SB Nation - David Greene

Kevin Butler's 60-Yard Field Goal to Beat the Clemson Tigers: An Open Letter to My Son on the 25th Anniversary of a Great Georgia Bulldogs Victory

T Kyle King — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:15:09 -0000

Dear Thomas,

As I write this, you are in first grade. You are a good student, a creative young man, and a more athletic fellow than I was at your age. We like watching sports together, just like your grandfather and I did when I was a boy (and we still do today), and I have thoroughly enjoyed taking you to major league baseball games and, of course, Georgia football games. I appreciated the way you stayed awake as long as you could sitting on the couch and watching last Saturday night’s game with me.

You have inherited all of my good traits, and, although you also have picked up a few of my bad ones, you have a number of talents I didn’t and still don’t. While your rambunctious nature sometimes gets the better of you, I agree with Thomas Jefferson (one of the guys I had in mind when your mother and I named you as we did, by the way) that a little rebellion every now and again is a good and necessary thing.

In short, I could not be more proud of you or more pleased with you than I am, son . . . but, even though you are well on your way to leading a happy and successful life, there still are a few things I have yet to teach you, and today---for reasons I will get to ~~soon~~ ~~shortly~~ after a while (patience is a virtue, so listening to your dad will make you more virtuous)---I have something important to tell you.

Today, I want to tell you about a man named Kevin Butler.

Kevin Butler was from Stone Mountain, not far from where your mother went to school before she went off to the University of Georgia, where she met and married me. Kevin was a defensive back at Redan High School, but he considered giving up the game of football when he did not earn a starting spot in the lineup.

Rather than quit, though, Kevin listened to his father’s suggestion that he switch to another position. Kevin had been a soccer player, so he took up placekicking and found out that he was good at it. As a junior, he led his high school team to the state championship, kicking six field goals from 50 or more yards away in the course of the season.

Kevin was heavily recruited, but, in 1980, Kevin was injured in the first game of his senior year. Torn knee ligaments ended his season and the scholarship offers he had received from college programs all over the country suddenly disappeared. Only one of the coaches who had been so interested in him the year before stood by Kevin as he went through surgery to repair the damage to his leg.

That coach was Vince Dooley. Kevin Butler came to Athens and played for the Georgia Bulldogs.

In 1981, Kevin kicked 19 field goals to tie an NCAA freshman record. The 94 points he accounted for that year were the most ever by an SEC kicker. Kevin’s 59-yard field goal against Ole Miss in 1982 set a school record and he made a number of critical kicks as a junior in 1983, including crucial extra points in 10-9 wins over the Florida Gators in Jacksonville and over the Texas Longhorns in Dallas. (By the way, son, if you’re ever in Dallas, you don’t need to wear a wristwatch. Remind me later and I’ll explain why.)

At the end of his college career, Kevin Butler held SEC records for career field goals (77), career field goals over 50 yards (11), and most points scored placekicking (353). It was no wonder that he became the first---and, if memory serves, still the only---placekicker ever inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Kevin went on to become the all-time leading scorer among kickers for the Chicago Bears as an NFL player, too.

As you know, though, son, many players were at their best against particular rivals. We in Bulldog Nation will always associate Buck Belue and Lindsay Scott with the Florida Gators, Theron Sapp with the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, and Kevin Butler with the Clemson Tigers.

You know, better than most Georgia fans your age, that Georgia and Clemson were longstanding rivals . . . and we still are. You know that, after you’ve turned ten, I plan to take you to see the Bulldogs play the Tigers in Memorial Stadium in 2013. As a Georgia fan who knows his team’s history, you’ve come a long way from the day when, as a youngster with a fondness for "Blue’s Clues," you saw a Clemson player on TV, took one look at the paw on the side of his helmet, and exclaimed, "A clue! A clue!"

Kevin Butler was at his best against Clemson, in an era in which the games between the Bulldogs and the Tigers were as big as any in all of college football. In his four-year career with the Red and Black, Kevin was responsible for 34 points against Clemson, which was almost 59 per cent of all the points Georgia scored against the Tigers in those years. Against the Country Gentlemen, Kevin kicked one field goal as a freshman, two field goals as a sophomore, three field goals as a junior, and four field goals as a senior.

He was not perfect against Clemson, though. In fact, Kevin missed a combined four long field goals against the Tigers in his sophomore and junior seasons. In 1982, when Georgia played the first night game in Sanford Stadium in more than 30 years in a nationally-televised Labor Day showdown with defending national champion Clemson, Coach Dooley asked Kevin before the game how long he could kick one. Kevin said he could make a field goal from 57 yards.

In the second quarter, the Bulldogs made it to the visitors’ 42 yard line. Coach Dooley sent Kevin in to try a 59-yarder. Kevin’s kick fell two yards short of the crossbar. (He wound up kicking the game-winner, anyway.) The following year, at Fort Hill, Kevin kicked the game-tying field goal after the Red and Black came from behind, but the Tigers tried a long kick after reaching their own 49 yard line.

Clemson’s kicker, Donald Igwebuike, tried a 68-yard field goal and came up well short. Georgia took over with time to run one more play in an effort to break the deadlock and get the win. Kevin came on to attempt a 66-yard field goal into the wind. He didn’t make it, but he would have his chance to boot a game-winner one year later in Athens.

Clemson was the No. 2 team in the country when the Country Gentlemen arrived in Sanford Stadium in 1984. The Tigers built up a 20-6 halftime lead and it looked like the Bulldogs were going to be embarrassed on their own home field. The Red and Black clawed their way back, though. Just like they did against Arkansas last Saturday night, the ‘Dawgs hung tough in the face of adversity and fought back. They knew they weren’t losing; they were just behind.

Georgia tied the game at 20 points per side and took the home team’s first lead of the day when Kevin kicked a 43-yard field goal. It was an important accomplishment for him, because Kevin had missed a 26-yard chip shot in the second quarter. He said later that he felt at the time that he had cost his team the game.

He hadn’t. Kevin kept trying, and gave Georgia a 23-20 lead. Clemson wouldn’t go away, though. The Tigers drove 48 yards in twelve plays and kicked a 48-yard field goal to tie the game once more. It looked like the two teams were playing for their second straight series draw.

A little over two minutes were left in the game when the Bulldogs took possession at their own 20 yard line. Thanks to a draw play on which Tron Jackson picked up 24 yards, Georgia managed to make it into Clemson territory . . . then Kevin Butler ran onto the field to try to kick a 60-yard field goal. No Red and Black kicker had ever kicked a field goal that far.

Up in the booth, Larry Munson was already grumbling. "So we’ll try to kick one 100,000 miles," he said. "We’re holding it on our own 49 and a half, gonna try to kick it 60 yards plus a foot and a half." Kevin put his foot into it, and Larry’s voice rose as the ball did. "Butler kicked a long one," he began to yell, "a long one. Oh, my God! Oh, my God! The stadium is worse than bonkers. . . . I can’t believe what he did!"

A great baseball player named Joe DiMaggio inspired Ernest Hemingway when he wrote The Old Man and the Sea and he inspired Simon & Garfunkel when they wrote "Mrs. Robinson." Kevin Butler’s 60-yard field goal to beat Clemson not only inspired what was arguably Larry Munson’s most memorable call in a Bulldog home game, it inspired what was almost certainly the most memorable column ever written by Lewis Grizzard, a great sportswriter and a huge Georgia fan.

In an open letter addressed to the son he hoped one day to have, Lewis wrote:

I hugged perfect strangers and kissed a fat lady on the mouth. Grown men wept. Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled. Stars fell, and joy swept through, fetched by a hurricane of unleashed emotions. When Georgia beat Alabama 18-17 in 1965, it was a staggering victory. When we came back against Georgia Tech and won 29-28 in 1978, the Chapel bell rang all night. When we beat Florida 26-21 in the last seconds in 1980, we called it a miracle. And when we beat Notre Dame 17-10 in the Sugar Bowl that same year for the national championship, a woman pulled up her skirt and showed the world the Bulldog she had sewn on her underbritches. But Saturday may have been even better than any of those.

Saturday in Athens was a religious experience. I give this to you, son. Read it and re-read it, and keep it next to your heart.

And when people want to know how you wound up with the name "Kevin" let them read it, and then they will know.

Son, that football hung in the air for six seconds, which is an eternity when you’re waiting to find out whether you’ve won. Kevin Butler knew immediately; as the pigskin flew westward, the placekicker ran eastward and sank to his knees, where he was mobbed by his teammates after the official signaled that the kick was good.

The official need not have bothered. It tied the longest field goal in the history of the Southeastern Conference, but it cleared the crossbar by at least five yards. Kevin might have split the uprights from 70 yards. Kevin was still trembling in the locker room afterwards, when he said: "It was the best feeling I’ve ever had."

Danny Ford, the Clemson coach whose team lost its shot at the national championship because of what Kevin Butler did, told the press, "That ball must be flat now. He kicked the fool out of it." Vince Dooley realized immediately how important that field goal would prove to be in the course of Georgia football history. He said:

I think that it will be in the Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall, where people can walk in, and pick up that phone and push the button and see Kevin Butler kick that record-breaking field goal to win the ballgame. That’s going to be a very exciting play, just as Buck’s pass to Lindsay, and . . . this has got to be one of the greatest in Georgia history.

It was. The day that you and I went to interview Chappy Hynes, the Georgia team chaplain took us on a tour of Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall, where that Kevin Butler kick is immortalized. I’m sure you remember it, because that’s the day I made this picture of you:

In a way, I wish this letter was being written by someone else to someone else. I wish it was being written by Lewis Grizzard to his son, Kevin Grizzard. Unfortunately, Lewis was already in the last decade of his life when that column was written, and Kevin Grizzard was never born . . . but, by the grace of God, you were born, so it falls to me to mark this occasion.

Kevin Butler kicked that famous field goal on September 22, 1984. Today is the 25th anniversary of that magnificent moment, yet it remains as clear and perfect a quarter of a century later as it seemed at the time.

I know I spend too much time on too many Saturday afternoons worrying about who is going to win a football game, although I really enjoy getting to spend those Saturday afternoons with you, son. I know, and I know that you know, that, at the end of the day, they are just games.

Still, there is a reason why I feel such pride when I take you with me to the campus where your mother and I met. There is a reason why I feel like I am doing well at my job as a father when I point to men like Mark Richt and David Greene and David Pollack as fit role models for you to emulate as you grow from boyhood to manhood.

There’s a reason why Kevin Butler’s 60-yard field goal meant so much to us then and still means so much to us now. Kevin Butler didn’t start as a defensive back in high school, and he thought about quitting, but he didn’t quit. He stuck it out, adapted, worked hard, and excelled.

Kevin Butler suffered a setback, but some of the people who had given him their word stood by him, and he came back from his injury. Vince Dooley made good on the promise he made to Kevin, and Kevin made the most of his opportunity. Kevin missed what ought to have been an easy field goal against Clemson in 1984, but he didn’t let it get him down. He kept after it, and, when he got his chance to atone for his earlier mistake, he did something extraordinary that inspires us even today.

The story of Kevin Butler is a story of perseverance and commitment and character. It is a story of teamwork and integrity and triumph over adversity. Yes, it was just a football game, but, no, it wasn’t just a football game.

It has been 25 years since Kevin Butler kicked that field goal, but there are lessons to be learned from the arc of that ball as it hurtled through space for what seemed like forever. Life is a lot like that football, son; it can fly as high and as majestically as you make it go through your talent, your hard work, and your willingness to take advantage of your golden opportunities and second chances . . . and, like that one field goal, one life can make all the difference in the world, produce joy in those who were there to witness it, and inspire those who heard of it.

Do with your life what Kevin Butler did with that football. Kick the fool out of it, son, and clear the bar with room to spare. If you do that---and I know you can---then 25 years later, folks still will be looking at you and your achievements, and they still will be saying, "I can’t believe what he did!" They will be telling their sons, "When people want to know how you wound up with the name ‘Thomas’ let them read it, and then they will know."

Love,

Dad

Expect Mark Richt to Let the 'Dawgs Out in 2009

T Kyle King — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 11:20:41 -0000

Last night, secure in the knowledge that my memory is not what it once was, I jotted down a few notes in preparation for appearing on John Frary’s radio show. As I ran down David Hale’s rundown of recent happenings on the practice field in the Classic City, I started to see a pattern emerge.

Last year, defensive penalties (and personal fouls in particular) were a continual source of problems, so the Bulldogs have made the elimination of flags a major area of concentration. Last year, kickoffs were a persistent weak point, so Mark Richt is shaking up the special teams. Coach Richt has hinted that some underclassmen may be atop the depth chart at tight end and Logan Gray may play the D.J. Shockley to Joe Cox’s David Greene, as well.

Maybe those are just routine efforts to right the ship in areas of concern. Maybe those are indications that Coach Richt, after redshirting Knowshon Moreno, has seen the wisdom of Urban Meyer’s statement that, in Gainesville, there is no longer any such thing as a redshirt year.

Maybe, though, there is something more going on here.

There are a myriad of reasons why last year’s preseason No. 1 ranking did not hold up, but one of the problems was that everyone associated with the program got a bit uptight over all the hype. Last year’s collapse in Jacksonville was emblematic of this; down 14-3 at the half with an Eastern Division championship on the line---exactly the situation in which the ‘Dawgs found themselves at Auburn in 2002---the Red and Black failed not only to finish the drill, but even to show up in the final 30 minutes.

I remain as fearful as ever about the 2009 season, but I see in our head coach indications of innovation, of a willingness to shake up the program after three straight seasons marred by lengthy stretches of complacency, and of a renewed vigor for the challenges facing Georgia.

With no expectations and plenty of job security, Coach Richt enters 2009 able to relax . . . or, at least, not be weighed down with the burden of national championship chatter. Over the course of the last twelve months, we have forgotten---I have forgotten---that this is supposed to be a sport of exhilarating joy, not miserable drudgery.

Aside from a few statistical bright spots that serve only to mock the hard fact of unrealized potential, last season stunk from stem to stern, and, to be blunt, Mark Richt did the worst coaching job of his otherwise stellar career.

What Hip Richt appears to remember today is what we would do well to recall ourselves. This Mark Richt is the same guy who called P-44-Haynes. He’s the same guy who called 70-X-Takeoff. He’s the same guy who called for an onside kick against Virginia Tech while knowing full well that engaging in a special teams duel with Frank Beamer is like doing the Ali shuffle in the ring with Muhammad Ali. This is the same Mark Richt who ordered the end zone dance in Jacksonville and blacked out Auburn.

I don’t know how many games the Georgia Bulldogs will win in 2009. It likely will be the case that they will fail as often as they succeed in big games . . . but, if they fail, they will fail while daring greatly.

We may or may not like the won-lost record this season produces, but we will look back on Mark Richt and his ninth Red and Black squad with an admiration for their boldness. There most likely will be more losses than we are prepared at present to accept, but there will be no timidity and no quit in this team.

In the end, heart only goes so far as a substitute for talent, but I get the sense that Mark Richt is in the mood to let ‘er rip. Without regard to whether we like the results, we ought to love the attitude, and it certainly should be fun to watch.

Can we please please please play some dadgum football already?

Go ‘Dawgs!

Talking the spread, Stafford and successful drafting teams with Football Outsiders

Mocking Dan — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:15:03 -0000

Every year the brilliant guys from Football Outsiders put out a phonebook-sized almanac packed cover-to-cover with nuggets of solid gold information. Bill Barnwell, managing editor of the book, joins us today to answer some draft-related questions.

Given how popular the scheme has become in college, is there a sound analytical way to evaluate a spread quarterback's future success in the NFL?

You know, at this point, I don't think there is a way to do so strictly with statistics. I really believe that the scouting element needs to be mixed in healthily when you're judging college players, especially with players in those sort of situations and schemes that they're not likely to play in at the pro level.

What's also interesting is that some of the preconceived notions that people had about what does and doesn't work at the pro level are being challenged now. Very few people would've suggested that the Wildcat would have worked in the NFL, let alone enjoyed the amount of success that it has. I don't know if any team would move to a spread offense for a variety of reasons, but hey, if the Chiefs were willing to implement the Pistol, the spread could be next.

How much does the spread skew the Lewin Career Forecast due to generally high completion percentages the scheme produces? (The LCF is used by FO to associate college-to-pro success.)

At this point, not that much; the reason why is because the Lewin Career Forecast only applies to quarterbacks taken in the first two rounds, and there haven't been very many spread quarterbacks with a grade of that caliber. Pat White, I suppose, would be the first example.

The case of Tim Tebow will end up being very interesting; he has great numbers heading into 2009, and if he stays towards the top of the draft and plays a full season, he would be projected to be an elite quarterback. I think he'll end up being the test case for how the spread affects the LCF.

From the Outsiders perspective, which teams have the most and least successful drafting teams and how do you come to that conclusion?

We're still working on refining our metrics for draft success. The tricky thing is that it's hard to define a "successful" draft, because there's no quick-and-dirty way to call a offensive lineman or a linebacker "successful". The metric of choice so far has been games started, but even that's subject to the nature of the teams involved and what holes they have filled.

The metric I play around with is GSAA (Games Started Above Average), which is still a work in progress; the idea is to compare the games started for a player over the course of his career, relative to how many games he was eligible to start, to those of all the players who were taken within 10 picks of him.

A good example would be Tom Brady, who rates out as one of the best draft picks ever by this methodology (realistically, it would be hard to argue that he wasn't the best). GSAA would take Brady, the 199th pick in the 2001 draft, and compare him to every other quarterback that was taken from picks 189 through 209. The pickings are, as you might expect, extremely slim; the only player who really had much of a career after being taken over the same timeframe was Gus Frerotte. So the system would measure how many games Brady started per season, compare it to the average quarterback from that subset of players, and then measure how many games started Brady has above the league average over the course of his career.

We haven't updated GSAA for the '08 season yet (since it doesn't appear in the book and we've spent our time focusing on the content that appears in FOA 09), but since 2001, the best drafting teams in the league were the Ravens, Colts, Bills, Jets and Texans; I think the Texans are a little bit of a reach, because they're an expansion team and have had more holes up and down the lineup to fill with the draft than any other team.

On the flip side, we see the worst drafting teams in the league as the Broncos, Steelers, Lions, Vikings, and Seahawks. I really can't defend a draft metric that suggests that the Steelers are poor drafters, which is one of the many reasons why it's still under development.

Along the same line, is there a college program that has produced the best NFL talent?

Using that same metric, and looking strictly at schools that had 15 or more players drafted from 1995 through 2007, the schools that produced the best talent, pick-for-pick, above league average were Purdue, Hawaii, Cincinnati, Illinois, and Syracuse. A strange group, to say the least. The five worst schools were (in descending order of disappointment) Clemson, USC, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Northwestern.

Is Matthew Stafford being set up for failure in Detroit based on his poor Lewin Career Forecast numbers and the general expectation that comes with being the No. 1?

I think so. It's very interesting that baseball is past the point where a guy can be a high draft pick strictly by having a big arm, but in football, we're not there yet. There's been a pretty clear history of quarterbacks with a huge arm but limited accuracy struggling as pro quarterbacks, and the Lewin Career Forecast sees Stafford being the next in the line of Ryan Leaf, Akili Smith, and JaMarcus Russell.

The anecdotal argument I've made relates to David Greene, who preceded Stafford in college (short one year of D.J. Shockley) while playing for the same coach in the same scheme. Greene put up superior numbers to Stafford, even after you take out Greene's senior year (which would have presumably been Stafford's best), and washed out of the pro ranks without making any sort of impact. Now, college statistics aren't foolproof or anything close to it, but if you were going to give Matthew Stafford $40+ million in guaranteed money and devote the first overall pick to him, wouldn't you want him to have outperformed David Greene at the college level? I would.

Who are some of your top players for the 2010 NFL Draft and what makes you think so highly of those players?

Ah, see, I can't do that. There's just too much that happens in a year that can dramatically impact a guy's expectations. Think about Quentin Moses or Brian Brohm; or, on the other side, JaMarcus Russell. Projecting player performance is hard enough once you've got their full body of college film available, let alone 60 percent.

I will say that last year, I predicted in September that the Chiefs would take Matthew Stafford with the first overall pick. So I had the right idea. This year, I can't make the same guess. I know who I expect to have the first overall pick at the end of the season -- the Seahawks, who will be drafting first after the Broncos put up the worst record in football. They obviously wouldn't be taking a quarterback, though, so that leaves their pick up in the air.

Thanks to Bill Barnwell of Football Outsiders for answering these questions. Make sure to check out the Football Outsiders Almanac this year. In it you'll find a huge NFL preview, great college football knowledge and some draft-related discussion. And, of course, the FO statistical analysis that made them so well-known.

Monday Notes: Training Camp Countdown Nearing Single Digits

Sean Yuille — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:20:51 -0000

Training camp is less than two weeks away. Part of me is a little sad about that fact since summer is going by so quickly and my time of relaxing is coming to a close, but another part of me is pumped that football is almost here and there will actually be stuff to write about every single day.
Jon Jansen, who is quite knowledgeable about the business side of the NFL, doesn't think there will be a strike in 2011. His reasoning for that belief is that when it comes down to it, both players and owners enjoy making money too much to let a strike happen. If there was a work stoppage, nobody would make money, and in the end no one wants it to come to that.
Despite being a raw player that needs time to develop, Tom Kowalski thinks that a lack of depth could force Sammie Hill into substantial playing time early in the season.
Darnell Bing is finally feeling comfortable at linebacker. Bing was a safety at USC but moved to linebacker with the Raiders. Early in his career with the Raiders he suffered a neck injury that proved to be a big obstacle. Since then, he has moved around to a few different teams, with the Lions being his latest one. Only now is he fully adjusted to being a linebacker, which gives him hope that he can make the team this coming season.
The FanHouse's Chris Burke wrote an excellent article about why comparing Matthew Stafford to former Georgia quarterback David Greene as a way of warning what Stafford's career could be like should things go wrong (as the AJC's Jeff Schultz did) is just ridiculous.
Barry Sanders Jr. isn't necessarily a fan of the Lions (he likes the Redskins), but he supports them.

Why I Don't Want to See "Jim Donnan" and "Georgia Bulldogs" in the Same Story Ever Again

T Kyle King — Thu, 14 May 2009 09:00:15 -0000

I’m glad I wasn’t drinking while I was reading, or else I would have done a spit-take when I read this:

Former UGA head coach Jim Donnan and former QB Quincy Carter will always be tied together in my mind -- perhaps ever more so because of the role a game against South Carolina arguably played in altering their careers. It was, after all, the 21-10 debacle in Columbia in 2000 that was the beginning of the end for Donnan and the effective end of Carter's Heisman campaign after his five interceptions contributed mightily to the Dawgs' loss.

There is no connection anymore, a point emphasized Tuesday, when Donnan was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame and Carter was arrested, again, this time for violating his probation.

I attended the 2000 Georgia-South Carolina game, which remains to this day my single worst sports-related experience ever. I was in the upper deck of Williams-Brice Stadium that day and I will never return to that accursed arena ever again for the rest of my life. (Since 1988, the ‘Dawgs have gone 7-2 in Columbia, posting a 7-0 record in games I did not attend and an 0-2 ledger in contests for which I was present on the premises.)

The ongoing embarrassment of Quincy Carter’s slow slide into drug-fueled self-destruction has long since ceased to be anything other than an infuriating waste of human potential, even for those of us who believe the former Georgia quarterback was the greatest prank Georgia Tech ever played on us. However, the idea of Jim Donnan going into the College Football Hall of Fame simply makes me want to puke.

Admittedly, my nausea was assuaged somewhat by this passage from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article linked to in the above excerpt:

He will be inducted this summer as a member of the Hall’s "divisional" class, which includes players and coaches from NCAA divisions I-AA, II and III and the NAIA. He was considered in that class because he spent more years as head coach at Marshall, which was then I-AA, than at Georgia.

All right, that counts for something, because I’m glad to know Coach Donnan’s years in Athens had nothing to do with his induction, but what is it with that namby-pamby nonsense that it was "because he spent more years as head coach at Marshall . . . than at Georgia"? Might it have had a bit more to do with the fact that he regularly contended for national championships with the Thundering Herd and guided the Bulldogs to little better than mediocrity?

I also have a problem with some of Coach Donnan’s remarks upon learning of the honor:

It’s a testimony to all the good players we had. We had a good run up there at Marshall, and we did some good things [at Georgia]. . . .

Coach [Mark] Richt has gone on and taken it to another level, but I feel like we came into a program that was on probation and got it started.

What, precisely, are the "good things" Coach Donnan believes he did, and how do they overcome his having gone 2-3 against Auburn, 1-4 against Florida, 2-3 against Georgia Tech, and 1-4 against Tennessee?

What, exactly, is the significance of the fact that Georgia "was on probation" when Coach Donnan arrived in the Classic City? Other S.E.C. coaches of that era overcame much worse penalties imposed by the N.C.A.A. (Terry Bowden at Auburn and Tommy Tuberville at Ole Miss spring to mind) and the Ray Goff-era probation was not of the major variety that deprived the Bulldogs of the opportunity to appear on television, accept bowl invitations, or be eligible for the conference championship.

What, specifically, did Coach Donnan get started? It wasn’t the Red and Black’s penchant for sending players to the N.F.L. (as evidenced by Coach Goff’s 1992 Bulldog squad), or for failing to achieve greatly with vast quantities of talent (also as evidenced by Coach Goff’s 1992 Bulldog squad). It seems to me that everything Coach Donnan started was something Mark Richt had to fix, whether it was running off Carter, booting Jasper Sanks off the team, implementing meaningful player discipline, instituting mat drills, halting the losing streak to the Yellow Jackets, or winning games consistently against meaningful opposition.

As a full-throated supporter of the man during his five-year tenure as caretaker of my alma mater’s football program, I come by my low opinion of Jim Donnan’s poor stewardship honestly. I may be the only Georgia fan you will ever encounter who had a personal conversation with Coach Donnan which was anything other than wholly unpleasant. I defended the man for as long as it was possible to defend him.

Accordingly, I feel justified in saying that, aside from redshirting David Greene, Jim Donnan made few, if any, contributions to Georgia football which were both enduring and valuable. I congratulate the man on the recognition he has been given for his years at Marshall, but there is nothing he has to say about the Bulldogs that I have any interest in hearing. Ray Goff, despite his failures as a head coach, was and always will be one of us. Jim Donnan was a bad hire from someplace else whose continued association with Georgia football in any way, shape, form, or fashion I consider unwelcome, and, frankly, I’d just as soon not have his name come up around here any more.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Kyle Gets Contrary: Why I Don't Like Mike Leach

T Kyle King — Fri, 01 May 2009 01:06:31 -0000

I believe the success of the "Kyle Gets Contrary" series is attested to by the reaction the first two installments have garnered in the blogosphere, so I am moved to go out on a limb in this third installment, in which I part company with the overwhelming majority of college football bloggers. Here goes:

I don’t like Mike Leach.

Oh, I have nothing against him personally; I’ve never met the man, so I cannot comment on his personal character. I have, however, remarked upon the character he plays on the sideline:

I know it’s sacrilege for an active participant in the college football blogosphere to say so, but I don’t particularly care for Mike Leach. I respect him as a coach, and I have no basis for disliking the man personally, but he strikes me as being like those guys in high school who tried to be weird strictly for the sake of being able to brag about how weird they were. That’s the hit I get off of Coach Leach’s public fixation with pirates and his purposeful quirkiness. I don’t mind those attributes in a sportscaster or a blogger, but I don’t particularly need to see a Division I-A head coach let his freak flag fly solely so he can make a production out of celebrating how odd he is. It’s like he’s a sports talk radio host caught in a football coach’s body.

The foregoing assessment, when initially aired last November, drew cogent retorts from fellow SB Nation bloggers Seth C of Double-T Nation and Skin Patrol of Hogs Haven, so I may have been a little rough on Coach Leach over the whole pirate thing (although, really, now is not a good time to be pro-pirate).

Accordingly, I wouldn’t mention this at all, but for the fact that Dr. Saturday recently noted Coach Leach’s latest slam against N.F.L. coaches who dare to disagree with him. Rather than voice his opinion like his mama raised him right, Coach Leach reacts to criticisms of his system and his players by being bratty, condescending, and insulting.

That doesn’t make him refreshingly forthright or amusingly quirky. It just makes him rude.

It also raises the question, "What did Mike Leach ever do that entitles him to talk this way to other coaches?" It was one thing for Steve Spurrier to say "something just happens to them at Georgia" while he was beating the Bulldogs like a bass drum or to say "you can’t spell ‘Citrus’ without U-T" when his Gators’ annual victories over the Volunteers routinely sent Tennessee to the Citrus Bowl; it might be ill-mannered, but it ain’t bragging if you can do it, and the Evil Genius did it (hence the "genius" portion of the formulation).

What in Mike Leach’s resume justifies such childish and churlish demeaning of his coaching coevals, though? Yes, I know, Lubbock was hardly a hotbed of football success prior to his arrival, but it isn’t as though he was Bill Snyder taking over Kansas State, however similar their non-conference scheduling practices may be.

Texas Tech hadn’t had a losing record in any of the seven seasons preceding Coach Leach’s arrival in Lubbock and the Red Raiders had attended five bowl games in that seven-year span. Granted, Spike Dykes’s last four Texas Tech teams lost five games apiece . . . but, then again, Mike Leach’s first four Red Raider clubs all lost at least that many.

Nine years into his tenure in Lubbock, Coach Leach has transformed Texas Tech into an offensive powerhouse, for which he deserves credit. What has he won, though, that has earned him the right to take potshots at N.F.L. coaches who dare to doubt that his players will succeed in a pro-style system?

Is it his 5-4 record in bowl games? Is it his three fourth-place finishes in the Big 12 South, or perhaps the three times his teams have tied for third place in the division? Could it be the five times his Red Raiders have finished at or below .500 in conference play, or maybe his 29-29 record in games played in venues other than Jones AT&T Stadium? Is it perhaps the fact that Mike Leach has guided his teams to the same number of conference title tilts as Lane Kiffin has?

This is not to say that Mike Leach isn’t a good coach; he is a good head coach and an outstanding offensive coordinator (although it is open to debate to what extent Hal Mumme made him rather than the other way around), and he has earned the right to smart off about Texas A&M. Still, actually winning something with your players ought to be a prerequisite to directing scathing put-downs to fellow coaches who doubt whether they would be able to win anything with your players.

I get that bloggers like him because he gives good interview. He doesn’t communicate in coachspeak. That may make him quotable, but it doesn’t make him right. It may, in fact, merely make him a slightly less puffy Eric Cartman. Ere we lavish too much praise on Mike Leach for being such a colorful character, therefore, we should recall the wise words of Crash Davis:

Your shower shoes have fungus on them. You'll never make it to the bigs with fungus on your shower shoes. Think classy, you'll be classy. If you win 20 in the show, you can let the fungus grow back and the press'll think you're colorful. Until you win 20 in the show, however, it means you are a slob.

Mike Leach is a talented coach who has revived, and has revived interest in, Texas Tech football. For that, he is to be applauded. In principle, he even deserves our admiration for being willing to defend his players from what he considers to be unfair criticisms. There is, though, a right way and a wrong way to go about it, and Coach Leach goes about these things the wrong way. You don’t hear Mark Richt ripping N.F.L. coaches who question his quarterbacks’ abilities to succeed in the professional ranks, and Mark Richt has coached two Heisman Trophy winners, the winningest quarterback in Division I-A college football history, and a No. 1 draft pick.

If Mike Leach wins a Big 12 championship, he can mouth off to every coach in the country. Once he can claim honestly to have captured as many conference crowns as Mack Brown, he can rip into his colleagues with willful abandon and the blogosphere will think he’s colorful. Until he improves upon his 2-7 records against both Oklahoma and Texas, however, Mike Leach’s sophomoric tantrums just mean he’s all mouth.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Not Just Another Joe: In Which Former Georgia Quarterback's Footsteps Will Joe Cox Follow?

T Kyle King — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:08:27 -0000

I'm beginning to wonder whether, after his comeback against Colorado, we shouldn't have just frozen Joe Cox in Carbonite and propped him up in a display case in Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall with a plaque reading "If we can't score two times, we don't deserve to wear Gs on our helmets." You have to love the kid, but, honestly, it seems like his moment has passed and he is merely the placeholder on the depth chart providing additional incentive to Logan Gray to apply himself.

T. Kyle King (April 7, 2008)

I have faith in Cox, but there is little actual, objective evidence regarding his in-game performance; he could be the next Greene or (less likely) Shockley, but he could also be JTIII redux. We just don’t know, and anointing him now as the next Greene could leave a lot of folks in for a big surprise.

wwcmrd? (April 21, 2009)

Deep down in my heart of hearts, I am afraid the Bulldogs are going 7-5 in 2009. When push comes to shove, I find that Joe Cox is the focal point of all my hopes and all my fears about Georgia’s prospects for the fall. Is Cox the caretaking placeholder quarterback I took him to be a year ago, or is he the inspiring team player who can lead this team to glory? Is he the record-setting high school quarterback rated as the seventh-best in the nation at his position by Rivals as a prep signal caller, or is he the guy who took the starter’s role from Matthew Stafford and couldn’t keep it?

In short, is Joe C. the next David Greene, the next D.J. Shockley, or the next Joe T.?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say Joe Cox is the next Dick Young.

Young was the Bulldogs’ backup quarterback in 1955, behind senior signal caller Jimmy Harper, the son and namesake of a Red and Black football letterman on Herman Stegeman’s undefeated 1920 squad. Harper fils had been Georgia’s passing leader in 1954.

Admittedly, this was not much of an achievement. Wally Butts is underappreciated today as an offensive innovator, but 1954 was not one of the better years for what had been a vaunted Bulldog passing attack. In the split-T (or, as Coach Butts called it, "the sliding T"; he had been using wide line splits, a la Mike Leach, since installing the original T formation in the mid-1940s), Harper had managed only to go 29 of 71 for 407 yards, eight interceptions, and two touchdowns in his junior year.

In the second game of the 1955 campaign, Georgia found itself trailing Vanderbilt in Sanford Stadium by a 13-0 margin at halftime. (Prior to 1952, the Bulldogs had gone 4-10-1 all-time against the Commodores.) Coach Butts and his quarterbacks coach, former Georgia all-American John Rauch, decided to make a change under center.

In the third quarter, Jimmy Harper was yanked from the lineup and replaced by Dick Young. The new quarterback led the Red and Black to a pair of second-half scores and Georgia prevailed over a Gator Bowl-bound Vandy outfit by a 14-13 margin. Does that sound like anyone we know?

1955 was Young’s last year as a football letterman, and he made the most of it. After his heroics against the Music City Sailors, Young went on to lead the Classic City Canines in passing, completing 48 of 97 attempts for 875 yards and eight touchdowns to offset his eight picks.

Those aren’t impressive numbers by modern standards, but they were solid statistics for that era. After Dick Young threw eight touchdown passes in 1955, only three other Georgia quarterbacks would equal that mark in the next 23 seasons: Larry Rakestraw in 1962, Mike Cavan in 1968, and Matt Robinson in 1974. After Zeke Bratkowski in 1952, no Bulldog signal caller would throw as many as ten touchdown passes in a season until Buck Belue threw eleven in 1980.

Likewise, Young’s 875 passing yards in a single autumn were remarkably comparable to the numbers put up by such future Georgia passing leaders as Jeff Pyburn (878 yards in 1978), Greg Talley (871 yards in 1990), and Hines Ward (872 yards in 1995). After Young but before Belue, the only Bulldog quarterbacks to top 900 aerial yards in a campaign were Fran Tarkenton, Larry Rakestraw, Mike Cavan, and Matt Robinson.

In short, Dick Young had a breakthrough moment against Vanderbilt eerily similar to Joe Cox’s signature performance against Colorado, right down to the venue, the circumstances, and the final score. Young went on to become a solid, but not spectacular, starter under center.

I’m fairly confident that, if only because of the supporting cast, the 2009 Bulldogs will fare better than the 1955 Bulldogs---even I would consider 4-6 a pretty dour prognostication---but, if Joe Cox lives up to the reasonable and reachable standard set by the Red and Black predecessor he most closely resembles, Georgia has more than a puncher’s chance to make some noise this fall.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Which Georgia Bulldogs Will Be the "Impact Freshmen" of the 2009 Football Season?

T Kyle King — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:48:23 -0000

Corch Urban Meyers reportedly has said that there no longer is any such thing as a redshirt year at Florida. This is a smart move on his part, for two reasons.

First of all, it’s a good thing to tell potential recruits, as it lets them know that they will be given an opportunity to make an immediate impact. (Teenage boys, particularly those afforded the privileged status of being a star high school athlete, are not known for their ability to defer gratification.) Secondly, it ensures that talented student-athletes who won’t be there for the full four years anyway will not see any portion of their collegiate eligibility squandered. (Knowshon Rockwell Moreno, anyone?)

When I think of impact freshmen at the University of Georgia, I think of fullback Floyd "Breezy" Reid. In 1944, the Bulldogs scored a touchdown on their first play from scrimmage against Clemson. The following year, in Reid’s first autumn of collegiate competition, the Red and Black hung points on the Tigers even earlier in the contest.

Against Clemson in 1945, Reid received the opening kickoff at his own 11 yard line and followed his blockers (one of whom was fellow freshman Johnny Rauch, who, along with David Greene, is the only quarterback in Georgia history to start every game of his varsity career, plus four bowl games) down the middle of the field for an 89-yard touchdown return. Reid had not yet turned 18 at the time of his sensational runback.

Breezy Reid’s kickoff return against Clemson in 1945 was the most attention-getting debut by a 17-year-old in a starring role prior to Olivia Hussey’s nude scene in Franco Zeffirelli’s "Romeo and Juliet."

We’ve already identified our Bulldogs to watch this fall. Now it’s time to focus strictly on the newcomers. Which freshmen do you believe will have the biggest impact on the 2009 ‘Dawgs?

Also, while we’re on the subject, which Georgia freshman do you believe had the second-biggest impact of any first-year Bulldog? (I think we all agree that Herschel Walker tops the list, so let’s take the Goal Line Stalker’s No. 1 ranking as a given and move on to the argument that’s actually debatable.)

Your thoughts go in the comments below.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Jeff Owens Interviews Joe Cox; Bulldog Nation's Mood Improves

T Kyle King — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:15:07 -0000

Before you start to fret about next football season, take the time to read Jeff Owens’s interview with Joe Cox. It will make you proud to be a Bulldog.

A few highlights:

Joe C. wants to be taller. Don’t we all?

The Ginger Assassin’s favorite color is green---hopefully, that’s capitalized and has an "e" on the end---and he will be a graduate assistant in Athens after he receives his degree. He also gets in a nice reference to his prep program that puts his high school on a par with Ohio State University. Given how well the Buckeyes fare against the S.E.C. in bowl games, that sounds about right.

The White Shockley loves the movie "Old School," likes Halle Berry, and hates reality television. Honestly, how could you not be a fan of this guy?

Finally, Cox lists as his proudest accomplishment as a Bulldog the fact that he was a member of the 2005 S.E.C. championship team. That, to me, speaks volumes about the caliber of Georgia’s 2009 starting quarterback. No one could have groused about it if Cox had claimed as his finest moment the day he came off the bench to lead the ‘Dawgs to a comeback win over the Buffaloes in Sanford Stadium, but, rather than emphasize the pinnacle of his personal highlight reel, Cox pointed to an achievement that was all about the team and not at all about him.

I don’t know how many games the Red and Black will win next year, but I know this: we will always have a chance as long as Joe Cox is under center. He may not have either the build or the arm of an N.F.L. quarterback, but Joe C. has the heart of a champion.

This is more good stuff from Jeff Owens. Be sure you’re reading what No. 95 is writing on a regular basis.

Go ‘Dawgs!

The Georgia Bulldogs and the Presidential Election Year Jinx

T Kyle King — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:00:05 -0000

Two important events transpired within a week of one another early in November 1980. One was the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency of the United States. The other covered 93 yards and ended with Larry Munson breaking his chair.

I mention these two events because, obviously, 1980---a presidential election year---ended quite well for the Red and Black, as had (to varying degrees) three of the previous four presidential election years (Vince Dooley’s first season in 1964 and the S.E.C. championship seasons of 1968 and 1976). With the sole exception of 1972, each of the five presidential election years following 1960 ended well for the ‘Dawgs.

What happened after that? Did we use up all of our presidential election year mojo with the undefeated season of 1980? Look at what has happened since:

1984: Georgia started the year well with Kevin Butler’s 60-yard field goal to beat second-ranked Clemson, but the Bulldogs faded down the stretch to finish unranked for the first time in five years.

1988: The Red and Black had a shot at winning Vince Dooley’s seventh conference title in his 25th and final season, but a fifth loss to Auburn in a six-year span and Georgia’s first loss in Lexington since 1965 doomed the ‘Dawgs.

1992: A Georgia squad loaded with talent was favored to win the Eastern Division and should have contended for a national championship, but losses by three points to Tennessee and by two points to Florida spoiled the Classic City Canines’ chances.

1996: Excitement over the installation of a new coach and a new offense between the new hedges quickly dissipated in the wake of an 0-2 start. Georgia failed to make a bowl game for the third time in four years.

2000: The ‘Dawgs came into the year expected to win the S.E.C. and considered a contender for the No. 1 ranking. Quincy Carter then proceeded to throw five interceptions in a loss to South Carolina and the team ended up in a bowl that doesn’t even exist any longer. This dismal season concluded with the firing of Jim Donnan.

2004: With Fred Gibson, David Greene, and David Pollack all back for their senior season, the Bulldogs once again were expected to win the conference championship and be in the running for a national title. A letdown against Tennessee and a beatdown at Auburn relegated Georgia to the Outback Bowl instead.

2008: Uh, yeah.

Let me hasten to add that I am not advocating the abolition of the electoral college, the establishment of an hereditary monarchy, or the creation of a parliamentary system of government. (There are arguments for that last one, but that’s a separate subject.) The U.S. Constitution vests the executive power in a president, which is just fine with me.

Nevertheless, I cannot overlook the fact that, after years of outperforming expectations in presidential election years, the Bulldogs now seem to fall short of playing to their potential each time voters go to the polls to choose the electors who will select the next leader of the free world. What, precisely, is up with that . . . and would it be wrong to suggest a Constitutional amendment giving the chief executive a single six-year term, so that we can space out the recurring downcycles a bit?

Go ‘Dawgs!