FOOTBALL
Coach Mark Richt
Opening statement:
I want to thank the students and the student section and what a great job they are doing during the pregame warmups. I know they are keeping things lively. I really enjoyed some of the outfits I saw last week. I just want to commend those guys on their costumes I guess, pretty good stuff.
Coach Richt Applauds The Student Section Following Win Over Tennessee
Vanderbilt, coach Robbie Caldwell’s team. It was an interesting transition for them and their staff. Warren Belin, who is on our staff now, was a part of that staff as late as last year and knows those guys and he knows coach Caldwell and has as high amount of respect for him, as I do. They just do a very good job on their staff of getting these guys lined up and getting them fundamentally ready to play football. They don’t necessarily try to trick you, but they are very, very sound in what they do. They play fast and they play physical and they really play great fundamental football on both sides of the ball. You could tell they’ve created a lot of really good habits in the way they play. I think some teams maybe spend too much time trying to put in all these blitzes and twists and stunts and runs and trick plays and this, that and the other, formations and all that. Not to say they don’t have a good bit of it, but you can tell that their focus is on being very sound with what they do and take advantage of the athletes they have and put them in the best position to make plays. They do have a lot of young men from the state of Georgia. I think that’s something a lot of those guys are going to be excited about.
It’s our job now to hopefully build off of the momentum that we’ve created with last week’s victory. I think when you lose games people tend to think that everything is going wrong and not much is going right. Then when you win games maybe they think everything is going right and not much is going wrong. I think as we were going through that losing streak we were improving in a lot of areas. We just didn’t finish really like we should and this game, even though a lot of things did go well we still have more to correct, and that’s our job as coaches is to continue to try to improve and again build off the momentum that we created.
On off-the-field distractions:
It’s hard to have great continuity week-by-week if a young man has done something to keep himself from being on the field. Again, it’s our job also to deal with those things, but also not take away from the preparation and not take away from the focus of the team. It’s something I’d prefer not to have to manage, but we’ve been managing it. This week, I don’t think there is any doubt our guys will be focusing on Vanderbilt.
On whether the standard for punishment of off-the-field issues has become tougher:
Oh yeah. No doubt, but they knew that.
On whether Caleb King’s punishment is a reflection of the tougher standard:
Yes sir.
On whether Caleb King’s punishment sends a message:
Obviously, yes sir.
On what can be done to prevent off-the-field issues:
Every young man has a responsibility to do the right thing. They’re aware of what the right thing is to do. Am I open to doing better? Absolutely. I’m very encouraged actually with Mr. Greg McGarity in a lot of ways. I think that he’s a wonderful choice for our athletic director. I think that he’s going to do great things for Georgia. I think the future is very bright with his leadership. He and I have already been discussing some things and we’ll implement some things as time goes on that I think will help us. It will be an ongoing conversation, but I really have a lot of confidence that he’s got some good ideas in that regard and I’m willing to listen to those and see if we can get better at that.
You want to prevent things and then if things do happen you still have to make decisions on what to do. In order to make sure that this type of thing isn’t happening No. 1, the student-athlete has to take the responsibility of knowing he’s got it and he’s got to take care of it. Georgia is not going to take care of the traffic violations, they have to. Now we can get involved in helping them, make sure that it gets done, but we are not doing it for them, that’s No. 1.
Awareness of certain things is important. If we are aware of things, we can make sure something like this doesn’t happen. In this particular case, you basically would have to get in contact with every single county in the state of Georgia on a daily basis to find out if something like that popped up.
You can check the licenses to see if they are in good standing on a periodic basis.
Monthly we’ve been doing that, but now were are going to do it weekly and maybe we can catch something at the last moment. We don’t want it to get to that point. In order to really know something like that we would’ve had to be made aware of it and then we can make sure that thing gets taken care.
Again, we are not taking care of it. We just have to make sure it gets taken care of by the student-athlete.
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