Sports Radio Interviews

Mark Richt: ‘When we’re out here working in camp and it’s smoking hot, guys might be thinking about feeling sorry for themselves. All you got to do is read out the heat temperature index in Stillwater on the very same day…’

The Georgia Bulldogs stumbled down the stretch last season after being ranked as high as #1 early in the 2008 season. Georgia was expected to give the Florida Gators a run for their money behind the leadership of junior signal caller Matthew Stafford. It wasn’t meant to be for the Bulldogs, as they lost to Alabama, got trounced by Florida, and lost to Georgia Tech . That’s life in the Southeastern Conference though. Any given Saturday you’re bound to get bounced if you don’t bring your A-game. Georgia head coach Mark Richt joined 1010 XL in Jacksonville to talk about replacing Matthew Stafford at quarterback, his thoughts on a playoff system, whether or not he thinks coaches’ ballots should be made public, and how excited he and his team are for their brutally challenging 2009 schedule, beginning in just a few short weeks in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

On if there is a department or two on the team, or a player or two, that has impressed Richt this past spring and early on during two-a-days:

“Oh, I don’t know. There’s so many things happening, so many working parts. I really am excited about how our kickers are progressing. Blair Walsh, you know, had a lot of trouble with the kickoffs and I think a lot of it had to do with being a true freshman and maybe not allowing him to have enough rest time throughout the season. I think his leg got a little bit weary as the season went on and he didn’t really kickoff well at all. And he’s banging it away really, really well. And then this kid we brought in from California, Brandon Bogatay, as a kickoff guy and as a possible field goal and extra point guy, he’s proved that he can kick that thing in and out of the end zone too. So, those two guys are really doing an outstanding job and then you know, Butler, Butler was a guy as a punter that was probably kicking it maybe 5 out of 10 times, you know, where you could win. Now he’s much closer to 9 out of 10 with his consistency, which is huge for us. So those things are really exciting to me because we know field position is so crucial.”

On if opening with a top-10 squad like Oklahoma State (in Stillwater) gets the juices flowing a bit more than starting the year off with an impossibly overmatched opponent:

“Well it has to. We’re going to Stillwater to play in their brand new stadium. We’re going to play on national t.v. We’re going to play on their field turf in the middle of the day, so we know it’s going to be hot. So when we’re out here working in camp and it’s smoking hot, guys might be thinking about feeling sorry for themselves. All you got to do is read out the heat temperature index in Stillwater on the very same day, and they’ll realize those guys are working in the same kind of heat and even hotter. So, we better get on our field turf field fields, which you know, are 10 to 15 degrees hotter than grass. We haven’t been spending hardly any time on the grass. We’re spending it all on field turf, even in the afternoon practices. So they know. They know it’s going to be a heck of a deal and if we’re not conditioned, we have no chance.”

On his thoughts about the coaches’ ballots being made public each week rather than just at the end of the season:

“Well, I’m fine with it on the final poll – the final poll being the one prior to the BCS Games. The last regular season poll, I’ve got no problem with my ballot being public. On a weekly basis if it was made public, I wouldn’t vote because you just don’t want to have to try to explain why you did this, why you did that. You know, you give some opponent some kind of fodder to get them motivated. I mean, I can defend every time I vote, but as we all know, very early in the season, it’s almost impossible to have some kind of rational decision. And as the season wears on, it’s much easier to be able to justify every thing that you do. But just like my preseason vote – my preseason vote, I ask the Athletic Director to get whatever consensus everybody else thought, and that’s my starting point. And then, you know, we work from there.”

On if he advocates a playoff system in college football:

“I would go as high as an 8-team playoff, yes. I wouldn’t not go past 8. I think our regular season is too exciting, it’s too important, and if you get in to a 16-team playoff, then I think you’re looking at diminishing the value, the importance of the regular season games. Games you could lose, you could say, shoot, no big deal. We’ll see them in the playoffs anyway. I think that’s why a lot of these major sports that have a huge number of teams in their playoffs, their regular season games don’t mean quite as much as ours do. And I’d hate to lose that. And I’d hate to destroy the Bowl system as it exists.”

Listen here to Richt on 1010 XL in Jacksonville

Tags: 1010 XL, Best conference in America, Georgia Bulldogs, Mark Richt, SEC Football