Millard Grimes: Don't forget 2015 Bulldogs

In the fruit-basket turnover of emotions, coaches and loyalties that has followed the University of Georgia's dismissal of Mark Richt as head football coach, one group of Bulldogs has been largely overlooked, if not forgotten: the 2015 football team.

The team still has another, very important game to play. Presumably, most Georgia fans want them to win it, although that doesn't seem to be a priority for the athletic department. The 2015 Bulldogs will be playing in the former Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, which is the fifth-oldest bowl among some 40 bowls that will be played this year. Georgia played in the first Gator Bowl back in 1948, tying Maryland. Its opponent this year will be Penn State, one of the storied football programs in the country. The two teams last met 33 years ago in the 1983 Sugar Bowl when both were undefeated and ranked number one and number two in the nation.

Georgia, with Herschel Walker at running back, was favored but lost 27-24, as Todd Blackledge, the Penn State quarterback who is now a well-known television commentator, lead the Nittany Lions to victory.

Both teams come to this year's meeting with much less on the line. Penn State (7-5) is still recovering from the scandal that cost Joe Paterno his job and resulted in disgrace for a longtime assistant coach who was convicted of sexual abuse.

Penn State is now coached by James Franklin, former Vanderbilt coach, who led that program to its best record in years, including a damaging defeat of Georgia in 2013.

Georgia's neglected team of 2015 goes to the Gator Bowl without its head coach, its offensive and defensive coordinators from the recent season, and with a fractured fan base.

Any chance for victory will require a large Georgia crowd that supports the team. A victory would be the 10th for the 2015 team, for an overall record of 10-3, including victories over Georgia Tech, Auburn, South Carolina and Missouri. The players can be justly proud. They endured a season of discord among the coaching staff and the loss of their most dynamic player, Nick Chubb, injured early in the sixth game against Tennessee. It was an emotional as well as physical loss, and while football never shows us its alternative outcomes, Georgia almost certainly would have won with Chubb still in the game.

Georgia's dismissed head coach is now in Miami: His appointed successor, Kirby Smart, is preparing Alabama for its national championship playoff games: Jeremy Pruitt, the former defensive coordinator, will also be helping prepare Alabama for the playoffs; the former offensive coordinator, Brian Schottenheimer, has resigned and apparently left. The new coaches hired by Smart are not on board for the Gator Bowl, which is now known as the Taxslayer Bowl, an incongruous (defined in the dictionary as absurd) title.

Georgia will be coached by two assistants from the past season, Bryan McClendon and Thomas Brown; the team and the fans should certainly be behind them. Neither is sure what he will be doing next season. Both are former Bulldog players and Georgia high school stars, Brown as a running back, McClendon as a quarterback. They came to UGA as recruits and have stayed as assistant coaches most of their postgraduate years. They are true and tried Bulldogs.

But the situation for all the teams and coaches involved should not have come down to this. The Naval Academy's athletic director voiced a valid point last week on a report that its coach would be leaving after its game with Army. "It's been a distraction. This is the biggest game of the year. We're an institution and we are a football program steeped in team and not about individuals: and all of a sudden this is about the coach's pending resignation.

Navy won the game, the coach resigned, but the idea is right. These coaching defections or firings should come after the biggest games of the season are played, especially when they are bowl games, or championship games the players aim for their entire careers. Whatever they may say, coaches like Smart cannot humanly keep their attention and emotions from being divided, especially with teams they are competing against for recruits.

Another former Georgia player, Will Muschamp, was in the postseason turnover, leaving Auburn after one season as defensive coordinator to take the head coach's job at South Carolina.

That sets up an intriguing recruiting battle amongst Georgia, Auburn, Alabama and South Carolina for the best players in the Southeast, not to mention Miami, which will have Richt, who is not a bad recruiter. The situation does not favor UGA. Richt's decisive mistake may have been the failure to aggressively recruit Deshawn Watson, from nearby Gainesville, who went to Clemson and almost won the Heisman Trophy his sophomore year, while leading Clemson to number one in the nation.

Georgia concentrated on Bryce Ramsey, the outstanding high school quarterback in the state that year. Ramsey was groomed for two years to be the 2015 quarterback but ended up as the punter, while playing few downs at quarterback even though quarterback was an obvious chink in Georgia's offense.

Georgia faces a challenge in 2016, which is not a reflection on Kirby Smart, who may become a great coach, but has never coached a game as the head man. All Bulldog fans should certainly be pulling for this gallant 2015 team, and for coaches McClendon and Brown as they represent the University in the TaxSlayer Bowl. A victory will be a consoling factor in a not all that bad season and a very upsetting off-season.

Millard Grimes, editor of the Columbus Enquirer from 1961-69 and founder of the Phenix Citizen. is author of "The Last Linotype: The Story of Georgia and Its Newspapers Since World War II."

This story was originally published December 21, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Millard Grimes: Don't forget 2015 Bulldogs ."