I BELIEVE THE REFS THREW THE GAME FOR UGA

[DRU2012]

Leakfan12 Shoot man, what can I say? It's how I deal with anger, disappointment, frustration, DEFEAT--sometimes...It can go either way: other times I just bite off a few sharp lines and that's IT. Guess I was EXTRA-down here (extra sauced, too: I did a fair amount of drinking AFTER the game, into the wee hours: thinkin' and drinkin'--and typin' away...for a writer without an editor that is a dangerous combination). Anyway, the damn thing was too much for ME to wade through just now--all "true", but just TOO MUCH.
Doesn't change the basic point you made, though, one I set out to support and PROVE: We got screwed--AGAIN: it's NOT our imaginations, there's a long history of such treatment, it is insidious and unfair and we just have to be that much BETTER to overcome it--and WIN.
Maybe I just should have said THAT, and stopped(?)...I never learn.
( Thanks for bearing with me getting through it, though.)
Go Gators!!!

(PS If you want a reminder of why we get angry and defensive, why someone like me bothers thinking in terms of extended and well-researched arguments in the first place, have you noticed that comment from one "DiamomdDallas6" on "Pickin' Thru' the Bones...", a thread I started after last Sat.'s game? Here's a likely Bulldog troll who became a GE member in the last 24 hrs. just to pose as a "Gator Fan" and attack us on just these grounds, that WE'RE ignoring the truth (his "truth", anyway) of all these calls being fair and accurate blah blah blah--check it OUT, man, and tell me if I'm out-of-line in my response...)

 

[Kerwin Bell]

That's football. Sometimes it bounces your way and sometimes it doesn't. As a matter of fact, the penalty pic posted above was called. The bottom line is that the team didn't execute and the coaches didn't do a good job of preparing. When you turn the ball over 6 times, bad things are bound to happen. The Dawgs took advantage of mistakes and the Gators didn't - plain and simple. I knew it was going to be a bad week when the arrogance component of the fan base took out that ad in the UGA student paper. A loss is a loss - time to move on.

 

[Michael]

That's football. Sometimes it bounces your way and sometimes it doesn't. As a matter of fact, the penalty pic posted above was called. The bottom line is that the team didn't execute and the coaches didn't do a good job of preparing. When you turn the ball over 6 times, bad things are bound to happen. The Dawgs took advantage of mistakes and the Gators didn't - plain and simple. I knew it was going to be a bad week when the arrogance component of the fan base took out that ad in the UGA student paper. A loss is a loss - time to move on.

The multiple personal fouls didn't help either..

 

[Escambia94]

The PFs are a problem, but I found out later that both teams were fighting in the tunnel before the game and these PFs were bound to be worse than in previous games. Somehow the Bulldog players got lost before the game and wound up in front of the Gator entrance tunnel. Funny how things like that happen. I am not excusing the Gator players (and one coach) for fighting, but the Gators fell for the trap set by the Dawgs. Great job, Dawgs. Note to Muschamp: get your ****ing team fired up as much as the opponents are fired up in the next rivalry game.

 

[DRU2012]

Kerwin Bell, Escambia94
Can't argue, Kerwin--I only heard about that ad-foolishness at the last moment before the game: Not sure if there's any direct connection, but it shows an immaturity that may have been pervasive among the students on campus at least, and that has a way of both affecting and being shared by their team, eventually, on some level. No DOUBT about us beating ourselves, though. The questions here involve why it happened, how our state at time-of-play (state of mind? state of emotion?), one that SOMEHOW had us ill-prepared (two fumbles on the 1st three plays we ran told the story) came to be in the first place, and what could have been done to have made things different. We had all kinds of chances to "pull it out", even WITH that strange flatness, our endless mistakes and key calls against us. Had we come out composed and READY to win, we well might have done so EASILY.
I'm pretty tired of dwelling on this one--hell, I don't really feel like THINKING about it much longer, not 'til next year, when we'll have something we can DO about it. So these are the last questions, for now, far as I'm concerned. Why weren't we "ready"? Did the coaches get it wrong? What were the things that could have been done differently?
I'm not so sure it's so simple as "our guys should have been as fired up as theirs", E-. We can be sure the idea was to have them "approach this game like all the others", and had they in truth been able to do so, we would have been able to win in the same way we did against USCe. Perhaps that was always unrealistic, though--the way EVERYONE approaches this week, the media, the students on campus, ALL of it (the game played on "neutral ground" amidst all the drunken hoopla before that strange split crowd, the damn thing has its own "forbidden name", fer cryin' out loud) in every way sets it apart--young men on a football team are gonna get fired up SOME way for some games. Maybe we need to vary OUR approach to them accordingly.
Whatever the reason, the players seemed torn, split inside between wanting to be "calm" and wanting to be "fired up", and not quite able to manage either effectively...and they weren't hardly a TEAM because if it. Everything else that happened flowed from that. If there's something to learn, it's bigger than just this annual game, something we better learn and begin to apply NOW, not just NEXT "Cocktail Party". There will be other "Big Games", this season--at least one, maybe two more, that we can't even worry about now--and beyond, with even MORE at stake in seasons ahead.
I don't know that they "trapped us", but I DO think that their coaches saw and accepted their high emotion rather than reject it as ours tried to do, helped them channel and focus it rather than try to fight it down, and were more ready to play because of it, to let us trap OURSELVES before we'd even hit the field. We sure don't wanna see anything like that again. I leave it to the coaches, then: mold them in your image, make them a forged weapon that reflects your philosophy of how a team plays to win, FINE--but don't forget to be flexible regarding their emotional state and approach to each game, and in building towards certain key ones...different, "special" whether you like it or not. As we saw, if you don't control THEM, they will control you--and that applies to your team's emotional preparation every bit as much as the games themselves.

 

[Escambia94]

I believe the Gators were ready, but that Georgia was more ready. They pull out all the stops in the rivalry. It started with the full page ad in their paper that the Gators were going to stomp the Dawgs. It continued with the rumors of people wanting the Gators to beat Georgia so Richt could get fired. These are nice little tricks that tend to work against a team that is close in talent, because it gains a psychological edge. The final blow was having Georgia players hang out in front of the Gator tunnel and just letting one of the hot-headed Gators take the bait and pick a fight. It worked. From there on out, the Dawgs had the psychological edge.

The Gators are admittedly riding a small margin. That margin can easily be overcome by bad refereeing or emotional motivation. Mizzou may not be able to match the Gators talent-wise, but they could upset the Gators given enough emotional motivation. FSU should not beat Florida this year, but it can if they are motivated to do better than last year.

 

[DRU2012]

Escambia94
If you are saying, and if it turns out to be true (remember that I am not following any of this except here, and in talking to my one friend "inside"), that all of those did indeed intentionally originate with UGA, then I am torn between anger and admiration--but they'd have all been either irrelevant or possibly even backfired had we had our own emotions under control. As I tried to suggest above, whatever was intended by our coaches, what we saw out there on Saturday wasn't it. The solution can be found then in their aims, in the manner they took to achieve them, and/or some combination of both.

 

[Escambia94]

Georgia may have put the Gators into a position where they felt they had to start something. They knew that Matt Elam would not be able to resist finishing the fight, and he is the one caught on video, along with Coach Jeff Dillman.

Call it dirty coaching by Georgia. Either way, they know how to get motivated in a rivalry game. Richt's job is safe once again. Coach Muschamp, take note. Fire up the Gators before the FSU game, and don't let the Noles win the psychological battle.

 

[Leakfan12]

I believe the Gators were ready, but that Georgia was more ready. They pull out all the stops in the rivalry. It started with the full page ad in their paper that the Gators were going to stomp the Dawgs. It continued with the rumors of people wanting the Gators to beat Georgia so Richt could get fired. These are nice little tricks that tend to work against a team that is close in talent, because it gains a psychological edge. The final blow was having Georgia players hang out in front of the Gator tunnel and just letting one of the hot-headed Gators take the bait and pick a fight. It worked. From there on out, the Dawgs had the psychological edge.

The Gators are admittedly riding a small margin. That margin can easily be overcome by bad refereeing or emotional motivation. Mizzou may not be able to match the Gators talent-wise, but they could upset the Gators given enough emotional motivation. FSU should not beat Florida this year, but it can if they are motivated to do better than last year.

You forgot the UGA player on D on calling out the D and the coach for not using players in certain situations and I'm sure that help them come together (sadly for the Gators). I still think Driskel's arm WENT FORWARD IN THAT 1ST "FUMBLE" like the 2006 Auburn, Remember that. I have a picture that proves Chris Leak's arm went forward. That call against Easley was bulls--t. Those calls give them 14 points. Though Driskel Int in the end zone and Reed's lame ass fumble again in the end zone cost the gator at least six or nine points (depending if the Gators got a TD if Jordan Reed held on to the DAMN BALL). Just hope the team plays better against Mizzo and the rest of the season. Also DRU2012 don't worry about it, We're all pissed about how the game turned out or behind pissed and pointing blame at different directions, fairly or not.

 

[Escambia94]

I am over last week's game and the fumbles and the penalties. This will happen again if the Gators do not play better. It is that simple. Against SC, the refs took away a couple Gator scores. The Gators dominated, overcame the bad calls, and won. They did not do that against Georgia. Lesson learned. We can only hope that the UGA game was an anomaly.

 

[DRU2012]

Escambia94, Leakfan12
Maybe I'm splitting hairs when I note that firing them up is seldom the problem, but rather to guide that raw emotion. Help them to focus it and make it a tool, a WEAPON (part of making your whole TEAM a weapon), and you'll have something...Let's agree then that that's what you really mean, E-: "Fire them up", yeah, but like a reactor pile, tamp it down and use it to power the ship. Make it a part of your greater strategy.
The more we talk about all this, Lf, the more we worry and pick at it, the more it seems to boil down to this...Everything else, from the turnovers to the missed opportunities, insufficient offense and the points left on the field, even the questionable "adversity", the contrived "psych job" leading up to the game and bad calls during it, all of these playing their part in how we hit the field flat to meet their buzz saw of emotion--it was all set up and made possible by us not being anything CLOSE to "ready". It's been true in every game: we came out flat to SOME degree. We were just able, through toughness and talent, to hold games close, adjust at halftime and eventually assert control.
All kinds of things were different THIS time. Between us, we've covered them all, I have little doubt; I think we are close to arriving at a consensus. We may have different ways of describing it, and have gotten there by different roads, but the bottom-line "truth" is the same: Something's lacking in our preparation, in when we are how ready to do what. We need to be "readier, earlier". Sure, a more prolific offense , for eg., would give greater "margin for error"...but find the key to this question of "emotional balance", and its effect on the readiness of the team, and you'll have the means to win with what you've got--and from there only get better, more and more able to assert your will on the other team--which IS our Head Coach's ultimate aim.

 

[DRU2012]

I am over last week's game and the fumbles and the penalties. This will happen again if the Gators do not play better. It is that simple. Against SC, the refs took away a couple Gator scores. The Gators dominated, overcame the bad calls, and won. They did not do that against Georgia. Lesson learned. We can only hope that the UGA game was an anomaly.

The "anomaly" was a matter of degree. We were doing the same things and coming in "flat" in every game this season: it just wasn't as extreme, the other team didn't exploit it, and overall it didn't COST us until game 8, the "Cocktail Party". As I think we all see, there are areas of talent, depth and performance that we can and will improve over time, but this matter of team "emotional balance", its effect on us playing a more complete game, can make an immediate difference--AND help to make us great over time as the other pieces are put into place.

 

[DRU2012]

SO...speaking of what we can do now to prepare AND to "take them one game at a time", do we agree that we're overdue for a return to matters at hand? It's time to focus on Saturday's game against Mizzou, I think. Guess "someone" will have to pull Dale's next "Game-'o'-the-Week" thread up to the top, right?