I am now less than one semester away from TOSS, which is the last thing I do prior to student teaching.
Now don’t get the wrong idea. TOSS is not something that we do to children, or to anyone else for that matter. Although, judging by what I’ve heard from friends who are currently in TOSS, it sounds like something they do to us, and those who survive go on to student teaching.
No, TOSS is none of these. TOSS is an acronym; the education world abounds with acronyms and I’m sure I will be running more by you before it’s all said and done. This particular acronym stands for Teaching Of Specific Subjects.
TOSS is a very intensive field experience which lasts for the duration of the semester. For the first ten weeks of the semester I will be taking classes for two days a week and spending one day a week working and helping out with a real live teacher (and doing some real live teaching along the way) in a real live classroom in a real live school somewhere. After the first ten weeks is up, I will spend the remainder of the semester working in this school for five days a week.
As the time for TOSS approaches, I am thinking about it a lot. I have been hearing horror stories about certain aspects of TOSS that make me nervous. One of these is the Plan of Remediation.
During the TOSS semester, teacher candidates, or candidates for short (that’s a fancy name for students in the education program at my school), are assessed frequently on several areas of their performance in the classroom. Level 1 is the lowest rating that you can receive in any area. Any candidate who receives three or more Level 1’s in any area at any time is brought before a faculty panel consisting of his/her advisor and a couple of other professors. They will try to work out a plan of remediation (the key word here is “try”, because remediation is not possible in all situations). If remediation is possible, then the candidate is allowed to continue in TOSS provided that the conditions of the Plan of Remediation are upheld.
There are lots of possible plans of remediation. Some can be as simple as requiring a candidate who is habitually late to the school where he/she has been placed to go to bed earlier. If the candidate continues to be late, then it is clear that the provisions of this plan of remediation are not being upheld, and the candidate can be dealt with accordingly. (I am presuming that this would mean removal from TOSS.)
After watching the Tennessee game this weekend, it has become dreadfully clear to me that Georgia’s football program is in dire need of remediation.
As a Georgia fan my desire is to see Georgia rise to the level where we can play any team in the country, anywhere, on any day, and at least stand a fighting chance. For most of the time that I have been a Georgia fan, this has not been the case. All through the 1990s, games against Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, and Auburn (depending on what kind of team they had that season) were marked down as automatic losses before the season even started. South Carolina and Ole Miss played Georgia pretty evenly through much of that decade. Even Kentucky and Vanderbilt slipped up and beat Georgia a couple of times.
Basically, in those days Georgia was nothing more than a third-rate, middle-of-the-road SEC program whose only distinguishing feature was that we won more games than we lost. Most of the time. (At least we were able to do this consistently during the Jim Donnan era; that was a marked improvement over the Ray Goof era.) And sometimes we would get to go to a decent New Years Day bowl. Sometimes we would spend the bowl season in Shreveport or Nashville or other such dreadful locales. And sometimes we wouldn’t go anywhere at all.
And then Mark Richt came to town. At last, or so I thought, Georgia had found someone who would bring them to the point of being able to compete with anyone in the country on any given day.
In 2001 Georgia came from behind and scored on the next-to-last play of the game to notch a signature win right here on this very field. This win propelled Georgia into the limelight for a season which saw them make 3 SEC Championship Game appearances and win two SEC championships, and which held the promise of Georgia eventually rising to relevance on the national scene, a status currently enjoyed by programs such as LSU, Southern Cal, Florida, Ohio State, and Oklahoma. Knoxville was good to Georgia during this season, as Georgia won impressively here in 2003 and 2005.
But alas, it is now safe to say that the mystique of the early Mark Richt era which began right here on this very field so many years ago is vanished, leaving Georgia no better off than they were before.
One of Mark Richt’s strongest selling points has been his ability to win in hostile environments. Up to this point Mark Richt has been remarkably successful in opposing teams’ home stadiums. But after this weekend’s debacle in Knoxville, even that is now suspect.
Florida continues to beat Georgia like a drum, year in and year out. (The only reason Georgia won the SEC in 2002 was that they had a big enough lead in the division to absorb the inevitable loss to Florida. And the only reason they won in 2005 was that everyone else was weak enough that Georgia could absorb losses to Florida and Auburn and still clinch the division with a win over Kentucky.) And now, with three wins in four years, it is safe to say that Tennessee owns Georgia once again, just like they did all through the 1990s. Georgia has not beaten an SEC East opponent in over a year; the skid has now reached six consecutive losses to SEC East opponents. Georgia is now losing to teams that they haven’t lost to in over a decade; both Vanderbilt and Kentucky are now threatening to make it two in a row over Georgia.
For all intents and purposes Georgia has now dropped out of contention for the SEC East title for the second consecutive year. Even with the SEC East as wide open as it is this year, there is little if any chance for a Georgia team with two division losses (and counting) to win the title.
Tennessee gave up over 100 points and several major body organs to Florida and Cal earlier this season. In light of that, I would have thought that Georgia would have had a better chance this week. But instead it is Georgia that now comes home having given up several major body organs. Florida is still on the schedule, folks!!! So are Vanderbilt and Kentucky, which each now stand, as I said earlier, to make it two wins in a row over Georgia.
This year’s Georgia team is even more suspect than the team that got manhandled by Tennessee in Athens so badly that they came out flat against Vanderbilt the next week and got beat. And they are playing Vanderbilt on the road. Kentucky is actually a very dangerous team this year; I would dare to say that they are actually better–MUCH better–than Georgia this year. And of course Auburn beats Georgia every other year, if not more frequently than that.
In light of this, I would have to say that the rest of the season for Georgia is starting to look unrelentingly bleak.
I get that 2006 was a rebuilding year for Georgia. But this was NOT supposed to be a multi-year rebuilding project!!! If the gains which we had made during the early part of the Mark Richt era had had any real substance, then it would not have required a multi-year rebuilding project to bring Georgia back to the place of relevance in the SEC. The truth is that Georgia’s program is on a new trajectory, a trajectory of decline which will only take us deeper and deeper into the ash heap of SEC mediocrity and irrelevance. In order to break out of this trajectory and get back to the place of relevance in the SEC (to say nothing of relevance at the national level), Georgia’s football program requires serious remediation.
So here is my proposed plan of remediation for Georgia football:
–Cut Willie Martinez open from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. String his remains up at the top of the tallest tree in Athens and let the buzzards and vultures pick away at them. (I don’t think there are a lot of buzzards or vultures in Georgia, but crows serve the same purpose and that would satisfy me.)
Okay, that was a little over the top. Sorry about that. But my point is that I don’t think Willie Martinez should be allowed to continue as the defensive coordinator at Georgia.
Willie Martinez’s tenure as defensive coordinator at Georgia has been marked extensively by defensive collapses against big-name opponents, and some against not-so-big-name opponents. There was the Auburn game in 2005, where Devin Aromashodu got loose on 4th-and-forever and Auburn went down and kicked a field goal to win the game. There was the 2005 Sugar Bowl, where West Virginia hung 28 first-quarter points on Georgia and hung on to win 38-35. There was the Tennessee game last year, where Tennessee rung up an unprecedented 37 second-half points on Georgia’s home field en route to a 51-33 bloodletting. There was the Vanderbilt game, where Vanderbilt went down and kicked a field goal to win the game.
I was willing to give Willie Martinez the benefit of the doubt after solid defensive efforts against Florida, Auburn, Georgia Tech, and Virginia Tech closed out the 2006 season. But 2007 came around and all the problems started afresh.
South Carolina torched Georgia’s defense for 38 yards and 3 first downs on 3 consecutive plays when Georgia needed a quick defensive stop at the end of the game. Alabama drove 88 yards on Georgia’s defense to tie the game and send it to overtime (where Stafford eventually pulled it out for Georgia). Ole Miss manhandled Georgia’s defense for three quarters, taking the opening kickoff 86 yards for a touchdown. They would have gone up 14-0 if not for a fumble at the Georgia 1-yard-line. (Make a note of this: It was an Ole Miss fumble which turned the tide of this game–NOT anything that Georgia was able to do on defense.)
And this week, Erik Ainge torched Georgia’s defense for 28 first-quarter points and Georgia never registered a pulse for the rest of the day. Tennessee’s running backs got into the fun as well; they scored four rushing touchdowns which left the Georgia defense looking dreadfully flat-footed.
Tennessee has players at wide receiver who are STILL LEARNING THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THEIR POSITION FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!!! And THEY were also making plays to beat Georgia.
There is absolutely positively no excuse for that whatsoever.
There are plenty of good defensive coordinators out there who could get the job done at Georgia. Willie Martinez is not one of them. The sooner Georgia gets rid of him, the better off we will be.
–Recruit some linemen on offense and defense who can actually block/tackle, and who won’t do stupid s–t to get themselves kicked off the team.
Georgia recruited well for these positions in the early part of the Mark Richt era. But an unusually high rate of attrition (due to graduation, transfers, and people doing stupid s–t to get themselves kicked off the team) has left both the offensive and the defensive line with as much depth as a puddle of mud during a record drought. Georgia’s well-publicized effort to recruit two junior college defensive linemen during the 2006-07 offseason showed the depths of desperation to which we have presently sunk.
And now our offensive line can’t block anybody, and our defensive line can’t stop anybody that’s trying to run the ball.
I don’t care what Georgia does. Devote an entire recruiting class to nothing but offensive and defensive linemen. Raid every junior college in the country to bring in some experience at these positions. Petition the NCAA to allow Georgia a one-time exemption to scholarship limitations. Petition the NCAA to allow Georgia to offer financial incentives that would enable them to attract quality players. The NCAA would probably never in a million years allow any of these. I get that. But if Georgia would at least make the effort it would show the world that we know we have a problem and we are committed to doing something about it.
They’re out there somewhere. And they can help us win. But we’ve got to get out there and recruit them. With the decline of Georgia’s program over the last couple of years this is going to be an even tougher sell than before, but we have got to get it done.
–Fire Mark Richt and hire Michael Vick to replace him. Maybe Michael Vick can teach these Dogs how to fight.
–I hear that things are not going so well for Bobby Petrino and the Cons these days. If Bobby Petrino starts to feel overwhelmed with the pressures of rebuilding a struggling NFL franchise and wishes to join the ranks of college coaches who went back after a short time in the NFL, then he will be more than welcome here at Georgia–at least in the eyes of this one discouraged, disheartened, and disillusioned Georgia fan.
And as I attempt to process what has happened in Knoxville this weekend and sort through the utter mess that is Georgia football, I turn to the southwest and cast a longing eye toward Baton Rouge, where LSU, which already has one national championship in the last five years and is now working on another, has just pulled off another one for the ages, one of the many epic wins for which LSU has become known over the last decade or two, using a perfect 5-for-5 on fourth-down conversions including two on the final drive, to overhaul Florida 28-24.
I hope LSU wins their national championship. Two national championships in five years would be a momentous accomplishment, especially considering that it would take five thousand years for Georgia to win two national championships.
I am thinking that in a couple of years when the time comes for me to start working on a master’s degree, I will move to Baton Rouge and go to LSU. Then I will become an LSU fan again, and quit this craziness that is Georgia football once and for all.
UPDATE: Oh well. So much for that.
