Georgia Football: Time To Let Go

It is time for the Georgia football team to move on from head coach Mark Richt, a man who has done more good than bad for this team and for this university. 

Like any relationship, there are highs and lows. The great times make a person feel like this relationship could be the ultimate one that is culminated by a life-long marriage. Then, there are the bad times that lead to the demise.

Georgia’s head coach Mark Richt has had both wonderful and awful moments in his career with the Bulldogs. His highs were extreme. In his first five years, the Dawgs won two SEC titles and had four 10-win seasons. In both 2007 and 2012, the Dawgs were national powers that were inches (and I mean inches) away from playing for a national championship. All was good in Athens.

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His lows, though, are the reason he should and most likely will be out as Georgia’s headman at the end of this season.

His 8-5 record in 2009 followed by his 6-7 mark in 2010 had many Dawgs’ fans thinking this was the end. But, Richt always had a way of sparking optimism at his lowest moments. The next two years he compiled back-to-back 10-win season and two trips to Atlanta.

This year is different. It does not seem like he can pull himself out of this crapshoot his team is in now. An 8-5 season in 2013 was followed by a 10-3 mark last season. At 10-3 it may seem like he turned it around, but Georgia fans know that last year’s season was anything but substantial. A deflating loss to rival Florida in Jacksonville was followed up by a bone-headed, giveaway loss to in-state Georgia Tech. That was after the Dawgs laid a serious egg at the beginning of the season to South Carolina who ended up being not worth a ‘whatcha-ma-call-it’ by the end of the season.

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After UGA’s performance against the Gators this past weekend, it seems that the offensive-minded coach may have lost his swagger based on how the offense has played this season. It turned out to be one of the worst performances in the Richt-era.

This time the firing talk seems more real than ever. The Dawgs on paper have always had everything that they need. They can recruit. They have stellar backs. They have a decent enough defense, and they have skill players. The only problem is that ‘on paper’ has never made an appearance in a game. That highlights the idea that maybe the Dawgs problem is coaching.

There is nothing to be taken away from the man that Richt is or the numbers he has put up at UGA, but it says something when a team constantly performs to the standard of ‘almost.’ They almost got it done. They almost won the SEC. They almost made the big play against Tennessee to win the game. If nothing else, it seems that the Dawgs are just a coach away from breaking that 35-year title drought.

As a Georgia fan now, there is no shame in wanting a change. Regardless of how you have felt in the past about Richt, it comes a time in a person’s life where breaking ties with a relationship or in this case a coach is for the best.