The year was 2008.
The Georgia Bulldogs began it by annihilating the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors so thoroughly in the Sugar Bowl that Colt Brennan’s well-being really did seem to be imperiled. Watching that massacre in New Orleans, it was hard to shake the feeling that Brennan and other skill-position players on the Hawaii roster were risking their bodies just to play a game. The sense of relief which accompanied the end of that game was palpable.
Georgia won, 41-10, but Hawaii survived — literally.
That was Georgia at the start of 2008.
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When the year 2008 continued, the Virginia Tech Hokies were coming off an Orange Bowl appearance. They lost to Kansas, but they had claimed their second ACC championship in four seasons. They’d won the Coastal division title for the second time in three seasons. The getting was good, and the Hokies were the target in the ACC. Everyone else wanted to be them — Frank Beamer set the standard all his conference peers aimed to match.
Virginia Tech was the marked team in the 2008 ACC. Yet, this particular Blacksburg bunch etched a special place in the history of the program. The Hokies defended their Coastal title and then won back-to-back ACC championships, the first time any league program had done that in the conference championship game era. Virginia Tech earned another Orange Bowl berth in the 2008 season, and although that next game occurred within the calendar year of 2009, a victory over Cincinnati earned the 2008 Hokies a taste of immortality.
Frank Beamer had won the 1995 (December, not January) Sugar Bowl over Texas, but over the course of the next 13 years, the Hokies couldn’t win another BCS bowl. Only when they broke through against Cincinnati did they snap that drought. Yet, being able to solve their January woes gave the Hokies a plate of riches that was envied by 98 percent of all other FBS programs. Only a select few schools would have looked upon Virginia Tech’s end-of-2008 status as anything resembling a disappointment, and even then, the measure of disappointing would have been miniscule at best.
2008 was a great year to be a Hokie.
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In 2008, the Oklahoma Sooners did catch a break — there’s no need to tap-dance around that reality.
The resolution of the three-way Big 12 South tie with Texas and Texas Tech easily could have cut in Texas’s favor. The Longhorns beat Oklahoma by 10 points on a neutral field in Dallas, and they played a harder Big 12 schedule not just in terms of the roster of opponents, but in terms of playing consecutive games against tough teams. Oklahoma, however, won a BCS-based tiebreaker, propelled by a vastly superior non-conference strength of schedule.
Yes, Oklahoma was lucky.
Yet, when given the chance to do something, the Sooners took advantage by throttling Missouri in the Big 12 Championship Game, 62-21. They reached the BCS National Championship Game before losing to Florida. As 2008 ended, the Sooners had clinched a berth in a BCS game for the seventh time in nine seasons. Despite coexisting with Texas and Nebraska in the Big 12 during the first decade of the new century, Oklahoma won a substantial majority of the Big 12 titles that were able to be claimed. The Sooners swiped six league crowns in a nine-year span from 2000 through 2008. Oklahoma might have made back-to-back national title games in the 2003 and 2004 seasons, but in terms of winning the Big 12, the year 2008 marked a high point: The Sooners captured their third straight conference championship that season.
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2008 — it was a year when Mark Richt and Georgia; Frank Beamer and Virginia Tech; and Bob Stoops and Oklahoma were all doing as well in conference as their counterparts, if not better.
Richt and Georgia were making a second Sugar Bowl appearance in three seasons at the start of the year. Florida became a better team in a three-season span from 2006 through 2008, but from 2002 through 2008, Georgia boasted the superior program.
By the time 2008 ended, Virginia Tech had supplanted Florida State as the standard-bearer in the ACC. If seen over a larger period of time, the Seminoles never really ceased to be the ACC’s “it” program, but in the context of the first decade of the century, 2008 witnessed Virginia Tech standing at the top of the mountain along the Atlantic coast.
When 2008 came to a close, Oklahoma was polishing off a sixth Big 12 title in nine seasons. Texas and Mack Brown had only one in that same span; Colorado (2001) and Kansas State (2003) were the only other teams to win the conference.
2008 — seven long years ago. It was the time when three sure-fire College Football Hall of Famers relished both their positions of power and their steady flows of success in a cutthroat profession. Those were the days of wine and roses for Richt, Beamer and Stoops. Prominence in each region appeared likely to continue for a set of coaches who had succeeded at an absurdly high rate.
Yet, just when the music seemed ready to play without end, it stopped.
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When the 2009 season began, no one could have known how the balance of power in the SEC, ACC and Big 12 would shift. Yet, the facts speak for themselves:
Georgia since 2009: no SEC championships, two SEC East championships, no BCS or New Year’s Six bowls.
Virginia Tech since 2009: one ACC championship, two ACC Coastal championships, two BCS/NY6 games, with nothing since 2012.
Oklahoma since 2009: one Big 12 championship, two BCS/NY6 games.
In light of Virginia Tech’s struggles this season, followed by Georgia’s and Oklahoma’s wrenching losses this past weekend, it’s highly likely that none of these programs will win league titles or make New Year’s Six games. If that scenario does indeed come to pass for each of these teams, these three coaches — Richt, Beamer, Stoops — will have gone 2 for 21 in winning conference titles over the past seven years.
That’s jarring, given the Hall of Fame credentials of all three men.
It raises a supremely inconvenient point.
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Richt, Beamer, Stoops — these men have tasted success at or near the highest level. Stoops has won a national title. Beamer and Stoops have both contested it. Richt has come extremely close to being a participant. Yet, once you’ve won at or near that level, how can anything afterward seem remotely satisfying? How can new inspiration be discovered after more than a decade of doing things not only comfortably… but SUCCESSFULLY?
All three of these men have earned the right to orchestrate their exits and also plan a line of succession in each of their communities — Athens, Blacksburg, and Norman. They deserve that much after long periods of extremely fruitful service to their schools.
Yet, after a day like Saturday for Georgia and Oklahoma (with Virginia Tech having suffered through bad losses earlier this season), how much longer will Mark Richt and Bob Stoops enjoy a 9-3 Outback or Holiday Bowl season? For how many more years will Georgia fans not accept a season which fails to collect another SEC championship? For how many more years would Oklahoma fans settle for finishing third behind TCU and Baylor?
Answers will vary on this, and they should create a lot of the drama attached to this piece.
Yet, this is a form of drama no Hall of Fame coach ever wants to confront at a more advanced stage of his professional life.
The misty watercolor memories of 2008 seem like 27 years ago, not seven years ago, for Mark Richt, Frank Beamer, and Bob Stoops. One wonders if any of these esteemed coaches will get the late-career conference championship and moment in the sun their respective resumes cry out for.
Right now, the outlook just doesn’t seem very promising.