You can't run with the Big Dawg, he's under the porch with the fleas.

Normally, when the Dawgs are off for a weekend, I peruse the Dawgvent and discuss the upcoming games and what our chances are going forward. The Vent is usually rife with diehards like me, talking recruiting, injuries, who needs the week off to recover and where to tailgate at the next away game. Other SEC games are watched and picked apart: "We could run the ball on Florida," "LSU's offense is suspect," or "Auburn is downright terrible or Ole Miss will be harder to handle than we thought." Thread after thread, anticipating the next game....asking the "what ifs" and everybody going to Stubhub and Ticketmaster to preemptively check SEC Championship ticket prices.

That did not happen this weekend. In fact, I never logged on to the Dawgvent on Saturday, nor did I watch a second of the LSU/Carolina game. I watched a few plays of the Ole Miss/Auburn game to cheer on my brother's alma mater and luckily, they were able to pull it out. Oh great, I thought, another game where we will probably struggle. The Dawgs play Ole Miss this year at home. A game that was a clear victory two weeks ago is no more. They have a mobile quarterback and quick little running back that can take it to the house at any point. They "dink and dunk" you to death.....a concept that our defense cannot seem to grasp. I'm betting money that Ole Miss gives us pure hell in Athens and the game will be another in a long line of frustrating underperformances.

Think back to West Virginia in 2005. Total disaster. Remember Mississippi State in 2009? Tennessee and Carolina in 2007? Alabama in 2008. Vandy. Kentucky. Central Florida. The god-awful loss to Tech at home in 2008. Hell, I remember one year, we beat UAB 13-10 on a late field goal at home and Middle Tennessee State was in doubt until the fourth quarter. Troy stayed right with us at home in 2007. On several occasions, I have walked out of Sanford after a win and it felt LIKE WE LOST. We get people on the ropes, pull back and let them right back in the game. This has become one of our calling cards. Our other calling card is even worse....hit us in the mouth early and we fold up like a cheap tent. Since 2005, we truthfully have had ONE season worth talking about. Anyone who refutes this is living in a dream world, works for the University or recently received a lobotomy.

Being the diehard football junkie I am, I did some research though. I know we are all quick to blame the coaches. History and statistics show that we are not totally off base on that stance. Think about Alabama in 2003-2007, buried by probation and a severe lack of talent on the field and on the coaching staff. They were awful. We crushed them in Athens in 2003, they were painfully inept and Thomas Davis almost killed Spencer Pennington that day. Nobody in their right mind would predict they would have two more national titles in 2012. Mal Moore went out and got the right man for the job and everything changed. Urban Meyer at Florida, same story. Les Miles at LSU. Sleeping giants were awakened at those schools and our giant...well....he's hit the snooze button about 25 times in the last eight years.

I examined our recruiting numbers since 2004. While doing this, I uncovered some extremely disturbing trends, foolhardy decisions, and just downright negligence on the part of our coaching staff. However, I also figured out that many players washed out on their own and no amount of coaching could have saved them. The number of players who were non-contributors over the last seven years is astounding. You do not have to wonder when and where we have gone wrong....it's like Billy told me in Cassville once, "if you can't see that, you're blinder than a bat in a coal mine." Want glaring statistic?

From 2005-2008, we had 18 offensive linemen commit. Of those 18, four of them never played a snap. One of those four was our ONLY offensive line commitment of 2005. Of the remaining fourteen, Ben Harden and Kevin Perez never saw the field other than mop up duty against Western Oklahoma Tech. AJ Harmon and Tanner Strickland transferred and retired from football, respectively. Trinton Sturdivant tore his ACL twice. Scott Haverkamp transferred back to Kansas after one year. Kiante Tripp switched to defense. That leaves seven offensive lineman for four years of recruiting that actually stayed and finished their careers at UGA: Ben Jones (success), Chris Davis (serviceable), Josh Davis (project who only caught on in his senior year), Clint Boling (success), Cordy Glenn (success), Vince Vance (a JUCO transfer who only played two years) and Justin Anderson (started but never lived up to the hype out of HS). Ouch.

Want another one?

Since 2004, we have had FORTY-ONE players leave, transfer, head to JUCO and flunk out, get dismissed or get thrown completely out of school. Many of these guys never saw the field once. I am not counting the O-linemen above, nor am I counting the guys who quit due to injury. (i.e. Bryce Ros, Quintin Banks, Antavious Coates) That's more people than Tech has fans. That's higher than an Auburn fan can count. Forty-one people who smoked, drank, rear-ended & license-suspended, punched, kicked and clawed their way right out of school. Suddenly, the slide of our program is not so far-fetched, is it? We are recruiting morons with no discipline, fools who cannot spell "shotgun" and idiots who cannot get out of their own way. While our fanbase points fingers and laughs at other programs, maybe we should look in the damn mirror. Or maybe they hide it better? Who knows? The numbers do not lie.

"The SEC is a line of scrimmage league," says Will Muschamp, the head coach of the Florida Gators. While I hate to agree with a vile traitor like Muschamp, a UGA alumnus who disparaged his alma mater when he took the Florida job, I must acknowledge the accuracy of that statement. Looking at these numbers, we are coming to the line of scrimmage completely shorthanded. It's a wonder we have won half of the games we played. Where we are not shorthanded, we have underachievers with no coaching. Remember Brandon Miller? Reshad Jones? Probably not. They were five-star recruits who drastically underachieved in their UGA career. Miller, because he was out of position and Jones, because he was not coached and an undisciplined player who was good for 2-3 personal fouls a game. However, they were ALL we had. Their backups were packing their bags to move to Alabama State or suspended for a parking ticket on their moped.

Right now, we have a true freshman starting on the offensive line. He is doing well, but he could have used a year to grow up. Our center is playing his first meaningful snaps. Our left tackle has been moved at least twice in his career and he was abused by South Carolina. We couldn't sub anyone in for him because there was nobody to take his place. We already have one redshirt freshman offensive lineman that Coach Will Friend has basically cast aside as a bust. We started the year missing two All-Americans on defense who simply cannot behave themselves, their draft stock be damned. I guess smoking grass and partying is better than $2,000,000 a year in the NFL. Where we were supposed to be strong, we are not. When we were supposed to grow up, we regressed. When we had the spotlight, we caved and the men who recruited these players stand idly by, hoping for someone else to lose so we can climb back into the race. That is no way to run a winning program in this conference, where you cannot win on talent alone.

Face it Dawg fans, we have hit the wall of complacency like a runaway Mack truck. If you are happy with 9-3 and the Capital One Bowl, then more power to you. Our rivals will raid our state, take every good player we have and bomb us back to the 90's. I wrote a pointed, yet respectful letter to our Athletic Director last season regarding these feelings. His response was essentially "get behind Richt or jump off the ship." Newsflash: I am behind my school, not a person. If they cannot understand that and we remain on this path, it's going to be a long decade, y'all. We have already lost six players from the 2010 class and five from the 2011 class. I hope and pray we turn this around soon and we go back to our winning ways. Until then I say good luck to the Dawgs....

All 37 of them.