Head over to chuckoliver.net and read more of my thoughts on the Bulldogs. The Kang has been a little hard on CMR but I want to give him one more season to get this thing under control. And boy I hope he does...
The rise and fall of Mark Richt as an elite coach has been a roller coaster that many Georgia fans simply want to get off now, and after the meltdown against Auburn it may just be granted. It wasn’t that long ago that Richt was an elite national coach, just biding his time before he won a BCS National Title and supplanted Vince Dooley at Georgia as the best coach to stand on the sidelines in Athens. He was going to have won his title during the heyday of the Southeastern Conference when the conference stood out as the only man in an NCAA full of boys.
Richt was the Christian coach that played by the rules, got the most out of his quarterbacks and watched as his uber-talented defenses made the necessary plays. In fact, that’s how his rise to elite status began. He took a squad his first year into Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium and shocked a top-ten ranked Volunteer squad with just six seconds left to earn the first of many road wins under Mark Richt at Georgia. It seemed that the Bulldogs couldn’t lose on the road with Richt, and that streak continued in his second season when the Elite stamp was officially rewarded with a sneaky road win against South Carolina, where the defense did what was necessary to win, and then by dialing up a fourth-and-forever playcall to knock off Auburn at Auburn to win the SEC East. A few weeks later after two blowout victories, Georgia was champion of the SEC and Richt was an elite coach.
He followed up his second season by winning yet another SEC East title; though he was blown out in the SEC title game, he rebounded by winning a CapitalOne Bowl. That is something elite coaches do: they get their players ready for the next game. Then the elite-level Mark Richt had his team LAY IT ON Nick Saban and his defending champion LSU Tigers the following season when LSU came to town if what many people still consider to be the signature home win of Richt’s tenure.
Despite no SEC title due to losses to Tennessee and on the road to Auburn, only his second road loss in four years, Richt was considered one of the top coaches in the game. He was able to justify that it was HIM and not that senior class the following year by taking his new old QB DJ Shockley and winning an SEC title in the first year AD (After Davids, Greene and Pollack).
How did that help the elite Richt? He landed a top-five recruiting class featuring quarterback Matt Stafford and tailback Knowshon Moreno. Stafford would take his lumps early on his freshman year, but the team would win three straight to end the season, all against ranked opponents including one against a top-five Auburn on the road.
Richt’s final season of the elite was in 2007, when he finished the year No. 2 with many feeling that the Bulldogs got screwed by the BCS and polls as Georgia was No. 3 entering the final weekend. Both No. 1 and No. 2 lost but Georgia was jumped by two teams for a spot in the BCS title game. No worries though as Georgia dominated an unbeaten Hawaii that all of America seemed to be cheering for and started the 2008 season No. 1.
This is where Richt fell from the elite. Georgia had Matt Stafford, a junior QB who would leave after the 2008 season to be the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL draft AND Knowshon Moreno, who would get considerable Heisman buzz for the first few weeks of the season before settling for being taken in the first 12 picks of the draft. Georgia dropped in the polls despite winning and was No. 3 when No. 8 Alabama came to town on September 27. Richt and the team had loved wearing the black jerseys the previous year and Richt was 2-0 vs. Saban since the 2003 SEC Championship game. With ESPN College Gameday coming, you wanted all of your elements in your favor, right? Too bad the only ELITE coach in this game wasn’t thinking about what color his team was going to wear. Nick Saban, who owned a national title and elite status, ran up 31 points on Georgia in the first half and led 31-0 at intermission.
THAT is when Richt lost his elite status. With the entire college football nation watching, Richt laid an egg. Then against Florida a few weeks later, Georgia was run out of the building, only after hinting that the Dawgs may go with another wardrobe change. Lastly Georgia blew a huge lead to Georgia Tech in what might have been’s Stafford’s best game as a Bulldog. In the three biggest games of Richt’s “most loaded” team’s season, Georgia was 0-3. Elite coaches don’t mismanage talent like that.
But could Richt rebound? He had a QB in Joe Cox that was a fifth-year senior, just like Shockley. Surely the once-elite Richt could coach him up like he did DJ, right? Wrong. The Dawgs lost five games with Cox under center in 2009 and were blown out by Florida AGAIN, one year after Florida blew them out. Elite coaches like Urban Meyer would have taken the FIRST blowout and used it as motivation. Richt did not. He did however break out a new uniform for Georgia for the Florida game. What is it with different uniforms? Elite coaches don’t worry about that stuff. They just play the games.
Now with a freshman at QB in 2010, Richt lost four of his first five games and despite getting an elite player in AJ Green back, the Dawgs still lost to Florida and Auburn and are in danger of missing a bowl game. WOW.
You used to be able to take a look at the SEC, the elite of all elite and say: they have Saban, Meyer, Miles, Fulmer and Spurrier all with titles and Richt and Tuberville both on the verge. Tuberville and Fulmer are gone now and Richt might just be behind them. When you mention the SEC now, you still say Saban and Meyer, and you have to mention the grass-eater Miles. You also throw Petrino out there and you’d probably say Spurrier still and soon perhaps Chizik and maybe even Nutt before you get to Richt. That is pretty sad if you are a Georgia fan. The fall from the elite happened when Richt walked into halftime down 31-0 to Alabama in 2008 and was punctuated Saturday when his team led at Auburn 21-7 but went into halftime tied and then decided that a field goal try was necessary while down seven against an offense he could not stop. Chizik may have entered the elite stratosphere yesterday, which for Auburn fans is exciting; sadly all Georgia fans were reminded that their coach is no longer elite and hasn’t been for quite some time.
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