Quote Originally Posted by PROPHET0216:
Why is everyone so down on this guy? This guy has been great for the UGA program.
@jimmy the freak - you compared him to Mike Shula............Really?
I agree with everything you have been saying about UGA and this game against Boise except that 1 comment. Your analysis and player info is right on point. After a couple of down years (as any real UGA fan should've expect) everyone thinks he can't coach.
1. Before Richt UGA's last SEC Crown 1982......In ten years he has given us 2. 2002, 2003, 2005 east champions and tied for 1st in 2007.
2. One of 7 coach's to win the SEC title twice in the first 5 years.
3. One of only 5 SEC coach's to have 4 straight 10 win seasons.
4. One of only 7 coach's in NCAA history to win 90 games in the first 9 years of coaching.
5. 10 straight bowl games.
6. Finished in the top 25 8 times. Top 5 -- 2 times, Top 10 3 times, and the others 13th, 22nd, and 23rd.
7. SEC coach of the year 2002 and 2005.
8. Overall record - 96-34 SEC 55-28.....34-10 record on the road.
To compare this guy to Shula is laughable. All of sudden this guy can't coach.
After losing the kind of players UGA lost over the last couple of years and with the coaching changes, freshman quarter back etc. etc. etc. down years should've been expected.
I thought I was pretty clear about my thoughts on Mark Richt, but evidently I wasn't.
Shula took over at Alabama at a very difficult time - while they were on NCAA probabtion. I note that Shula was 10 & 2 in the '05/'06 season with a win over Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl. He also beat Florida 31-3 that season (the Tyrone Prothro game). So like Mark Richt, Shula's career at Alabama was not completely devoid of success. These men, however, do possess some very similar traits.
Both men are super nice guys whose teams took on the personna of their coaches. Both coaches were player coaches (if you will) whom the players took total advantage of. That lead to their teams being very undisciplied (I supported this assertion with stats in my original post), and lead both of them to completely lose control of their teams. The players basically ran the teams and did as they pleased. This manifested itself in, among other things, an absurd number of arrests. Shula had one player (Jimmy Johns) who was openly slinging cocaine on campus on his watch. Workout regiments also suffered and were not strictly enforced, which lead both teams to earn reputations around the league as being soft (just like their coaches)..
At Alabama it took a coaching change to turn the football culture around. At Georgia it took an ultimatum. My point about Richt is that from everything I've seen, he's taken this ultimatum to heart and has regained control of this team. Penalties and turnover margin (something they ranked close to last in virtually every season) did a complete about-face last season.
Richt also purged the team of troublemakers, and instituted a strict and effective strength and conditioning progam (just as Saban did). Now team confidence and morale has never been higher during the Richt regime. That, in turn, is why I'm as bullish on this Georgia team as I have been in many years.
To me the similarities leading into this Boise/Georgia game are sooooo strikingly similar to the '08 Alabama/Clemson opening day game in the Georgia Dome it's uncanny. Even the preseason rankings of the teams are strikingly similar. Back then, like now, the propoganda channels of the mainstream media just assumed that it would be a perfunctory win for Clemson. Few gave Bama much of a chance. That's the exact same situation we see taking shape in this Boise/Georgia game.
The last line from my Alabama/Clemson write-up back then was as follows:
When the final seconds tick off the 4th quarter clock there will be no doubt who the better team is, and it won’t be Clemson.
Predicted Score: Bama 31 Clemson 10. (the actual final score was 34-10)
I can simply cut and paste this same final sentence and score predicition, and apply it to this Georgia/Boise game because I think the outcome will be very similar.