Smart has turned Georgia into a rabbit-eared football dynasty | Whitley

As a public service to Georgia players, coaches and fans, I’d like to say the Bulldogs are in deep trouble without Brock Bowers.

Sure, Georgia is 7-0 and ranked No. 1, but there’s no way the Bulldogs would have beaten teams like UT-Martin, Ball State, UAB and East Bemidji Tech without their injured tight end.

“Obviously, this is not only one of the best players in America this year, last year,” Billy Napier said. “This is one of the best players of all time.”

Now, let’s pause for a moment so Kirby Smart can cut out the previous three paragraphs, copy them in 72-font boldface type and stick them on bulletin boards around campus.

The rest of this column, he may want to skip.

Bowers is great, but Georgia would have figured out how to be 7-0 without him. And the mighty Dawgs will likely figure out how to beat Florida on Saturday.

That would be consecutive win No. 25. The Bulldogs have also been ranked No. 1 for 19 straight weeks, the third-longest streak in history.

Now that’s impressive. It’s also what Saban lovingly calls “rat poison.”

The antidote to people saying you’re great is people saying you’ll go 7-5 — even when they don’t. Manufacturing snubs is nothing new, but Smart has raised it to an art form that’s infected fans with an Us-Against-The-Word paranoia.

It’s like when Michael Jordan said journeyman LaBradford Smith had dissed him by saying, “Nice game, Mike,” after he scored 37 points against the Bulls.

He hadn’t, but Jordan needed something to get him motivated for the next time they played. Jordan scored 47 points in that one. It was not unlike what Georgia did to TCU in the College Football Playoff title game.

“Everyone doubted them to start the year,” Smart said of his players after the 65-7 win. “And the chip on the shoulder was just big enough to create an edge for our team.”

Who'll Win?: Listen Now! Experts on Gators, Bulldogs break down World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party

Tough test: Florida football's offense has come to life. Will it continue against stiff Georgia defense?

Georgia was indeed ranked No. 3 at the start of the year. Its entire 2021 defense had moved to the NFL, and Alabama and Ohio State were loaded. But the Bulldogs moved past them in early October and settled into the No. 1 perch.

They were the top seed in the playoff and 13.5-point favorites in the championship game. Georgia turned all that into a Stone Mountain-sized chip on its shoulder.

“They thought we was going 7-5,” linebacker Nolan Smith said. “We ended up perfect.”

Smith later told The Saturday Down South Podcast he concocted the 7-5 insult/story. Smart knew the narrative was baloney, but he didn’t do anything to tamp it down.

If you heard quarterback Stetson Bennett at Georgia’s victory celebration, the motivational ploy worked.

“Y’all burn us, y’all kept telling us how bad we were,” he said to whoever y’all were. “And y’all couldn’t understand it, and we kept winning, and we kept embarrassing people.”

Bulldog Nation has now been conditioned to think it is — pardon the old cliché —Rodney Dangerfield. I tell ya, it gets no respect.

“ESPN College GameDay” host Rece Davis failed to rank Georgia No. 1 in his preseason predictions. That triggered an X/Twitter battle with Georgia faithful.

“It’s amusing to see things like fabricated 7-5 picks,” Davis wrote. “Everyone knows they could send their 3^rd team out and go 7-5 or way better.”

ESPN stablemate Kirk Herbstreit chimed in, “RD stop it – you know EVERYONE secretly 'hates' UGA and doubt them every step of the way! Hopefully they can beat Vandy this year!”

Georgia doesn’t play Vanderbilt this year, but the teams they play better watch their P’s, Q’s and innocent responses. South Carolina linebacker Tonka Hemingway was asked at SEC Media Days what were the loudest SEC stadiums he’d played in.

He said Texas A&M’s Kyle Field and Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium. No, he didn’t mention The Swamp, not that Napier noticed.

Smart certainly noticed that Hemingway didn’t say Sanford Stadium, and he turned that into an insult heading into the South Carolina game.

“People want to question whether our fans are elite. We’ll find out Saturday, right?” he said. “Sounds like Tonka called them out.”

Tonka Hemingway, meet LaBradford Smith.

Smith’s big hope this week is for people to observe that Georgia wont’ be as good with Bowers on the sideline. Alas, Florida’s players have not come close to slighting the Bulldogs.

I’ve always admired Smart and would like to help him out. So allow me to say that Bowers is Herschel Walker squared. What's more, Georgia is going to finish 7-5 if he doesn’t return.

Please, don’t thank me. I know life can be tough when the worst thing people can say about you is you’re No. 1.

David Whitley is The Gainesville Sun's sports columnist. Contact him at dwhitley@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidEWhitley

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Georgia football thrives on manufactured insults