Lang’s World: Living in College Football Purgatory

The Tennessee Volunteers got throttled on Saturday night in Columbia, South Carolina, losing to the Gamecocks, 63-38. It was a real butt-kicking, a game where the ostensible fifth-best team in the country with everything to play for got picked apart in methodical, exacting fashion. And a team that hadn’t scored an offensive touchdown a week before dropped 63 points on a team that swore they belonged in the College Football Playoffs.

COLUMBIA, SC - NOVEMBER 19: Tennessee Volunteers quarterback Hendon Hooker prepares to make a pass during the second quarter of a college football game between the Tennessee Volunteers and South Carolina Gamecocks at Williams-Brice Stadium on Saturday, November 19, 2022 in Columbia, SC. (Photo by Austin McAfee/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

For the Vols, this essentially ends their season. I mean, sure, they can still finish with 10 wins and make it into a bowl game not named after something too embarrassing, but let’s be real: Losing to South Carolina means Tennessee is out of the running for the Playoffs. That’s what fans really care about, right? You play the game to win championships, not to finish with a round number of wins. Being good is fine and all, but being great is what matters.

The problem is, going from good to great is a helluva leap, and there’s no clear path. Different teams go about it in different ways, depending on their circumstances and coaching staffs. Sometimes it’s investing in your program infrastructure, other times it’s getting a home run recruit, and occasionally it’s just getting lucky at the right time. 

Whatever it takes to get there, what isn’t fun is when you’re stuck in the upside-down, trapped in that space between being good and being great. As a fan of the Georgia Bulldogs, I can speak to this from experience. I almost hesitate to say this out loud, for fear of jinxing anything, but Kirby Smart has gotten the UGA program to a place where I go into each weekend feeling like we are going to win. It doesn’t matter who the opponent is—Alabama, Michigan, even Tennessee—Georgia is favored, and honestly at this point we should be favored. 

ATLANTA, GA - DECEMBER 07: Georgia Bulldogs take the field during a game between Georgia Bulldogs and LSU Tigers at Mercedes Benz Stadium on December 7, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Steve Limentani/ISI Photos/Getty Images)

But it wasn’t always this way. For a very long stretch, really going back about twenty years, Georgia was always good, but never good enough. From 2002 through 2019, UGA won the SEC East nine different times. They won the SEC Championship game one time, in 2017. (They went on to lose the National Championship Game in 2017.) They won zero National Championships during that time. UGA was really good, but they weren’t good enough.

As a fan, I was well aware of our situation. I knew that for us to have a chance at going all the way, there was a razor-thin margin. We couldn’t screw up, ever. This made watching UGA games something like performance art for me. Every missed third-down conversion, each broken tackle, any call that went against us—it was all death by a thousand cuts, each flaw contributing another straw to my personal bale of misery. I screamed at my television and flung myself on the floor. Realistically, I knew the only chance UGA had at winning a championship was that we had to play perfectly and get a few breaks along the way. 

LEXINGTON, KY - NOVEMBER 19: Georgia Bulldogs Head Coach Kirby Smart waits to lead the team onto the field before the college football game between the Georgia Bulldogs and the Kentucky Wildcats on November 19, 2022, at Common Wealth Stadium in Lexington, KY. (Photo by Jeffrey Vest/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Friends, this is no way to watch football. No college football team is perfect, particularly the players, a bunch of teenagers who should be allowed some grace. Trying to will them toward perfection is a fruitless endeavor, especially for your blood pressure.

Somehow, UGA made the jump. How? Well, it was a combination of a lot of things: Kirby Smart upping the recruiting ante, hiring better assistant coaches, changing the culture, raising expectations, and then the players meeting those expectations. The key thing is noting that it didn’t happen overnight. I say this because for much of the last month, when Tennessee was the hottest team in the country, a few of my friends who are Tennessee fans allowed their imaginations to run wild, mentioning to me that they believed that this was their year. Tennessee has now lost two of their last three games, and sit at home with broken hearts. Patience is key.

ATHENS, GA - OCTOBER 08: Georgia Bulldogs defensive back Kamari Lassiter (3) defends during a college football game between the Auburn Tigers and the Georgia Bulldogs on October 8, 2022 at Sanford Stadium in Athens, GA. (Photo by Brandon Sloter/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

These days when I watch UGA, I can understand that there is some wiggle room. If young Kamari Lassiter gets whistled for a pass interference call, I can grimace and shake my head, secure in the knowledge that while the outcome isn’t ideal, in the long run, UGA will probably be strong enough to persevere. When Stetson Bennett continues trying to force the ball to Ladd McConkey, I know we have some room for error. Georgia has sustainable success.

Again, it took me a while to reach this point. The key part is understanding that, if everything works out, there are higher levels to be attained. Tennessee seems to be on the correct path, the same as teams such as USC and Penn State, where they can consistently be part of those conversations about the best teams. Maybe these teams never reach that point, and perhaps for a while you have to dwell in the upside-down.

But don’t expect the journey to happen overnight. And until then, you better be prepared to keep running up that hill.


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