It's the new guy.
Georgia football coach Mark Richt doesn't normally address the media on Mondays, but he had news to share. Richt announced that Greyson Lambert, who transferred from Virginia this summer after graduating from the Atlantic Coast Conference university, would be the starting quarterback for Saturday's season opener against visiting Louisiana-Monroe.
Lambert, a 6-foot-5, 220-pounder from Jesup, Ga., got the nod over two returning Bulldogs, redshirt junior Faton Bauta and redshirt sophomore Brice Ramsey.
"It was just a cumulative grade, so to speak, or a cumulative performance," Richt said in a news conference. "All this time you probably thought I was being coy about it, but I didn't know. It was very, very close. I can't tell you how many times we went back and forth."
Richt said that he and first-year Bulldogs offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer felt this past Saturday that Lambert was the choice. The two met again Monday morning to confirm the verdict, and Schottenheimer informed each of the candidates before Monday's practice.
Lambert made nine starts for the Cavaliers last season and completed 154 of 261 passes (59 percent) for 1,632 yards with 10 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. The redshirt junior had the slowest start to preseason camp of the three candidates.
Although Lambert will start, Richt said that "other or others" could get in Saturday's game, potentially as early as the first half.
"I'm not making any promises," he said. "This was a very, very close competition, and it's still contested in my mind."
Ramsey played in eight games last season as Huston Mason's primary backup and replaced the injured Mason in the 37-14 win over Louisville in the Belk Bowl. Bauta played in three games in each of the past two seasons as the third-stringer.
Richt felt it was important to announce the starter Monday so the chosen quarterback could practice this week with the first-team offense, and he added that Ramsey and Bauta would be sharing time with the second-team unit. The rest of the players were informed of the quarterback choice after Monday's workout.
"If I was a betting man, I would say that I didn't think there was going to be one named up until the game," senior left tackle John Theus told reporters Monday night. "That's how things are normally done around here. Coach Richt announced it today, but we didn't know it was coming.
"I didn't see it coming at all."
Richt said Lambert's body of work at Virginia did not factor into the decision.
Taking the money
Louisiana-Monroe traveled to LSU, Kentucky and Texas A&M last year, which caused sixth-year Warhawks coach Todd Berry to joke Monday about not getting an invitation in July to SEC Media Days. Perhaps an invitation will be awaiting next summer, because the Warhawks not only open Saturday at Georgia but visit Alabama on Sept. 26.
"We're going to take the highest paycheck, because we need the money," Berry said. "That's the way it is, and we kind of knew that coming into it. We're not funded very well, which has been pretty well documented, so we need those checks, and generally the people who tend to pay the most money are the ones that can't get games.
"Whether it's Georgia or Alabama or Oklahoma or Texas A&M or Florida State or TCU, they tend to pay the most money. You don't have a ton of control over your schedule, because they pay the most money, and you will play them whenever they tell you to play them. We're also talking to Tennessee for somewhere down the road, too."
Indoor facility update
Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity announced Monday that the new indoor practice facility would be 140 yards long, 80 yards wide and 76 feet high. Construction will not begin until after the current football season, and the $30.2 million facility should be ready by the 2017 calendar year.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.