In 2001, it might have been the Tennessee game. In 2002, it was the Alabama game. In 2003, it happened right out of the gate at Clemson. In 2004, it wasn’t particularly necessary, but the LSU game sure served the purpose. In 2005, it was Boise State.

What is it? It’s the game each season that reminds people that Georgia is as good as any team in the SEC and most everyone in the nation. Strange as it may seem, even our own fans sometimes need a wake-up call about the current state of the program. While the Dawgs haven’t always won the conference or been national title contenders each of these years, they have been consistently there among the pack if not on top of it as much as any team in the league. No one disputes it after the fact, and the Dawgs always get their due, but each year it seems as if a certain game solidifies the Dawgs as contenders.

2001 wasn’t a particularly stellar season, but the Tennessee game in Knoxville did show that things would be different under Mark Richt. Richt came to Georgia with the uncertainty of a guy who had never been a head coach, and the 2000 victory over Tennessee a year earlier was considered much more of a blip than any kind of sea-change in the series. After losing to Georgia in 2001, Tennessee went on to win the East and become a national title contender. The Dawgs stood up to them in one of the more intimidating venues in college football, a coach gained legitimacy, and a leader at quarterback was born.

Guys like Haynes, Grant, Phillips, and Wansley who anchored the 2001 team left, and there was plenty of uncertainty about their replacements. Some might say that the South Carolina game in 2002 with its unforgettable David Pollack play and the amazing finish was it in 2002, but many fans at the time considered that win much more of an escape than a statement. The new quarterback rotation was still an issue. It was the infamous "man enough" game at Tuscaloosa that established Georgia as an SEC favorite in 2002. Richt’s road warriors won in a stadium where no Georgia team before ever had, and the young program had another shot in the arm.

The 2003 game at Clemson looked like a perfect setup for failure. It seemed as if half the team was suspended – freshman walk-on Tra Battle had to start at safety. Almost the entire offensive line from 2002 was gone. There was no running game to speak of. A 30-0 blowout in Death Valley served notice that the Dawgs weren’t a one-hit wonder in 2002, and they repeated as SEC East champs. Despite losses to LSU and Florida, routs of Clemson, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Auburn were some of the most impressive wins in the Richt era.

A preseason #3 ranking in 2004 was the one time in this era when the Dawgs clearly controlled the role of favorite entering the season. They weren’t spectacular to start the year with struggles against South Carolina and Marshall. LSU had taken two games from Georgia in 2003, and few people could have predicted the blowout of the Tigers which would erase all doubts about Georgia’s legitimacy. Unfortunately, the Dawgs threw all of that away the following week with a sluggish loss to Tennessee, and they were on the outside of the SEC title hunt for the rest of the year.

We were back in the familiar pattern in 2005. Greene and Pollack were gone, so certainly the Dawgs must be down. D.J. Shockley had been shaky in relief against Georgia Tech, and Boise State brought one of the nation’s most potent and unique offenses into Athens for the opener. It was the showdown between a vulnerable team from a BCS league and an annual favorite "BCS buster". The Georgia win was so complete that Boise State shows up on almost no one’s list of "hot" teams anymore. Shockley’s command of a Georgia team that would win the SEC title was never again questioned after the first quarter.

So here we are again. Shockley’s gone, the lines are thin, new secondary, etc, etc. Questions all over the place. It’s Auburn, LSU, and Florida and then everyone else. I could be wrong, but it seems as if the question should simply be, "which game will it be this year?"

Now that we’ve had a day or two to digest the announcement of the quarterback depth chart, things are starting to calm down a bit. After all, isn’t this more or less the depth chart from the end of last season? There were reports last year that Joe Cox would have played ahead of Barnes had Cox not redshirted. So insert Stafford in there somewhere, but the rest is more or less unchanged. If there was a suprise to most people, it was that Cox was #2. He threw several picks at G-Day, but he also moved the offense more consistently than any other quarterback.

Coach Richt left the question open-ended and the depth chart is subject to change during or after the first game. That’s given people occasion to read the tea leaves and latch on to any scenario that puts their favorite under center for the South Carolina game. Every word Richt says is parsed…"well, he said JT3 deserves to start this game." It’s much more simple than that – until someone proves they are better, Tereshinski will keep the job. Will the Western Kentucky game be a test to see how each performs in a live game? With the starter named, how much time will the others really get in practice or even in games to show that they deserve the job?

I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t disappointed that someone couldn’t shake up the depth chart. After four or five years of high-level quarterback play and some recent quality recruits, I can’t grasp that the best we can hope for is what we saw in Jacksonville last year. I would like to see progress at the quarterback position – even Greene and Shockley were far from efficient – but I’m not so sure we’ll see it this year. Of course we expect people to improve from year-to-year, but I didn’t see much evidence of progress at G-Day.

Unless Tereshinski’s abilities are quite different this year, the offense will be somewhat limited. Shorter passes will allow secondaries to play closer. Georgia’s running game will be stuffed until the offense shows some ability to stretch the field – something they couldn’t do at all in Jacksonville last year. Games will be closer with increased pressure on the defense to keep scores down. That should result in a defense that takes fewer risks and avoids situations where it might give up the big play. This decision and the ability of the quarterback to move the offense and put points on the board has implications across the board for the team.

Sorry if I seem a bit pessimistic. Though we knew that the new quarterback would be relatively inexperienced, we talked about it for so long as a position of strength. Now it seems as if we’re more concerned that it’s not a weakness. That’s something I’m not used to from the Georgia quarterback position, and I’m hoping that a different picture will emerge over the next two to three weeks.

Back at it after a perfect week on the Georgia coast spent recharging and relaxing. A week away forces you to take a step back from the myopia that comes from constant practice updates and remember why you’re really looking forward to the upcoming season. With only two weeks remaining, there’s lots to talk about, so let’s start with the obvious: Richt and his starting QB. Is anyone really surprised? I’ll dive more into this later tonight.

One of the few things I managed to catch on vacation was the occasional installment of ESPN’s "Championship Series" where they took a shot at the big games of each weekend and – shock! – more or less chose the favorite every time. Not a terribly thought-intensive exercise, but it was college football talk and a pretty good insight into the teams that ESPN will be pimping at the start of the season.

A big thanks to CFR for the link. I keep meaning to add my links here…not a comprehensive list as in the Daily Dawg days but a small list of the sites I make it a point to check every day. CFR is certainly one of those.

I’ve had the privilege in the past to have press credentials for various sporting events. I appreciated the opportunities and enjoyed serving those who arranged the credentials for me. It’s a nice change of pace and gives you a different perspective on the games. You get to see little things that escape you in the stands or on TV, and you see sides of the participants and coaches that most don’t get to see. I especially appreciate getting the occasional interview where I can ask the questions that I know are on the minds of fans like myself.

I couldn’t imagine doing it full-time though. Why? It’s a job. There is little if any tailgating. You must (or should) appear outwardly impartial and neutral. After the game, there’s no time to celebrate or enjoy a win – it’s time to get to work filing stories and/or processing pictures. You’re at the game, but there is a disconnect from the fan experience. That’s a big adjustment that most fans couldn’t handle. I just enjoy being a fan too much.

EDSBS has an interview up today with Phil Steele, publisher of the invaluable preseason football guides. He describes how he researches all of the teams and then goes into detail about his setup for the weekends. "In this year’s magazine on page 17 we have a picture of the 12 tvs in front of my desk. I get to watch 12 college games all day long on Saturday and 12 NFL games on Sunday."

To a lot of people, that sounds like heaven. Not to me. Don’t get me wrong – there are a lot worse fates in the world than being surrounded by an endless choice of football games. It’s how I spend bye weeks. But it’s infinitely better to me to be at a Georgia game and immerse myself in the gameday experience. Steele might be surrounded by hundreds of square feet of hi-def college football goodness, but in that same position it would kill me not to be at Sanford Stadium.

What I’m trying to say comes down to this example: In 2002, I was fortunate enough to be on the sidelines for Georgia’s game at Auburn. Most of you immediately recognize the significance of that game. My mission was mostly photography, and I took several rolls of pictures during the game. What stands out is the picture I didn’t or couldn’t take. You’re all familiar with the play – fourth down, David Greene, Michael Johnson, touchdown. It was possibly the biggest play in Georgia football in decades. I was in a perfect position – on the goal line maybe 20 feet away from Johnson’s catch. You can see me in the replay of that catch. I had my camera ready to capture the picture of a lifetime. But I couldn’t move. I had to watch the play. I had to make sure he caught the pass. I forgot about the camera, I missed the picture, but I didn’t care – Georgia had just taken the lead and was on its was to the SEC Championship.

HeismanPundit has an interesting post up about the stat-skewing in overtimes. Lots of good, hard empirical data courtesy of CFBStats.com.

I replied that if there are stats that have the potential to really get skewed or distorted by overtime, they’re team scoring offense and scoring defense.

Remember Georgia’s 1996 game at Auburn? Of course you do. Regulation ended 28-28 after a miracle Bobo-to-Allen pass, and the Dawgs won in overtime 56-49. My problem is that the nature of overtime scoring means that the final score doesn’t tell the true story of a game. A low-scoring struggle can easily turn into a 45-42 final. These points come from a shootout format that starts at the 25 yard line.

A team that gives up 20 PPG could find its average shifted by 2 or 3 points per game after a single overtime game. That’s a pretty significant skewing of the average.

My suggestion: keep score as usual in overtime but once things are decided, revise the score to give one point to the winner. A 28-28 game would end 29-28 no matter if overtime had a single field goal or five or six touchdowns.

While I searched for a job after graduating from the University of Georgia in 1995, I noticed that the Dawgs didn’t have much of a presence – official or unofficial – on the relatively new World Wide Web. There were several discussion groups on services like Prodigy, UseNet lists, and scattered e-mail distribution lists. But there wasn’t much on the Web, so I started a Dawg site for the hell of it on my personal account. I don’t remember the specific date I started, but I remember working on the site while the news of Jerry Garcia’s death came across the TV. I’m not an especially big Deadhead or anything, but the date stuck with me. It seems as good a date as any for the anniversary of this site.

August 9th, 1995. 11 years ago. We’ve been there for three Georgia football coaches, four basketball coaches, dozens of conference and national titles, and two URLs.

The site grew quickly. We got good behind-the-scenes reports from Jim Donnan’s first spring practices in 1996. We eventually had contributors writing on everything from football to hoops to baseball. We had the Daily Dawg which became the directory of Dawg news sources. It was very crude and very grassroots, but that was the nature of the medium. We were all learning. Several other Dawg sites sprang up, each with their own kind of speciality. The Anti-Orange Page captured perfectly what it meant to be a Georgia fan in a world of rivalries. The DawgVent quickly established itself as the place for discussion. The Grapevine became a must-visit site for Georgia recruitniks.

In 1998, the specialized news services started up. AllianceSports and Rivals (later to morph and twist and reincarnate into Rivals and Scout) started a healthy competition and arms race for the very focused target market of the passionate college sports fan. The role of disorganized grassroots coverage was fading, and I was glad to see this cottage industry established. I dove in myself, contributing frequently to UGASports.com over the years. Those sites take a lot of heat for being "amateurs" among journalists and letting fans run wild on message boards, but other media and even official team sites have been completely transformed in response to the innovations pioneered by companies like Rivals and Scout.

With the online news services establishing themselves, the mission of this site had to change. I bought the dawgsonline.com domain in 2000, and I abandoned the "breaking news" style while keeping the site as a place to write and reprint things I had written elsewhere. A blog, in other words. I had become familiar with the blog concept by reading some of the early pioneers like Dave Winer, but content management tools were so clumsy when I dove in. I tried writing my own system, and then I settled on a system called GrayMatter. It worked well but wasn’t maintained at all. I tried Blogger for a short time, used Moveable Type for a while, and now I’m happy using WordPress. A few things have been lost in the transitions, but some posts as far back as 2001 have been salvaged. I’ve recently found some content that’s older still and may post that again just so it’s not lost.

While I can’t help but be slightly amused by all of the sites congratulating themselves recently over a year or two online, I’m really happy that so many fan sites have been created. Some have become wildly successful in just a year – deservedly so. I’ve read so much good analysis, thought-provoking writing, and humor online over the past couple of years, and several of the writers are as good (if not better) than some who get paid to write about sports.

The one thing that most of us eventually realize is that it’s hard and sometimes even expensive to keep a personal site going over a long time. Motivation can come and go. Priorities and life circumstances change. But if the bug to write is there, you can work through that.

I agree with Stewart Mandel’s opinion here in an interview with HeismanPundit.

It’s another outlet for fans to express themselves, which is always good. I think it’s the next generation of the Rivals/Scout message boards, only now, instead of having to share space with 900 other posters, you can be your own columnist. And just like anything else, the best will rise to the top and gain more credibility.

Without sounding all populist and idealistic, that’s what this is all about – fans love to talk sports, and now they can connect. Someone with something to say now has very few obstacles to getting his thoughts out there. True, there’s a lot of crap out there now as a result, but Mandel’s point is right: the best will separate themselves.

I can’t begin to count the opportunities and personal rewards that have come from starting this site 11 years ago. I’ve been published on the Rivals.com national home page. I used my experience building the site to change careers – one of the best moves I’ve ever made. I’ve met some amazing people and made some great friends. I guess it comes down to one moment – circumstances put me on the sideline at the goalline ten feet away from where Michael Johnson caught the gamewinner against Auburn in 2002. It’s the moment I’ll probably remember most as a Dawg fan, and it probably wouldn’t have been possible had this site never existed.

RIP Jerry Garcia, and here’s to another 11 years.

Even they know…

If you were among the Dawg fans at yesterday’s Atlanta Bulldog Club meeting at Colony Square, you probably noticed a lot of empty chairs. Many people chose to stand, but the room wasn’t packed by any stretch. For the first time in a while, attendence at the Road Tour was off quite a bit this year. I’m getting much the same story from other locations, including Macon, Roswell, and Jacksonville.

I’ll admit that for the first time in several years I decided to skip the Atlanta meeting. Why? To be honest, I kind of knew what to expect and didn’t see much point in fighting Atlanta traffic. I was pretty happy with what I heard at the Roswell meeting last month. As it turns out, I was able to see the meeting thanks to the free online broadcast via the athletic association’s gXtra service. As I watched the broadcast, I felt pretty justified in my decision to stay home. I think I can put my finger on a few reasons why the annual "rubber chicken circuit" is becoming less and less important to fans.

• Less-than-impressive organization and marketing. The athletic association just doesn’t seem interested in promoting the Bulldog Club events. Either they expect fans to find out the information on their own, or they expect the local clubs to handle their own promotion. If it weren’t for word-of-mouth on message boards and blogs, I don’t think many people would have known about the events at all. I’m hardly out of touch with Georgia athletics, and I had to dig to find information about a meeting in my area that featured Coach Richt but which wasn’t on the official Road Tour schedule. It’s a shame, because the technical aspects of the events are well-done. The videos are always entertaining. Last night’s meeting was broadcast online via gXtra. That takes some technical chops to pull off. Georgiadogs.com did promote the Atlanta meeting – on the day of the event.
  
• Fewer questions about the program. Let’s face it, the interest in the football program drives these events. The program is riding high with few core changes. Oh, of course there are some positional questions and the usual "how good will we be" or "what the heck happened against West Virginia" stuff, but fans are more or less confident that things will work out reasonably well. If there is a common question in this offseason, it’s "who’s going to be the quarterback?". Anyone with a shred of sense knows that question won’t be answered before preseason practices, so it’s not something on which we expect to gain much insight from the Road Tour. How many times can you hear Coach Richt say, "I don’t know who the quarterback will be."?
  
• Diluted and recycled information. Last night in Atlanta, Mark Richt was one of six speakers including three other coaches, Damon Evans, and an emcee. The format had him address some canned questions and then open the floor to some (mostly awful) fan questions, and his portion of the meeting took less than half an hour. You learned more about the program reading a transcript from SEC Media Days. I’m not criticizing Coach Richt for what he does or does not reveal at these events. It’s the nature of the event. He’s not going to reveal his super-secret depth chart that he’s been saving for this meeting, and he doesn’t want to be the next coach to put a foot in his mouth with a "55 years" comment. Many of the fans are tuned into the program year-round now thanks to the Internet, and a lot of the usual questions we have before a season have been dealt with over and over online. Since most of the Bulldog Club meetings follow more or less the same format, a good recap posted online from one event can be enough for most.

I understand that the Road Tour is an inconvenience for all. Richt starts fall camp in less than a week. Basketball coaches are in the middle of recruiting. The full fleet of interns there during the academic year probably isn’t around to help. But what it all adds up to is that the athletic association and the Bulldog Club system are just going through the motions now, and the empty seats show that fans are beginning to notice.

Am I missing something? What is the future of Bulldog Club meetings? Maybe it’s a good thing – these events have more or less turned into pep rallies, and the Bulldog Nation doesn’t need much of a pick-me-up these days. Despite the questions and uncertainties of a new season, Dawg fans have faith in their coach and have just maybe taken on a little bit of his relaxed confidence.

• Semi-liveblogging. I’m almost always at the games on Saturday, but I like to go back over the Tivo’ed broadcast on Sunday. I’ll post in stream-of-consciousness mode while watching the tape after a night to sleep on the game.
• "Film study". This might be more of a mid-week thing, but thanks to sites like YouTube where hosting video is less of an issue, I’ll put up some comments about a few plays (not likely to be the usual highlights) and illustrate them with video clips.
• Stats browser. Who gets the most carries and receptions in the 4th quarter of SEC games during October? You’ll be able to find out. I’m most interested in the running game, so we’ll likely start there.

Hold me to all of this.

With the attention focused on the quarterback decision, there are some other important positional questions out there this summer that I’ll be watching as practice gets underway this weekend. Here are just a couple off the top of my head:

• Who will be the other starting cornerback? For that matter, how about the other safety? Battle and Oliver seem fairly certain as two of the starters in the defensive backfield. From there, it gets a little messier. Kelin Johnson is a favorite to start at strong safety, but C.J. Byrd and Antavious Coates could play early and often. Thomas Flowers could reasonably start at the other corner position, but Bryan Evans and Ramarcus Brown could make that a tough decision. Asher Allen and Prince Miller might be the future at cornerback, but I’m skeptical about starting true freshmen at cornerback no matter how talented they might be. Even Champ Bailey didn’t really make an impact until the end of the 1996 season.
  
• How will the running game depth chart shake out? The key decision here is the tailback rotation and the distribution of carries. Thomas Brown is at the top of the depth chart, and Kregg Lumpkin will be the most likely to challenge him. I won’t go over and over my same doubts about the tailbacks and the desire for one of them to grab control of the position, but I will say that I will be a little disappointed if we head into the season without some more clarity at tailback. What kind of an impact will a new position coach have on the position? How will Southerland and Williams share time at fullback?
  
• Can Michael Turner get the job done at offensive tackle? Depth at offensive tackle is one of those hidden time bombs that could quickly derail a promising season. It will be tested immediately given Inman’s suspension. Even once Inman returns, the offensive tackle position remains one of the areas on the team that could least absorb a long-term injury.
  
• The last chances. For guys like Mario Raley, Marquis Elmore, and Danny Verdun-Wheeler, this preseason presents an opportunity to set the tone for their senior seasons. Verdun-Wheeler seems in the best position as the "fourth linebacker" and a guy in whom the staff has a lot of confidence backing up most any linebacker position. Raley watched Bryan McClendon step up from relative obscurity as a senior to become one of the team’s leading receivers. Richt has set a goal for Raley to have a similar season. Elmore could be much-needed veteran depth at a young defensive tackle position, and he finally seems to be past the nagging injuries.
  
• What will happen to the aging receivers? I mentioned Raley, but Gartrell and Goodman are also upperclassmen. Newcomers like Tony Wilson and Michael Moore will push for playing time. Younger receivers Massaquoi, Bryant, and Harris seem a bit more established. The injury to Bailey and the relatively open depth chart behind Massaquoi leave the door open for one of the veterans to have an impact, but can they?
  
• The little things on special teams. Positions like snapper and holder that you never notice until they screw up remain open. Tereshinski probably won’t remain on the punt team if he’s the starting QB or even #2, and he handled that role well. Returning jobs seem open, too. If Flowers sees significant time at cornerback, will he still return punts with so much speed on the bench? Will a star like Thomas Brown return kickoffs, or will other speedsters get that chance? Byrd and Kelin Johnson were among the young players who made names for themselves on special teams as the first men down on kicks and punts. Who’s next in that role? Will kickoff returns improve from an abysmal 2005?

“I am still committed to Ole Miss, but I am kind of open too.”

– Ole Miss “commitment” Ted Laurent

Wake me in February.

Mark Richt’s Dawgs have lost just 13 games since he arrived in 2001. I think those 13 losses comprise the entire Georgia video library over at CSS. Yet I keep watching.

I did it again last night….CSS, Dawg football, UT 2004. Gotta get my fix. I don’t care if it’s the ugly 2003 Middle Tenn. St. game, just give us one Dawg win. Please?

For most Georgia fans, the name Glen Mason evokes unpleasant memories about the mess that was Georgia football in the mid-1990s. In these parts, Mason is more a bit of trivia than a football coach taken seriously. I would imagine that many Dawg fans are relieved that some midwesterner who managed moderate success at Kansas and Minnesota didn’t get his hands on this program. But I’ve got to give him some credit.

Some of the other Dawg blawgs like Georgia Sports Blog and DawgSports were kicking around numbers on which states produced the most NFL talent. The states you’d expect showed up at the top of the list, and Georgia was in a respectable position right up among the best.

Among the states with the fewest players in the NFL were Kansas and Minnesota. And one man has had success with the flagship football program of both of those states: Glen Mason. First, he took lowly Kansas and had four winning seasons in the early 1990s including a 10-2 mark in 1995 which attracted Georgia attention. Now he’s turned Minnesota into a respectable mid-tier Big 10 program.

Winning in the upper midwest is a tough assignment. Colin Cowherd maintains, and I agree, that Barry Alvarez will always be criminally underrated for the job he did at Wisconsin. He took a weak program in a talent-poor state and turned it into a program that played for Rose Bowl titles, produced Heisman-quality backs, and established themselves among New Year’s Day bowl regulars. At least Wisconsin had a rabid fan base and a place in college lore with its fight song and band.

Minnesota has none of that. It lies on the periphery of the Big 10 and, though it plays for axes and jugs and whatever else they use for trophys up there, there’s just not much tradition. They too lie in a relatively talent-poor state, they play in a dismal dome, and they’re typically….well, bad. There are a few homegrown success stories such as Marion Barber, but they’re pretty scarce.

Now Mason hasn’t taken the Gophers to the Rose Bowl, and they haven’t really been able to take the next step beyond the 7-4 or so plateau. But even that level of success, given what he has to work with up in the frozen tundra, is quite solid. He’s found a way to win games behind a bruising running attack, and his team will head to a bowl game in most years. They’re capable of knocking off the better teams in the Big 10, though they won’t do it every week. That’s pretty rare air for Minnesota. Actually, it’s only a win or two a year away from what Georgia had in the late 1990s while working with much less.

A lot of coaches wouldn’t even touch Kansas or Minnesota – they aren’t high profile, the fan base isn’t particularly rabid, and they are stuck in some pretty competitive conferences. We don’t know how Mason would have done in the SEC, and though his turnarounds have been steady, they haven’t been immediate. Georgia fans wouldn’t have had much patience especially given the lack of name recognition. Still, as we enter the 2006 season ten years after the season Mason was to have started at Georgia, I have to tip my cap at the job he’s done and continued to do. He’s earned a good measure of respect as a coach.

Ticket cut-offs for the 2006 season have been announced, and demand is at record levels again. For some perspective, here’s what it has taken to get tickets over the past few seasons. Florida is the best barometer for changes since our allotment remains more or less steady from year to year.

2003:
Clemson: all cumulative scores above 11,175
LSU: all cumulative scores above 13,860
Tennessee: all cumulative scores above 11,616
Vandy: All orders were filled
Florida Club: all cumulative scores above 25,051
Florida Regular: all cumulative scores above 4,301
Georgia Tech: all cumulative scores above 15,700

2004:
South Carolina — all cumulative scores above 11,187
Arkansas — all orders were filled
Florida — Club – all cumulative scores above 27,001
Florida — Regular – all cumulative scores above 5,986
Kentucky — all cumulative scores above 5,651
Auburn — all cumulative scores above 14,101

2005:
Miss. St.: all orders were filled
Tennessee: all cumulative scores above 15,601
Vandy: all orders were filled
Florida Club: all cumulative scores above 30,701
Florida Regular: all cumulative scores above 5,301
Georgia Tech: all cumulative scores above 18,751

2006:
South Carolina: all cumulative scores above 16,000
Mississippi: all cumulative scores above 12,850
Florida Club: all cumulative scores above 32,400
Florida Regular: all cumulative scores above 6,800
Kentucky: all orders were filled
Auburn: all cumulative scores above 19,506

UGASports.com is killing some time this summer by having folks votes on Georgia’s best player. Of course we know who will win, but the process spawns some other interesting discussions.

Take quarterbacks. Georgia hasn’t really produced a clear “best” quarterback, and not many Bulldog signal-callers have had much pro success. Not many fans were around to see Tarkenton and fewer were there for Rauch and others from that era. Georgia’s offense during the successful Dooley years was based on the run, so you had quarterbacks who could run the option and pass every now and then. Since the McDuffie revolution in 1991, we’ve had a slew of passers come through the program but none has really had much success beyond Georgia. Without some clear stars at quarterback, some of Georgia’s better players don’t get their due sometimes.

Some quarterbacks make it easy. Manning, Leinart, Vick, Frazier, Marino…they all showed obvious talent in college and could be appreciated for their roles on some very good teams. For those with less-obvious talent or in systems that don’t lend themselves to gaudy numbers, it’s very possible to underrate some very good players.

Buck Belue. Critics will be quick to point out that “all he did was hand off to Herschel.” Sure. He also brought Georgia back off the mat down 20-0 to Tech in 1978, and he saved the 1980 season with a scrambling pass against Florida. Quarterbacks like Belue who might have been overshadowed by a superstar tailback or a dominant defense often aren’t appreciated. Even David Greene – no one in Division 1 has had more wins as a starter – gets slighted because as some fans put it, “most of those wins belonged to the defense”. Unbelieveable. It’s possible to give too much credit to the quarterback; football is a team game of course, and rarely can a single player overcome serious deficiencies elsewhere. Still, the quarterback is a focal point in any system, and there are reasons why teams have a bit more success with some quarterbacks than with others.

Jay Barker is probably the poster boy for this type of quarterback in the era of modern offense. Alabama in the early 90s had a defense you simply didn’t score on, and they relied on the run within a conservative offense. Barker as quarterback was seen as a guy whose job was simply not to screw things up. His team bested those of higher-profile quarterbacks like Shane Matthews and Gino Torretta. Faced with a deficit against Georgia in 1994, Barker showed off his arm and outdueled Eric Zeier in a comeback win. He finally received some overdue recognition as a senior with SEC and national honors, but you probably won’t find Barker on most people’s list of the Top 5 SEC quarterbacks of the 1990s. He should be high up on such a list.

Ohio State’s Craig Krenzel is a more recent quarterback from this mold. He was the man who handed off to Maurice Clarett, and most assumed that Ohio State was much too one-dimensional to survive from week to week. But they kept winning, and Krenzel was surprisingly at the center of a lot of plays that kept the Buckeye’s record perfect. In the end, it was fitting that this unheralded quarterback was the leading rusher in the national title game and scored twice. He was only 7-21 passing, but five of those completions were for first downs. Clutch. Clarett said, “He maybe doesn’t have the best arm out there, and he’s maybe not as fast. But, I’m telling you, when it comes down to it, he can play. I’d take him over anybody in the world.” He was talking about Krenzel, but he gave a perfect description for this type of underappreciated quarterback. They’re not superstars, but they’re leaders and, when it comes down to it, winners.