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- Please no inappropriate usernames (remember that there may be youngsters in the room)
- Personal attacks on other community members are unacceptable, practice the good manners your mama taught you when engaging with fellow Dawg fans
- Use common sense and respect personal differences in the community: sexual and other inappropriate language or imagery, political rants and belittling the opinions of others will get your posts deleted and result in warnings and/ or banning from the forum
- 3/17/19 UPDATE -- We've updated the permissions for our "Football" and "Commit to the G" recruiting message boards. We aim to be the best free board out there and that has not changed. We do now ask that all of you good people register as a member of our forum in order to see the sugar that is falling from our skies, so to speak.
Comments
I never thought Downs would come here and don't know why so many did. If you look at the position Downs plays, we already have high performing players. He wasn't guaranteed to start here while he probably is at Ohio.
I'm a Georgia kid and grew up idolizing the Bulldogs. To this day at age 57 I can't honestly understand why any Georgia kid would want to go somewhere else. But, I respect the fact that there are Georgia kids who choose to go elsewhere. No need to get **** and disrespectful towards those that do.
Go Dawgs!
By leaving UGA, Burton certainly missed out on a 2nd NC and quite possibly a third had he stayed. We will never know how things might have turned out for him, but he did himself no favors in the public eye with his behavior after leaving.
@MikeGriffith , it's funny you mentioned "Good Will Hunting." When I first learned the dudes were getting paid to visit, I thought about that job interview scene. He sent one of his friends and told them to keep asking the Japanese guys for a hundred dollars.
Nah....I think he got it right. It's this generation and "their culture". They live in a cyber-bubble, and validate each other. Lol
IMO....@MikeGriffith ....that was the best article I ever read, with your byline. Great job! More articles like this, need to be written by National Sports Media. It was honest and raw.
It’d certainly be better if it were just an age thing because then there might be a chance those afflicted could grow out of the reality Mike described. But, in my experience at least, I’ve seen and experienced young, mid and older folks with their eyes on what’s next.
Regardless, we agree on the quality of Mike’s piece and the Dawgs- Sic ‘em!
The good teams in the NFL also used to care about loyalty, sadly that is no longer the case in the NFL or any other professional sport. And now collegiate sports are headed down the same road.
Thank you for pointing this out, @GBAL. @MikeGriffith wants to make it seem like so many Dawg fans, on their own, just automatically assumed Downs was a lock for UGA. But DawgNation itself certainly did its part to contribute to that belief. Now he wants to castigate fans by writing this column as if his own site wasn't a part of the overall media's portrayal that Downs was gonna be a Dawg. Revisionist history.
I never truly believed UGA was in the driver's seat for Downs and I never castigated him or his family for choosing 'Bama or Ohio State. Disappointed? Sure. But never hateful or spiteful. Many people commenting here now about how good this column is need to remind themselves of the nasty comments they made -- and many still make -- about Justin Fields and his transfer decision. That young man and his family was criticized all kinds of ways and yet I NEVER read, saw or heard THEM make a disparaging comment about UGA, either the school, the football team or its coaches. People SPECULATED about what he said to get his transfer, but no one in the public knew anything for sure. I figured the Fields family couldn't have thought the school was that bad or dangerous as they left Justin's twin sister at UGA to play softball. Did the family somehow care less about her than Justin? Was the so-called "race card" that Justin allegedly played not also true of his sister, or is she white?
Of course we fans, especially those of us who are older, should know better than to angrily disparage young people or their families for decisions they make -- unless people are being duplicitous in their actions. And some players are. But neither Caleb Downs or members of his family, to my knowledge, ever said he was "leaning" toward Georgia. He didn't make a commitment to UGA, for example, hold on to it for months and then suddenly bolt saying that he was "born to be" a Buckeye. So, folks who blasted them shouldn't.
But at the same time, @MikeGriffith, if you're going to blast the 10 percent of fans (and I'm not sure how you arrived at that figure) for getting out of hand, at least acknowledge the role that your own publication played in the feelings of those fans, some of whom may only get their Bulldog information -- and thus formulate their opinions -- from DawgNation. And also, fans are not obligated to heap praise on players who played well last year and plan to return next year. Glad they are. Earnest Green, CJ Allen and Peyton Woodring are great players. They will be noticed and they are most certainly appreciated. But right now, at this point in the off-season, people are paying attention to who's coming in the house, not who's already safely inside. Just as you say fans need to understand that college football is (has) changing, you should understand how fans attention spans work. In fact, you make the point, Mike, that perhaps the biggest off-season deal of all is Travaris Robinson becoming co-defensive coordinator. Like all things, time will tell about that.
And one other thing. When you write that Vince Dooley (and other UGA coaches) have built the program on class and pursue players that bring that class, you insinuate -- perhaps unintentionally, perhaps not -- that the players who don't wind up at Georgia now somehow failed to meet Kirby Smart's "standard" for the type of classy player he's looking for. That likely is true of some recruits, but certainly not all. I think if Caleb Downs, for example, called Kirby tonight and said he wanted to come to UGA after all, I think Kirby not only accepts him with open arms, but he would start against Clemson from the opening snap. And Downs is not alone.
Go Dawgs!
If you go out and buy every great player, have you really won anything? Molding young men into championship players is what Kirby and Company do. It's exciting to watch. I even love seeing the guys who start with just a few snaps - you can watch them get better over time. Kirby has added so much to the entertainment side of this game. I don't see the Downs kid as a big miss.
The only one that hurt for me was that big D tackle who went to USC. There's someone who made a terrible decision. We win a third if he doesn't leave. He is floundering in Cali and looks like he's regressed. Sad when good players are lured away by desperate coaches. Kirby can't always fix the mental side of his kids.