Georgia will spend the first week of the 2008 regular season the same way we spent the last week of the 2007 regular season: looking up at a team jumping us in the polls. The coaches dropped Georgia to No. 2 this week behind USC. No other team went backwards without a loss. (Update: Same for the AP: No. 2. Ohio State is only nine votes behind us.)
So the pole position that we enjoyed with that preseason ranking got obliterated about midway through the second quarter in Charlottesville. Thanks, Wahoos. Now Georgia will need a dominating win in front of a national TV audience too and we need it now. I would nominate South Carolina, but the performance in Columbia is only important if USC gets beat at home by Ohio State. Otherwise, the national media all but gives the Trojans a spot in Miami. If they win, USC is pretty well cemented at the top of the polls until they lose. We become simply one of the many teams vying to be their likely opponent.
Quinton
45 comments:
Welcome to the general stupidity of early season polls - and the really, the entire polling system.
F it. All you can do is win every game you play. Thanks to the Vols, the weak-ass Pac 10 argument is shot to hell.
Well, what did you expect with all the USC hyping they've done all weekend long. However, one, yes one person on ESPN said that the win over Virginia was highly overrated. Look at the bright side. The men in red & black no longer have the #1 tattooed on their backs and this may just make them hungrier.
Go Dawgs!
The voting was tight in the USAToday Poll -- with USC getting 22 first place votes to UGA's 20. With USC having a bye week (already!) and if Georgia can pull out a dominating win against Central Michigan, we could find our way back to the #1 spot.
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone given the way that SC dominated UVA. The leapfrog was going to happen regardless following the outcome of the tOSU/ SC game. This doesn't change much. It only gives the team another reason to win the games against South Carolina and ASU all the more convincingly.
I'm not sure any amount of domination over Central Michigan can convince the voters that we are better, even if the voting is really, really tight.
You're surprised? We looked slow on Saturday and gave up 21 points to Georgia Southern.
It doesn't matter when the points came, or who was playing for us at that time. The pollsters don't get to see the entire game.
Plus, you look at Knowshon's 58 yards on the day... hardly a shining performance by the Dawgs.
Hopefully this'll give them a kick in the ass, get them motivated, and strip any sense of entitlement they thought they had.
...keep an eye on Hurricane Hanna. It is expected to pass through Georgia and South Carolina late Friday / early Saturday. We may not be doing much domination of Cent. Michigan if we are playing in a storm.
"We may not be doing much domination of Cent. Michigan if we are playing in a storm."
Yeah, because keeping the ball on the ground is a bad thing for Georgia...
What's disturbing is that this is the poll Georgia had the larger lead in. I wouldn't be surprised to see us in 3rd on the AP.
AP dropped us to 2nd as well.
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/rankingsindex
I admire Richt for putting in lots of 2nd and 3rd stringers Saturday, even if it did affect the outcome and lead to us losing ground in the polls. I just hope that down the line we see the dividends of all of those younger players getting experience.
They want to set it up as a #1 v. #2 USC v. tOSU game, so I wouldn't be too surprised to see us get jumped again. I think overall it just says how stupid pre-season rankings are. We go out, take care of business, and get dropped a spot. Oh well, gotta get em fired up somehow.
maybe if we left are starters in after being up 38-0, and kept it a blowout we could have stayed at #1..
sorry but mark richt is a much more respectful person then Pete Carroll..
i wouldnt worry about this, it means nothing! just wait until we play arizona state, lsu, tennessee, alabama, and florida...
I don't think we have any business blaming another team's dominating win against a div I opponent for our slide. We have only our own 2nd half crappy play against a cupcake to blame for that.
check out the new design on USC's field..
USC Trojans New Field
WHO CARES!!!!!!!!?!??!?!?!?!
We have to win to get in anyway. Hoepfully this pisses our guys off!
I would love to try to explain this system to a logical person who knows nothing about sports.
"You see, people pick who they think is best, but it's kind of week-by-week, but it's supposed to be overall, too. Yeah, you shouldn't drop a spot unless you lose, but other teams....blah blah blah blah blah. I whine not because of us dropping this week, but because, as a logical person, this system makes my head hurt.
The first few weeks of college football are kinda preseason too minus a few games splashed here and there.
I do think that hanging serious points on our SEC opponents/stronger OOC teams (ASU or GT) when possible should be done. I don't think we should to our lil' brother teams or very weak OOC teams due to humiliation. It's pretty obvious the voters see total domination (see also humiliation) as being a front runner. Richt is hopefully aware and will take the needed steps to make it happen regardless of religious reasons.
No worries. USC crushed a horrible Virginia team on the road and when the season is over the pollsters will see how bad Virginia is at the end and discount the victory. If Georgia keeps winning they will be in the National Championship game. In fact I think they can lose once this year and still be in it as long as they don't lose in the SEC Championship game.
For the life of me I cannot figure out why anybody cares.
The winner of the SEC Championship game is the best team in the country as far as I am concerned.
The rest of it is just blather and commentary.
Southern Cal will beat OSU as badly or maybe worse in a couple of weeks than LSU beat them in the championship last year.
The PAC-10 is weak but the Trojans are strong. They probably are the best team in the country right now.
i thought the championship was in pasedena this year? you said the pollsters are basically already putting usc in miami??
If we play every down with intensity - regardless of score or string - then we leave it all out on the field. Can't ask for anything more.
...doesn't matter what ESPN pundits say, doesn't matter what the polls say, play our best game every week & its all left on the field.
GATA
No worries....even if we beat GSU 70-7 we still would have moved to #2. SC had a bigger audience with a bigger named opponent in UVA. We just need to show up and win our games and we'll move back to #1.
Lets all be honest, despite our love of the Bulldogs. Imagine the situation was reversed. USC started #1 and beat 1-AA team. We started 2 or 3, and beat (for example) an unranked Clemson (like a few years ago). We would all be here expecting to have jumped USC.
Furthermore, whoever wins the USC/OSU game was bound to be #1 no matter what. This was unavoidable.
I hope Richt can make his players feel like they got "dissed" by this to motivate them.
-Cambios
Blogging about Online Gaming and Virtual Worlds:
http://www.muckbeast.com
It really doesn't matter. We control our own destiny. Because we play UF and USC plays OSU an undefeated or 1 loss SEC champ UGA team is pretty much a guarantee. 2 losses would keep us from the number one spot and probably the number two spot as well. So it's really all irrelevant. Honestly the main team that would worry me would be OU, as their the only team who doesn't play another top team until the Big 12 champ game. So everyone needs to pull against OU for 1-2 upset losses. Same with Mizzou.
Virginia is D1-A. Southern isn't. Plain and simple. If the teams were reversed, we would be whining that we played the "tougher" team.
It was inevitable after the USC/OSU game anyway, so things have just happened sooner than later. We need to win the division and win the conference. The rest will take care of itself.
Anonymous 2:55
I was explaining why Tennessee was playing UCLA last night to my girlfriend. (who knows jack squat about football)
I said you have to play tough teams outside your conference to impress voters so they'll vote you higher and the higher you are, the better bowl you go to.
Her exact response "That's stupid, why don't you play everybody in your conference and if you win your conference then you play the winners of the other conferences in a playoff type system"
Week to week polls don't matter to me. All that matters is that we win the SEC and are #1 or 2 when bowl selection time comes.
Yea I agree with what everyone else is saying, but I have to say, even if we won 100-0 we would have still dropped bc they are still talking about losing Sturdivant and now Owens is gone. So I felt this coming......unfortunately / or fortunately depending on whether you think the guys will get mad about this or not.
For those of you asking 'who cares', I care and here's why.
There is NO WAY IN HELL the pollsters will give Georgia a boost over USC for a dominating win over anyone on our schedule, even UF.
It's a double standard.
Oh, and to hell with Virginia.
USC looked great, we looked ok.
UVA is D-1, GSU is D-2.
They want a #1/#2or3 matchup for USC v OhSU. The winner is #1, UGA is #2...that was set in stone in the beginning, which is why they ranked us #1.
We win every game, we play in the Big Game...period...if not, we get involved in politics...which'll be based on the strength of the rest of the SEC (thanks Bama! Love the new offense Vols!)
Go Dawgs!
one game at a time folks. ignore the polls. the only one that counts is the one in mid january. if you think that our win over a glorified junior college saturday means we are the best team in the country then you are drinking to much kool aid. usc, osu, alabama all had more impressive victories.
Hobnail - you are exactly right. That's what pisses me off when people say it doesn't matter. They'll be singing a different tune later in the year when we can't leapfrog the vaunted USC no matter how big the win.
"Plus, you look at Knowshon's 58 yards on the day... hardly a shining performance by the Dawgs..."
ovn...
Seriously...Knowshon had 59 yards on 8 carries. That's about 7.4 yards per carry.
That's pretty good, last I checked.
He also had 53 yards on 2 catches.
Not bad, either.
Oh, and he scored 3 touchdowns.
In other words, he makes things happen when he DOES get the ball.
This game didn't hurt him one bit, believe me.
Folks,
The reason it "doesn't matter" is because whoever wins the USC-OSU game was guaranteed the #1 spot even if UGA won its games 900-0 between now and then.
I don't think anyone is saying the #1 ranking "doesn't matter." Of course it matters. What doesn't matter is the fact that we lost #1 this week instead of in week 3 after the USC/OSU game.
-Cambios
Blogging about Online Gaming and Virtual Worlds:
http://www.muckbeast.com
It is ridiculous that these polls have become such a "beauty contest" that you have to "look impressive" in winning. The only look most of these pollsters get is via the scroll on a TV screen and via the ESPN highlights. Anyone watching our game would see that we did what we had to do- put them away and the outcome was never in doubt. With apologies to Mike Gundy, these polls are GARBAGE. Just keep winning and ti will all fall into place anyway.
Let's just get to the SEC Championship game first and worry about the rankings later.
Just like last year, I don't listen to what a bunch of biased windbags say about who should be ranked where. The polls didn't work last year. WE WERE #1, not LSU, and any person with common sense knows it. To hell with the pollsters! I know that we have a better team than USC and Ohio State, and I don't care what those jerks think.
This is not something to worry about.
Who cares about polls or ESPN nuts or radio hosts think.
If we can handle CMU, USC(can I still say that?), and actually show up to play fired up against ASU. (It won't be hard to do after watching The Vols last night) They will be talking about us again. The Dawg fans just need to be as LOUD as possible in the Desert. PLEASE!
The Florida game is crucial. More than ever.
The Dawgs just need to tighten up that sloppy Defense, because the offense will be stellar.
That performance was terrific.
GATA Dawg Fans!
a brief history lesson
we were sitting pretty at #3 before the last weekend of last season before WVU lost to Pitt and immediately the pundits started to discredit UGA as not worthy of being #2, so when the polls came out we dropped....
This shows that voters are willing to ignore UGA and go w/ the more comfortable choice in another team....we were up 38-0 on GA Southern and then called it quits....we looked good enough to keep our #1 ranking and we should still be there...
the willingness for UGA to be jumped over an "impressive" victory against Virginia makes me nervous...
ITS FREAKIN' VIRGINIA
Reddawg,
The very fact that your girlfriend thinks that makes sense is the very reason college football doesn't do it that way.
Last year we choked horribly against SC and Tenn. Before we worry about polls, we need to take care of business and not choke away games we should win.
My attitude every year is the same: I want UGA to win the SEC. That is something we have full control over. If we win the SEC with our schedule, there's no way we are shut out of the national title game - especially not after last year.
-Cambios
Blogging about Online Gaming and Virtual Worlds:
http://www.muckbeast.com
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