The Georgia Bulldogs have had their fair share of off-field troubles. If you were to ask non-Georgia SEC fans, they would say the football program has seen more trouble during Mark Richt’s tenure than any other team in the Southeastern Conference—hands down.
It’s true that Georgia hasn’t been as squeaky clean as the image of their coach might suggest. In 2008 alone, the team suffered through more than 11 player arrests and were a constant source of eye-rolling and head-scratching within the fan base. It simply didn’t make sense that so many players couldn’t control their behavior, so the finger began to point heavily towards Richt’s approach to discipline.
The theory began to surface that Richt’s style mimicked that of former Florida State coach, Bobby Bowden. During the 90s, when Coach Richt was the offensive coordinator, Florida State was often on the other end of many an NCAA infraction. The players were indulged and the disciplinary atmosphere was too lax and uneven. However, as long as they continued to win championships, they were given a pass.
In the meantime, coach Bowden was indifferent to many of the allegations and never seemed to have a clue what was going on—some doubted his ignorance. The same is sometimes said of Coach Richt. After all, “How could he not know what’s going on?” Better still, “How can Georgia continually escape the glaring spotlight that other programs have? What makes them above reproach?”
Most recently, four UGA football players allegedly verbally and physically assaulted a university couple. The report was filed on March 29th, but here we stand on April 5th with little to no new information on this particular incident.
True enough, everything about the allegations speaks of conjecture and there is not any real evidence that the perpetrators are either university students or football players. That said, if this were Florida, Alabama, or LSU, would that matter? How long would it be before facts were disseminated from fiction?
Mention "football players" in Tuscaloosa, Gainesville, or Baton Rouge and red flags go up—answers are demanded—swarms of media converge on the campus with ill-intent. However, they can go a week in Athens and still be left without answers—how does that happen?
Over the weekend, Montez Robinson was dismissed from the team after his third arrest in as many months. Outside of Georgia, who knows about this? If you Google the name "Montez Robinson," there are a slew of stories but, nationally, ESPN barely saw fit for him to be more than a blip on Chris Low’s blog.
Does UGA get a special media pass because Mark Richt is a nice guy? Is it possible that he is the Bobby Bowden of the SEC—minus the shoe and car extravagances?
In my estimation, Mark Richt is less Bobby Bowden than people think him to be. He takes discipline very seriously and weighs the individual act and the player who committed it with fairness before making any snap decisions. His program isn’t rogue and his methods aren’t questionable. He’s simply cautious about making snap judgments.
UGA has it’s share of disciplinary problems but they are no more tawdry than that of any other team and the media overexposure for the aforementioned SEC teams has more to do with their national championship success than anything—it’s just more fun to pick on Goliath than David.
That said, as the story regarding the alleged group of UGA perps who may, or may not, be members of the football team begins to unfold, it will be interesting to see how Richt handles the outcome. If any portion of that story, which can be found here , is true, they should be dismissed from the team—no question.
Stay tuned.
This story was originally syndicated from Bleacher Report - Front Page.
Read the original Article Here
Incoming sports news and scores search terms for the article:
- discipline problems on college football teams
- Discipline problems in NCAA football
- georgia bulldog player problems
