Fans need to practice patience

Hello, my name is Daniel, and I’m a college football fan.

I’m emotional and irrational and scream at the TV a lot. Just ask my co-workers or my wife and kids.

Already this season, I have begged for my alma mater to fire its first-year head coach and three weeks later cheered wildly when the team went on the road for a win over a top-10 team. My Saturdays are filled with wild swings of emotion based on heart-racing wins and mind-numbing losses.

Isn’t admitting my affliction half the battle? I hope so, because when it comes to my team my brain shuts off. And that’s why it’s so strange for me to be able to be so rational and reasonable when considering the plights of other fans.

But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong when telling those fans to calm down and relax. Yes, the 38-year-old man who acts like a child and screams at his team, including using some words that send me in a rush to Mass each Sunday, is preaching patience.

That is exactly what fans at Georgia and Georgia Southern need to practice.

Sure, the Bulldogs and Eagles have struggled through the first part of the season, but fans really need to let the season play out before they starting calling for coaches’ heads and looking for changes. It’s a long season, and plenty can happen in the second half of the season to change opinions based on the first half.

Georgia fans aren’t happy with the Bulldogs this season. But are they really surprised? They lost the two best players in the SEC to the NFL draft, and players like Knowshon Moreno and Matthew Stafford don’t come around often. There should have been an expected drop off offensively, and the defense has had problems for a couple of seasons, so that should have been expected to continue.

So some Bulldogs fans want head coach Mark Richt to be fired because of one sluggish season. At the very least, they want him to shake up his coaching staff, which might actually be a good step.

But to fire Richt would be going one step too far. Maybe he hasn’t taken Georgia to the top of the college football world, but even with this year’s struggles, the Bulldogs’ program is in pretty good shape. That certainly wasn’t the case when he took over.

Georgia was a mess on and off the field after the Ray Goff and Jim Donnan years, and Richt has stabilized things while winning a lot of football games along the way. Bulldogs fans really need to think about that and appreciate what they have when they start screaming for Richt to go. They may get their wish one of these days, and they probably won’t like what they see if they do.

Likewise, Georgia Southern fans who are upset with Chris Hatcher need to take a step back and look at the big picture. The Eagles are just 4-4, coming off a bad loss (52-16 to Appalachian State), and Hatcher said Monday night at the Macon Touchdown Club that he, obviously, was not happy with that performance.

But the Eagles have three very winnable games left — at Samford and home vs. Furman and The Citadel, and if they do win all three, that would mean a third straight winning season for the Eagles under Hatcher. That would be a pretty big accomplishment considering the disaster that Hatcher took over in 2007.

Not only was he the program’s third head coach in three years, but after Mike Sewak was fired and Brian VanGorder stayed only one season, Georgia Southern pretty much went without two straight signing classes, and that will damage any program for a couple of years. Couple that with some serious academic problems, and the mess in Statesboro was worse than most people know.

Still, the program has progressed nicely in Hatcher’s first two seasons, and this season has not been all that bad, either. Take a look at the Eagles’ losses — all coming on the road to strong FCS teams South Dakota State, Elon and Appalachian State along with FBS’ North Carolina — and things don’t look too dire.

Add in the fact that 30 of the Eagles’ top 44 players are either freshmen or sophomores, and the future actually looks pretty good for Georgia Southern.

The Eagles and Hatcher just need their fans to be a little patient with them, just like Richt and the Bulldogs.

Contact Daniel Shirley at 744-4227 or dshirley@macon.com