This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of Hurricane Camille’s landfall on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Camille was one of only five hurricanes to make landfall in the United States as a Category 5 storm. (Katrina had been a Category 5 at one point but made landfall as a Category 3.)
According to legend, my second favorite source behind the concert promoter who said that Michael W. Smith could do a show in Nashville and start the next Great Awakening, a group of 23 brave/intrepid/clueless (take your pick) souls holed up in the Richlieu Manor Apartments in Pass Christian, Mississippi, to ride out the storm, against all imaginable wisdom and caution. Vast amounts of alcohol (and potentially other substances–we don’t know) were consumed over the course of that weekend. Of course, the Richlieu Manor Apartments no longer exist. Neither do those 23 brave/intrepid/clueless (take your pick) souls.
Like many things in this world, this supposed “hurricane party” turned out to be an urban legend. Only 8 of the 23 died in the storm. There was no party; the 23 who stayed behind were working to secure the property and assist those who couldn’t evacuate, and when they were done they were just too exhausted to party. But it’s a good story; thus it persisted for many years.
Which brings us to Georgia football. What does any of this have to do with Georgia football? you ask. Nothing. As I said above, it’s a good story, so I’m sticking with it.
It’s Year 4, and Kirby Smart is on the clock. If this sounds harsh or critical, it isn’t. Every coach at every major college football program is on some sort of clock after Year 2. If you haven’t won yet, you’re expected to start winning. If you’ve won big, you’re expected to win bigger. And if you’ve won it all, you’re expected to win it all again. The only exception is Nick Saban, who has won so many championships that Alabama fans long ago ceased to count. That’s just the nature of the profession Kirby Smart has chosen.
It is the middle ground–having approached ultimate success without actually attaining it–that is the slipperiest of all. That is where Smart is now. That is where Richt was going into his fourth year. Richt came close to winning it all, and we had every reason to hope that he would at some point. Richt got fired because he stopped coming close.
Given that Kirby Smart and Mark Richt seem to be on similar trajectories over Year 2 and Year 3, the Smart vis-a-vis Richt comparison seems apt. Smart seemed overwhelmed and helpless at Auburn in 2017 and LSU in 2018; Richt won the SEC East with 70X Takeoff at Auburn in 2002 and in 2003 was tied with 90 seconds remaining against an LSU team that would go on to win Nick Saban’s first national championship. Yet Richt was helpless at Auburn in 2004 and lost in 2002 and 2003 to Florida teams he had no business losing to by any score, so that comparison seems a wash. The deciding factor is recruiting; Smart has recruited at a level that Georgia has never approached consistently at any time prior.
As Billy Beane would say, “My job is to get us to the postseason. What happens after that is pure [fickle] luck.” The same is true for Kirby Smart. His job is to get to the playoff, or at least a clear path to the playoff. What happens after that is pure luck.
Vanderbilt: The Commodores are easy like Sunday morning. (See what I did there?)
Prediction: Georgia 27, Vanderbilt 10.
Murray State: [insert snarky comment here]
Prediction: Georgia 49, Murray State 10.
Arkansas State: An occasional Georgia opponent over the years, this was Gus Malzahn’s last stop before Auburn.
Prediction: Georgia 45, Arkansas State 14.
Notre Dame: This is going to be the biggest event in Athens in years. Good luck getting a ticket; they are going for as high as $600 in many places.
Prediction: Georgia 24, Notre Dame 20.
Tennessee: After dropping nine straight to Tennessee during the 90s, Georgia has tied the series and is in position to take the series lead with a win this year. Tennessee is rebuilding under Jeremy Pruitt, and is not the program they were back in the 90s.
Prediction: Georgia 24, Tennessee 10.
South Carolina: If there was a trap game on Georgia’s schedule, this would be it, with Georgia coming off a big game at Tennessee and South Carolina having this game circled on their calendar. But Kirby Smart’s teams have done well thus far at avoiding the traps. Last year, South Carolina was a chic pick to upset Georgia because of the Columbia heat and because it was an early-season game that they had on their calendar all summer long. We saw how that turned out for them.
Prediction: Georgia 31, South Carolina 10.
Kentucky: The last Kentucky team to win 10 games was back in 1977. That team featured Art Still and Derrick Ramsey, and incidentally humiliated Georgia 33-0 on homecoming with Prince Charles in attendance. The subsequent years saw Kentucky go 4-6-1, 5-6, 3-8, 3-8, and 0-10-1, Just like 41 years ago, Kentucky must replace its two biggest playmakers, Benny Snell (offense) and Josh Allen (defense). Kentucky won’t fall as far and as fast as they did 41 years ago; Mark Stoops is too good a coach to let that happen. But it seems unlikely that Kentucky will finish anywhere above fourth in the SEC East.
Prediction: Georgia 42, Kentucky 13.
Florida: Ah, Florida. Time to break out the jean shorts and mullet wigs and head down to Jacksonville for the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party!!!!!!!!!
Dan Mullen, Urban Meyer’s aide-de-camp through much of his early career, did nice work at Mississippi State, winning consistently at a place where wins are excruciatingly difficult to come by. Yet the high-water mark of his Starkville tenure was in 2014 and saw his team dismantled by Georgia Tech in the Orange Bowl. Florida AD Jeremy Foley (now AD emeritus) twice passed on opportunities to hire Mullen away from Starkville, choosing Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain instead.
Now Mullen is at Florida. His first band of Gators, which is the worst we are likely to see for a while, led Georgia in the third quarter last year (albeit briefly). If Georgia were to beat Florida this year, it would be their third win in a row over Florida. That has only happened once in this series over the past three decades, and that was with Georgia alum Will Muschamp as coach. Mullen is a better coach than Muschamp.
Yet though Mullen has significantly upgraded the talent level in Gainesville, he is not recruiting at quite the same level as Kirby Smart. Also, Todd Grantham is his defensive coordinator, and as long as Todd Grantham is on the opposing sideline, Georgia is never completely out of the game.
Prediction: Florida 22, Georgia 20.
Missouri: Missouri may be an even greater threat to challenge Georgia in the SEC East. They pulled off one of those waiver-wire deals that have become the new normal in college football, landing QB Kelly Bryant, who had been rendered superfluous at Clemson by the emergence of Trevor Lawrence. Missouri’s cross-divisional slate consists of Ole Miss and Arkansas, while Florida’s consists of LSU and Auburn. If Missouri can survive early-season tests against Wyoming and West Virginia, they could easily be 8-0 by the time they reach Athens. There is a catch: As things currently stand, Missouri is ineligible for postseason play and thus ineligible for the SEC championship game due to NCAA sanctions. An appeal of those sanctions is pending.
Auburn: There’s crazy, and then there’s Auburn.
Over two giddy weeks in November 2017, Auburn beat Georgia and Alabama, who would go on to play for the national championship that year. Coach Gus Malzahn then leveraged a supposed overture from Arkansas into a $49 million contract extension. This for a coach whom, just four weeks prior, Auburn wasn’t sure they wanted to keep around. After coming within 15 seconds of a national championship in 2013, Malzahn had gone 8-5, 7-6, and 8-5. Going into November 2017, Auburn was 7-2 with then-No. 1 Georgia and not-too-far-behind Alabama still to come on the schedule, and appeared headed for a similarly lackluster finish.
On cue, the schizophrenic Tigers finished the 2018 regular season 7-5, which included a loss to a very lackluster Tennessee team and thrashings by Georgia and Alabama, and were suddenly sick with buyer’s remorse. There were reports that Auburn was intending to fire the coach they had just re-upped, which is not atypical behavior for Auburn. Trouble was, it would have cost $32 million to make Malzahn go away; this spawned further reports that Malzahn was pressured into accepting less money than he was contractually entitled to in order to keep his job. Which sounded nuts, but again, not atypical for Auburn.
Malzahn is still in place, but how long will that last? The schedule is frightful, with games against Oregon, Texas A&M, and Florida before the first weekend of October. Look for additional reports of Urban Meyer being spotted looking at property on Sougahatchee Lake.
Prediction: Georgia 20, Auburn 13.
Texas A&M: Texas A&M should be in championship contention by next year, if not this year. Jimbo Fisher is a big-time coach at a big-time program with big-time resources. He won a national championship in a similar setting. Alabama, the odds-on favorite to win the SEC West, must travel to College Station this year. When Texas A&M travels to Athens to face Georgia, both teams will be playing for championships in their respective divisions. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Prediction: Georgia 27, Texas A&M 24.
Georgia Tech: New coach Geoff Collins has ditched Paul Johnson’s offense yet retains Paul Johnson’s players. That’s a problem.
One of the first things Collins had to do on his arrival at Georgia Tech was go out and recruit a tight end and a non-option quarterback. The guys he found will do in a pinch but are not to be confused with Brady-to-Gronk. The larger problem is that Johnson was never much for recruiting, so the talent level he leaves for Collins is considerably less than what he inherited from his predecessor Chan Gailey. Collins is an excellent recruiter and he will remedy that situation in time. The class he is currently working on ranks No. 23 nationally. But those guys aren’t here yet, and that’s the problem. Taking a bunch of middling recruits who were recruited for a different offensive system, and fitting them into the same kind of offense that everyone else is running and expecting them to play better–good luck with that.
If there is good news for Georgia Tech this year, it is this: The rest of the ACC Coastal is not that great either. Seven wins was good enough for Pitt to win the Coastal last year, and it will likely be enough for whoever wins this year. Georgia Tech could conceivably get to six wins this year. More than that is likely too much to ask.
Prediction: Georgia 31, Georgia Tech 3.
Postseason: Despite being shaded by Florida in Jacksonville, Georgia will make it back to Atlanta for the SEC championship as Florida’s cross-division slate of LSU and Auburn proves too tough to handle. Once again Georgia drops a heartbreaker to Alabama. But unlike 2018 when Georgia was the first team out of the playoff, Georgia makes the playoff as the SEC’s second entry on the strength of a schedule much more difficult than the 2018 schedule, whereupon Georgia loses in the semis to eventual national champion Clemson.
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