Georgia Head Coach Mark Richt News Conference Comments

Opening statement:
“It has been a great trip. You stay somewhere eight days and you’re thinking that everybody would get tired of it. I think we went at a good pace. I think the Outback does it right when it comes to events. I think the events we do go to are ones that everybody really enjoys. I’ve been in some of them and watched our guys had a good time, and I’ve seen on georgiadawgs.com watching them have a good time, including some belly dancing and stuff like that. Everything that’s been done has been done extremely well. The pace has been good to where it doesn’t wear people out. We get an opportunity to take a nap sometimes once in a while, or our players do anyway, and I think that’s been good for them. Our practices have been, I thought, really outstanding. I think a couple days ago, the last day that we were in shells, our helmets and shoulder pads, was the first day it was really warm. I thought they were a little bit sluggish that day. But it was about the fourth or fifth day in a row of practice and that’s not all that unusual. So I figured it was about time to take the pads off the next day, which we did, and got our normal Thursday type practice in. Today we do nothing involved as far as getting on a football field.”

On the bowl experience versus a playoff scenario:
“I’m not interested in that. I’m not interested in that type of playoff situation. I don’t want the bowls to go away. I think the bowls are great. I think the bowls are great for communities, bowl are great for the players and the coaches and the fan bases. How many fans are going to be able to jump in a plane and follow that team around for three or four playoff games? That’s just probably not going to happen. There might be enough interest once you got closer to the national championship game to sell out those games whether you had a fan base there or not, maybe just the local people wherever you decide to have those games you might be able to get a crowd. That’s not what college is about. College is about bringing the band and the cheerleaders and the fans and all the tradition, your mascots. I think it is a good reward for those players. I think they earn it and deserve it.”

On whether Ken Malcome will start at tailback:
“He probably will. I think he’s going to unless something gets blown up between now and then which I don’t think will. Kenny had a good bowl practice back in Athens and also here in town, so we felt he earned the right to start this game.”

On dealing with criticism:
“I don’t read too much about it, I really don’t. I’ve got a plan of action that I believe in. Deep down, gut level I’m going to try to do the best I can do on a daily basis. I’m going to try to do it in such a way that my Lord and savior is pleased with it. That’s kind of who I’m working for, so I don’t worry about the rest of the stuff. But I do the best I can do. But I know you really can’t do more than that. As the leader of the program, if I act like I’m fretting or I act like I’m mad at something it doesn’t help the staff, it doesn’t help the players, it doesn’t help recruiting, it doesn’t help anything. I know the University of Georgia is a great place to be. We’ve got tremendous facilities, great support from our fans, we’ve got great support from our administration. We’ve got a bunch of coaches that know what they’re doing. We’re going to be knocking on the door of the greatest success that you can have in college football. If we keep knocking hard enough one day we’ll get there, and that’s kind of how I see it.”

On whether he is comfortable with the tailback position:
“We have everybody healthy, we have everybody getting a lot of reps. Somebody made a comment last night, I don’t know what game it was, I had never really thought of it, but they were playing a couple of quarterbacks. They were saying sometimes it’s hard to play two quarterbacks on a game when you’re just going week by week by week because there’s not a lot of practice reps to get two quarterbacks ready. But during bowl practice you really do have time to get two quarterbacks ready. So when you look at our tailback situation, we’ve gotten at least four or five guys a lot of reps. We’ve had six backs get reps and I think they know what to do. I don’t know if we’ll play all six guys, but I imagine we might see as many as four guys in there during the game. You would think if you play more backs then they’ll be more fresh individually and can give it all they’ve got and know that when they’re in there they need to perform well if they want to get more totes. I feel as good as I have about our tailback position in a while.”

On how he feels about the Georgia Bulldogs program:
“I don’t think there’s any doubt we’re in a good place. If you win 10 games in a season you’ve done well. Is that the ultimate goal to win 10? No. But to do that, that’s good. I mean, 11 is better, we’ll be shooting for that. Some people believe in momentum more than others. I think we’ve created some very good, positive momentum in our program and I think not only did it bless us this year, I think going into the future we’re going to be in good shape as far as a bunch of guys that are going to be buying in 100 percent to what we’re doing. When you get that, get some experienced players coming back, get guys that have a taste of playing in the SEC championship game and not being able to finish, but still tasting it, I think that gets you hungry for some more. I think we’ll be in good shape when we begin our offseason program.”