean that there is at least a contest for the crown moving forward. Beating the best means more, so I'm glad we get the Tide tonight, because if Georgia wins, there will be no doubt that the Dawgs earned every single bit of this title.

I want this so bad.

I want this for the players, especially those seniors who came back this season and might have changed this program for the foreseeable future.

I want this for Kirby Smart, who was patient and waited for his dream job. I was skeptical about Kirby because I wanted a head coach with head coaching experience, but I could not have been more wrong. Kirby has done almost everything right since he got the job.

I want this for the fan base who has had to suffer through an amazingly long list of incredible disappointments. So many close calls, so many what if's throughout the years. Still, each and every September, the Dawg Nation fills Sanford with renewed hope and expectation.

I also want this for me. Today is my 33rd birthday, and I can't think of anything more perfect than celebrating with a national title. Most people who know me know that I love sports. I am a Falcons fan. I am a Braves fan. I am an Atlanta United fan. I was a Thrashers fan. But no offense to any of those team that I do love, I am a Dawg. Understand, I am not a Dawg fan, I am a Dawg. This is my team. I know there are a lot of you out there that feel the exact same way.

Tonight is our night. All the suffering ends, and for one night, we will be champions. For one night we will sit atop the college football world. I just wish the Mighty Munson was here to see it!

Georgia 17   Alabama 13

Glory, Glory

Dawgs on Top

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!

A New Twist to the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry

For two teams playing for the 122^nd time, you wouldn’t think it would be possible for something to be happening for the first time, but that is exactly the case on Saturday when Georgia takes on Auburn for the SEC Championship.

There are a few firsts for this game. It will be the first time the SEC Championship is played in the brand new Mercedes-Benz Stadium. It will be the first time cross-divisional rivals have ever squared off for the SEC Championship. It will also be the first time in the college football playoff era that the SEC Championship Game will serve as a sort of National Quarterfinal.

Georgia leads the all-time series 57-56-8, but it was just three weeks ago that Auburn throttled Georgia on the Plaines 40-17.

There are four things that will be different on Saturday from the first meeting and I think they all favor Georgia.

First, the home field advantage that Auburn enjoyed three weeks ago will not be present in Mercedes-Benz. I think it will probably be 60-40 Georgia-Auburn, but even if it is 50/50, the Auburn defense won’t have nearly the advantage that it did at Jordan-Hare.

Second is the health of Kerryon Johnson. It has been announced that Johnson could be a game-time decision on Saturday. I fully expect Johnson to play, but how effective he will be will go a long way in deciding who wins the game. As well as the Auburn offense is playing, it relies on Johnson running the ball to keep the defense honest and open up the passing game. A one-dimensional offense against Georgia’s defense is a recipe for failure.

Third is that the coaching staffs for each team have seen what the other team has, and now can make adjustments. I’ll take Kirby Smart 1000 times over Gus Malzahn. No offense to Malzahn, but we have seen his teams be inept many, many times over the years. He is a good coach with a great system that is nearly unstoppable when it is working, but I haven’t seen him be able to come up with a plan B in all his time at Auburn.

Fourth are the stakes. As I said before, the winner of this game goes to the playoff, while the loser will have to dream of what might have been. I can honestly say that this season has been an overwhelming success for Georgia, no matter what happens on Saturday. For a team that lost 5 games a year ago, two of those games being against Vanderbilt and Tech at home, this year has been a great turn around. Georgia won at Notre Dame for the first time in school history. They defeated three of their biggest rivals, Tennessee, Florida, and Tech by a combined score of 121-14. They won the SEC East for the first time in 5 years, by going undefeated in the division for the first time ever.

Auburn has to win on Saturday to make this a successful season. Think about that. In the past three weeks, the Tigers have defeated the number one team in the country twice, but none of it will matter without another victory. Auburn’s two early season losses make it where the Tigers’ are in a unique position. Win and it could be the greatest 4 week span in the history of college football. Lose and this team will be 10-3, and largely forgotten. That’s amazing.

When you look at what Auburn is as a program, you realize that their reputation is better than the teams they put on the field. Since 2007, the Tigers have averaged 4.8 losses per season! In that time, they have lost less than 4 games only twice. So why do we perceive them as a national power? Because the two times they lost less than four games they either played for or won the National Championship. Auburn is the best team in the nation at cashing in on limited opportunities. Meanwhile, the Mark Richt era at Georgia was defined completely by not cashing in. 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2012. All seasons where Georgia was in the hunt for a championship and talented enough to win it all, but they always managed to lose that one game that put them out of the title race. The one aspect of this game that favors opportunistic Auburn is that this is the exact type of season where they cash in.

There is one more factor about this game that can’t be ignored. Multiple media outlets are reporting that if Auburn loses this game, Gus Malzahn will be resigning and taking the Arkansas job. I had a friend ask me last weekend what I thought about those rumors and I dismissed them completely because it makes no sense to me. However, this seems to be real. Can you imagine a situation where by Monday, a team that has had the success the Tigers have had over the past month could be out of the playoff and looking for a new coach?

So on the field, what has to change for Georgia to win the SEC and make the playoff?

If I were numbering these, 1-100 would be that the offensive line has to, what do they call it these days…. BLOCK!!!!

Georgia couldn’t run the ball in the first game. Georgia couldn’t throw the ball in the first game. If you can’t run the ball, and you can’t throw the ball, there is no chance that you can score. If you can’t score, you can’t win. See, it’s really not that complicated.

Georgia has moved Ben Cleveland to right guard which has made the offensive line look better the past two weeks against Kentucky and Tech, but the real test for this line will be whether or not they can be effective against the Tigers.

Georgia also needs to eliminate the stupid mistakes. Georgia has struggled with penalties this season at times, but the mental mistakes made against Auburn were totally out of character for this team. Dropped punts. Kung Fu kicks when trying to rush the punter. Personal fouls on late hits out of bounds. All of these things extended drives and led to points for Auburn in the first game. Despite the fact that Auburn scored 40 points in the first meeting, Georgia’s defense played fairly well in the first game, but any defense that is sent back on the field two times after what should have been 3 and outs, is going to get demoralized and eventually break.

The one aspect of Georgia’s defense that will need to improve from the first game is tackling. There were far too many yards after contact for Kerryon Johnson. However, the worst part was terrible tackling by the Georgia secondary that allowed too many extra yards on Auburn passing plays. If Georgia tackles better against Auburn, the defense can dominate this game.

Georgia can’t be bland on offense. Too many times in the first game, Georgia ran the ball unsuccessfully on first and second down only to have either an incompletion or more often a sack on third down leading to a punt. Georgia has absolutely nothing to lose in this game and I want to see an offensive attack that understands this fact. Throw it on running downs. Run some draws. There are these pass plays called screens, they work some times. If you call a trick play, make sure you block the defensive line.

Georgia has, in my opinion, five players who are threats to score every time they touch the ball. Chubb, Michel, Swift, Hardman, and Wims. Those guys need to have the ball in their hands on nearly every offensive play. They need to all be on the field together and Georgia needs to attack this Auburn defense, rather than try to out-muscle them the way they did on the Plaines.

Can Georgia really make all these adjustments in just a few short weeks? Can they put a stop to Auburn’s dream run? I honestly don’t know. But I know one thing. I am excited to be in the position to find out.

This time last year, we were getting ready to not watch a crappy Florida team get destroyed by Alabama. This season, we are one win against a team that we have dominated for a decade away from the College Football Playoff.

Get used to this Georgia fans. This isn’t just our present, this is our future.

Go Dawgs!