Georgia Bulldogs: SEC Media Days and UGA Expectations

The Media circus that is SEC Media Days took off in Hoover, Alabama on Monday. Thus begins the hype train for Kirby Smart and the Georgia Bulldogs.

If you are a college football fan who happens to like a specific SEC team, SEC Media Days is the equivalent of cinema buffs getting to a movie early so he or she doesn’t miss the previews. It doesn’t really tell you what will happen, but it does begin the hype. Tuesday is the day when Coach Kirby Smart extols and waxes philosophical about his Dawgs. What about the 2017 Georgia Bulldogs football team? The hype is building, but is it real this time?

Look, I’m just going to come right out and say it; The Georgia Bulldogs football team is one of the most over-hyped and overrated teams in college football over the last 10 years. It’s just true. UGA fans will hiss and dismiss. Other fans will nod with a sanctimonious fury. But, it is true.

I live in Tennessee, currently, and have done sports talk radio for six years now (I’m a Georgia boy through and through, though). Fans up here always want to compare Mark Richt’s firing to Phillip Fulmer. Part of that is to make them feel better about how their program has been gawd-awful since 2003, with the implicit idea that UGA will go 5-7 for three straight years like Tennessee did. That ain’t happening.

The reason the Reverend Richt was fired was because, in spite of a deservingly heralded career, his teams mostly under-performed. They did that, sometimes, because Richt suspended his best players like A.J. Green and Todd Gurley, when no other coach would do the same. When you do that, and let Missouri win back to back division titles, while Florida and Tennessee are dumpster fires, you’ll get canned. Fulmer just couldn’t recruit the State of Georgia anymore. That’s why he got fired. It’s not the same.

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So, why does this matter now? Because the “over-hyped” aura still surrounds this Georgia Football program. I’m not talking about the over-zealous fan who insists that UGA will go 10-2 every year. Every program has those, and most are lunatics for believing it.

I’m talking about the media. One thing we’ve learned about corporate media in these last few months (politics or sports), and their make-up caked faces, is that they hate to be wrong. The problem is they are almost always wrong. Specifically, with regards to SEC Media Days, where they “vote” for who they think will win each division, they are almost always wrong.

Coach Smart has done some things to change perception surrounding the UGA football program. Recruiting has moved into quasi-Alabama strata in two years. The commitment of the University to build/improve facilities has had an impact. But wins and losses are the only thing that matter when it comes to program perception.

We’re going to hear a lot through Thursday about whether we should “trust” this Georgia Bulldogs football team. They are the most talented team on paper in their division. The problem is that just hasn’t meant much over the last decade. They’ve been able to say that going into a given football season for 6 or 7 of those 10 years, with only a couple of division titles won.

If the Georgia Bulldogs win the SEC East this year, Smart and Co. will have changed the due course of the program concretely. I have no doubt about that. It will usher in a period of sustained and elevated success that UGA fans clamor for.

If they fail to win the East, and at this point two-time defending SEC East Champion Florida gets any benefit of the doubt (all East teams have issues), Georgia Football will continue to shadow box the over-hyped label and reputation.

Year Two is a tough year to truly judge a football coach. But this is SEC Football, and the UGA hype train is cranking up in Hoover. Just with a lot of hmming and hawing mixed in.

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