After chaotic summer, UGA embraces football season some thought might never happen
Monty Rice didn’t have confidence it would happen.
Georgia’s senior linebacker already felt uneasy about the prospects of having a season this fall. Then, the Big Ten and Pac-12 announced the decision Aug. 11 to postpone their seasons. Rice’s last season in Athens, his final shot at a national championship, appeared to be on the brink.
Now it’s late September and Rice is preparing for Georgia’s season opener at Arkansas on Saturday. After a summer of turmoil and chaos, football is here not a moment too soon.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart told reporters this week. “There’s been a lot of things that have happened and transpired since we were on the field last for a competitive game. I know our guys are excited.”
The last time the Bulldogs took the field for a competitive game, they trounced Baylor 26-14 in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day. Since then the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have rocked the sports world, forcing the cancellation of Georgia’s spring football practice and altering virtually every aspect of the program’s operations.
Even the schedule has been affected. The Bulldogs were supposed to open the season Sept. 7 against Virginia, but the start of the season got pushed back nearly three weeks as the SEC switched to a 10-game conference-only schedule.
Smart said he never lost optimism for a fall season based on the advice of the SEC’s Return to Activity and Medical Guidance Task Force, of which Georgia’s director of sports medicine Ron Courson is an integral part. He praised the task force and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey for their transparent communication through the entire process.
The Georgia players, however, weren’t always privy to those conversations. Based on the news they were seeing, it’s fair to say their confidence wavered throughout the summer.
“One week I’d be like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re playing,’” redshirt sophomore receiver Kearis Jackson said. “Then the next week it’s kind of like, I don’t know.”
In those times, all a player can do is train with the hope that it won’t be for nothing. Senior outside linebacker Jermaine Johnson said he treated every week like it was a game week.
The Bulldogs were able to report back to campus on June 8 for conditioning workouts. Activities slowly ramped up from there, with an extended fall camp kicking off Aug. 17.
Since then, Georgia has had to watch teams in the ACC and Big 12, among other leagues, kick off their seasons.
“It’s probably been a little awkward just watching games and having not played one,” Smart said. “It’s like having an open week, and then another open week and it’s like, ‘When are we going to play?’ You know the date’s set, but it’s just unusual to have everybody start before you.”
These games have been used to spice things up around Athens. Instead of showing more and more clips of practice, the coaches have used footage from games that have already been played as teaching moments for the Bulldogs.
Last Friday, though, practice had a bit more edge and energy to it. It’s not hard to guess why.
“There was a little more excitement out there because we are getting ready to go, in my case, hit something other than the Georgia red jerseys,” Johnson said. “So it’s just exciting to go out there knowing that we’re going to play a different opponent in a week.”
Now that games are here, the importance of the season comes into shape.
Running backs coach Dell McGee said the football season brings normalcy to a world that needs it. For the players like Jackson, it means they’re back to playing the game they love, the end goal they’ve been looking toward over this entire year of upheaval.
“Just praying every night that, ‘Lord, I need this season,’ because some of us, we need this season, including myself,” Jackson said. “We need it and it’s finally here. We’re going to attack it and we’re all excited that we’re getting the chance and opportunity to go out there and play.”
Georgia vs. Arkansas
Who: Georgia (0-0) at Arkansas (0-0)
Where: Reynolds Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville, Arkansas
When: 4 p.m. Saturday
TV: SEC Network
Line: Georgia by 28