Online betting handicappers have noticed a disturbing trend taking place with the Georgia Bulldogs that has been going on since 2008 in which the Bulldogs have underachieved.
A Steady Fall
Mark Richt is in his 10th season on the job as the Georgia Bulldogs head coach and has gone from being considered the top coach in the Southeastern Conference to one that is now in trouble. Georgia is currently 1-2 both straight up and against the spread and has lost their first two SEC games in the past two weeks at South Carolina and at home to Arkansas.
It has been bad enough that Richt’s program has gone from the best in the SEC to now trailing behind Florida, Alabama, and LSU in stature but when the Bulldogs trail South Carolina and Arkansas that is when the temperature begins to rise in Athens, GA.
Better Coaches in SEC
There has been a steady improvement of head coaches in the Southeastern Conference that have made Richt’s job more difficult. Nick Saban at Alabama and Urban Meyer at Florida immediately come to mind but Bobby Petrino at Arkansas, Dan Mullen at Mississippi State, and Steve Spurrier at South Carolina are all among the best at what they do. And say what you want about Les Miles at LSU but he has more recent success than Richt and one more national title as well. Astute Sbgglobal handicappers are taking all of that into account when analyzing UGA.
Pristine Image
Richt has a pure image of something of a preacher and father figure. When he was winning, it was considered a positive, but now Richt has the Internet betting reputation of lacking fire and of having a team that is an image of his bland personality. Fans at Georgia want to see more of the type of fire that they saw out of Richt before the 4th quarter of last week’s game against Arkansas when he gave a rousing pep talk to the entire team and they rallied from 14 points down to tie the game.
Brutal Loss
Unfortunately Richt’s team was beaten in the final moments on a touchdown pass by Arkansas as they failed to score an online betting payout for the second consecutive week. The question now is if they can emotionally recover for Saturday’s game at Mississippi State in which they are 1-point dogs. UGA is 10-9 in their last 19 games.