I knew nobody would address the issues or answer my points.
ALL of us want to beat georgie. Some of us have actually thought long and hard about it. georgie has some advantages and they are magnified at the end of the season. That is why they are beating us 70%+ of the time.
Of course I believe that PJ will beat georgie a very high percentage of the time no matter when we play. We hit a home run here guys. We all know that.
However if ANYONE can explain to me one decent reason why I should believe that we will not regress back to a 30% win percentage the day after PJ retires I will apologize profusely for being misguided.
And the rumor is GEORGIE called our AD after he hired PJ to see if we would move the game.
And finally, I think that the schools with competitive Thanksgiving rivalry games will prove to be at a significant disadvantage in Conference Championship Games to the teams without one.
I would actually want you to explain why we would automatically go back to 30% without CPJ. The idea is that we are
changing the attitude and energy of the program. That's why Paul Johnson is here. DRad said it himself. We're not just shooting for some gloss over "well that was cute" quick fix, we want something tangible that lasts. Why do you think georgia currently has a recruiting advantage? Why do you think their program is where it is now? Because Richt came in and got them to start winning, and people around the country started noticing.
You have this tunnel vision that because georgia isn't the game before a possible ACCCG, that everything will be all rosy. IT WON'T. We will still be playing a significant football game at that time of the year. Unless we have already clinched the division, it will have serious conference implications. And if the team we're playing is fighting for bowl eligibility, or a better bowl, they're gonna give us everything they freaking have. uga isn't the only team we can get hurt playing. We can come out of a game with nc state with three major injuries to our key players JUST AS EASILY.
Moving the game isn't going to make the ACC Championship game any easier for us. We still will have gone through a 12 game schedule just like everyone else. All that will do is make the BEGINNING our schedule just as hard as the tail end because we will start the year playing uga. What if we get beat up during that game? We have the year to get healthy, but at the cost of being undermanned for the conference games that get us to the ACCCG. Then what?
Also, if you're banking on their players being suspended for the game if it starts the year, you're severely misguided. One, I expect him to try to crack down on those issues to save his rear end. Two, if something did happen, unless it was too severe to avoid scrutiny, it would probably be a situation where it is "handled internally". Happens all the time. No one gets suspended for signficant games unless they do something that you can't sweep under the rug. Period.
Understand something: We run a high precision offense that demands execution of the highest calibur to function. We're most likely NOT going to come into next year automatically firing on all cylinders. We will be better, yes. Don't get me wrong at all. But it will still take some games to get into the flow of the season. That's why most people schedule one or two creampuffs to start the year. You want to talk about the disadvantages of when we play uga, if you do it to start the year, you're probably limiting that, and putting us further behind the eight ball.
And as for focus, I recall a team last Saturday that was pretty damn focused on the task at hand. I saw a team that wanted that win more. I saw a team that got down, but looked themselves in the eye, and decided to do something about it. I'm sure none of them were thinking about some project they had due next week in that locker room at the time. Yes, these are student athletes. Yes, we go to a VERY hard school. But you can focus on the task at hand, while still fulfilling those requirements in the classroom. That's what we have a coach for. If we move the game, you still have a conference game, and a Conference Championship game for that matter, at the same time of year. Are we going to be focused for those games? Should we try to move them too because the academic stress is too much?
The answer isn't to manipulate things around you because you think it will make things easier. Hell, I'm not convinced for one second that anything will get easier for us. It was nice to have the conference schedule out of the way before others. We could focus on uga better. If we had clinched the division before Saturday, we could have REALLY focused on the uga game. The answer is to get better. That's it. We've lost 7 out of 10 to uga these past three decades because they have been better. Look at our football program's history. Most of their wins have come when we were simply down as a program. We would have lost most of those games even if they were played at Christmas. We need to focus on getting better as a football program, and the wins will come. That means while CPJ is here and beyond.
That game needs to stay where it is. To HELL with georgia!
