GEORGIA: Dawgs can use ’05 Vols as example

You’re ready. Especially if you’re a Georgia football fan. You’re sipping your coffee every morning from a Bulldogs mug.

“Glory, glory to old Georgia,” blares from your cell phone and your doorbell, which is roughly four feet above the Bulldog statue that greets visitors to your home.

It’s still August, but you’re flying spirit flags from your front porch and your car windows. You’re wearing red and black every chance you get. You’re already greeting everyone you meet — especially rival fans — with, “How ’bout them Dawgs! Woof! Woof! Woof!” just to make sure they know how happy you are to be ranked Numero Uno in the preseason coaches’ poll for the first time in school history.

And at least once a day you drift back to that wonderful New Year’s night in New Orleans 236 days ago, when your dazzling Dawgs humbled Hawaii 41-10, scoring the most points Georgia has ever scored in a bowl game.

That night secured your school a final No. 2 ranking in the Associated Press poll. That night the hype took flight for all that has followed.

Even your own coach, Mark Richt, said earlier this month: “Being ranked No. 1 preseason in the coaches’ poll is significant, because when it’s all said and done, (ranking is) one-third of the formula to decide who gets to play for the national championship.”

And maybe they will play for it. Maybe UGA quarterback Matthew Stafford will start throwing a lot more touchdowns than interceptions. His career marks of 26 TDs and 23 interceptions aren’t typically the stuff of championship seasons.

Maybe the offseason run of Dawgs behaving like dogs has come to a close. Georgia has had eight players arrested since that Sugar Bowl victory. One has been kicked off. Others will serve suspensions, including five for the season opener against Georgia Southern.

“We don’t want to be looked at as bad guys or thugs,” receiver Mohamed Massaquoi said a couple of weeks ago. “We understand what was done, and we understand we can’t afford to make those mistakes in the future.”

Maybe, too, a schedule that looks like it was made by Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer and Florida boss Urban Meyer rather than Richt won’t leave the Dawgs a ghost of a chance by Halloween, which just happens to be the night before their annual showdown with Meyer’s Gators.

But if you were drawing up a schedule to finish No. 1, would you want to travel to South Carolina on Sept. 13 and nationally ranked Arizona State on Sept. 20, then return to the road for four straight weeks between Oct. 25 and Nov. 15 by visiting defending national champ LSU, Florida (in Jacksonville), Kentucky and Auburn?

Does all that look like a recipe for No. 1? Or Excedrin headache No. 101?

More than anything it looks like a repeat of Tennessee in 2005, when the Vols began the season ranked No. 3 in the Associated Press poll and finished with a 5-6 record, the only losing season of Phillip Fulmer’s career.

Just like Georgia, UT was beset with off-field concerns throughout the winter and spring. Just like with this year’s Dawgs, the Vols were coming off a rousing bowl win, having crushed Texas A&M in the previous January’s Cotton Bowl. Just like Richt, Fulmer was doing nothing to dissuade talk of a national championship run.

Said Fulmer of the 2005 off-field woes a few days ago: “That distracted the heck out of everybody. It wasn’t fun, and the results were awful.”

Two players from that team sounded further warnings.

“It’s just something unnecessary that’s on your mind,” said fifth-year UT senior defensive lineman Robert Ayers. “You want it to be all school and football, and when you’ve got anything but those two things on your mind, you can’t put your best foot forward in those things.”

Added running back Arian Foster, who became a starter that year as a redshirt freshman: “I think everybody was just complacent. There wasn’t a lot of sense of urgency. There was a swagger and confidence that was kind of overdoing it. It was kind of like, ‘We’re already here.’”

The Georgia players are saying all the right things, beginning with Stafford, who told ESPN earlier this month, “We understand it’s going to be tough. It’s going to be hard on everybody. I want to see that same type of attack mentality we had last year.”

Said Massaquoi in the same interview: “We’re in it for Georgia, for family. We have so many good things we want to accomplish.”

So maybe Georgia will play like the team that shocked Florida and blew apart Auburn rather than the team that barely nipped Vanderbilt, got blown out by Tennessee and lost at home to South Carolina.

But as late as Aug. 2, at least three Dawgs were in trouble with the law after a fight in an Athens bar. The start of preseason camp, the start of all those good things the Dawgs hope to accomplish, was less than three days away, and three Bulldogs were in a bar fight.

“The reputation of this team has been damaged, no question,” Richt said two days after that fight. “It’s certainly been a distraction. There’s no way you can say it hasn’t been a distraction, because it has been.”

Maybe it will be a distraction no longer. Maybe the attack mentality is back. Maybe the defense that sacked Hawaii quarterback Colt Brennan eight times in that Sugar Bowl will wreak similar havoc all autumn. Maybe running back Knowshon Moreno will be the second coming of Herschel Walker, who led the Dawgs to the 1980 national crown.

But the Vols’ Ayers said something else that should worry Bulldog Nation, something that may not become evident until the third quarter at Arizona State or the fourth period against UT, Florida or Auburn.

“Before the (2005) season we didn’t think it would affect the season,” Ayers said. “But you saw what happened. It might not have been a direct result of those incidents, but it hurt the team.”

The SEC East is hurting from off-field distractions or on-field injuries almost everywhere except Ayers’ Vols. Florida — the SEC Media Days pick — has already lost five players to knee injuries. As if the off-field distractions weren’t enough, the Dawgs saw left offensive tackle Trinton Sturdivant’s season end before it started with a knee injury.

South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier still can’t find a quarterback he likes other than himself. Kentucky booted expected starting quarterback Curtis Pulley from the squad. Vanderbilt’s, well, Vanderbilt.

So even with all of Georgia’s hype and hope, the Vols would seem to have an edge. Especially in the distraction department.

“We haven’t had any incidents in a while,” Ayers said. “We just hear about what’s going on at other schools, and fortunately those things aren’t happening here.”

And should that good fortune continue, Tennessee should reach its third SEC title game in the past five years and its fourth this decade.