AJ GREEN’S GONE FOR A WHILE: HOW WILL IT PLAY?

So Wednesday we found out. AJ did the deed and he feels bad and the DAWGS are staring down the barrel of their SEC opener, against a historically troublesome opponent and all of this will play out on the road. Yeah…that one stings a bit. What’s more, for this member of the DAWG Nation anyway, is the fact that once again the University that I love so deeply has taken yet another black eye when it comes to public perception.

Still, life…and the season…go on. So the real question is what impact does this have on the team. Coach Richt is saying all the right things including this insightful message from CMR shared by @bulldogsblog on Twitter:

TE Aron White says coach Mark Richt told team that "we're still Georgia. One player doesn't make Georgia."

and Green has offered up his apologies earlier tonight from his Twitter account @ajgreen_uga8:

I want to take the time 2 apologize 2 my team&fans as I go through this learning experience.

What’s really important now is how the DAWGS react to this adversity. We all have hopes that this team is championship caliber and now we get to find out. Championship teams rise to the challenges that inevitably come up during a season and this is clearly this Georgia team’s first chance to prove they have what it takes.

Now, just taking a quick moment for perspective, we learned earlier this week that the University of Wyoming suffered real tragedy when a Wyoming player was killed and three others were injured in a car wreck. Green’s issues are bad for himself and for the University of Georgia on the football field, but they are no real tragedy. A sobering fact that we all should keep in mind.

Back to the game, the best case scenario I see for our DAWGS is one where the team leaders take control of that locker room, pull this team together and fully embrace that “us against the world” mentality and show up in Columbia, SC at high noon on Saturday in a bad mood, with a chip on their collective shoulder and with something to prove. If they do that, the DAWGS will walk tall out of South Carolina having made a national statement that they are for real. As for AJ, the kid did the crime…now he must do the time. Your teammates and the DAWG Nation will welcome you back whenever you are allowed to return.

In case you missed it, I wrote a piece earlier this summer about NCAA inquiries and wondered what it would mean to you if one of our DAWGS were involved. To see more about my personal feelings on the topic please check it out HERE and be sure to read all of the comments as well to get a full understanding.

Hopefully I will be done with this ugliness after this post, but nothing has changed for me going forward. Make no mistake, I love the University of Georgia, I love CMR’s DAWGS and I hope we beat the extra crispy off those chickens this Saturday and serve notice to the rest of the league and college football that the spirit that makes Georgia the best damn school in the land is alive and well.

Glory, Glory.