Kirby Smart, Georgia Bulldogs Have Huge Opportunity at South Carolina
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ATHENS - You don’t get a ton of opportunities in a season to show just how good you are, or can be. That’s what Kirby Smart and his Georgia Bulldogs have in front of them this weekend in Columbia.
The South Carolina Gamecocks, a team that was trailing to Georgia State at home in the third quarter, is not a team that should be confused with championship qualities. The South Carolina Gamecocks, which were down 21-3 at Arkansas and rallied to get within a score by the third quarter, shouldn’t be confused with being a team that quits.
But they are not good, and Georgia should throttle our fine-feathered friends on Saturday. This is about fear - and continuing to strike fear in the rest of college football.
These two teams are not in the same universe as one another, which is the point. And Georgia should prove that point in one of the few games this team will play that folks will pay attention to in the early part of the season.
The Dawgs have already dropped the Ducks. They need to do the same to the Cocks.
Georgia, the No. 1 team in the county, will play Kent State and Missouri over the new few weeks. No one is going to pay attention to those games the same way no one watched Georgia’s 33-0 win over Samford.
But the Carolina game - that’s an opportunity for these Dawgs to show that they are not only the best team in the nation, but that they have the ability to be a steady the entire year. Texas is a solid team - they are better than South Carolina it seems. But the Horns lost their starting QB during the game, and yet Alabama still struggled to win on the road - with seemingly all of Austin screaming at them.
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Georgia will have all of Cootlumbia screaming at them as well, it happens. It’s hard to make clear to many UGA partisans just how rabid the Cock fanbase is against the Dawgs. The game falls so far down the list for the Bulldogs, but it is No. 2 behind only the rock rubbers for the Cluckers.
Billy B, as the stadium is known at times, will be rocking and rolling Saturday. It is always rocking and rolling at the start. South Carolina does a great job of creating an atmosphere.
But this is a different Georgia. South Carolina can have the shiny object that is Spencer Rattler. They can wave towels, play Sandstorm and rename mascots.
It doesn’t matter.
Georgia has no one player who they must depend on. This collection of developed players and recruited superstars moves as a giant amoeba to swallow up most anything in its path.
And crush Carolina the Dawgs should.
This is an opportunity dressed up as an away noon game in a hostile environment. For all of the talk of how tough this game is, and it traditionally it can be a trickier game than it should be, a few new realities are in place. First, Georgia is significantly better than the Cocks. Second, Carolina is in the middle of a rebuild - I’m not sure if folks are admitting that or not.
In addition, South Carolina has beaten Georgia exactly five times in Cootlumbia since entering the SEC.
30 years. Five times. That’s not a great ratio. It is hard to imagine this Saturday being number six.
All that said - it might not feel like it, but Georgia has something to prove this weekend. It needs to prove that not only is it the best team in the country, but that it will handle business on the road.
Alabama nearly didn’t last weekend, and what’s an article about the Dawgs without mentioning Alabama at least a few times?
