Weep not for Mark Richt today.
The former University of Georgia football coach will have at least $4.1 million reasons to feel good about life after being shown the door by athletic director Greg McGarity on Sunday.
But should he want to coach again in the near future, someone - possibly his alma mater, Miami - will surely be quite happy to hire a coach who has won 74 percent of his games, played for five Southeastern Conference championships in 15 years (winning America's toughest conference twice) and accomplished all of that without anyone whispering a single disparaging word about him or his program.
Instead, weep for the man who will replace Richt. Not only will he have to slightly better those numbers to justify his pay, he'll have to do it in an SEC East that figures to become far tougher than the one Richt struggled to dominate in recent years.
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This is not to argue that Richt's best years weren't behind him. And unlike those who rightly brought LSU administrators to their senses regarding Les Miles, Richt has no national title to protect him. Under him, the Bulldogs never even played for one.
As esteemed Atlanta Journal Constitution columnist Mark Bradley pointed out this weekend, over Richt's first seven seasons between the hedges, his Bulldogs were 14-12 against conference foes that finished better than .500 in SEC action and 24-13 against ranked opposition. Yet during his final eight seasons - starting in 2008, when Georgia began the year ranked No. 1 - Richt's record against SEC teams finishing better than .500 in league play fell to 5-16, and his record against ranked foes dipped to 13-24.
Having won SEC championships in both 2002 and 2005, he won none thereafter. Georgia also reached no major bowls from 2007 on.
Even Richt told ESPN on Sunday: "That's the standard here. Win the SEC and hopefully go beyond that. From that point of view, we fell short of our goals."
But is UGA winning the SEC more the standard or the exception? Do Georgia's fans, to some degree, live in the same fantasy world as Tennessee, which has won one national championship (1998) over the past 64 years, though the Big Orange Nation seems to think of itself as Alabama, which has won or shared six titles since 1978 and been ranked No. 1 in the final Associated Press poll nine times since 1961.
Look closely at Georgia football and you'll see a similar history to UT. Take away the 1980 national championship season and Georgia has won as many as 10 games in a single season 14 times since then. Nine of those belong to Richt, and should the Dawgs win their bowl game, he will have posted 10 double-digit win seasons in 15 years.
Beyond that, Georgia has lost as few as three games in a year (including bowl games) a total of 18 times since 1980. Eight of those belong to Richt, and that will grow to nine of 19 if Georgia wins its bowl.
Other similarities to UT: Each school has lost four or more games in a season 17 times since 1984. Each school's national title came during a remarkably similar four-year run. The Dawgs' 1980 title under Vince Dooley began a 43-4-1 mark between 1980 and 1983. The Vols' 1998 national title came at the close of a 45-5 run between 1995 and 1998.
The difference is Richt strung together a similarly impressive 44-9 mark from 2002 to 2005.
That's also what Georgia fans no doubt cling to as a reason to start over. If you can deliver those four-year runs of excellence twice in 35 years, why can't you do it a third or fourth time? When you have one of the South's most beautiful campuses and stadiums, when your state runneth over with five-star talent, when you've proven you can produce abundant NFL players - the 34 former Bulldogs on NFL opening-day rosters were tied for fourth with Bama (LSU led with 40) - you should win a national championship more than once in 35 years.
Shouldn't you?
And maybe they'll hire a coach capable of fulfilling that wish.
But, once again, Georgia isn't Alabama, and no coach nationally has proven the equal of the Crimson Tide's Nick Saban (four total titles), just as no college basketball coach has been able to compete with Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski's five NCAA championships.
So hiring former Georgia player and current Bama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart doesn't mean you're getting Saban Lite. Nor would Georgia's fan base - of whom 77 percent voted to keep Richt early Sunday morning in an online poll - necessarily feel comfortable with Florida State's Jimbo Fisher, given his lax leadership of the Seminoles in recent years. Bulldog Nation might be happy with the wins, but they might feel the need to take a shower afterward.
Given that, the odds are at least 50-50 Georgia will hire someone who struggles to match Richt's record, particularly in an SEC East that figures to have a much tougher Florida and Tennessee to compete against.
Though McGarity surely believes he has the money and connections to hire the right guy, he need only look to UT's recent history since it fired Phillip Fulmer to see the potential disaster that awaits him. In 16 seasons in Knoxville, Fulmer was 152-52, though only 68-34 over his final eight years. Richt is 145-51 with one game to go over 15 seasons, though his final eight years have produced a 73-32 mark.
What should worry Georgia boosters is Tennessee's 43-44 record in the seven years since Fulmer was let go.
"Mark's record on the field was outstanding," McGarity said in a statement Sunday.
As any Tennessee fan can tell you this morning, replacing a coach with an outstanding record, however diminished its shine in recent years, is often far tougher than could ever have been imagined.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.