I sometimes joke with Kyle King of DawgSports.com about his tendency to get a bit...wordy. For all my joking, no one devotes more legitimate ink to UGA baseball or gymnastics than Kyle. And no one spends more time arguing with bloggers who follow other football programs than Kyle.
All of that said...he's neither wordy nor focused on our rivals in this one. It's a concise and extremely on point article about the location of the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. Score one for The Mayor. When you quote Erk to prove your point, you're way ahead of the game.
PWD
31 comments:
Just beat em.
+ 1 CJ
I still say it makes no sense for UGA to give Florida the advantage of playing eight games in the state of Florida.
And, UgaMatt makes very good counterpoints why the Georgia - Florida should go home and home.
Jacksonville is where the game belongs. It's a tradition that has many positives for the almuni, the students, and for recruiting. We just need to start winning again. Boy, it was fun when Galen Hall coached the Gators.
exactly, CJ. This game has nothing to do with location and everything to do with psychology.
Dr. King is an ace reporter on the spot. (He deserves a blogging doctorate, IMO.)
It belongs in Jacksonville. We just gotta get our heads straight when we go down there. I know it's just another game in the SEC East we have to prepare for, but it has history (albeit a good one for us). It was better when the dadgum BCS and/or SEC East wasn't always on the line during this game (rather, just the SEC), but it's our history, our Red River Shootout. Get our heads straight without worrying about how to celebrate and just come through our metal steel chairs. As we used to say, "Herschel by land, Belue by air, Rex by toe will get us there." Cox by God, Tebow by Hell, Urban by Kiffin, time will tell.
If we the fans expect a beatdown in Jaxsonville every year, then why would the guys that play the game feel any differently? You can take your history and tradition and bury it underneath the East stands at Sanford if a change of venue will help us to beat the Gators more consistently. Let's see: A history of getting whipped by Florida or a history of keeping them honest; which would you prefer? Proponents of keeping it there always ask "give me one reason why you think a home/home series will improve our chances of winning". Instead I'd like to ask those people to give me one reason why you think the current trend of dog whippings will change by staying in Jax. Just ask Auburn what a change of venue did for their rivalry with UA . . .
Kyle is the man, but he couldn't be more wrong on this one.
UGAMatt's response to Kyle in Kyle's comment section makes two arguments against Kyle's base assumptions.
Kyle's Assumption 1) Losses in an opponent's stadium have nothing to do with location. Kyle's Assumption 2) It matters what UF fans think of the University of Georgia.
Answer to 1) - See UGAMatt's number 2. Great argument
Answer to 2) - See UGAMatt's 3. I will add the following. Robert E. Lee sent his troops to die on two frontal assaults when he should have withdrew his forces all because of what his troops would think of him. Clearly, this did not work at Gettysburg and will not work here.
Agree with those here - UGAMatt kinda owned Kyle in that one.
As for the Auburn comparison to B'ham.
Auburn moved their home games to Jordan-Hare in 1989 vs. Bama. They turned the series around based on the strength of their coaching NOT on the location.
Meaning....Bear was long gone.
Dye vs. Curry: 3-0
Dye vs. Stallings: 0-3
Bowden vs. Stallings: 2-2
Bowden vs. DuBose: 1-0
Oliver vs. Dubose: 0-1
Tubs vs. Dubose: 1-1
Tubs vs. Fran: 1-1
Tubs vs. Shula: 4-0
Tubs vs. Saban: 1-1
With the exception of Bowden vs. Stallings, the better coach almost always won.
Pretty much the same way with UGA vs. UF with the exception of '97, '03 and '05.
PWD
jacksonville may have been consider part of SGA 30 years ago.
But this is 2009 and that statement doesn't hold any water.
The game should stay in Jacksonville. Richt should focus on winning the game and not on the location. It's great knowing we don't have to go to that cesspool Gainesville and knowing they won't have the privilege of traveling to Athens.
anon @6:33, I and several thousand south Georgia Dawg fans respectfully disagree. Believe me, that town will look a whole lot more friendly when we start winning a few there again.
People keep saying just win, just win....like CMR hasn't been trying to do that.
Jax is freaking cursed. We need to break the cycle of going down there for couple years.
we wear the away uni's this year and we have the week off beforehand. We also have a tremendous Dline which will give Tebow hell all day. I like our chances in '09.
This is one fight we should run to, not from.
I love, respect and admire older UGA fans from the 60s, 70s and 80s...but it seems that the only reasons you folks are so gung-ho about keeping the game in Jacksonville are these amorphous points about tradition, psychology and how things were 25+ years ago.
I'm lifting this from some post I saw that could better explain my thoughts better than I can, but here is the money quote:
"If you, as a Georgia fan, are that worried about how you would be viewed by Gator fans (the only other people who even give a damn about the game switching locations), then you are guilty of the same mental block that you claim our players are when facing Florida."
http://runaroundsues.blogspot.com/2009/03/tailgaiting-on-northside-drive-aint-as.html
Makes zero sense to have this game in Jacksonville. If you think otherwise, you're just plain wrong.
There is zero evidence that the location has anything to do with the Won Loss record.
Zero.
Most agree that it's a mental thing.
So...you're proposing going home and home...while not resolving the mental thing.
That means losing to the Gators in Athens. I can promise you that losing there is MUCH worse than losing in Jax.
PWD
"With the exception of Bowden vs. Stallings, the better coach almost always won.
Pretty much the same way with UGA vs. UF with the exception of '97, '03 and '05."
Your point (and Kyle's) would seem to lead to the conclusion that Florida has and has had better coaches than Georgia. There are only two ways to change this situation. Either Florida must hire worse coaches or we must better ones.
As Urban Myer does not appear to be going anywhere, which Georgia coaches do you believe should be fired and which candidates do you have in mind to replace them?
Triangle,
We clearly need to upgrade our approach revolving around kickoff coverage, and in-season tackling over last year. Those are low hanging fruit as it were.
Richt says he's resolved the tackling issue. So that would help there. We'll see.
The other issue shows no credible sign of improvement in my opinion with or without the new kicker. Blaming the problem on the kicker vs. the insanity of directional kicking is a leading indicator that it won't be fixed in 2009.
The other chief coaching problem was Neil Callaway, and that was resolved. HOWEVER, you don't fix a problem of a near complete lack of quality and quantity at OL recruiting over a 3 year period over night.
There will always be injury issues for both squads. But by in large, coaching is the #1 indicator of a team's success. The team with the best coaching staff always ends up with the best players and the most wins.
Always.
PWD
Clarification:
"The team with the best coaching staff always ends up with the best players and the most wins."
That's over the long haul. You'll have a fluke or two always. See '97 and '03.
But generally, that statement holds.
When we were beating the Gators 17 of 25, Dooley was simply better than the parade of gomers they had.
PWD
And we make fun of Bama folks for constantly bringing up the Bear.
Erk is dead, and before that had not stood on a UGA sideline since 1980.
KEEP IT IN JAX..
Learn to win every other year, and UGA is holding up MNC Trophies...
PWD-
Thanks for the response. I hope can improve our tackling and it will lead to more wins against Florida. Overall, I agree with your statement that better coaching wins out over time, which makes Richt's record against UF all the more frustrating. He is obviously one of the winningest head coaches in football and firing him would be asinine. But he has never fired an assistant coach and I doubt he ever will. I hope after this season we aren't all wishing he would fire a coach. This season should be decisive as to the abilities of our assistant coaches.
There are 20 million reasons why the game should be moved from Jville. We spend that amount of money to expand our stadium....why have the biggest game of the year at an away stadium. If we had the home game in 2002 we probably would be natl champs...why not play a meaningless non conf game there every few years or alternate home-home-Jville.
What a joke. Shouldn't we be playing Auburn in Columbus as well?
Jim,
Does Columbus have an 85,000 seat stadium and $2.5 million to pay each team?
No, but Atlanta does.
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