Saturday, October 27, 2007

classless

it's not enough that florida lost. i'm strangely okay with our losses this season. they were banged up, kestahn moore had a case of butterfingers, tebow was tentative when running.

mark richt showed an absolute lack of class today. in case you missed it, knowshon moreno scores the first touchdown of the game. georgia's ENTIRE BENCH runs onto the field like they've just won the super bowl and starts dancing around. wait wait, it gets worse.

mark richt was asked at halftime what he said to his team. ""i told them if they didn't get a penalty for celebrating after the first score i would be mad at them." so there it is. pissed off as i was at that lack of control over his team, and his apparent lack of class, it only took me a moment to realize why. he's a bowden disciple. he coached under bobby bowden at fsu during the spurrier years when neither bowden nor spurrier had any sense of class when dealing with the other. twisted knees in the pile, late hits on quarterbacks, sniping at one another in the media. it carried over today when richt improved his record against florida to a not-so-commanding 2-5. 0-1 against spurrier. 1-2 against ron zook, who went 8-5 for three straight seasons. 1-2 against urban's gator squads. impressive, eh?

gary danielson and verne lunquist actually PRAISE this lack of sportsmanship. something along the lines of, "way to be fired up!" what are you teaching our youth, cbs? that taunting is ok? sportsmanship is no longer the cool thing to do? it's no wonder when terrell owens and chad johnson are lauded as the greats in the game, and kids look up to them as they make an "art" of celebration and being assholes. i'm glad that i don't have any kids right now. i have a hard enough time teaching my class right from wrong, class, and manners. try teaching sportsmanship these days with the utter lack of nolan ryans, walter paytons, cal ripkens, and michael jordans in pro sports these days. guys that were great, and knew it, but were never cocky about it. they did their job and let their play speak for itself. i lost a lot of respect for georgia today, and i will root against them from now on, SEC pride be damned. i hope they lose the rest of their games this year, and dwell in the bottom of the east from here on out.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

First I'd like to express my deepest empathy to you and your 5-3 team. Now you know what it feels like to be a 'Nole fan these days. =) Although I completely agree that Richt and the UGA team went so far over the line this afternoon with the celebration stunt, I find it unfair for you to blame this partially on Bowden. Did he really teach Richt to play dirty or did the nature of the intense FL/GA rivalry bring out the worst in both teams tonight? Either way, it's really unfortunate that these are the examples being put forth to represent sportsmanship to our youth. Tough loss today, but don't worry because the 'Noles will still blow it several more times and make the Gators look good Thanksgiving weekend. Hey, at least we can both say we're not dirty, dirty 'Canes. =)

rachel said...

I agree. I was watching it with my mom and brother, and the entire time they were on the field, we were just looking at each other like "wtf are they doing??"

I'm all for team spirit and getting excited about the game, but that was pretty ridiculous.

2 kudos for this post :)

Mr. J said...

the FL-GA rivalry has never manifested (in my memory)in such a display of poor sportsmanship. the reason i brought up bowden was because of the spurrier years. while amusing in the media, the taunting and showboating tolerated by both coaches during those years (when HBC struggled mightily against FSU) took us down the slippery slope we're now on. richt cut his teeth in coaching during those years.

and yes, thank God we're not dirty, dirty 'Canes!

Mr. J said...

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=3086059

too little. sour grapes, probably. why is it when the fans rush the field, the team gets fined? the team rushes the field, encouraged by the coach, and, "my bad" suffices as an explanation.