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| NEW ORLEANS -- UGA or just ugh? Depends on which side of the gutter you were stumbling down late Tuesday night.
All those things you thought, read and predicted about No. 4 Georgia? True, after a 41-10 victory in the Sugar Bowl that foreshadows '08 more than wraps up '07. A seven-game, season-ending winning streak sets up the Dawgs for a top-five debut next season. Freshman tailback Knowshon Moreno set himself as an early 2008 Heisman candidate with two rushing touchdowns. The defense had more sacks of Colt Brennan (a school-record eight) than the Georgia offense had touchdowns (five). The Bulldogs treated the Warriors like the wide-eyed out-of-towners they were trying not to be. Georgia mugged 'em, thugged 'em, lei'd 'em out, sent them back to that rock in the South Pacific with enough stories about cajun food and voodoo to last until their next BCS bowl. For the non-BCS Warriors, that could be a loooong time. "For me," said Brennan, leader of the nation's most statistically potent offense, "it's a gigantic disappointment." "We felt like we were the best team in the country," Georgia corner Asher Allen said. "If we would have played anybody today, we would have won." In the end, the season of the upset did not extend to the Superdome. If you haven't noticed, we're two-fifths of the way through the BCS matchups and the games stink. Georgia and USC have won by a combined 63 points against opponents who were -- how to say it delicately? -- sub-standard. Georgia and USC squaring off in Pasadena would have been better than the slop we were subjected to on Tuesday. But the Sugar Bowl never would have released the Bulldogs, so we were subjected to BCS jail. This is just a bad year for matchups in the questionable system. Questionable and overwrought. Those worried about getting back to their hotel rooms before sunup after the four-hour, five-minute Sugar Bowl had commercial-happy Fox more to blame than the pass-happy Warriors. The hype factor had better pick up quick, then, in Glendale and South Florida before the title game Monday back here. Hawaii's loyal fans spent thousands of dollars to find out that not only weren't their Warriors a match for Georgia, they didn't even resemble Boise State. The heart-warming story of an undefeated WAC champion cracking the BCS code and upsetting a traditional power lasted exactly one game. The 2007 Fiesta Bowl, to be exact, when Boise State seemingly was at the front of a revolution. The 2007 regular season carried on the revolution, except that Hawaii wasn't doing any of the upsetting. Playing the weakest schedule in the country, Hawaii largely took advantage of those other upsets (and BCS fuzzy math) to get here. That's what beating Northern Colorado and Charleston Southern will get you. "You know what, I took one right in the mouth today," Brennan said after being knocked out in the fourth quarter of the final game of his career. "The SEC is probably the fastest conference in all of college football, and we got a first-hand taste of that tonight." Brennan got extremely familiar with MVP Marcus Howard, a senior defensive end, who had a Sugar Bowl hat trick (three sacks, one that produced a fumble that he recovered for a touchdown). "I don't think they were ready for our speed, our size, our emotion," freshman linebacker Rennie Curran said. "We just came out full blast. It sends a message that Georgia is not any joke. We're not to be played around with. It shows everybody we can hang with anybody, no matter what conference." Hawaii brought an incredibly loud and loyal contingent of about 15,000 in the otherwise red and black Superdome. Their beloved Warriors did their pregame ha'a dance to get fired up. It was great theater until the ball was kicked. Clash of cultures? More like an attack of vultures. The nation's lone unbeaten team was out of it by halftime. The nation-leading 13-game winning streak was ended, too. BYU is now at the top with a 10-game streak, followed by -- guess who? -- Georgia with seven. The SEC's sack leaders (42 total for the season) were so unrelenting they finally succeeded in revealing a closely guarded secret. His name is Tyler Graunke, Hawaii's backup quarterback who replaced an injured and battered Brennan. What was worse for Hawaii, Georgia coach Mark Richt had been playing his second-team defense since midway through the third quarter. Hey, there were those valuable young bodies and a ranking to protect. Based on this result, if Georgia doesn't start next season in the top five with 18 returning starters, they ought to shut down the polls. The Dawgs (11-2) can't wait around a week and play the winner of LSU-Ohio State, so toned-down redemption will have to do. Two years ago, West Virginia beat favored Georgia in this same game. The Bulldogs hadn't been the same until Tuesday night. "Everybody in the media wanted me to say we talked about (Boise State)," Richt said. "We really didn't talk about that. We talked about West Virginia because it happened to us. We started out 3-2, we had barely a pulse when we played Tennessee (an Oct. 6 loss). We didn't show a lot of spirit. We had to change the course of the season." After sneaking past Vanderbilt in mid-October, Georgia beat Florida to set it on that course. Moreno ran for 188 yards and scored three touchdowns against the Gators. Richt quickly found he had something special: the first Georgia freshman to run for 1,000 yards since Herschel Walker. Perhaps the only reason Moreno wasn't more spectacular (nine carries, 61 yards) was a tweaked ankle he suffered last month against Georgia Tech. Does any of it matter with kickoff only nine months away? "In the SEC, it doesn't matter how good you are," Richt said. "There are going to be six, seven teams that are as good as you are. We are going to have a more veteran team than we've had in awhile. I think we'll have a chance to make a run at it, but so do six or seven others." |
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