OK, I’m not going to suddenly start blogging routinely about sports.
And I’ll admit that I’ve gotten less and less interested in college football in recent years because of the growing issues involving concussions and the shameful commodification of young players, including many who will likely never earn a penny from the risks they’re taking on the field.
But I still follow the game to a degree, and I did watch UGA’s sort of embarrassing loss to Clemson on Saturday night.
So here’s my question, which I haven’t really seen addressed anywhere: why was Georgia playing this game in the first place?
We know that Georgia under Mark Richt has had a relatively weak record against ranked opponents. We know that Georgia has a recent history of slow starts. We know that when this matchup was announced, Clemson was expected to have a very good team this year, likely in the top 10 in the pre-season polls.
We also know that the college football rankings put heavy weight on any loss, including those in close games early in the season.
So while other top teams were racking up pretty straightforward opening week victories against respectable but clearly overmatched opponents, Georgia was playing on the road, at night, in a frenetic atmosphere, in a non-conference game, and against a top-10 opponent with one of the college game’s most skilled quarterbacks and a hurry-up offense that would give any team fits.
Now, no matter what Georgia does from here, they’ve marooned themselves several spots further down in the rankings than they would have been with an opening week W.
So why play Clemson on the road in week one? Was it just about the money that ABC was offering? Or machismo? Or hubris?
With a tough schedule the next few weeks, it’s quite likely that Georgia’s record will be 2-2 soon. That record will make it virtually impossible to win a national championship, which this team clearly is (or was) capable of doing.
So, really, why even schedule that game?
While I’m complaining, let me also complain about all the UGA partisans who keep saying how happy they are that the offense scored 35 points.
Well, 21 of those points were in the 1st half (14 in the first quarter), and 7 of those points came on a final drive for which Clemson was effectively playing prevent defense. It seems to be lost on most fans and commentators, but since Georgia had no timeouts left, Clemson was satisfied to give up that final touchdown since they also ran over one minute off the clock.
Almost half of UGA’s total yards were on drives that started in the first quarter.