Dooley once on the hot seat
Mark Richt’s seat is not as hot as it was following the second game of the season, when his Georgia football team lost back-to-back outings to No. 5 Boise State at the Georgia Dome and to 12th-ranked South Carolina between the hedges.
Wins over Coastal Carolina, Mississippi and Mississippi State have cooled things off and have raised the Bulldogs back above .500 at 3-2. They were above the .500 mark just once last year, and that was after a season-opening 55-7 win over Louisiana-Lafayette.
Richt is not the first Georgia head coach to feel pressure. Vince Dooley, who recorded 200 wins in 25 years in Athens, was under siege during the 1979 season after opening the year with three straight losses, which included two at home. They were beaten 22-21 by Wake Forest, fell 12-7 at Clemson and lost 27-20 to South Carolina.
The season-opening loss to Wake Forest was unimaginable. An Athens Banner-Herald sports writer had referred to Wake Forest as “Mackovic’s Meatballs” prior to the game, a reference to head coach John Mackovic.
The reference fired up Mackovic and his team. Wake Forest recorded 570 yards of total offense en route to a 22-21 upset of the 12th-ranked Bulldogs
“When you come in as a three- or four-touchdown underdog, people make up cute things to say. I don’t mind that,” Mackovic was quoted as saying in an Associated Press story from the game. “But when they called us ‘Mackovic’s Meatballs,’ that was the end of the line. An 18-year-old player who goes through what these players do shouldn’t have to be called things like that.”
Following the win, Mackovic kicked members of the Georgia media out of his locker room, saying “I will not talk to the Georgia press.”
As bad as the loss was to Wake Forest, it paled in comparison to a setback to Virginia in Georgia’s homecoming game in October that year. Georgia was shut out 31-0 by the Cavaliers.
Georgia finished the 1979 season at 6-5, and fans were restless about Dooley and the state of the football program. But that all changed the next season, when Herschel Walker arrived and led the Bulldogs to an unbeaten record and a national championship. Dooley was also named the national coach of the year. Following the national championship season, the Bulldogs finished sixth, fourth and fourth in the next three final collegiate polls.
If Georgia runs the table this year, which is possible, the losses to Boise State and South Carolina will hardly be remembered, just as the 1979 season wasn’t remembered in 1980.
One thing that Richt has to endure that Dooley did not is the presence of the Internet, with all of the blogs and comments on the social media sites that keep Bulldogs fans in an uproar.
I hope Richt will survive. A 10-2 finish will assure that.
Bobby Pope hosts the Saturday Football Scoreboard Show on 1670 AM. The show is in its 37th year this fall.
This story was originally published October 4, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Dooley once on the hot seat."