Just embrace that you’ll never get over it. In 1985, I went to the Labor Day game vs. Bama. We retired #34 that night. We blocked a punt to take a late lead. With no timeouts and 0:50, Mike Shula led them down the field to beat us. I’m still not over it.
There is nothing to go over. I’m not concerned about the direction of the program under Kirby. We’ve obviously got some tremendous young talent. We’ll get more. We played with an edge and urgency the entire game save for 10 seconds. (which is part of the problem). I’m not worried about what Kirby is building.
What does me in is the cruelness of fate. It’s that we were all about to witness the greatest win in Sanford Stadium history. I don’t say that as hyperbole. I really think it was going to be. It’s been a long time since we’ve beat a team of that caliber in that fashion. Frankly, I don’t really understand football fate, after watching it for 39 years.
I was in Death Valley when we held a late 4 point lead over Clemson backed up in our own territory. Keep in mind, this is against Rodney Williams (QB) and Clemson. He could neither pass nor run. He was good at handing off. Ford ran a classic 80’s power team and expected to win with running and defense. We ran a QB sweep with James Jackson, who got tackled for a safety in the endzone, cutting the lead to two. We kicked off and they got in position for David Treadwell to kick a FG to beat us by 1. It was the second straight year Treadwell had kicked a FG to beat us. The most impossible and improbable thing happen for us to lose in almost the only way we could. There was no way Bama was driving the length of the field. There was no way Clemson could score another TD to overcome that 4 point deficit.
What I want to tell you is that if you think this is a Smart, Richt, Donnan or Goff problem, it stretches far beyond that. Those were Dooley games. I can see us running that QB sweep in my mind and as an 10 yr old thinking “No!!!!!”
What makes me sad are two things:
· There are no guarantees Jacob Eason or any of us will experience anything like that ever again, especially in Sanford Stadium. We’ve all been to a whole bunch of games there, and the list is very, very short of come from behind victories where we had to score a TD to win the game at home and did and won the game. Of the ones I’ve seen:
o Stafford to Massaquoi.
o Murray to JSW vs. LSU. I literally can’t think of another.
o Mason to Mitchell in ’14 vs. Tech would have been.
o I was there for Butler’s kick in ’84. It was bonkers. The game was tied and we won on a FG, obviously.
o To win on a bomb like that. It was just different than Stafford or Hutson. And it felt different than Murray to JSW.
· The schedule has me down for those very same reasons. Don’t get me wrong, I want to beat Florida, Auburn and Tech, badly. But there’s a decent chance we’re going to go the rest of the season without playing a ranked team. Heck, there’s a decent chance we go to South Bend next year and ND is unranked the way they’re going. The chance to bounce back vs. a perceived ‘good’ team doesn’t exist. We could go 10-2 with the only ranked team we beat being UNC, who might possibly go 11-1 (again). The Heels have VaTech and Miami the next 2 weeks. Win those two and they’re cruising. BTW, why wouldn’t LSU hire Fedora?
o All that to say…the next meaningful game for the division in Sanford Stadium is in 2018 vs. UT. The older I get, the more I tire of the Jacksonville deal and I hate the Auburn/Tech deal. I like Jax, but I’m for a 3-4 year rotator. Athens – jax – Gainesville – jax – Athens…Every class gets jax twice. Every class gets a home game and a road game. My brother has seen home games in the last year and a half vs. ND, FSU and L’ville. All wins. We get a top ten team in Athens once in a blue moon, and we’re in a better conference with more ranked teams. That’s insane. I could have my mind changed about Jax with a 9-game conference schedule. We’ve got to get A&M, Bama, and LSU to Athens more. A&M plays in Athens in 2019. LSU plays in 2025. I believe Alabama plays in Athens again in 2016. That is certifiably insane. We play Notre Dame and UCLA in Athens before we play either LSU or Bama in Athens again. I fell in love with UGA football because I’m addicted to that environment from Saturday. Mizzou at noon doesn’t really do that.
o The other part of the schedule is that as talented as we’ll be in 2017 and ’18, we play @ Notre Dame in ’17 and @ LSU in ’18. In ’17, we play @ ND, @ UT, @ Auburn, @ Tech and Fla. In Jax. You tell me if that looks like a championship. It’s a murderers row. People are going to watch us in huge National TV games and say, “Do those guys ever play at home?”
BUT…what Kirby has to fix, more than anything, is this issue of fate. Richt openly admitted that he wanted to be at the top and one year things would eventually fall in place. No injuries, the ball would bounce your way, etc. That’s waiting on fate. I don’t think Bama or Ohio St. wait on fate. Michigan lost an even more inexplicable heartbreaker to MSU last year…but they don’t seem to be waiting on fate. Georgia needs to take fate out of the equation. That might be our problem for the better part of 30 years. We don’t want to be better than you, we just want the ball to bounce our way our fair share. I think that mindset is in our players. It’s why we relaxed with 10 seconds left. I know the coaches didn’t. I’m a Georgia fan, expecting the worst, so I sure didn’t. That’s my takeaway. Stop waiting on fate. We’ve been waiting since Lindsay ran down Duval St. Be better.
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