SB Nation Atlanta: All Posts by Michael Birdhttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/46601/atlanta-fave.png2012-12-18T08:34:27-05:00https://atlanta.sbnation.com/authors/michael-elkon/rss2012-12-18T08:34:27-05:002012-12-18T08:34:27-05:00Who Cares That The Falcons Are Overrated?
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TyHAPorTiz81zeHmhGzQRqcT_AQ=/0x0:4000x2667/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/5206505/20121216_gav_av3_201.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Daniel Shirey-USA TODAY Sports</figcaption>
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<p>The team that just visited the Georgia Dome is a great example of the fact that regular season performance does not dictate what will happen in January.</p> <p>Unless you are a believer in the statistically unsound theory that a team is always as good or bad as their record, the <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/teams/atlanta-falcons" class="sbn-auto-link">Falcons</a>' 12-2 mark flatters them. If you prefer to go by points, then Jeff Sagarin's ratings have the Falcons <a target="_blank" href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/nfl12.htm">sixth</a>, while SRS has them <a target="_blank" href="http://www.pro-football-reference.com/">fifth</a>. The picture gets worse when you get more granular with the numbers. Football Outsiders' drive-based numbers had the Falcons <a target="_blank" href="http://footballoutsiders.com/stats/teameff">eleventh</a> in the NFL going into last week. After smashing the <a href="https://www.bigblueview.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Giants</a>, the Falcons are going to rise in the DVOA rankings when they come out this week, but they still are not going to be in the top few spots as their record would suggest. Even with the victory over the Giants, the Falcons are only tenth in the NFL in yards per game margin.</p>
<p>More worrisome is that even after the win over the Giants, the Falcons have still been outgained on a per-play basis. Atlanta gains 5.8 yards per play and allows 5.9. I am a believer in yards per play for two reasons. First, that stat makes intuitive sense because it controls for pace. If we've learned that we should judge running backs on yards per carry as opposed to total yards because the former stat accounts for the number of times that a runner carries the ball, then why wouldn't we make the same adjustment for offenses? Second, most Vegas sharps use yards per play as the basis for their team ratings, although they all make adjustments in various ways to account for turnovers, special teams, etc. As a general rule, it's better to trust the judgment of people who have actual skin in the game, as opposed to someone who gets paid for voicing opinions behind a desk that the masses find palatable (read: every talking head on an NFL pregame show).</p>
<p>Two years ago, I wrote a post when the Falcons were 12-2 in which I noted that the Falcons had been outgained by 0.6 yards per play, which was <a target="_blank" href="http://bravesandbirds.blogspot.com/2010/12/what-do-we-know-about-falcons.html">worse than every other team that had made the Super Bowl in the Aughts</a>. Only one of the last twenty conference champions - the 2001 <a href="https://www.patspulpit.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Patriots</a> - had a negative yards per play margin. Since I wrote the post, two things happened. First, the Falcons got roasted by the Packers in their first playoff game, which provided some credence to the idea that the Dirty Birds were not nearly as good as their record. Second, four teams have made the Super Bowl and all four had positive yards per play margins. The 2010 Super Bowl was an endorsement of the stat, as it featured the <a href="https://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Steelers</a> (+1.1) and the <a href="https://www.acmepackingcompany.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Packers</a> (+0.6), both of whom were strong in that department. The 2011 Super Bowl pitted the Giants (+0.4) and the Patriots (+0.1), who were positive in yards per play margin, but not too far from the mean.</p>
<p>On the one hand, we could say that the Falcons have a negative yards per play margin and only one of the last 24 teams to make the Super Bowl have been negative in that department. On the other hand, if the Patriots could make the Super Bowl at +0.1, then is it a major stretch to say that the Falcons could make it at -0.1? Also, the Patriots and Giants were third and ninth respectively in the NFL last year in yards per play gained; they were 30th and 22nd respectively in yards per play allowed. The Falcons are currently eighth in yards per play and 28th in yards per play allowed, so they look quite a bit like the two Super Bowl participants from last year. In an passing-friendly era in the NFL, it might be the case that a team with a great aerial attack can make up for other weaknesses. And what is the strength of this Falcons team? An elite passing offense.</p>
<p>However, the fallacy of the last four paragraphs is the assumption that success in the NFL playoffs is a question of merit. In a world where the 13-6 Giants can beat the 18-0 Patriots, where four years later the 9-7 Giants can win the Super Bowl, and where the 9-7 <a href="https://www.revengeofthebirds.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Cardinals</a> - a team that put up a mediocre record in the worst division in football and lost a game by forty points in the penultimate week of the season - can make the Super Bowl and come literally inches from winning it, we are probably not well-served spending our time parsing out statistical differences between playoff teams because truly, anything can happen.* <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpDkYZWeeVg">William Munny had it right all along.</a> If the '07 Giants, '08 Cardinals, and '11 Giants can win the NFC, then why not us?</p>
<p>* - <i>The 2011 Giants were 12th in DVOA. The 2008 Cardinals were 21st. The 2007 Giants were 14th. These teams were not just ones with underwhelming records. The more advanced statistical measures were also harsh in grading their performances.</i></p>
<p>I've had a good time reading and listening to Bill Simmons and Aaron Schatz try to process this Falcons team. Despite the fact that they are both Patriots fans, I like their columns. Schatz has made a major contribution to the experience of being a football fan by coming up with an empirically tested way of measuring success and failure. Simmons often uses good statistical analysis to make points, certainly moreso than other mass media columnists. (Whether Simmons deserves credit for moving in a numbers-driven direction or he is just a reflection of the evolution of sports culture is a separate, interesting question. Do you believe that history is shaped by great men or social/economic forces?) As New England fans, they should be well aware of the fact that a team's record can flatter it and yet that team can still win the Lombardi Trophy. However, they go right on their merry way, dismissing the Falcons and expecting that they will get exposed in January. Schatz used the term "poleaxed" on Twitter to describe his expectations for the Falcons in January and the Falcons were the object of the sentence, not the subject.</p>
<p>I would like to attribute their attitudes to being subjective Northeasterners. I like a good accusation of regional bias and thus, I can imagine an argument that they will describe traditional NFL teams from the Northeast and Midwest as clutch when they win a bevy of close games, whereas a non-traditional power like the Falcons is just lucky. It doesn't offend their sensibilities for the Patriots or Giants to benefit from good fortune, but it does strike them funny for Atlanta to do the same. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/quotes?qt=qt0447157">And I'd like that. But that s*** ain't the truth.</a> No, what's really going on here is that Simmons and Schatz are data-driven people in a world where the data are not reliable. They want to believe that after a 16-game schedule, we can make solid predictions about which teams are better than others. The two-time Super Bowl champion Giants mock that belief.</p>
<p>The Falcons just clobbered those Giants 34-0 in a validating, emotionally satisfying, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aHwuUWqcyI">"here I am"</a> performance. Atlanta did so one week after getting humiliated by the 3-9 <a href="https://www.catscratchreader.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Panthers</a>. If you need a better illustration of the futility of trying to get a read on an NFL team, this was it. The Falcons are capable of hitting the highest highs and plumbing the deepest depths. We would all like to tell ourselves that the team that beat the Giants is the real version of the Falcons, but what evidence do we have for that? We would like to tell ourselves that the Falcons defense that picked off <span>Peyton Manning</span>, <span>Drew Brees</span>, and <span>Eli Manning</span> a combined ten times in three games at the Georgia Dome is the real Falcons defense instead of the one that gave up 475 yards to the Panthers and 474 to the <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/teams/oakland-raiders" class="sbn-auto-link">Raiders</a>. But in reality, all we know is that this team is capable of wide variance, like just about every other team in the NFL.*</p>
<p>* - <i>Here is what I will be telling myself when quaffing beers at Der Biergarten before heading to the Dome for the divisional round game in a few weeks: "Mike Nolan can confuse a great quarterback, but he has a finite supply of <a target="_blank" href="http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Blackwater?file=Wildfire_explosion.jpg">wildfire</a>. Thus, he saves his best stuff for the biggest games and we can expect a top-end performance in the playoffs." These are the sorts of thoughts that cause sports fans to drive themselves crazy.</i></p>
<p>This is what is most frustrating about the narrative surrounding the 2012 Falcons season. The mantra has been repeated over and over again that the Falcons will be judged based on what happens in January. After four years of regular season success and postseason frustration, the team is not going to get credit for another year in which they win games from September through December. A 13-3 regular season will not matter if the Falcons lose their first playoff game again. Mike Smith and Matt Ryan will get raked over the coals for months if that happens. The problem with this line of thinking is that it assumes that what happens in the playoffs is a true reflection of a team's merit when in reality, it is just one small snapshot in a game where teams are very different from week to week. The game against the Giants reminded us of what the Falcons look like when they hit fifth gear, but we are deluding ourselves if we think that Atlanta (or any NFL team, for that matter) controls the shifter.</p>
https://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/12/18/3779680/who-cares-that-the-falcons-are-overratedMichael Bird2012-12-03T10:56:25-05:002012-12-03T10:56:25-05:00Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
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<img alt="Give 'em hell, give 'em hell, stand up and yell" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cq6n3V0tvh3gQnsr0YFY_tXz75Y=/0x108:4000x2775/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/4321073/20121201_rvr_sz2_060.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Give 'em hell, give 'em hell, stand up and yell | Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports</figcaption>
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<p>Georgia lost on Saturday night, but in delivering a good performance against the best team in the country, Mark Richt and Aaron Murray should not have to apologize to anyone.</p> <p>Losing a close game is a miserable experience. When your team gets blown out, you can wash yourself of the entire experience, banishing it from your head like a drunken one-night stand. In contrast, when your team comes up short in a game that comes down to the final play, the natural response is to toss and turn in bed, thinking about every little play that might have swung the outcome, every unlucky bounce, every close call. This is true for any close game, let alone a conference championship game against the defending national champion with a trip to the BCS title game on the line for a program that has not won a national title for 32 years. Saturday night was brutal for Georgia fans, one that would naturally lead fans to ask the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Quote/hillel2.html">"if not now, when?"</a> question about Georgia playing for and then winning a national title.</p>
<p>It's easy for someone like me, a casual Georgia fan, to say this, but when the emotional pain wears off, Dawg zealots should look back on Saturday night's game as a positive. Against the <a target="_blank" href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt12.htm">best</a> <a target="_blank" href="http://footballoutsiders.com/stats/feiplus">team</a> in the country, a program that has recruited better than any other over the past five years and is going for its third national title in four years, Georgia gave as good as they got for sixty minutes. The Dawgs took a 21-10 lead in the third quarter and then responded to the Tide's two-touchdown rally with a five-play, 75-yard drive to go back ahead in the fourth quarter. When the Tide took the lead again and left Georgia with only a minute to save themselves, the Dawgs moved the ball 81 yards in a flash, ultimately coming just eight yards short of what would have been one of the great wins in program history. For a team that has been derided in recent years as being mentally soft, Georgia showed great resilience throughout.the game. One year ago, Georgia folded when LSU hit them with a run late in the first half. This year, Georgia responded to the Bama surges every time.</p>
<p>I can think of few instances in which I have been prouder of Richt than in the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.al.com/alabamafootball/index.ssf/2012/12/watch_mark_richts_post-game_pr.html">post-game press conference</a> when he brusquely dismissed Chuck Oliver's ludicrous, passive-aggressive questions about Georgia's reputation in big games. Oliver frankly embarrassed himself by asking a question on behalf of unnamed "fans" when Richt opens himself up to direct questions from the public every week on his call-in show. If fans want to ask him about big games, then they can do so themselves without Oliver acting as a mouthpiece. In truth, Oliver wanted to make the accusation, but he didn't have the cojones to bring the charge himself.</p>
<p>More importantly, how in the world could someone have watched Georgia's performance and think that the "under-performs in big games" label has any value whatsoever when applied to this team? As if beating #2 Florida on a neutral field to win the SEC East - thereby handing the Gators their only loss of the season - and putting themselves in the SEC Championship Game wasn't winning a big game, Georgia had just scared the bejeezus of a Nick Saban team in a title game. They answered every punch thrown at them and were one deflection away from potentially winning as an eight-point underdog. Yes, Chuck, that must mean that Richt and Aaron Murray can't handle pressure.</p>
<p>Without knowing it, Bill Barnwell described the situation perfectly when he <a target="_blank" href="http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8693526/the-falcons-inability-win-playoffs-significant-think">wrote about the Falcons in the aftermath of their win over the Saints last Thursday night</a>. The "can't win the big one" label is, more often than not, a canard based on a small sample size and an accident of sequence:</p>
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<p>And now, of course, the next step in our road map for the Falcons is to win a playoff game with Ryan at the helm. Since Atlanta already has a playoff spot virtually sealed up, Ryan and the Falcons are going to spend the next four weeks deflecting that same question about their legitimacy in interview after interview, something Ryan already had to do during the postgame show last night. That criticism conflates the words "haven't" and "can't." It suggests that there's something lacking about Ryan's abilities or even Atlanta's character. That both Ryan and his team truly can't be taken seriously - that they don't deserve to be taken seriously - until they beat somebody in January. I don't know that the Falcons will win the Super Bowl or even that lone playoff game this year, but impugning Ryan and his team on some sort of illegitimate-until-they-win argument is lazy. There is no next hurdle for the Falcons to cross because that's a narrative trick, not a genuine way that people win or lose football games.</p>
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<p>Barnwell's point is that we should not read too much into a small sample size of results (in that instance, three playoff games) when history offers up plenty of examples of unquestionably great quarterbacks who lost three straight playoff games. We can make the same point with college football coaches. It took Joe Paterno a bevy of close calls before Penn State won a national title in his 17th season as the head coach in State College. (Georgia fans might remember the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCCYuXM4VOk">circumstances</a>.) Bobby Bowden won his first national title in his 18th season at Florida State and only after excruciating misses in 1987, 1991, and 1992 where the Noles lost three games against Miami by a total of five points. If Paterno and Bowden - the two winningest coaches in major college football history - could be derided with the label of not getting it done in big games, then Richt ought to take Oliver's insulting line of questioning as a compliment.</p>
<p>It is especially weak to criticize Richt for his performance on Saturday night when, to these somewhat impartial eyes who <a target="_blank" href="http://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/11/27/3696534/georgia-alabama-2012-sec-championship">opined last week that the coaching match-up was an instance of good versus great</a>, he out-coached Saban. Richt wasn't the one who completely butchered a time management situation at the end of the first half and went into the locker room with a pair of unused timeouts. Richt wasn't the one who repeatedly rushed three in the final minute and allowed Georgia to almost come back from the dead. After the game, most of the attention was directed to Georgia's decision not to spike the ball before their final snap, but as Chris Brown explains, that was <a target="_blank" href="http://smartfootball.com/game-management/should-georgia-have-spiked-the-ball">hardly a mistake</a>. Richt's team scored a touchdown on special teams. Richt's team executed a fake punt perfectly as opposed to Bama getting a delay of game penalty before trying their fake. Georgia looked like a well-prepared team, one that had found the right mix between being fired up and playing under control.</p>
<p>Alabama won the game in large part because they have recruited and developed a fantastic offensive line and two excellent running backs to charge through the holes produced by that line. Bama needed every ounce of production from their running game because the Dawgs put up as good an offensive performance as we have seen against Alabama in two years, save possibly for the one delivered by the presumptive Heisman winner three weeks ago. <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/78599/aaron-murray" class="sbn-auto-link">Aaron Murray's</a> last three performances in "big games" against LSU, South Carolina, and Florida had produced an aggregate line of 39 of 95 for 422 yards (a puny 4.4 yards per attempt) with two touchdowns and seven picks. On Saturday, Murray almost doubled his production as compared to that small sample, throwing for eight yards per attempt with one touchdown and one interception. Not only did Richt coach well, but his oft-criticized quarterback played well against the type of opponent that allegedly owned him.</p>
<p>It sucks to come close and lose, but as Paterno and Bowden illustrate, it is better to come close and lose than to not come close at all. If Georgia fans need an illustration as to this maxim, then they ought to cast their attention 110 miles southwest on I-85. In 2010, Auburn got every conceivable good bounce and won the national title. The Tigers won their championship out of the blue, as they were two years removed from firing their head coach and had gone 13-12 in the two prior seasons. Auburn's success came from a void and they have promptly returned to that void, going 11-14 since beating Oregon in Glendale. Dawg fans, would you rather be in Auburn's shoes? Would you rather have that national title that has eluded you for more than three decades, but now find yourselves looking for a coach again after an 0-8 season in the SEC? What matters more: a brief highlight or sustained success?</p>
<p>I just finished the highly entertaining <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/My-Heart-Is-Idiot-Essays/dp/0374280843/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354539596&sr=8-1&keywords=my+heart+is+an+idiot&tag=sbnation-20" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener"><i>My Heart is an Idiot</i></a> and there is a passage that applies nicely for Georgia fans. In the chapter "Canada or Bust," the author, Davy Rothbart, is giving a ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco to a St. Pauli Girl named Missy and a vagabond DJ named Hakim. The latter is trying to make it to Vancouver because it seems like a potential paradise for him:</p>
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<p>But what would happen once he reached Canada? Missy and I had talked about it for a bit after he'd first fallen asleep. It's appealing to imaging that if we can just get that one thing in our life to work out - if we can get the job we want, finish writing that book or making that movie, get the right girl or get to Canada - that everything will be solved, absolved, good to go for good. I slipped into that way of thinking too often, I admitted to Missy, even though I knew that sometimes in life all of a sudden there you were - standing with your Technics turntables just across from the Canada border, and you're not a new you, you're just you, but in Canada.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Winning the 2010 national title didn't change who Gene Chizik was. He was still the same guy who went 5-19 at Iowa State, the same guy who would go on to run off the assistant whose offensive style made the 14-0 season possible. Losing the 2012 SEC Championship Game doesn't change who Mark Richt is. He's still one of the best coaches in Georgia history. If anything, Richt's performance against the Tide should make Georgia fans more confident that he will ultimately get them to the promised land. Paterno's team was stymied by the Tide at the goal line in the 1979 Sugar Bowl, but JoePa was a champion three years later on the same field. Bowden's team was a two-point conversion away against the Canes in 1987 and then a matter of feet away from a winning field goal in 1991. Two years later, Bowden had his crown on the Orange Bowl field. Coming close and losing in a big game isn't an insult or a reason to opine that a coach or a quarterback is a choker; it's a positive sign that the guys in charge did enough to get to that point in the first place.</p>
https://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/12/3/3721326/georgia-alabama-sec-championship-2012Michael Bird2012-11-29T08:45:01-05:002012-11-29T08:45:01-05:00Aaron Murray & A.J. McCarron: Play Time Is Over
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<img alt="Step into the light, Aaron" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/C_0_xz3oCRIdwxd1jCcHuCPSnmg=/0x208:4000x2875/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/4103889/155398000.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Step into the light, Aaron | Scott Cunningham</figcaption>
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<p>The SEC Championship Game will feature the nation's top two quarterbacks in terms of passer efficiency, but they have put up those numbers against mediocre schedules. Saturday will represent a big step up for both of them.</p> <p>One of the negatives of conference expansion is that we sometimes lose the ability to compare teams within the same league. In a 14-team conference with an eight-game league schedule, each SEC team plays only two of the seven members of the opposite division. This can lead a team to play a very challenging SEC schedule or a relatively easy one, all depending on the luck of the draw. As Steve Spurrier pointed out, much to the consternation of Georgia fans, but with a good degree of accuracy, Georgia and Alabama both benefited from good fortune in their schedules this year.</p>
<p>The 2012 SEC is <a href="http://www.footballperspective.com/week-13-college-football-srs-ratings/" target="_blank">highly stratified</a>. There are six elite teams, four good-to-mediocre teams, and four bad teams. Happily, the six elite teams were split evenly between the two divisions. Georgia missed all three of the elite teams from the West; Alabama missed the three elite teams from the East. Thus, the Tide and Dawgs only played two conference games apiece against truly challenging opponents. Add in eroding non-conference schedules - Bama played three cupcakes along with a good, but not great Michigan team; with Georgia Tech's decline, Georgia didn't play a single top 50 non-conference opponent - and you have two teams that played twelve games, but had few challenges on the slate. By Brian Fremeau's metrics. Bama and Georgia played the <a href="http://insider.espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8686912/why-steve-spurrier-right-flawed-league-title-game-format-ncf" target="_blank">two easiest schedules in the SEC</a>. ($)</p>
<p>This context is important when we look at the quarterback match-up for the game on Saturday. Aaron Murray and <a class="sbn-auto-link" href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/78259/a-j-mccarron">A.J. McCarron</a> posted outstanding stats this season. The two juniors are <a href="http://www.cfbstats.com/2012/leader/national/player/split01/category02/sort02.html" target="_blank">#1 and #2 nationally in passer efficiency</a>. However, what do we really know about them, given their schedules? Do stats compiled against the defenses of Western Kentucky and Buffalo matter at all when we are trying to predict how they will do against defenses chock full of future NFL starters?</p>
<p>This is a particular concern with Murray because the rap on him during his time at Georgia has been that he has been great against weaker opponents, but has struggled in the games where Georgia needs him the most. The Dawgs got the big game monkey off their back with an eight-point win against Florida, but Murray did not play well against the Gators, so the concern remains with him. All quarterbacks do better when they do not face pressure and when they are throwing through big windows, but Murray seems to have an especially big disparity in performance based on the quality of opponent.</p>
<p>To get a sense as to Murray's track record against defenses that are in the same ballpark as the one he will face at the Georgia Dome, I decided to take a look at his stats for every game played against a defense that finished in the top twenty nationally in yards allowed per play. Chart? Chart.</p>
<p> </p>
<table unselectable="on" border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="400"><tbody>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="124"><i>Opponent</i></td>
<td valign="top" width="24"><i>Comp.</i></td>
<td valign="top" width="23"><i>Att.</i></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><i>Yards</i></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><i>TD</i></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><i>INT</i></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><i>YPA</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="124">‘12 Florida</td>
<td valign="top" width="24">12</td>
<td valign="top" width="23">24</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">150</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">1</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">3</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">6.3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="124">‘12 South Carolina</td>
<td valign="top" width="24">11</td>
<td valign="top" width="23">31</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">109</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">0</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">1</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">3.5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="124">‘12 Vandy</td>
<td valign="top" width="24">18</td>
<td valign="top" width="23">24</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">250</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">2</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">0</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">10.4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="124">‘11 Michigan State</td>
<td valign="top" width="24">20</td>
<td valign="top" width="23">32</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">288</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">2</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">2</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">9.0</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="124">‘11 LSU</td>
<td valign="top" width="24">16</td>
<td valign="top" width="23">40</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">163</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">1</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">3</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">4.1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="124">‘11 Florida</td>
<td valign="top" width="24">15</td>
<td valign="top" width="23">34</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">169</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">2</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">1</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">5.0</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="124">‘11 Vandy</td>
<td valign="top" width="24">22</td>
<td valign="top" width="23">38</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">326</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">3</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">1</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">8.6</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="124">‘11 Miss. State</td>
<td valign="top" width="24">13</td>
<td valign="top" width="23">25</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">160</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">2</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">3</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">6.4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="124">‘11 South Carolina</td>
<td valign="top" width="24">19</td>
<td valign="top" width="23">29</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">248</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">4</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">1</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">8.6</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="124">‘10 UCF</td>
<td valign="top" width="24">21</td>
<td valign="top" width="23">38</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">198</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">0</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">2</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">5.2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="124">‘10 Florida</td>
<td valign="top" width="24">18</td>
<td valign="top" width="23">37</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">313</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">3</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">3</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">8.5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="124"><b>TOTAL</b></td>
<td valign="top" width="24"><b>185</b></td>
<td valign="top" width="23"><b>348</b></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><b>2374</b></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><b>20</b></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><b>20</b></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><b>6.8</b></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p> </p>
<p>Thanks goodness for that Vandy game, huh? If you view the South Carolina and Florida games as the true tests because those defenses, unlike Vandy's, have the sort of athletes that the Tide will bring to town, then the track record in 2012 is ugly. Then again, we're dealing with a sample size of two, which illustrates both Georgia's good fortune in avoiding top opponents this year and also the limitations of this exercise. You don't have to have a PhD in statistics to know that drawing major conclusions from a two-game data set is a fool's errand.</p>
<p>Let's put those numbers in context by placing A.J. McCarron under the same microscope:</p>
<table unselectable="on" border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="400"><tbody>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="103"><i>Opponent</i></td>
<td valign="top" width="41"><i>Comp.</i></td>
<td valign="top" width="27"><i>Att.</i></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><i>Yards</i></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><i>TD</i></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><i>INT</i></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><i>YPA</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="103">‘12 LSU</td>
<td valign="top" width="41">14</td>
<td valign="top" width="27">27</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">165</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">1</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">0</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">6.1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="103">‘12 Michigan</td>
<td valign="top" width="41">11</td>
<td valign="top" width="27">21</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">199</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">2</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">0</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">9.5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="103">‘11 LSU</td>
<td valign="top" width="41">23</td>
<td valign="top" width="27">34</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">234</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">0</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">0</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">6.9</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="103">‘11 Miss. State</td>
<td valign="top" width="41">14</td>
<td valign="top" width="27">24</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">163</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">0</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">1</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">6.8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="103">‘11 LSU</td>
<td valign="top" width="41">16</td>
<td valign="top" width="27">28</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">199</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">0</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">1</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">7.1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="103">‘11 Vandy</td>
<td valign="top" width="41">23</td>
<td valign="top" width="27">30</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">237</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">4</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">0</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">7.9</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="103">‘11 Florida</td>
<td valign="top" width="41">12</td>
<td valign="top" width="27">25</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">140</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">0</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">0</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">5.6</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="103">‘11 Penn State</td>
<td valign="top" width="41">19</td>
<td valign="top" width="27">31</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">163</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">1</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">0</td>
<td valign="top" width="57">5.3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="103"><b>TOTAL</b></td>
<td valign="top" width="41"><b>132</b></td>
<td valign="top" width="27"><b>220</b></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><b>1501</b></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><b>8</b></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><b>2</b></td>
<td valign="top" width="57"><b>6.8</b></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p> </p>
<p>McCarron has a smaller sample size, in part because he did not start as a redshirt freshman like Murray did and in part because he has played one fewer top defense over the past two years. It's also interesting that both Murray and McCarron faced more top defenses in 2011 than they did in 2012, further drilling home the point about the two teams' schedules this year.</p>
<p>Overall, the numbers reflect the differences in the Alabama and Georgia offenses. McCarron throws for fewer yards - 187 per game as compared to Murray's 215 - but that he because he throws less. The two quarterbacks have the exact same yards per attempt. This is true despite the fact that McCarron has completed 60% of his passes in games against top defenses, whereas Murray's completion percentage is only 53%. Thus, it's fair to say that McCarron is that he throws shorter, higher-percentage passes, while Murray takes more risks down the field. Murray gets his yards in bigger chunks.</p>
<p>You can see the risk issue come up with the interception totals, which is the big difference between the two. McCarron's interception rate against top opponents is below 1%. He simply does not give the other team the ball. Combine that strength with Alabama's outstanding defenses and you have a winning recipe. Bama forces their opponents to drive the length of the field and they bet correctly that they won't be able to do it against a Saban- and Smart-coached unit stocked with blue chippers. Murray, on the other hand, has an interception rate against top opponents of 5.7%. He threw three picks in Georgia's biggest win of 2012. He threw three picks when he played in the SEC Championship Game last year.</p>
<p>It is that proclivity to throw interceptions that represents the big statistical disparity between Murray and McCarron. Aaron and A.J. have the same yards per attempt against top defenses. However, if you switch to <a href="http://www.pro-football-reference.com/about/glossary.htm" target="_blank">adjusted yards per attempt</a>, which gives a twenty-yard bonus for touchdowns and imposes a 45-yard penalty for interceptions, then McCarron's number goes up to 7.14, while Murray's drops to 5.38. If this were a case of Murray being dragged down by his freshman and sophomore stats, then maybe we could conclude that a large portion of Murray's performance could be dismissed as irrelevant in projecting a result Saturday, but his poor performances against South Carolina and Florida indicate that this isn't a problem that went away as he gained experience.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to the Florida game, I wrote that <a href="http://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/10/26/3553646/four-principles-on-georgia-florida" target="_blank">Georgia would have to break two patterns</a>: the pattern of the team to lose against elite opponents and the pattern of the defense to under-perform in 2012. The Dawgs passed both tests and as a result, have put themselves in a position to win the conference and a national title. The SEC Championship Game represents another instance where a pattern will have to be broken. In this instance, it's <a class="sbn-auto-link" href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/78599/aaron-murray">Aaron Murray's</a> tendency to play poorly and throw interceptions against great defenses. Zach Mettenberger and <a class="sbn-auto-link" href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/134696/johnny-manziel">Johnny Manziel</a> showed that this Alabama defense can be beaten. It is not impregnable like the 2011 edition, which stands to reason, given how many 2011 Bama stars are now playing in the NFL.</p>
<p>It will be almost impossible for Georgia to beat Alabama if the Dawgs are minus two or worse in the turnover department. We know that A.J. McCarron is highly unlikely to throw picks. We do not know whether Murray can do the same while still generating yards and points. That is the big question for Saturday.</p>
https://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/11/29/3705708/aaron-murray-a-j-mccarron-play-time-is-overMichael Bird2012-11-27T08:37:52-05:002012-11-27T08:37:52-05:00Georgia-Alabama: Coming to grips with being good
<figure>
<img alt="A gentle reminder." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/L5oKKY9_5ssePGnmTowoZjcPq5M=/0x69:841x630/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/3982375/124557764.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>A gentle reminder. | Kevin C. Cox</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mark Richt is an honorable man and a good coach. He also is not Nick Saban. We need to keep that little fact in mind when we prepare for Georgia's biggest game in three decades.</p> <p>Saturday was not a good day for my primary football rooting interest. While Georgia fans were enjoying the Dawgs' demolition of Georgia Tech, Mark Richt's eleventh win over the Jackets in twelve tries, I was suffering through my alma mater's frustrating five-point loss to Ohio State. I suppose that I should be grateful that Michigan is competitive with its arch rival after four straight double-digit losses in Lloyd Carr's last season and then the three years of the <a href="#" class="sbn-auto-link">Rich Rodriguez</a> disaster. However, it is not a lot easier to watch your team come tantalizingly close to beating an 11-0 team on its home field than it is to watch your team get run off the field from the start.</p>
<p>What was especially frustrating was that Michigan had the tools to move the ball on Ohio State, and yet the Wolverines failed to cross midfield in the second half against a defense that was mid-table in the Big Ten (the Big Ten!). All of the warnings that I got from my Auburn friends when Al Borges became the offensive coordinator at Michigan, the warnings that I dismissed with "he won't have Tommy Tuberville meddling in his affairs," came rushing back to me. <a target="_blank" href="http://mgoblog.com/content/end-parlor-trick">Brian Cook, take it away</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you've poked around the flaming wreckage of the Michigan internet in the aftermath of Saturday, you have undoubtedly heard the wailing and gnashing of teeth because of that. But the thing is so stark it has to be marveled at again: when <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/76856/denard-robinson" class="sbn-auto-link">Denard Robinson</a> entered the game against Ohio State, every play but one was Denard Robinson doing something. Once it was fail to chip <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/132060/ryan-shazier" class="sbn-auto-link">Ryan Shazier</a> and try to get out for a screen; all other times it was run the ball, sometimes with a pitch included. The fakeout was a six-yard completion to <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/131975/mike-kwiatkowski" class="sbn-auto-link">Mike Kwiatkowski</a> in the first quarter, and there ended any attempt at deception...</p>
<p>What can you say? It's indefensible. It's a failure without any possible explanation. It caused legions of neutral observers to laugh or fume or sit slack-jawed as they watched it unfold. Sean McDonough was dumbfounded. Orson, in the stands, marveled. Twitter burst at the seams with furious mockery from people who don't care about Michigan but do hate to see Denard Robinson end his final Ohio State game on the bench, having averaged 11 yards a carry on ten attempts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2012/11/26/3692940/blatant-homerism-part-one-the-thing-we-did-before-the-fsu-game">Or the aforementioned Orson</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>7. I was ready to bolt The Game early if I had to, but fortunately Midwestern football is polite and runs on a schedule. After Denard Robinson scored on Al Borges' mind-blowing two-minute drill (sweep left! then sweep right!) the game calcified, presumably frozen by the elements and both defenses clamping down on whatever was going on in the first half. <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/132058/braxton-miller" class="sbn-auto-link">Braxton Miller</a> was largely corralled, and <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/114089/carlos-hyde" class="sbn-auto-link">Carlos Hyde</a> was left to pound out the Michigan defense and put the Wolverines in the horrendous position of doing whatever it is that Al Borges wants the Michigan offense to do.</p>
<p>8. No one knows precisely what this is, save from calling really obvious rollout passes that the Georgia defense was picking off back in 2006. You, <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/113843/devin-gardner" class="sbn-auto-link">Devin Gardner</a>, are no Brandon Cox. (Mostly because Gardner only threw one pick, and Cox was good for at least three against Georgia at any given time He also did nothing but beat Florida. I hate and respect you, Brandon Cox, and always will.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I came away from the game with a basic fear confirmed: Michigan is going to lose more than its share to Ohio State as long as Urban Meyer is the coach in Columbus. There is not going to be an immediate correction for the Tressel era, a whiplash where Michigan is suddenly on a long winning streak to compensate for the seven straight that the Wolverines lost from 2004 to 2010. The college football gods do not believe in redistribution.</p>
<p>Brady Hoke has exceeded my expectations in a major way. His first team went 11-2 and won the Sugar Bowl. Where Lloyd Carr drove Michigan fans crazy with conservative tactical decisions in close games, Hoke is endearingly aggressive. More importantly, Hoke might come across like a Chris Farley character, but that doesn't stop him from being (or maybe causes him to be) an excellent recruiter. Michigan brought in a <a target="_blank" href="http://rivals.yahoo.com/footballrecruiting/football/recruiting/teamrank/2012/all/all">top ten class in Hoke's first year</a> and is poised to do <a target="_blank" href="http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/recruiting/teamrank/2013/all/all">even better this February</a>. This is no easy feat at a program whose recruiting base is gradually bleeding talent.</p>
<p>However, the simple truth is that Hoke is not as good a head coach as Urban Meyer. This is hardly an insult, as I can count the number of coaches who are on Meyer's level on one hand. Still, I am left to confront the fact that Michigan's arch rival has a better recruiting base and a better coach. I can gnash my teeth all I want at the fact that Ohio State was punished for major NCAA violations with a coaching upgrade, but maybe that's Ohio's reward for having a football culture that produces coaches like Meyer who view coaching in Columbus as a career apex. (That culture also produced Hoke and Bo Schembechler, so a little gratitude on my part is in order.)</p>
<p>We live in a sports culture that derides teams, players, and coaches that are good, but not elite. We get inundated with cliches about second place being the first loser. Coaches are forced to mouth platitudes about winning a championship being the only goal. Atlantans experienced this phenomenon first-hand during the Braves' run of putting together great regular seasons and then losing short, lottery ticket series in October, an era that apparently means that we were <a target="_blank" href="http://atlanta.sbnation.com/atlanta-braves/2012/3/1/2835333/forbes-sports-cities-2012-atlanta">tortured for years</a>. One has to step outside of a cultural norm to say "my team is well-run, but not as well-run as our rival, and I accept being second out of twelve instead of first."</p>
<p>And after 985 words, that brings me to the Georgia-Alabama game. With that lead-in, you can probably see where I'm going with this piece. Mark Richt always struck me as the Lloyd Carr of the SEC: an honorable man who represents the personal virtues held in the highest regard by his school's fan base, a good recruiter who puts together talented teams, but a coach who has certain limitations in terms of offensive approach and tactical decision-making that leaves him a notch below elite. Carr won when he was coaching against John Cooper; he lost when he was coaching against Jim Tressel. Richt won when he was coaching against Ron Zook* and now Will Muschamp (although that is by no means set in stone); he lost when he was coaching against Steve Spurrier* and Urban Meyer.</p>
<p>* - <i>Richt inexplicably went 1-2 against Zook, but Zook's various other failings allowed Georgia to win the East in both of the years in which Richt lost to Zook.</i></p>
<p>** - <i>I'm thinking of the Florida Spurrier here. South Carolina Spurrier also has a good record against Richt, but it's harder for his team to turn wins over Georgia into divisional titles because of South Carolina's inferior recruiting position.</i></p>
<p>On Saturday, Richt is going to be going up against an elite coach and program. Georgia is used to playing opponents that do not have as much talent as the Dawgs; the comedic stylings of <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/36147/bacarri-rambo" class="sbn-auto-link">Bacarri Rambo</a> aside, that will not be true on Saturday. Alabama's last five recruiting classes, according to Rivals were #1, #1, #5, #1, and #1. Although oversigning does give the Tide a slight advantage in those rankings, the average star rating of Bama's recruits over those five years was higher than that of Georgia's in all but one. The last time we saw Nick Saban with an extended period of time to prepare for an SEC opponent in a championship game, his defense stopped LSU from crossing midfield until the fourth quarter. (I am operating on the assumption that Saban was able to coach against Western Carolina and Auburn with one eye on Atlanta. He would not have let on about this to the players because of THE PROCESS, but in places he doesn't talk about at parties, he's been thinking about the Dawgs for a while.) It may not be fair that Alabama fans got the Bear and now they get his modern-day equivalent. This is, after all, the program that only hired Saban after Rich Rodriguez changed his mind about taking the Bama job. But here we are; Nick Saban is coming to town.</p>
<p>Georgia has, by in large, a reasonable fan base. Dawg fans are not noted for outlandish expectations for their coaches, which is to their credit. Under normal circumstances, they would have no problem agreeing with the statement that Mark Richt is a good coach, possibly even a very good coach, but that he is not Nick Saban and as long as Saban is in Tuscaloosa (and the Tide are not on probation), Georgia will tend to have teams that are not as good as those of Alabama. That doesn't mean that the Tide will always beat the Dawgs, but the odds are generally against it. Sure enough, Bama comes to town as a 7.5-point favorite against Georgia, which translates to about a 29% chance of the Dawgs winning. You don't need to be Nate Silver to understand that those are not good odds.</p>
<p>This little exercise in remembering where we are seems useful now that the SEC Championship Game is being sold as Georgia's biggest game in thirty years. With the stakes so high and a tantalizingly beatable Notre Dame team over the horizon, it is quite possible for Georgia fans to get caught up in the moment and forget that this is not a contest between equals. Georgia has a reasonable chance of winning on Saturday, but they don't have a good chance because of the quality of the opponent. We ought to keep that in mind because it could very well help us deal with the aftermath. This is an "Odysseus being lashed to the mast" moment and that exercise proved <a target="_blank" href="http://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/10/5/3458552/october-it-just-doesnt-matter">useful in October</a>.</p>
https://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/11/27/3696534/georgia-alabama-2012-sec-championshipMichael Bird2012-11-21T08:46:12-05:002012-11-21T08:46:12-05:00Failing Up: Maryland Leaves The ACC
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/i1U27G2Io3Psq1ceavQFwfPZ50w=/0x43:4000x2710/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/3666773/20121115_mje_aq3_829.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Evan Habeeb-US PRESSWIRE</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Maryland's athletic department is a poster child for mismanagement. So of course the Big Ten decided that they had to get on that train.</p> <p>If there were one concept that I would graft from international soccer onto American sports, it would be <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promotion_and_relegation">promotion and relegation</a>. It is a simple concept. In a sport, you have multiple levels. At the end of a season, the bottom 2-3 teams get dropped into the next division down and are replaced by the same number of top finishers from the lower league. The system generates excitement at the end of the season outside of the race for the championship at the top. In fact, it's probably fair to say that the pain of getting relegated is greater than the joy of winning the championship. A club can go from playing <a href="https://theshortfuse.sbnation.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Arsenal</a>, <a href="https://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Chelsea</a>, and <a href="https://thebusbybabe.sbnation.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Manchester United</a> in one season to making trips to Peterborough United, Ipswich Town, and <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/soccer/epl/teams/wolverhampton" class="sbn-auto-link">Wolverhampton</a> Wanderers the next. The playoff to determine the last promotion spot from the English second division to the Premiership is often referred to as the world's richest match, as the value of winning and getting sent up was estimated last year at <a target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/sports/soccer/in-england-west-ham-wins-playoff-and-promotion-to-premier-league.html?_r=0">$150 million</a>.</p>
<p>Aside from generating excitement and interesting narratives, promotion and relegation reward success and failure. A poorly-managed team doesn't get to just keep cashing checks from its league's TV deals and revenue sharing arrangements, Instead, it has every incentive to alter its course when the product on the field is substandard. Egotistical clowns like Daniel Snyder would get their just desserts. (Until recently, I could have mentioned Donald Sterling and Peter Angelos in this section. How unfortunate that events had to get in the way.)</p>
<p>Additionally, the specter of relegation would prevent farces like the <a href="https://www.fishstripes.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Miami Marlins</a>' recent sell-off. In Major League Baseball, the Marlins can tank before the season because there is no major downside. They get to cut payroll drastically and they will still get large payments from the league to make ends meet. In soccer, this course of conduct would put the Marlins at serious risk of getting relegated, which would mean a fiscal disaster for the club. Thus, in a structure where failure is punished appropriately, there are factors that force teams to actually try to put a good product on the field.</p>
<p>SB Nation spent a week in the summer discussing how <a target="_blank" href="http://www.sbnation.com/college-football-relegation">promotion and relegation would look in college football</a>. In a clunky, informal way, college football already has something approximating promotion. It does not have relegation, as it is practically impossible to boot an underperforming athletic department out of a conference. However, programs that do a great job of winning games and generating fan support can move up the ladder. This doesn't happen in pro sports. No matter how well the Charlotte Knights do in the International League, they are not going to get snapped up by Major League Baseball. However, in college football, a sustained period of success by a team in a lower division can lead to elevation.</p>
<p>There are a number of examples of this phenomenon. Take Virginia Tech, for instance. Frank Beamer became the coach in 1987. By 1991, the Hokies' results were good enough to get invited into the Big East. Beamer produced a number of outstanding teams in the Big East, highlighted by consecutive 11-1 seasons with <span>Michael Vick</span> at quarterback in 1999 and 2000. Lane Stadium developed a reputation as one of the most feared destinations for visiting teams. When the ACC was seemingly bringing about the demise of the Big East in the early Aughts, it was the combination of Virginia Tech's success on the field and its passionate fan base that led the Hokies to get the brass ring of an invitation to the ACC. The prospect of angry Hokie fans at the polls caused the Virginia General Assembly to get involved, putting pressure on the University of Virginia to take care of its in-state rival. In the end, college football acted as a meritocracy and a deserving program got a just reward.</p>
<p>For the most part, this is how conference expansion worked. The Big Ten and the SEC are the two top destinations for a program. The schools that they have invited since Roy Kramer kicked off the realignment era in 1992 - Arkansas, South Carolina, Penn State, Nebraska, Missouri, and Texas A&M - all had devoted fan bases, a recent, encouraging pattern of on-field football success, or both. You don't find many fans of either conference regretting the addition of any of these particular schools, although you will find the occasional SEC fan fretting that the conference has gotten too big and unwieldy. That's nothing that a <a target="_blank" href="http://atlanta.sbnation.com/georgia-bulldogs/2012/6/1/3056578/sec-football-nine-game-schedule">nine-game schedule</a> won't fix.</p>
<p>Note that the topic sentence of the last paragraph is framed in the past tense. The Big Ten broke the pattern this week by inviting Maryland to join the conference. One can make a case that Greg Schiano's excellent work at Rutgers and the fact that the Scarlet Knights now draw decent crowds is an example of success being rewarded. One cannot make that case with Maryland. In every meaningful sense, the Maryland athletic department has been mismanaged for an extended period of time. Maryland ran off Ralph Friedgen, who was one of the best coaches the school had had in recent decades. They failed to retain <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/115134/james-franklin" class="sbn-auto-link">James Franklin</a>, who is about to take Vandy to a bowl game for the second straight season and remarkably has the Commodores' incoming recruiting class <a target="_blank" href="http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/recruiting/teamrank/2013/all/all">ranked in the top 15 nationally</a>. (You know that when Vandy is fighting with Florida State, Michigan, Notre Dame, and USC for a <a target="_blank" href="http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/recruiting/player-Leon-McQuayIII-100111;_ylt=ApAjMuFiVFQItVT4ogbmffRIPZB4">five-star safety</a>, something is going right in Nashville.) They hired Randy Edsall, who has managed to run off a couple dozen players and is 6-17 in two seasons in College Park (although this year deserves a bit of an asterisk because <a target="_blank" href="http://mgoblog.com/category/tags/angry-iowa-running-back-hating-god">Angry Iowa Running Back Hating G-d</a> got bored with one position and moved onto Maryland quarterbacks). Maryland football was never a major factor in the DC/Baltimore sports market, ranking behind the <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/teams/washington-redskins" class="sbn-auto-link">Redskins</a>, <a href="https://www.baltimorebeatdown.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Ravens</a>, <a href="https://www.camdenchat.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Orioles</a>, <a href="https://www.federalbaseball.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Nationals</a>, <a href="https://www.japersrink.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Capitals</a>, <a href="https://www.bulletsforever.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Wizards</a>, Maryland Hoops, Georgetown Hoops, and quite possibly Johns Hopkins Lacrosse in terms of attention, but interest has <a target="_blank" href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/images/SEC-SEC-SEC-SEC-SEC_AAD5/A76yNHECQAAgKii1_thumb.png">cratered</a> this year. Maryland expanded Byrd Stadium beyond the fan base's interest level, leaving the school with a large deficit that it can only make up by <a target="_blank" href="http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/seven-sports-are-eliminated-at-maryland/">cutting seven varsity sports</a>. When Buzz Bissinger wanted an extreme example of poor management to make his inept case that college football should be banned, <a target="_blank" href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304743704577382292376194220.html">he picked Maryland</a>.</p>
<p>In short, Maryland has a poor track record of on-field results, lukewarm fan support at best, and a gaping maw in their athletic budget that is forcing the department to hemorrhage programs. Jim Delany looked at that and said "I'll take it!" Maryland's current state is so bad that even in a <a target="_blank" href="http://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/9/13/3325530/nick-saban-lane-kiffin-2012-college-football">post-truth world</a>, none of the relevant parties could spin the move as being about anything other than cable TV viewers. Like Saudi Arabia and other resource-rich states that manage to muddle along despite chronic mismanagement, Maryland got promoted not because of smart management or passionate fans, but rather because it happens to be the flagship school for a state with a good number of television sets.</p>
<p>Leaving aside the fact that the cable TV revenue on which Delany's decision is based might very well be <a target="_blank" href="http://nymag.com/daily/sports/2012/11/madness-of-big-ten-expansion.html">ephemeral</a> in the long term, Maryland's addition to the Big Ten offends the basic premise that in a free market, success is rewarded and failure is punished. American professional sports are not a free market. Witness the continued vitality of the <a href="https://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/" class="sbn-auto-link">Chicago Cubs</a> as evidence of that fact. College sports has a number of non-free market elements, starting with the fact that the individuals who create the value in the enterprise - the players - are paid in scrip from the company store, but the concept that a well-run program could move up the conference ladder had a real American Dream dynamic to it. Maryland has failed miserably and is being rewarded handsomely. The only meritocratic elements of the story are that John Swofford is being <a target="_blank" href="http://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/8/6/3223566/5267-words-on-college-football-media-deals-and-swofford-does-not">punished for self-dealing</a> and it is likely that either UConn or Louisville - two athletic departments that are not business school case studies in mismanagement - will get bumped up from the Big East to the ACC. In a situation where a conference about to celebrate its sixtieth birthday just saw one of its seven charter members fly the coop out of financial desperation, that is the silver lining.</p>
https://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/11/21/3674826/failing-up-maryland-leaves-the-accMichael Bird2012-11-15T08:02:11-05:002012-11-15T08:02:11-05:00BCS Silly Season, Starring Pierce and Wetzel
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<img alt="Notre Dame: caught in between conspiracies" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/E728wldF9yAcKI0rG9D1rcVIYUA=/0x56:4000x2723/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/3293415/20121110_jla_aa6_985.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Notre Dame: caught in between conspiracies | Mark L. Baer-US PRESSWIRE</figcaption>
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<p>One claims that the BCS will conspire to include Notre Dame for ratings. The other claims the BCS will exclude Notre Dame because they lost the Champs Sports Bowl. Both could have stood to be at the Georgia Dome this week to see what the BCS gets right.</p> <p>We are coming to the conclusion of another college football season, which means that it's time for the politicking to start in earnest. It's time for SEC fans to dismiss one or more high-scoring teams from the Pac Twelve and Big XII as being products of a defense-free environment. It's time for Mark May to troll entire fan bases. It's time for Texas fans to wonder why they are not in the picture, yet again. It's time for the national media to fight over which star player from a top three team should win the Heisman. It's time for Big Ten fans to mutter about oversigning and "who won the Civil War, anyway!" (thus fulfilling their destiny as the English soccer fans of college football) as they spend another November on the outside looking in. And it is definitely time for national writers to gripe about the BCS in irrational, often contradictory fashion.</p>
<p>Let's start with Charles Pierce. If a writer from Boston is going to spill ink on college football, then which program is going to draw his attention? Would you be shocked if I said it was Notre Dame? Pierce, fresh from writing about various political conspiracies, believes that <a target="_blank" href="http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8623235/rooting-undefeated-notre-dame">the BCS will put Notre Dame in the title game over Kansas State for commercial reasons</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Let us assume that Notre Dame manages to get by Southern Cal, and Kansas State manages to escape Texas, and Oregon beats Oregon State in the annual Wild Hemp Classic or whatever the hell it is, and then gets through a conference championship game in which the Ducks record 750 passing yards. This would leave us with three undefeated teams, and one of them would be Notre Dame. In that event, watching the purely objective, scientific BCS Brainiac 205 computer come up with a magic formula to screw Kansas State is going to be a wonder to behold.</p>
<p>Does any person smart enough to spoon his own oatmeal really believe that the powers that be in the BCS would set up Oregon and Kansas State if Notre Dame-Anybody were a live option? The game is still going to be televised, right? And what's that, you say? Maybe Oregon would get hosed? Yes, and maybe Phil Knight will join the Carthusians. There is a reason why nobody messes with Nike, and it's roughly the same reason that people don't play mumblety-peg with tactical nuclear weapons. Nope, sorry, in that scenario, it's Kansas State that doesn't have a chair when the music stops. Sucks to be you there, Bugtussle.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is what happens when someone who knows nothing about college football writes about college football. First of all, there are no "powers that be in the BCS." Two-thirds of the BCS rankings are determined by the Harris Poll voters, who are a collection of hundreds who barely know what's going on in front of their own noses, and the coaches, who are spending the vast majority of their time over-managing their programs and cannot pay sufficient attention to their ballots. This collection couldn't conspire to order hash browns at Waffle House, let alone elevate a program that is the most disliked in college football - the only major power that is not in a conference and therefore doesn't share its largess with other schools - into a national title game.</p>
<p>Second, the "purely objective, scientific BCS Brainiac 205 computer" isn't going to come up with a way to put Notre Dame ahead of Kansas State; the computers <i>already have</i> Notre Dame as they <a target="_blank" href="http://espn.go.com/college-football/bcs">best team in the country</a>. This isn't the result of secret orders from the Vatican; it's the consequence of the mathematically bankrupt formulae that the computers are required to use that do not account for margin-of-victory. The BCS castrated their computers as a result of Nebraska making the 2001 national title game on the strength of margin-of-victory and then getting pummeled, just as Oregon or Colorado would have against an epic Miami team. <a target="_blank" href="http://thematadorsports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/miami.jpg">Catholics, thank the Convicts</a>.</p>
<p>Third, let's think of some other times in which the BCS rankings have picked one team over another. In 2008, the BCS picked Oklahoma over Texas to play Florida. The last time I checked, there are more TVs in Texas than there are in Oklahoma. In 2006, the BCS passed on the chance to match <a target="_blank" href="http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-09-20/sports/30179138_1_football-team-sec-and-acc-tradition-rich-program">two of the most popular programs in college football</a> and famous arch-rivals to boot. In 2003, the BCS nixed USC and the LA market for the title game. In 1999, the BCS rankings led to fledgling Virginia Tech playing in the national title game instead of Nebraska, an established power with a big fan base at the tail end of a seven-year period of dominance. Is this a pattern of picking teams based on commercial interests? Did Pierce bother to think about his assertion empirically before making it? Do <a target="_blank" href="http://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/5/10/3011344/ban-northeasterners-from-writing-about-college-football">Northeasterners make valuable commentary about college football</a>? In the words of Flavor Flav at the end of "Burn Hollywood Burn," no, no, no.</p>
<p>Reaching a different conclusion on Notre Dame's prospects but using similarly weak reasoning is Dan Wetzel. Wetzel is like a lawyer who is smart enough to do research and fashion his findings into credible claims, but not smart enough to pick between good arguments and bad ones. In court, the technique leads to a counselor being punished by the fact-finder by losing his credibility. In the consequence-free zone of punditry, it just means being picked on by people like me. As opposed to taking the Pierce approach of inferring conspiracies against the Irish, Wetzel <a target="_blank" href="http://sports.yahoo.com/news/ncaaf--undefeated-notre-dame-stuck-at-no-3-need-help-archaic-preseason-polls-bcs.html">claims that Notre Dame is behind and will remain behind Kansas State because the Irish lost their bowl game against Florida State last year</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The problem Notre Dame faces is that once a pecking order is created, it isn't easily reshuffled. And since the coaches' poll begins in the preseason, speculation can play a significant role in determining an actual champion.<br>By far, the chief reason the Irish are No. 3 and not No. 2 is because they lost 18-14 to Florida State in the 2011 Champs Sports Bowl. Expectations for the Seminoles' 2012 season soared as a result of their come-from-behind win. Notre Dame's dropped. As such, FSU started the year ranked No. 7 in the coaches' poll. Notre Dame was No. 24.</p>
<p>The problem for Brian Kelly was that Kansas State checked in at No. 21. Oregon was No. 5. The Irish were effectively boxed out before the season began - Death by Athlon, if you will. They've remained behind both the Ducks and Wildcats every single week.</p>
<p>Who's more deserving of No. 2 isn't the point here. Just know that if Notre Dame held off FSU last year, the Irish would have started the season well ahead of Kansas State in the preseason polls, and due to their computer strength would today have a clear path to play for the title this year.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You got that? Kansas State started the season at No. 21, Notre Dame started at No. 24, and therefore, there is no chance for the Irish to jump the Wildcats. Funny thing about that, but Notre Dame did in fact jump Kansas State in the AP poll - <a target="_blank" href="http://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/years/2012.html">moving from No. 20 to No. 11 while K-State stayed at No. 15</a> - after the Irish beat Michigan State 20-3 in East Lansing. Kansas State then jumped back ahead after beating Oklahoma in Norman. </p>
<p>It's hardly uncommon for a team to get jumped even after winning a game. Alabama jumped USC after the first week of the season because of the Tide's manhandling of Michigan. Stanford skipped a passel of teams that won the prior week when the Cardinal upset USC. Georgia jumped Florida State, Clemson, and South Carolina in a week where the latter three all won because the Dawgs beat No. 3 Florida. One-loss Oklahoma jumped unbeaten Ohio State after a three-week stretch in which the Sooners blew out Texas Tech, Texas, and Kansas. In short, teams jump around in the rankings all the time (maybe not as much as they should, but the phenomenon does happen) and Wetzel is off the reservation when he claims that coaches and Harris Poll voters remember who the hell they had on their preseason ballots when they are ordering the national title contenders in November.</p>
<p>I will give Wetzel credit for one thing: in a confused piece (for instance, he criticizes the computer rankings for omitting margin-of-victory, then complains about style points when the two concepts are basically the same thing), he did manage to cite <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_Impossibility_Theorem">Arrow's Impossibility Theorem</a>, thus leading me to Wikipedia to learn something new. Here is a short summary of the theorem:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In short, the theorem states that no rank-order voting system can be designed that satisfies these three "fairness" criteria:</p>
<ul>
<li>If every voter prefers alternative X over alternative Y, then the group prefers X over Y.</li>
<li>If every voter's preference between X and Y remains unchanged, then the group's preference between X and Y will also remain unchanged (even if voters' preferences between other pairs like X and Z, Y and Z, or Z and W change).</li>
<li>There is no "dictator": no single voter possesses the power to always determine the group's preference.</li>
</ul>
<p> </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The problem for Wetzel is that the Theorem, as my twelve-years-removed-from-academia brain understands it, presents a trio of challenges for Wetzel's worldview. First, Wetzel wants a small committee to make selection decisions for a college football playoff, but that runs counter to the final fairness criteria. He thinks that a dictatorship will produce better results than the confused mess that are the current BCS rankings, but in reality, it will just present different problems. Just wait until the Charles Pierce's of the world get to criticize a BCS politburo instead of an anarchic mess of voters and computer programs. Second, rank-order voting will be required regardless of whether we have a two-team, four-team, or sixteen-team playoff.</p>
<p>Third, the gist of the Theorem is that rank-order voting cannot satisfy several competing criteria. This broad framework - the idea that there are multiple principles to follow and it is hard to create a system that follows all of them - illustrates the problem of the college football postseason and indeed, of postseasons in general. Wetzel is completely hung up on the problems with the current system and in his defense, there are many good ways to criticize it. However, college football's structure has merits as well as flaws. For instance, it does a better job of preventing undeserving champions. The reigning Super Bowl champion went 9-7 in the regular season. Last month, we were one three-game hot streak from the San Francisco Giants away from a World Series pitting a pair of 88-win teams from the two weakest divisions in baseball. College football's system can screw teams like Auburn and Utah in 2004, but it's pretty damn good at ensuring that the team holding the crystal ball in the end has a legitimate claim to having been the best team over a large sample size.</p>
<p>College football's system also ensures the primacy of the regular season. The fact that we are still discussing what Notre Dame and Kansas State did in September is itself an illustration of that point. Compare the weight given to college football games in September with the attention that college basketball games are getting in November. <a target="_blank" href="http://blogs.ajc.com/jeff-schultz-blog/2012/11/13/college-hoops-kings-provide-rare-thrills-for-atlanta/">Take it away, Jeff Schultz</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Kentucky, Duke, Michigan State, Kansas. (Sounds great in any order, doesn't it?) It was sort of like a Final Four, except without the deciding third game and the fact that it's November, not April, and that probably not enough people in Atlanta were really paying attention.</p>
<p>Despite the marquee value of the teams, coaches and players, this "Champions Classic" didn't create significant buzz on the Atlanta sports landscape in the past few days, smothered by all things Bulldogs, Falcons and ... well, did you see that David Ross signed with the Red Sox?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If college football had an early September double-header involving LSU, Florida State, Michigan, and Clemson (the teams occupying the four same spots in the preseason college football poll that Kentucky, Duke, Michigan State, and Kansas occupied in the preseason college basketball poll), do you think it would draw attention in Atlanta (or any major market)? College basketball is all about March. Teams like the four that played at the Georgia Dome on Tuesday night are going to be in the Tournament regardless, which makes their non-conference meetings glorified friendlies.</p>
<p>A postseason structure needs to strike the right balance between including the contenders and omitting the pretenders. It needs to be important, but not so important that it crowds out everything that comes before it. A polemicist like Wetzel either misses or ignores half of the equation; a polemicist like Pierce doesn't care and just writes whatever sounds good to his ear.</p>
https://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/11/15/3647736/bcs-championship-charles-pierce-dan-wetzelMichael Bird2012-11-05T08:23:02-05:002012-11-05T08:23:02-05:00What does Alabama's win over LSU mean for Georgia?
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<img alt="They're coming." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/goIaT_nTG2f5padxA4OhB4kNPCM=/0x0:4000x2667/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/2682415/20121103_jla_ah6_760.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>They're coming. | Derick E. Hingle-US PRESSWIRE</figcaption>
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<p>In the aftermath of an SEC classic, a tilt between the Tide and the Dawgs at the Dome is almost certain. So what did Saturday night teach us about that potential clash?</p> <p>Barring the implausible, utterly miraculous possibility of Auburn winning an SEC game, Georgia is going to play Alabama in the SEC Championship Game at the Georgia Dome. Saturday went a long way towards settling that result, as Georgia came back from an early 10-0 deficit to bury Ole Miss and Alabama came back from a late 17-14 deficit to win in Death Valley. Bama's win over LSU was interesting and notable in all sorts of ways. What do those notable aspects imply for Georgia? I'm glad you asked...</p>
<p><b>1. Alabama's greatest strength on offense is its offensive line, not <a class="sbn-auto-link" href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/78259/a-j-mccarron">A.J. McCarron</a>.</b></p>
<p>A.J. McCarron came into the game Saturday night as a major Heisman contender by virtue of the fact that he is the quarterback of the unbeaten defending national champions, he was leading the nation in passing efficiency, and he had not thrown a pick all year. McCarron was quite pedestrian for long stretches in the game and in fact went missing for the entire second half until LSU softened its coverage (read: John Chavis blinked) and McCarron led what will surely go down as one of the more famous drives in Tide history.*</p>
<p>* - <i>Noted Alabama football historian Mark May called it the greatest comeback drive in Crimson Tide history. I realize that it's too much to expect May to be able to think back a whole three years, but Bama had a pretty notable drive at the end of the 2009 Auburn game to come from behind and preserve their unbeaten season, not that Alabama fans would put significance on a winning drive against Auburn.</i></p>
<p>However, what struck me during the game was that McCarron often seemed to have an unlimited amount of time to throw. His offensive line repeatedly gave him perfect pockets for an extended period of time, despite the fact that they were blocking one of the best defensive lines in college football. By the end of the night, I had reached the conclusion that McCarron might be a cut above the Bama quarterbacks who have preceded him in recent history, but he is a product of playing in front of a truly great offensive line.</p>
<p><i style="font-weight: bold; ">So what does this mean for Georgia? </i>Todd Grantham is going to have to coach the game of his life for Georgia to stop the Tide. Grantham simply cannot use normal pressure schemes and expect his pass rushers from getting close to McCarron. If Bama's blockers could neutralize <a class="sbn-auto-link" href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/78735/sam-montgomery">Sam Montgomery</a> and <a class="sbn-auto-link" href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/78718/barkevious-mingo">Barkevious Mingo</a>, then they will probably be able to slow down Jarvis Jones, as well. The key will be confusing the Bama line to get free rushers. Admittedly, part of the strength of Bama's line is that they are a smart, experienced collective, so it won't be easy to get free blitzers. However, Grantham did a great job against Florida of bringing new, exotic pressure packages to get his defenders free runs at <a class="sbn-auto-link" href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/131897/jeff-driskel">Jeff Driskel</a> early in the game. Doing the same against the Tide is a tall order, but it's necessary.</p>
<p><b>2. Alabama and LSU bring out the best in one another.</b></p>
<p>The games between Alabama and LSU in 2011 were by no means classics. The Tide and Tigers were the two best teams in the country, but when they played, the balance between offense and defense was tilted, mainly because neither team got good quarterback play. In the first game, neither team could do much in the air, so it finished 9-6. In the second game, LSU's quarterbacks were even worse, while McCarron played his best game of the season, so Bama won comfortably. On Saturday night, both teams got better quarterback play, especially LSU, who got Zach Mettenberger's best game. (<a href="http://www.cfbstats.com/2012/player/365/1024026/passing/gamelog.html" target="_blank">Mettenberger's prior high for passer rating in an SEC game was a lowly 108.14 against Auburn; he put up a 149.52 against Bama.</a>)</p>
<p>The impression I got as the game played out was that the prospect of playing the Tide brought out the best in LSU and the in turn, the challenge brought out the best in Alabama when the game was on the line. I was reminded of a passage in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Game-Ken-Dryden/dp/0470835842?tag=sbnation-20" target="_blank" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener">Ken Dryden's first book, <i>The Game</i></a>, about how playing the Boston Bruins brought out the best in a Montreal Canadiens team that, like modern-day Alabama, was a dynasty in progress:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Like a stopwatch to a sprinter, it is the reliable opponent that tells a team where it stands. The Bruins are not as good as we are, and so in Montreal we win, and in Boston we tie or win; but the difference between us is small, and by playing their best as they always do, they force us to play our best, so each time we play them, we find out what our best is. And I find out mine. It is an important thing to know, and year after year, only the Bruins do that for us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><i style="font-weight: bold; ">So what does this mean for Georgia?</i> Unlike the Tide and the Canadiens, Georgia has not had a worthy adversary over the past several years that has brought out the best in the Dawgs. To the contrary, Georgia's results against top ten opponents over the past five years has been <a href="http://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/10/26/3553646/four-principles-on-georgia-florida" target="_blank">pretty bad</a>. Georgia broke this pattern against Florida, upsetting the #2 Gators to put themselves in the position to play Alabama. However, the Florida team that Georgia beat is a highly flawed outfit because the Gators are going through significant offensive growing pains. Alabama, needless to say, is not. The Dawgs raised their game defensively to beat Florida; they are going to have to take another quantum leap forward to hang with the Tide. The good news is that Georgia showed a sign of being able to elevate their performance in the SEC Championship Game last year, as they first half against :LSU was the best that Georgia played all season. That small shoot of green is going to have to turn into a fully-formed Venus Flytrap in four weeks.</p>
<p><b>3. Alabama-Oregon would be a fantastic contrast in styles.</b></p>
<p>Stewart Mandel nails why Alabama versus Oregon would be a <a href="http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/stewart_mandel/11/04/alabama-oregon-bcs-overtime/index.html#ixzz2BLoi0u7l" target="_blank">fascinating national title game</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You couldn't ask for a better snapshot of the dichotomous state of college football than Saturday night's dose of dueling television drama. On FOX, there was Oregon, the poster program for everything new and different, revving the tempo and running an offense that manages to turn the inside handoff into something just as exciting and productive as the 40-yard bomb. On CBS, there was Alabama, the current standard-bearer for championship football, running much the same offense that's worked for decades upon decades of title teams before it.</p>
<p>You could not ask for two more stylistically opposite approaches, which is exactly why much of the country is thirsting for an Alabama-Oregon BCS championship showdown. It would be a culture clash unlike any in the event's 14-year history.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are a lot of great things about college football and one of them is the dynamic that used to exist in baseball before interleague play. It used to be that the All-Star Game and World Series were exotic because they were the only times where teams from the two leagues - leagues that had different styles - would play one another. Fans would spend months watching their teams and players against a contained universe of teams and then, the big test would come against teams and players from a totally different universe.</p>
<p>We have spent the past ten Saturdays watching SEC teams play in a defensively-oriented league, battling one another for field position and field goals. (And yes, there are <a href="http://www.goodbullhunting.com/" target="_blank">exceptions</a>.) Pac Ten fans have watched a completely different form of football for the past ten Saturdays, a league where a quarter of the members are averaging over 500 yards per game. (Only one of 14 SEC teams can say the same.) For sixty minutes, it would be great fun to see the up-tempo Oregon spread - an offense that Nick Saban has <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2012/10/5/3459430/alabama-football-nick-saban-offenses-college-football" target="_blank">derided as unfair</a> - against an Alabama defense that had been impregnable for the better part of two seasons until showing chinks in the armor against LSU.</p>
<p><b><i>So what does this mean for Georgia?</i></b> Unfortunately, not a whole lot that's favorable. In order to stop a potential collision between Oregon and Alabama, Georgia will not have the advantage of bringing a contrasting style to the table. The one exotic aspect of the Georgia team is the defense, a true 3-4 that can bring pressure from parts unknown. Unfortunately for the Dawgs, Alabama is also predominantly a 3-4 team. Thus, Georgia is not going to have an element of surprise when they play the Tide. Georgia has gotten by in 2012 because they have great athletes and those athletes are competently coached. Alabama has more great athletes and those athletes are more than competently coached.</p>
<p>But hey, as we saw at the Georgia Dome last night, there is likely to be a rich, egocentric NFL owner with a coaching vacancy and it's possible that he will covet Saban, so hope springs eternal.</p>
https://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/11/5/3602604/2012-sec-championship-alabama-uga-lsuMichael Bird2012-10-29T09:24:24-04:002012-10-29T09:24:24-04:00How do we put a value on Georgia's win?
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<figcaption>"Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." | Sam Greenwood</figcaption>
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<p>Georgia got a huge win against Florida on Saturday. Let's not overreact to the latest piece of evidence in evaluating where the program is right now.</p> <p>For those of you who were either tailgating on Saturday during the noon to 3:30 time slot or had been dragged to a corm maze at an inopportune time, Texas had to pull out a skin-of-their-teeth victory in Lawrence against Kansas. Yes, a Kansas team that has not beaten a single FBS opponent and has losses to Rice and Northern Illinois on its resume was one stop away from beating a Texas team that is <a target="_blank" href="http://bravesandbirds.blogspot.com/2012/10/texas-arsenal-does-anyone-buy-t-shirt.html">more profitable than any other in college football</a> and that gets to select players, rather than having to recruit them. Against an opponent that gained 39 yards passing in the game on nine attempts, Texas still found themselves needing to convert a fourth and six from their own 34 with two minutes remaining on a <a target="_blank" href="http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/boxscore?gid=201210270020&page=plays">drive that ultimately led to the winning touchdown</a>.</p>
<p>The Twitter reaction to Texas narrowly averting an utter disaster was along the lines of <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/Mark_Schlabach/status/262267763849064448">Mack Brown saving his job</a> with that late drive. Think about that for a moment. Brown has accumulated a 15-year record in Austin. If you view his regime as being doomed, then you are looking at his track record since 2010, since which time the Horns have gone 19-14 and look like an anachronism in a conference where teams generally do a good job of maximizing their talent. If you want Brown to stay, then you are putting value on the 2005 national title and the overall health of the program in terms of recruiting prestige and fan interest. In no way should one pass from <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/114961/case-mccoy" class="sbn-auto-link">Case McCoy</a> to <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/134587/jaxon-shipley" class="sbn-auto-link">Jaxon Shipley</a> determine whether the guy should keep his job.</p>
<p>And yet this is exactly how the college football cognoscenti were acting on Saturday afternoon. The universal focus was on the outcome, with very little attention paid to a process that involved Texas trailing for most of the game to a hopelessly over-matched opponent. No one is saying that Texas deserves credit for their performance in Lawrence, but the volume and quality of the reaction is <i>way</i> different based on the outcome of one play,</p>
<p>And that brings us to Mark Richt. Going into the 2012 Cocktail Party, Georgia fans were down on Richt. The general sense that I got was that the fan base had lost confidence in him, that his teams play flat and soft, and that he does not get the most out of the talent at his disposal. One eight-point win over <a target="_blank" href="http://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/10/26/3553646/four-principles-on-georgia-florida">an overvalued Florida team</a> later and the tune has changed dramatically. The Dawgs just need to avoid a major upset in the next two games and they will win the SEC East again. Assuming that they don't trip up against Georgia Southern or Georgia Tech, the Dawgs will go into a likely match-up against Alabama at the Georgia Dome knowing that an upset victory will propel them into serious consideration for the BCS Championship Game. (I wonder if Gary Danielson would do any politicking for a 12-1 Georgia team over unbeaten Kansas State, Oregon, or Notre Dame? With Gary's intense commitment to intellectual honesty, I totally unsure as to how he would come out on that question.)</p>
<p>Georgia beat Florida despite throwing three interceptions, gaining only 273 yards (a smidge fewer than the Gators were allowing coming into the game, although I'm willing to acknowledge that the windy conditions aided the defenses), and committing a whopping 14 penalties for 132 yards. In the fourth quarter, I couldn't shake Hannibal Lecter's line about <a target="_blank" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/quotes?qt=qt0334799">tedious, sticky fumblings in the back seat of a car</a>. On an emotional level, no Georgia fan should care about style points in a rivalry game of this magnitude. On a rational level, with some distance from the game, no Georgia fan should let one afternoon in Jacksonville radically alter the way he or she views the current status of the program.</p>
<p>In fact, do we think that Saturday's result was a lot more complicated than "Jarvis Jones was healthy and motivated?" For whatever reason (most likely a pair of nagging injuries that have been bothering him over the course of the year), Jones had been quiet since destroying Missouri in the second game of the season. Against the Gators, Jarvis put forward an effort that deserves its own DVD: 13 tackles, 4.5 tackles for a loss, 3 sacks, 2 forced fumbles and 2 fumble recoveries. In a game full of future NFL players on both sides, Jones stood out. So if your average Georgia fan thought before the game "I'm done with Mark Richt because I can't get the taste of the South Carolina and Kentucky games out of my mouth" and after the game "I knew that Richt had it in him; I'm proud that that guy represents my program," isn't the difference between the two really just the health of Jarvis Jones's groin?</p>
<p>I am reading <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Ikes-Bluff-President-Eisenhowers-Secret/dp/0316091049?tag=sbnation-20" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener"><i>Ike's Bluff</i></a> and a particular passage struck me last night as being relevant for the mistakes that we all make in evaluating coaches. In a chapter on President Eisenhower's opposition to the idea of limited war put forward by General Maxwell Taylor and Secretary of State Foster Dulles, Evan Thomas writes the following about Ike adopting a "deeper meaning" from Clausewitz's <i>On War</i>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Politicians and policy makers may think that they can control war by rational planning, but Clausewitz saw larger, irrational forces at work. The bias of war, Clausewitz wrote, is always toward violence; even the most well-meaning men will use whatever weapons they can find, including the sacrifice of citizens.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Football is constantly described as a metaphor for warfare, so why not get a little lesson the famous Prussian theorist? We grade coaches on what happens on the field, which depends on the illusion that they control the events that unfold before our eyes. We credit <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/115256/mack-brown" class="sbn-auto-link">Mack Brown</a> for saving his job as if a back-up quarterback completed a pass on fourth down because of something the head coach did. We revise our assessments of Mark Richt because his team won a really big game for the first time in years when in reality, the win was more about healing tissue in the body of a star player than it was about anything else. It's trite to say that we give too much credit to coaches for victories and too much blame for defeats, but this weekend provided a fine illustration of that cliche.</p>
https://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/10/29/3570370/georgia-florida-mark-richt-jarvis-jonesMichael Bird2012-10-26T08:01:09-04:002012-10-26T08:01:09-04:00UGA Vs. Florida: Four defining principles
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<figcaption>Sam Greenwood</figcaption>
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<p>The Gators are overrated, the Jacksonville factor is overrated, and none of that will matter if Mark Richt and the Georgia defense cannot break their patterns.</p> <p></p>
<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Georgia has arrived at the Florida game as a ball of contradictions.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On the one hand, the Dawgs are 6-1, ranked #10 in the BCS rankings, and with a win on Saturday, they will position themselves to win the East for the second straight year.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On the other hand, Georgia got blown out by South Carolina, they eked by Kentucky, and they have generally performed in a disappointing fashion.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The offensive line is in a strange funk and the defense is a disappointing <a href="http://www.cfbstats.com/2012/leader/national/team/defense/split01/category10/sort02.html">49<sup>th</sup> in yards per play allowed, one spot behind Ole Miss</a>, so disappointing in fact that Shawn Williams <a href="http://blutarsky.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/if-you-enjoyed-the-celebration-youre-gonna-love-the-bounty/">went public with his frustrations about his teammates</a>, thus giving sports radio hosts in this city days of fodder in lieu of talking about the actual game.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This season is shaping up to be a Mark Richt special: a campaign that looks good when one looks at the record, but feels like a wasted opportunity that ends in Orlando or Tampa.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The best way from me to explain my perspective going into the 2012 Cocktail Party is to lay out a series of principles:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">1. <span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Florida is overrated.</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I think in terms of historical analogies and the first one to come to mind this week was 1985, when Florida came into Jacksonville ranked #1 in the country and left with their scaly tails between their legs as 24-3 losers.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Florida comes into this game at #2 in the BCS, but the Gators are eminently beatable.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Their defense is outstanding, but the offense leaves a lot to be desired.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The Gators are 82<sup>nd</sup> in the country in yards per play on offense.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>To put that into context, Indiana is 82<sup>nd</sup> in yards per play on defense.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Would Georgia fans worry about moving the ball on Indiana?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No, so should they worry about stopping the Florida offense?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Put it this way: the Florida defense and Georgia offense are both elite units, but in terms of weak sides, I’d much rather have the Georgia defense than the Florida offense.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Florida wins games by playing great defense, winning the special teams and turnover battles, and then just running <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/78461/mike-gillislee" class="sbn-auto-link">Mike Gillislee</a> over and over again.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Will Muschamp has hit on the right formula, given the situation in which he finds himself, and I expect Florida to be a lot better on offense in coming years as the team matures and Brent Pease has time to put his offense into place.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>However, this formula can be beaten.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If Georgia simply avoids turnovers and special teams disasters, they will have an advantage in the game.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">2. <span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Florida’s mental edge over Georgia is overrated.</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I <a href="http://bravesandbirds.blogspot.com/2011/10/jeff-schultzs-solution-for-georgia.html">wrote about this last year</a>, but if you look at Georgia’s dark ages against Florida (the period from 1990 forward), there are really only three seasons out of 22 where Georgia came to Jacksonville with a superior team and lost: 1992, 2002, and 2003.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Conversely, Florida can point to two seasons – 1997 and 2007 – where the Gators had a slightly better team and lost.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In the end, the Dawgs’ terrible record against the Gators comes down to Florida having better teams for most of the past two decades and change.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There is nothing magical about crossing the border to play Florida, nor is there anything mental about playing against those orange and blue uniforms.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I made the point last year that Georgia was a better team and should win the game.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They were and they did.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This year, Georgia is a better team in terms of yardage differential; Georgia’s yards-per-play margin is 1.93, whereas Florida’s is 1.25.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>However, Florida has played a significantly tougher schedule, which should color the way we view that stat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The rankings that use strength-of-schedule and scoring margin instead of yardage say that Florida is a significantly better team.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt12.htm">Sagarin Predictor</a> would have the Gators as a two-touchdown favorite; <a href="http://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/years/2012-standings.html">SRS</a> would have the margin at eleven points. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Thus, Georgia has been in the yardage department, but Florida has been better at converting yardage into points.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The question is whether the factors that have given Florida an edge in the latter department are replicable.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Put another way, can we expect Georgia to hand a game over like South Carolina did?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">3. <span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>This is the kind of game that Georgia usually loses.</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s fun to think back to 1985, but Georgia’s recent history against ranked teams is not a cause for optimism.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This season, Florida has played three teams that were ranked at the time of the game and won all three. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Georgia has played one ranked opponent and lost the game by four touchdowns.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This is part of a pattern.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Since the 2008 season, Georgia is 1-9 against top ten opponents, with the only win coming at Grant Field in 2009 against Georgia Tech.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No one has questioned Mark Richt’s ability to beat the Jackets, but outside of playing an in-state rival that has several major disadvantages as a program relative to Georgia, he has not done well against exactly the sort of opponent that Georgia will face on Saturday.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Moreover, the games against top ten opponents have not been close.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Here is the complete list of the nine losses, in chronological order:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Alabama 41 Georgia 30<br>Florida 49 Georgia 10<br>Oklahoma State 24 Georgia 10<br>LSU 20 Georgia 13<br>Florida 41 Georgia 17<br>Auburn 49 Georgia 31<br>Boise State 35 Georgia 21<br>LSU 42 Georgia 10<br>South Carolina 35 Georgia 7</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What bad fact do we want to consider?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The fact that in these nine games, Georgia has lost by an average of three touchdowns per game?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Even if you add in the win over Georgia Tech, the average score of a game between Georgia and a top ten opponent since 2008 has been 36-18.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Do we want to worry more about that defensive record where opponents are regularly scoring in the 30s and 40s or the fact that Mike Bobo’s offense has only broken 17 points thanks to garbage time scores against Alabama and Boise State, along with one game against a Ted Roof defense?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">With the caveat that this discussion, like most college football discussions, suffers from a small sample size, Mark Richt is going to have to break a pattern to win on Saturday.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">4. <span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>The Georgia defense must break its pattern.</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Doesn’t it feel like déjà vu that we are asking ourselves whether a Georgia unit can come out of its funk and play up to its talent level?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The fact that Georgia fans find themselves posing this same question to themselves, again and again, illustrates Mark Richt’s success as a recruiter and his failure at getting a team to play up to its potential.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Look at how <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2012/10/24/3547400/florida-georgia-game-2012-preview-aaron-murray-will-muschamp">Bill Connelly describes the game</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="margin-left:.5in" class="MsoNormal">If Georgia IS able to put some points on the board and force the Florida offense to keep up, things get interesting. Thus far, Florida has responded when it has needed to, typically via the ground; quarterback <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/131897/jeff-driskel" class="sbn-auto-link">Jeff Driskel</a> averaged just 3.5 yards per pass attempt in a 31-17 win over Vanderbilt but rushed for 181 yards and three touchdowns. Challenged by Tennessee on the road, Driskel passed for 219 yards (11.0 per attempt) and rushed for 81 (10.1 per carry), and the Gators pulled away. But you can get to Driskel if your pass rush is decent, and you can keep Gillislee in check if you can avoid those one or two big drives -- since rushing for 146 yards versus LSU, Gillislee has gained just 104 yards in 36 carries (2.9 per carry). Can a Georgia defense with a one-man pass rush (Jones has 5.5 sacks in five games, the rest of the team has 5.5 in seven, and the Dawgs rank a horrific 103rd in Adj. Sack Rate) and sketchy run defense (66th in Rushing S&P+) raise its game in its biggest game of the year?</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal">How does a Georgia defense with this amount of talent suffer so much to stop the run or pressure the quarterback?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Georgia fans are left wishing for an October Surprise along the lines of what the Dawgs delivered in 2007 when they turned their season around in the Florida game.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That reversal of fortune was an anomaly, but Dawg fans are forced to keep waiting for it again.</p>
https://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/10/26/3553646/four-principles-on-georgia-floridaMichael Bird2012-10-09T08:38:30-04:002012-10-09T08:38:30-04:00UGA Vs. South Carolina: Profiles in Underachieving
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<figcaption>Kevin C. Cox - Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Georgia has been in the position of a three-game losing streak against a program that it had dominated historically. Jim Donnan did not survive that skid. Will Mark Richt?</p> <p>You know that Georgia has had a bad weekend when its fans are all looking back to the Jim Donnan era for analogies. Doug Gillett has <a target="_blank" href="http://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/10/8/3468030/georgia-vs-south-carolina-2012">latched onto the '98 Tennessee game</a>, a game in which Georgia entered as a home favorite and left with a 19-point loss that crushed the Dawgs' hopes of a national, conference, or even divisional title. Doug explains:</p>
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<p>On Twitter I noticed a lot of comparisons to the "blackout" debacle against Alabama in 2008, but they don't quite fit: That Georgia team kept battling against an insurmountable lead and actually succeeded in making the final score look respectable. No, Tennessee '98 is the historical analogue that fits best here, and not just because of the lopsided score or the presence of "Gameday." It fits because of where Georgia had been coming from, what each game said about where Georgia was at that moment, and what Georgia could look forward to. None of it's going to make Bulldog Nation feel very good about itself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On Saturday night, I was also thinking of the Donnan era, but my focus was on his last game in Sanford Stadium. Georgia entered the season ranked #10. Donnan, never one to tamp down expectations, referred to the team as the one that he had waited his entire life to coach. Georgia had Quincy Carter entering his third year as a starter and a roster loaded with talent from several consecutive years of good recruiting. (Does any of this sound familiar to Dawg fans?) Georgia started the year with a disastrous performance in Columbia in its first SEC game, losing 21-10 as Carter threw five interceptions. The Dawgs then muddled their way through the season, beating Tennessee for the first time in ten tries, but adding their customary loss in Jacksonville and an overtime loss on the Plains.</p>
<p>Georgia entered the Georgia Tech game at 7-3 and with a two-game losing streak to the Jackets. Quincy Carter was "injured," so <a href="#" class="sbn-auto-link">Cory Phillips</a> started under center. (In a move that Georgia fans would later appreciate, Donnan did not take the redshirt off of <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/161973/david-greene" class="sbn-auto-link">David Greene</a> when Carter's services were no longer required.) On an overcast day in Athens, the Jackets beat the Dawgs decisively. The first half started with <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8MivZ0jw-g&feature=relmfu">the less-than-lightning-fast George Godsey scoring untouched on 33-yard run</a> and ended with <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhNCuHt4rEs&feature=relmfu">Darryl Smith giving Georgia Tech a 27-3 halftime lead with a 70-yard interception return</a>. Georgia fought gamely in the second half, but never got the game into single-digits, losing 27-15. The fact that the Dawgs could only run for <a target="_blank" href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/scores100/100330/100330470.htm">26 yards on 18 carries</a> left the impression that Georgia had been dominated physically. Donnan was gone a matter of days later with only the most melancholy trip to Hawai'i imaginable remaining.</p>
<p>Contrary to the impressions of many, the Georgia fan base does not have unreasonable expectations. They lionize Vince Dooley, whose career in Athens consisted of one outstanding period (1980-83) and then a series of peaks and valleys. While I'm sure Dooley took some criticism over the first 15 years for not being Bear Bryant, that did not become a fireable offense. Likewise, Dawg fans can accept Richt's Georgia not being on the level of Urban Meyer's Florida or Nick Saban's Alabama. There's no shame in being just a notch below the very best programs in America.</p>
<p>What Georgia fans have a harder time accepting is losing to teams that have disadvantages relative to the Dawgs. UGA is the flagship school for a state that produces more talent than any other, save for the big three (California, Florida, and Texas). The only in-state rival has a smaller fan base than the Dawgs, less historical success (certainly if we focus on modern history), and academic restrictions. Depending on the circumstances, Georgia fans can accept losing to Alabama (arguably the most accomplished of any college football program), Florida (the flagship program for a state with more talent than Georgia), LSU (the only major program in a state with a good amount of talent), and sometimes Tennessee (a top ten program, historically speaking).* It's one thing to lose a fight to a peer; it's another for a high school senior to get beaten up on the playground by a freshman.</p>
<p>* - <i>Applying this reasoning to my alma mater, I can understand losing to Ohio State (a program that has major advantages over Michigan in that there is more football talent in Ohio than there is in Michigan and the Buckeyes don't have to share it with another Big Ten program) and Notre Dame (after all these years, still a recruiting powerhouse). Losing four in a row to Michigan State, on the other hand, burns me in tender places.</i></p>
<p>And that's where the Georgia Tech-South Carolina analogy comes in. As mentioned before, Georgia fans would not accept losing three in a row to Georgia Tech. The '98 and '99 games could be explained away as two tight games that arguably turned on some bad officiating. The '00 game was just a physical whipping, a sign of a program spinning out of control and demonstrably behind its little brother. Georgia fans are also going to have a hard time accepting a third straight loss to South Carolina, a team with little tradition of success that comes from a state with: (1) less talent than Georgia; and (2) an in-state rival that has traditionally dominated the Gamecocks. If South Carolina is demonstrably ahead of Georgia as a program, then something has gone right in Columbia and wrong in Athens. Additionally, while Georgia lost close games to South Carolina in 2010 and 2011, Saturday night's game was a brutal beating. There are no available rationalizations when you lose 35-7, you get out-rushed 230-115, and the opponent's defensive line spends the evening in your backfield because they figured out your snap count. South Carolina was better and luck had absolutely nothing to do with it.</p>
<p>Look at it this way: here are the Rivals recruiting rankings for Georgia for the past five years: 12, 5, 15, 6, 7. And here are the rankings for South Carolina over the same time period: 19, 18, 24, 12, 22. Each one of Georgia's classes has been better than that of South Carolina and with that advantage in material, the Dawgs lost by four touchdowns. In those five classes, South Carolina signed a pair of five-star players: <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/116171/marcus-lattimore" class="sbn-auto-link">Marcus Lattimore</a> and Jadeveon Clowney. Both players had a huge impact on the game. In the same time period, Georgia signed seven five-star players, five of whom were available for Mark Richt on Saturday night: <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/158483/josh-harvey-clemons" class="sbn-auto-link">Josh Harvey-Clemons</a>, John Theus, <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/122359/ray-drew" class="sbn-auto-link">Ray Drew</a>, <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/players/78596/branden-smith" class="sbn-auto-link">Branden Smith</a>, and Richard Samuel. It's possible that Steve Spurrier is just lucky that the two five-star players that he landed have turned into stars while the five-star players who signed with Georgia were more uneven. However, it also seems quite possible that Georgia is doing considerably less with the raw materials that are afforded by its position as the biggest program in a fertile recruiting state.</p>
<p>Coming back to the Georgia Tech-South Carolina analogy, the end of the Donnan era was marked by the 2000 Dawgs coming apart at the seams. The team that took the field against the Jackets that year was a beaten unit. On the other hand, Georgia right now is in the middle of its season. The East is not lost, as the Dawgs can find themselves right back in the driver's seat if the Gamecocks stumble in Baton Rouge and Gainesville. Thus, while the 2000 Georgia Tech loss represented the end of the road, the 2012 South Carolina loss leaves Georgia with a damaged, but fixable vehicle. The question is whether Georgia has the right coach to make the necessary repairs. It's an odd question to be asking after 11.5 years and three SEC titles, but here we are.</p>
https://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/10/9/3477854/georgia-vs-south-carolina-2012-reaction-georgia-techMichael Bird