re: The Loss to Tech

I listened to the David Greene show from Shula's last night for a while. Probably the only time that I can recall Greene, who is a very homer media guy, criticize a Richt decision. He even said it wasn't like they had Deion Sanders returning kicks. Greene, himself, said it was a case of a coach playing "not to lose" and was the worst decision of Richts tenure here. He made the point that it was a coaching decision that led to the loss and that no coach ever wants to carry that burden. He said that all the player gaffes had been overcome when Mason conducted a drive for the history books of this rivalry game. At that point, having the lead, it became a coaching decision that led(not caused) to the loss. He talked about how Richt acknowledged as much and was as despondent after a loss that Greene had ever seen him. And he was that way because it was his decision that started that :18 chain of events .

We can debate it all day long but when the actual coach who made the decision along with homer media personalities who go out of their way to never put a negative spin on Richt.....along with 95% of fans say it was a bad call, perhaps the few who debate the other side are just doing so to play devils advocate. Does not change the fact that the overwhelming consensus, which includes the coach, is that the call was wrong.

I respect your opinion. It did not cause us to lose outright. It was, however, the catalyst that led to us losing and no coach wants that burden. You are not saying that call, by itself, lost the game. I can agree with that. It did initiate the series of events that gave them a more advantageous position to do the unlikely though. I believe you understand this and are making the argument that however wrong that particular call was....we were still in position to win.

We had a 99.8% chance of winning the game before the kick according to somebody with some kickass software. That's been published elsewhere. Unfortunately there were no odds published after the kick. I bet that immediately following the kick, our odds went from 99.8% to something like 96.2%. This according to the kickass software in my skull.

The call did not lose the game for us. Anybody who says otherwise is either... too lazy to analyze the ending, doesn't understand odds or how the game works, or unwilling to admit defeat to a GT team that outplayed us for what I would say was the majority of the game, even before the kick.

ETA: The reason the winning % doesn't exist immediately following the kickoff? Because the number is similar to what I put above, 96.2%. Had that number actually been published, it would have made an otherwise interesting statistic (99.8%) totally irrelevant. You KNOW the person who published the 99.8% figure had one following the kick as well.