I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning. – HARUKI MURAKAMI
I can tell a lot of us are licking our wounds this week. Chatter and comments have been scarce, and what has been there has been a lot of us agreeing to disagree (nicest way I can say it) about what went wrong. Truth be known, it’s not for us to figure out. Even if it was, no one’s listening to us, anyway.
I don’t chalk that up to anything bad. It’s human nature, after all. In my Sports Psychology class at Georgia Southern, taught by the great and somewhat tipsy-at-class Bucky Wagner, he talked about BIRGing and CORFing. When we are doing the former, we are Basking in Reflective Greatness. Those are the good times. We refer to our favorite team with “we” a good bit, as though we played the game ourselves. Sometimes, as the latter, we try to Cut Off Reflective Failure. That’s when we fight with each other, point fingers, blame, and so on. We refer to the team with “they” terms. Those are the bad times. Such is life, and no one’s mad at ya if you’re doing it.
It’s been a hard week to blog. Part of these can come organically from observations, others by researching and sorting through socials. That’s not been fun. I’ve seen Ryan Williams replayed more times than I care for. I’ve seen ample trolling from hostiles from all sides, Tennessee and Alabama folks especially. Makes me sick.
One Alabama fan, reveling in the win, said “after all we endured this off-season the Gods are finally smiling on us”. WE endured? Finally? 7 national titles this century and you endured? I know some fans who would trade your enduring with their hopelessness, to be sure. I guess it’s all relative.
Then there’s this, which made me pause.
Peep the time. 2 and 26 ring any bells?
I remember that pain, and so do you. Seeing Sony and Nick in tears on the sideline. Seemed like we were so close. Kirby vowed we weren’t going anywhere. He was right, but it still took time. There was the Sugar Bowl debacle versus Texas. The QB carousel of 2020 and, to some end, 2021. Trusting the process seemed hard at times. Then, two awesome miracle seasons. Last season was pretty good, too, until it wasn’t.
I considered if there was meaning to 2 and 26. I’m not a big horoscope or numerology person, but I found this when seeking meaning to the combination of numbers
The message behind angel number 226 is to trust in your abilities and to have faith in the universe.
Trust. We’ve heard that before, Kirby bringing that from Saban and trusting the process. I said a couple of weeks ago we always say “Kirby’s on the mother”. The hard part is when things like this happens, it seems to happen against the same team, sometimes the same way. It gets old, but after the last time 2 and 26 appeared to our demise, things worked out in the long run. It took some ups and downs, but it happened. It was four years, not forty. That’s pain, and many of us here lived that pain for way too long to forget.
For a time, losses like this happened to us at the hands of Florida. Then Tennessee (that Dobbs Hail Mary wasn’t that long ago). Then Florida again. Then Auburn. Now Alabama. This, too, shall pass.
What’s intriguing is I’ve seen far more stories about the lessons learned for Georgia and how they’re better for it. It was a wake up call, as some are calling it, and waking up a team that may have been in a pride coma and smelling themselves, now to start playing up to their potential. With some urgency they haven’t had in a minute. To quit with the lackadaisical starts and play with some fire. We will find out soon enough how this team responds..
So how do we respond? The same way we hope our Dawgs do this weekend. We pick ourselves up off the mat, stop CORFing, and start hating Auburn and getting ready to kick the shit out of the Barners the only way we know how.
It’s Auburn Hate Week, Refugees. Let’s respond accordingly.
Go Dawgs.
AUBURN SUCKS!!…..GO DAWGS!!
I try to reverse that. They win. We lose.
As a former 11 year old kid who after 12 games was convinced that Herschel would only get better and would finish 48-0 with 4 natties, whose 1982 Christmas gift were season tickets to Herschel’s Senior Season, who went through Herschel goes pro, Jan Kemp, Ray Goff, 1992, Edwards’ 7 tds in 3.5 quarters only to break his foot, the failed promise of Quincy, 2002 UF, 2005 UF, no title game for you in 2007, 2012 SECCG, 2nd and 26, and seemingly nut punch after nut punch after nut punch for 41 years only to see Ringo and then validation the next year: 15-0, finishing with a 65-7 win in the final, I’m set for life.
The wins are better. The losses don’t matter by Monday, usually earlier.
If anyone wants to talk shit I’ll just tell them:
Go win two straight with a former walk on qb and the second one 65-7, otherwise, fuck you, you got nothing to say to me because your team, your program, your coach will NEVER do that. So stfu, or not, but I am immune.
I was tempered in a world of merciless and seemingly unending shit and then permanently inoculated against all haters in Indy and Los Angeles.
Fuck ‘em all and go dawgs.
Stetson Fuckin Bennett.
Amen.
This post needs to be etched in Georgia marble and hung on the side of Sanford Stadium!
Loved your reference to Bucky Wagner. I had a few grad-school classes under Bucky and was assistant SID at Georgia Southern when he was A.D. He taught me about everything from sports psychology to how to build a football stadium. Only Coach Russell had a more profound effect on me during those years.
Loved Bucky. We were all GAs and I worked in athletic marketing when Sam Baker was AD. We think Bucky had been on the links all day and was very transparent when he taught. One whole class he opened up about Bowden’s “ethics” at FSU. Man, that was a fun class. Great guy and great lessons learned.
Well, you can’t leave us hanging there…
Lol. Fair enough. Apparently there was a publicized run in with the law, where some unnamed high level players (read: starters) had been busted with the wacky tabacky and were facing criminal charges along with school and team suspensions. Bucky approached Bowden and told him that he would need to handle the situation appropriately, to which Bowden promised that it would be addressed appropriately and there would be consequences to respond to the charges. The following day, Bowden had a closed door meeting with said athletes, who apparently had an upcoming contest against Miami. When Bucky approached Bowden about the actions he’d take, he told him, to paraphrase here “we had a long conversation, and I’m confident that the boys learned their lesson”. When asked if they’d be missing playing time, the response was that their shame from his disappointment was consequence enough. Case closed, apparently. Not sure if Bucky had to override him, but this story was imparted in 2000 after two national championships, so I’d imagine that Saint Bowden did as he pleased and the starters played, from the sound of it. I’m sure this comes as a shocker to none, but that was a story about the publicized run in, lord knows how much more of that happened and no one knew. Those were the days, apparently. He shared tons of other stories about FSU, and it sounded like quite the place to be when it comes to lessons in ethics.
And it continued with the crab thieving sexual assaulter.
Hated losing that game but hated it a lot more in the 1st Half. I don’t believe in moral victories, but I do believe in Kirby. The team could have folded and lost by 40. We were watching and hoped we could just make it respectable – and damned if we didn’t almost win.
Like Derek said above: we live in special times. Enjoy it – the highs and the lows, because lately the highs have been a LOT higher then before.
As for the team: Learn the lessons. Get better. Make the playoff. Survive and advance.
This pain has no purpose until we beat Alabama three times in a row. People like to point out the Crimson Tide has won the last 5 out of 6. In reality, they’ve won the last 9 out of 10 going back to 2008. In my mind, the sting of that run can only be ameliorated by three consecutive wins.
Comments may be spotty due to Helene as much as the loss. Lots of Georgia folks still without power. When you can’t get online you can’t comment. I could not see the blog for several days.
I thought about that as well. There’s real pain out there, I’m praying that our followers are out of harm’s way and doing okay. Just saw there was a groundswell of comments and discussion after the game and Sunday, then dissipating. Been missing some of our regulars that I enjoy hearing from so often…it helps some of us get through the day sometimes. Hope you’re doing okay, too, debby. Prayers out to all who are impacted by the storm.
We lost power for 27 hours but that is a short time. We have lots of limbs down but our real damage is a tree took out three sections of fence. I lost all my refrigerated foods but I am doing great; when I see what others are going through I feel like we had no damage. My daughter had a tree down on her home and her rental home. She is still waiting for the tree people to get it off the roof but she does not think it went through the roof. All the trees that went down around me were uprooted. My mil’s power is still out. I have friends in Augusta with damage to their house and no power. Western NC is had it worse flooding and tree damage. Prayers for all affected are needed. We should be at the game but it depends on whether my mil has power.