Georgia's DC search, the Saban lesson, and good things coming to those who wait.

The Independence Bowl has come and gone, the year has changed over, and Georgia still doesn't have a defensive coordinator. To hear some portions of the UGA fan base tell it, it's time to panic.

Well, the AJC's Mark Bradley appears to be the main one reaching for the panic button, actually. And while a substantial portion of his commenters appear to agree with him, the comments threads in AJC.com's sports section on any given day can be counted on to be dumber than Lindsay Lohan and wronger than Bill Kristol. The people who actually know what they're talking about -- and here I'm thinking about your humble Georgia blogosphere, people like Paul Westerdawg and Kyle King and Senator Blutarsky, not to mention a few mainstream-media guys such as the Macon Telegraph's David Hale -- have appeared blessedly calm over the course of this search. But for those among you who are tempted to take Bradley's cue and start getting antsy, let me make a couple of points.

Think back to Alabama's last head-coaching search, one of the highest-profile, if not the highest-profile, such search in the last decade. Mike Shula was informed he would not be retained on November 26, 2006, just over a week after the Crimson Tide concluded their regular season with a loss to Auburn. Nick Saban was not announced as his replacement until January 3, 2007. Thirty-eight days. Willie Martinez was fired this past December 2, so if we use Bama as a model, we don't really get to start panicking until this coming Saturday, January 9.

That's semi-tongue-in-cheek, of course. There's no set date by which point fans should automatically get the green light to begin melting down over a protracted hiring process. But the point is that a lengthy coaching search does not automatically guarantee failure; if anything, moving too quickly is the more dangerous path. Alabama took 38 days and ended up with Nick Saban; Florida took only five days and ended up with Ron Zook. That's how it works sometimes.

And consider what a gigantic clusterfuck the Alabama hiring process looked like at times. Alabama AD Mal Moore, god love him, offered then-West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez the job before knowing whether he'd say yes; announced that he'd taken the job before he said yes; and then looked like a complete fool when Rodriguez said no, he was staying in Morgantown after all. Know what that means? When Alabama hired Nick Saban, they got their second choice. OK, so that's kind of a mischaracterization of how things played out, but Alabama had already been told by Saban that he wasn't interested, and it was obvious that it would take a whole truckload of cash to move him from that position. Saban might have been their preferred choice, but taking a $4-million flier that he'd actually come to Tuscaloosa was a definite Plan B, strategically, in comparison to finding an established college coach much more likely to view Tuscaloosa as an upgrade (i.e. Rodriguez). Alabama botched Plan A and only then went double-or-nothing on Plan B -- to wit, crossing their fingers and using the nation's highest salary as an opener in the hopes of luring one of the nation's highest-profile coaches. It was by luck (and Saban's growing disgust with the Dolphins' front office), not skill, that Alabama pulled that off.

Contrast that to the deliberateness and discretion with which Georgia has handled their DC search. By all reports, we did make a more-or-less official offer to Bud Foster, which was turned down only when Virginia Tech bumped up his salary. And while we apparently expressed interest in talking to LSU's John Chavis, there's no evidence that we actually offered him the position before LSU bumped up his salary as well. So in spite of what Mark Bradley implies, we're not down to Plan C or worse at this point, and we're not at a point where not getting Kirby Smart from Alabama automatically = failure.

Bradley seems to think that what's most important here is getting the biggest name. I hope I've already made a pretty solid case that having patience and finding the right guy is more important than moving hastily just so that we can find someone with a name that guys like Bradley will find suitably noteworthy. Again, by the criteria Bradley appears to be using, we would never have even sniffed Brian VanGorder back in the early months of 2001.

I think Westerdawg absolutely hits the nail on the head with his take: "I'd lose a recruit or three to get the right guy." To me, that brief comment really offers some perspective on just how little there is to be gained by making speed the top priority in this search. So let's all squelch whatever urge to panic we may be feeling in the moment, and instead take a moment to be glad that Mark Richt, not Mark Bradley, is leading this process.

Thank you.

While we're all taking this day to ponder all the things we're thankful for, I thought I'd take a moment to do the same here. I know the ratio of maudlin posts to overall posts on this blog has been creeping upward of late, for which I apologize, but I want to thank you all for being regular readers, even through some very difficult times over the past few months in which I didn't do as good a job of keeping this thing updated as I should have.

When misfortunes happen in bunches and depression sets in, the attitude that frequently takes over is, "Why should I bother doing [X], it's not gonna make a lick of difference one way or the other" -- and for me, that's been particularly applicable to my writing, in spite of the fact that it's one of the things I do best and enjoy the most. This blog, the work I've been doing for other people's sites, the book that I've been alternately trying to write and trying to give up on for years now -- with each one of these things, I've had that "Why bother" attitude at one point or another over the past year or so, or multiple points, to be more accurate. But y'all are why bother, and now is as good a time as any to remind myself of that and thank all of you for it. Y'all have taken the time to read this blog, care about what's written here, and on occasion even be entertained by it, and that's kept me from throwing my hands up and saying "screw it" despite many temptations to do so.

So a heartfelt "thank you" to you, the readers, for both your time and attention and for the encouraging words you've commented, e-mailed, and Twittered my way; to Holly, Orson, Matt Hinton, and all the other bloggers who have permitted me to deface their sites with my invective over the past few months; and to my family, who have put up with my constant presence (and the nonstop stream of "Super Mario Bros." theme music that comes with it) and still been able to grit their teeth, smile, and assure me sincerely that better days are ahead. Not a day goes by when I don't thank the Lord for all of you, and it's about time you knew that.

What is to be done?, or: Separated at Birth, the not-funny edition.

Now that I've (mostly) recovered from the shock of seeing this in a context other than a sushi-and-Pernod-induced nightmare, I guess it's time to take a stab at gauging The State Of The Program. The estimable Senator Blutarsky -- who, coincidentally, joins me today in hoisting the "Tears of Unfathomable Sadness Award" in Brian Cook's This Week in Schadenfreude feature -- has already summed up things about as tidily as anyone could, and I don't know that I have too much to add that he hasn't already said, but obviously I'm going to try just the same.

Yes, we know we have a lot of young players. Yes, we know the departure of Matt Stafford and Knowshon Moreno has left a sizable vacuum, possibly in terms of leadership, definitely in terms of talent. And it's possible that I was way too naive about both of these issues in my preseason projections of Georgia's fortunes, in which case, ancient mariner, you may consider me a sadder, wiser man from this point on. But the fact remains that we possess the following assets on our team:

· a fifth-year senior who is currently second in the SEC in total offense;
· the most dominant receiver in all of college football right now;
· a pair of tight ends with nine recruiting stars between them;
· an offensive line that returns every starter from last year's unit, which paved the way for 1,400 rushing yards for Knowshon Moreno and only let Matt Stafford get sacked 17 times all season;
· two senior defensive tackles;
· one of the hardest-hitting linebackers in the country; and
· a special-teams unit featuring the nation's leading punter, a placekicker with only one field-goal miss all season, and a kick returner who already has two 100-yard TDs

. . . and we're still only 3-3, with a four-touchdown loss to Tennessee.

That's embarrassing, and unacceptable. It is no more acceptable than any of the blowout losses Jim Donnan sustained even after bringing in all of his outstanding recruiting classes; if anything, it's less acceptable, because while Donnan never gave us consistent evidence that his teams would be better than that, Mark Richt already has.

On that note, some people have compared Saturday's Tennessee loss to the Auburn game in 1999, which is frighteningly apt. For those of you fortunate enough to have not been in Sanford Stadium on the evening of November 13, 1999, here's the thumbnail sketch: A 4-5 Auburn team that had just recently snapped a five-game losing streak came into Sanford Stadium to face a ranked Georgia squad, rolled up a 31-0 halftime lead, and coasted to a 38-21 win. Ben Leard, a mediocre QB who had accomplished nothing of note that season, completed three-quarters of his passes and shelled us for 416 yards. Georgia's offense accomplished nothing until the game was way out of hand. A coach already developing a reputation as a complete asshole in his first year on the job got to laugh in our faces. (All this starting to sound familiar?)

That comparison would be bad enough for Mark Richt, since the blowout Auburn loss is generally seen as the beginning of the end for the Donnan regime. But I'd like to make another comparison that I think bears more relevance to the state of our program on a macro level, and if my Auburn friends will forgive me for dragging out their program one more time, this is where the Separated at Birth part comes in:



First of all, in the interest of full disclosure, let me state that I didn't care for Tommy Tuberville either as a person (the smarminess of his poor-man's-Steve-Spurrier act was downright irritating, and got even more so as he had less and less to back it up) or as a coach (just last year I pronounced him maybe the most overrated coach in the league). But anyone who survived the turmoil and embarrassment of an attempted coup in 2003, only to turn right around and lay waste to the entire conference on the way to a 13-0 season the very next year, must have had some coaching chops.

The problem, though, with that phoenix-like resurrection in '04 was that it turned Tubs into a bit of a monster. This is a purely subjective judgment, I grant you, but once he had the 13-0 season in his back pocket, Tuberville seemed to start acting like he was invincible. I can think of few more retroactively embarrassing sound bites by any SEC coach in the last decade than when Tuberville bitched and moaned about how hard it would be for his team to play for the BCS title -- just two days before Auburn went out and got themselves pounded by an unranked Arkansas team. It gave the impression of someone who had already put himself in the championship spot and thus was devoting more energy to settling pointless old scores with the BCS than to settling the scores that mattered on the field. And when Auburn did lose a game like that, Tuberville frequently employed "weasel words" with the skill of a politician, giving any and every explanation for the loss other than "We just got outcoached" or "I didn't prepare the players well enough."

The biggest indicator of success-induced complacency on Tuberville's part, though, was his loyalty to an underachieving group of assistants, most of whom Tuberville either brought with him from Ole Miss or had worked with in some prior capacity. And let me be clear that I mean position coaches, not coordinators, whom Tubs burned through so quickly it started to become a running joke -- but that was symptomatic of the problem: Given the choice between unloading a coordinator or unloading one of the position coaches with whom he went way back, Tuberville opted for the coordinator time after time, even in the face of mounting evidence that the position coaches weren't pulling their weight (and were, in some cases, actively trying to submarine the coordinator who wasn't part of the good-ol'-boy network). By the end of 2007, Auburn had a QB who'd gone from four-star recruit to basket case; an O-line that was allowing said QB to be pounded into goo on a regular basis; and a receiving corps that pundits repeatedly trucked out when they needed a poster child for the "underachieving" label. Yet instead of ditching the position coaches responsible for those units -- Steve Ensminger, Hugh Nall, and Greg Knox, respectively -- Tuberville chose to part ways with Al Borges, who had been brought in to save the Auburn offense from Nall's dismally incompetent hands following the 2003 season and helped turn it into a 13-0 machine (with on-the-brink QB Jason Campbell being magically transformed into an NFL first-rounder in the process).

Borges, as we all know, was replaced by spread guru Tony Franklin, who, like Borges before him, was disdained as an outsider by the good-ol'-boy group -- and when the internal conflict resulted in disaster, Franklin was shown the door with the 2008 season just half-over. Incredibly, the guy who received the interim OC tag in his place was none other than Steve Ensminger, who managed to be even less productive in that spot than Franklin had been. Make no mistake, Tuberville didn't get fired at the end of that season because he'd hired Tony Franklin; Tuberville got fired because his assistants had poisoned that offense so completely that it would've sucked no matter whom they hired as OC. In spite of the evidence that whatever they were doing wasn't working anymore, Tuberville stuck with blind loyalty and an insistence on "staying the course" (whatever that was), and he paid for it in the end.

Now, after all that, let me say that, even after Georgia's recent struggles, I have complete faith that Richt is both a better coach and a better dude than Tuberville was, and the same goes for our assistants compared to Tuberville's. But Richt's legendary loyalty to his assistants is starting to show cracks just like Tubs's did. Our defense, for example, has followed an almost linear downward trajectory ever since Willie Martinez took over from Brian VanGorder in 2005, yet there has never been any hint that Martinez's job is on the line. Our special-teams coach (who has to divide his attention between ST and the defensive ends) justifies our continued use of disastrous directional kickoffs with about the most asinine explanation possible -- yet not only does he remain in control over special teams, there's little evidence he's received any directive to dispense with this tactic. The presence of Logan Gray on the field for punt reception is a veritable flashing neon sign indicating that we're not going to attempt any kind of runback, yet we keep on putting him out there, and he keeps on not running it back. Georgia starts the Tennessee game in a soft zone, and despite that soft zone getting picked apart by the play-action, no discernible adjustments are made. As with Auburn in the latter years of the Tuberville regime, things that aren't working aren't getting fixed.

There are other creeping symptoms of Tuberville Syndrome: veteran players at a variety of positions not being properly developed; implications that past success should mitigate current failure; Richt's increasing testiness with the press; his growing tendency to put blame on players not "executing," which sounds just as bad as when Terry Bowden used to do it. I got chills this morning -- the bad kind -- when I read Paul Westerdawg's explanation that Georgia's current "Lack of a Sense of Urgency" was "a by product of Coach Richt's eight year deal and his enormous buyout." Not because I was shocked to hear something like that, but because I'd considered the same possibility just the day before, and I couldn't believe I was having those thoughts about a guy I liked and respected as much as Mark Richt.

I don't believe that Mark Richt is a bad or stupid person, nor do I believe that about any of his assistants, even the ones whom I hope aren't working for us this time next year. And I don't think for one second that he's satisfied with our performance this season. But changes have to be made, in some cases big ones, and I've begun to have doubts that he's committed to making all of them. More and more, we're seeing a "stay the course" mentality coming from our coaching staff that's proving detrimental to the product we put on the field. Last year, for example, Richt backed off on full-contact tackling drills in practice, which manifested itself in the shocking decline of our run defense over the second half of the season -- yet no effort was made to change course until our defenders were literally bouncing off Georgia Tech players in the regular-season finale. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result; if that's the case, then we've been doing some pretty insane things lately.

Following last night's Dolphins-Jets MNF game, Jets coach Rex Ryan had the guts to call his team's performance an "embarrassment" and claim "full responsibility" for not having the team properly prepared. He cited specific decisions he'd made that turned out to be bad ones, and explicitly vowed to do a better job the following week. And this was all after losing by only four points, on the road, to a team with the best rushing attack in the league, with the winning score occurring in the very last minute of the game. If Rex Ryan is willing to hold himself that comprehensively accountable for a close, valiantly fought loss, is it too much to expect our coaches to be just as accountable for a loss in which we all but laid down for Jonathan Crompton?

I'm not simply seeking Richt's shame or self-flagellation here; his shame plus two bucks might get me a cup of coffee at Starbucks, depending on what part of the country I'm in. What I'd rather have is an end to the complacency, a recognition that the old ways of simply staying the course and "hoping that [the team] can ride sheer talent to get through a game" are no longer keeping our heads above water. And while I think we need a big staff shakeup at the end of the season, I'm not even calling for that now, because as naive as I am, I'm at least smart enough to realize that such a shakeup this week wouldn't improve our immediate prospects at all. What I'd rather have, if you conservatives out there will pardon the dredging-up of an Obama trope, is a more obvious commitment to change. Directional kickoffs not working? Then don't do them anymore. Walk-ons and bench players not covering kickoffs well enough? Then stop being afraid to use starters. Veterans not producing? Then put the good of the team before your desire to reward seniority and give the young kids a shot. This is not about giving veterans their due, or giving the players a "challenge," or proving the worth of what you think should be considered a time-honored strategy. This is about winning games, and an emphasis on anything other than that is missing the point.

I like and respect Mark Richt both as a coach and as a human being, and he's too good in both of those capacities to fall into Tuberville Syndrome. But to avoid that fate, he's going to have to make some tough decisions over the next couple months, decisions that may test concepts such as tradition or loyalty. We've seen what happens when he unleashes the power of Evil Richt on other teams, but the time is fast approaching when he may have to be willing to turn it on his own.

A belated anniversary celebration, and an even more belated thank-you.

So I was coming home from a weekend trip up to Huntsville -- which was lovely, by the way -- this afternoon, when I realized something: This blog turned four years old on March 7 and it totally went right by me. Didn't mark the occasion with so much as a commemorative post or even a commemorative toaster thrown from the balcony. So here I am, 15 days later, finally marking the occasion. Some parent I'm gonna turn out to be.

But instead of doing my usual self-aggrandizement job or reveling in the aroma of my own metaphorical farts for a while, I'm going to take some time out to extend some thanks -- to you, the readers. Yes, I write this blog, but you, the people who read it regularly and hang on my every word and help build up those nice checks that Google sends me every few months -- you guys are the real heroes. So thank you for taking time out of your day to read this spew, and there are a few groups of you to whom I'd like to give special thanks:

· The folks who wished me well and checked in on me when I was recovering from the back surgery I had at the beginning of this month. I hope nobody worried too much, because it wasn't that serious -- certainly not life or death -- but it was still nice to know that y'all are thinking of me. Just so everyone knows, the cyst on my back was removed, the scar has been healing nicely, and now I can get on to whatever embarrassing health problem awaits me next.

· The people who were kind enough to donate at my behest to Magic Moments' "Magic Mile" fundraising campaign over the last few weeks. That campaign started out as something where we were going to send direct e-mails to friends, co-workers, and family to solicit donations, but I went ahead and threw a note about it up on the blog just on the off chance that a reader or two might be able to throw us a couple bucks -- and you know what happened? I ended up getting way more donations from the blog solicitation than I did from those direct e-mails. (If you're a friend or family member who got one of those e-mails but hasn't donated yet, you may feel free to interpret that as an AHEM aimed very pointedly in your direction.) Seriously, that touched my heart in a big way, guys, and I can't tell you how much your generosity is appreciated not only by me but by the entire organization, not to mention all the sick kids whose wishes we're going to be able to grant this year. Just so you know, if you're still interested in making a donation, you can do so at this link, and the campaign "officially" runs through this Friday. So thanks to everyone who's already donated, and a pre-emptive thanks to those who are about to.

· The blog aficionados who followed me over to Dr. Saturday as I guest-blogged there while the good Doctor was out of town on vacation. Y'all are great, even the commenter who told me I should "just kill [my]self and stop using up resources useful people could be using." Hell, especially that guy. The knowledge that I can still annoy people that much with only a minimum of effort is almost as big an ego stroke as the actual comments I got that week.

· The folks who linked the increasingly infamous Ayn Rand flaying on Fark.com's political section. Even if you hated it, guess what, thimbledicks, you still read it, and that still put some extra change in my pocket. Which I think I will use to go out and buy a copy of The Militant this week. 'Preesh!

But in all seriousness, thanks, everyone, for making the past couple weeks even more rewarding for me than usual. And when this anniversary rolls around next year, we're blowin' this bitch up for big Number Five, promise.

In which this blog gets used for something worthwhile for once.

If you've been reading this blog for any significant length of time, your impression of me (assuming you do impressions) is probably that of a cranky, profane, self-absorbed douchebag who spends all his time bitching about Georgia football or popping off at the Republican party. And don't get me wrong, you've pretty much pegged me, but it might surprise you to know that in my non-blogging time I actually do some respectable things. For about a year now, for instance, I've been the chair of the junior board of Magic Moments, a non-profit, non-partisan charity that grants "wishes" for kids here in Alabama with fatal or life-altering illnesses. (First person who says living in Alabama is its own life-altering illness gets a computer virus sent to them.) Each year we meet with as many as 200 kids and send them to Disneyworld, take them on shopping sprees, take them to meet their favorite star athletes (like we did with Matthew, shown above meeting Peyton Manning), or grant any number of other wishes that give them some nice memories at difficult times in their lives.

This year we're making a concerted effort to expand our grass-roots support through an online fund-raising campaign. The campaign is called the "Magic Mile," and each one of us on the junior and senior boards have set up our own personal fund-raising pages to which we've been directing friends, relatives, and co-workers via e-mail. My personal page is here, and guess what: You can donate there, too.

All you have to do is make a secure online donation with your credit or debit card, and it doesn't have to be a lot -- since this is the first time we're trying a campaign like this, we're starting small, and with each of us aiming for an individual goal of $500, even small donations of five or ten bucks will help. And they'll take us a little bit further toward being able to provide another Disneyworld trip, pro-athlete encounter, or other wish for a sick kid.

So go here and throw in whatever amount of money you can spare. And don't worry, this site will return to your regularly scheduled bitching and complaining before you know it.

Desert, anyone?

Looking for tickets to this fall's Georgia-Arizona State game out in Tempe? You can wander interminably through the desert like Moses did . . . or you can go ahead and knock that out right now. Paul Westerdawg has the semi-inside dope on how to do that.

Basically, it's like this: Call the Arizona State athletic department -- you have to do this over the phone, you can't do it online -- and order a $99 season ticket in the north end zone of Sun Devil Stadium. For that ninety-nine bucks, you get a Georgia-ASU ticket whose face value is $55 all by itself -- and you get tickets to six other ASU home games (Northern Arizona, Stanford, UNLV, Oregon, Washington, and UCLA).

Given how much the scalpers will likely be charging by the time September 20 rolls around, $99 would be a pretty fair deal even if the Georgia ticket is the only one you end up doing anything with. But with those six other tickets, you can either return them to the ASU athletic department, who will donate them to a local charity like the Boys Club and send you a charitable gift receipt you can whip out at tax time, or you can punt them on eBay, where you're likely to make up the entire $99 charge and then some. (Gotta have something to pay your way as you go roaming the bars of Tempe, of course.)

Westerdawg has the contact info and a seating chart of the stadium; over at Dodgy at Best, Kanu has some of that same information as well as the inside track on how to get out to Tempe and what to do once you're there. According to Kanu, public consumption of hard liquor is legal out there -- so between that and the Arizona State coeds, I'm debating whether I'll actually come home. But, uh, we'll see.

Regardless, let's pack the stadium with red and black and show the Pac-10 how it's done in the Dirty Dirty. Good luck!