Next year we should be good...real good. By all acounts, the 2008 Dawgs should be the best Georgia team since Mark Richt's first SEC Championship when we won the Sugar Bowl over FSU. If we win out this year and win a BCS Bowl, then we should be ranked in the preseason top 3.
The only problem is, I just looked at our scheudle for 2008. It is the toughest Georgia schedule I have ever seen. We kick things off against Championship Subdivision power Georgia Southern. This is always a fun game and usually draws a huge crowd. Whenever they play in Athens, it is usually the biggest crowd for a football game ever in the state of Georgia. One of these years, they're gonna get us and we're not gonna see it coming. Don't think it can happen? Just ask the boys in the Big House about a little team from Boone, North Carolina.
After that, we get the ball coach, Arizona State, Alabama, and Tennessee back-to-back-to-back-to-back. The only good news here is that ASU, Bama, and UT are home games. Spurrier can beat us no matter how good we are and no matter how bad the Gamecocks are. Look at this year as evidence. Look at what they did to us and then look at where we are and where they are. Shouldn't have happened, but it did. If they can do it this year, they can do it again next year. How good is Arizona State supposed to be next season? I don't know what their situation is. Are they losing alot of key players to graduation/early departure for the NFL this year, or do they return a good many from this year's team? If they're the same top 10 team next year as they are right now, we're in trouble, seeing as how we usually play our worst at the beginning of the season. Bama and Tennesseee are self-explanatory. Richt has never lost to Alabama and is the only Georgia coach to win in Tuscaloosa. Saban's teams only get better. They will be hungry for a win in Athens and they'll be challenging in the West.
As if that weren't enough, there will be no bye-week for the Dawgs before making the annual pilgrimage to Jacksonville for the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. The team we play the week before the Gators? LSU. Tebow will be back, the frontrunner for the Heisman trophy, and the Gator nation will be looking to exact its revenge on a probably banged-up Georgia squad that just played a very physical game against what may very well be the defending national champions, and were left with no time to heal and prepare for the much-improved Gators.
And then there's the standard fare of Auburn, Kentucky, and Georgia Tech to worry about.
We will be great, but our record may not reflect it. No way do we get through that schedule unschathed.