There are but three things that bring me great joy in life: One of them obviously is Georgia Bulldog football. Another is great literature.

The third, incidentally, is a Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut hot out of the grease. But that’s a pure, sublime joy which bears no resemblance or relation whatsoever to the feelings I grappled with after last season’s 41-31 UGA victory over Mississippi State. So literary catharsis it is.

It took some thinking to figure out what great writer was capable of expressing the type of joy tinged with fatalist bitterness that I felt after watching Georgia scrape out an ugly win against arguably the worst team in the SEC. There really aren’t many people who have plumbed the complicated depths of emotion one feels after that kind of shabby squeaker. To find an appropriate merchant of melancholy I had to travel all the way across the world, and back to the 19th century. Ladies and gents, please enjoy the following recap of the 2024 Mississippi State game in the style of……Russian novelist and one man laugh riot Leo Tolstoy. Enjoy.

On the Nature of Athletic Truth and the Melancholy of Victory

If you, dear reader, seek the comfortable warmth of celebration, the simple joy that comes from reading of triumphant young men carrying leather ball across measured lines of grass, then I implore you to cease reading these tortured words and seek elsewhere for your solace. There exist, I am certain, other chroniclers who will speak to you of Carson Beck’s thirty-six completions from forty-eight attempts, of his four hundred and fifty-nine yards passing through the autumn air—statistics that gleam like polished silver in the hands of those who prefer the brightness of numbers to the shadows of truth.

There are scribes, no doubt, who will tell you of defensive linemen rising like titans against the earthbound assault of running backs, of the righteous Bulldogs holding the Mississippi State legion to a mere seventy-nine yards rushing on twenty-six attempts. This too occurred, and those who write of it do not lie. Yet to speak only of such things is to mistake the surface of a lake for its depths, to confuse the smile upon a face with the thoughts that move behind the eyes.

Still you remain? Then I must ask: what is it that draws us to seek discomfort when comfort lies so readily at hand? Perhaps it is the same impulse that drives a man to press his hand against a wound, to confirm that the pain is real, that what troubles him is not merely the creation of a restless mind. The same impulse that drives him to order the sushi from room service at the Starkville Ramada. A need to feel something, anything. Even all-consuming nausea.

We Are What We Are

Six games into a season—as sixteen years into a life, or six decades into a nation’s existence—the essential character reveals itself. There are those who will protest this assertion, who will speak of miraculous transformations, of teams that rise like phoenixes from the ashes of mediocrity. Yes, such things occur, as miracles sometimes visit the devout. But more often, far more often, what we are in October is what we shall remain in December, just as the man who is cruel to his servants at thirty will be cruel to his grandchildren at seventy.

This Georgia team—these young men in their red and their black, with their dreams of glory and their parents’ hopes pressed upon their shoulders like invisible weights—this team is what it is. Between the third and fifth best in a conference of ambitious institutions, bearing flaws that will prevent them from reaching the summit they so desperately seek. To say this causes pain to those who love them, who have invested hearts and minds in their success. They will call me cruel, perhaps even treacherous. They will write me letters in the dark hours after midnight, their judgment clouded by spirits and sorrow. But their anger is not truly with me—it is with the terrible democracy of truth, which grants no special privileges to our desires.

Our Weaknesses Define Us More Than Our Strengths

In the great game of football, as in the great game of life, it is not our virtues that determine our fate, but our failures. The opposing coaches—men like generals studying maps before battle—they do not spend their sleepless nights devising ways to stop what we do well. They seek instead our soft places, our unguarded moments, the gaps in our armor where a well-placed thrust might find its bloody mark.

The secondary—those young men charged with preventing the swift receivers from running free beneath the vast sky—they have become a liability. Tonight they made a freshman quarterback, a boy in his second game of consequence, appear as seasoned as a veteran. Michael Van Buren, barely past his youth, threw for over three hundred yards and three touchdowns. After a tentative beginning, he found his confidence, and with it, he found the spaces in Georgia’s defense where doubt had taken root. Then he harvested the fruits of that doubt.

Daylen Everette, athletic and willing, fights like a man defending his home. Yet his eyes wander when they should be fixed, and once beaten, like a man ruminating upon misspent youth he cannot recover the ground he has lost. Next week, when Isaiah Bond runs past him for a hundred and twenty-five yards and two touchdowns, we will remember this moment and recognize it as prophecy fulfilled.

The receivers—those meant to be the swift arrows in Beck’s quiver—they are not the weapons that Ladd McConkey was. Arian Smith caught five passes for one hundred and thirty-four yards and a touchdown, yes, but he also dropped passes in the way that a man with trembling hands drops precious things. Dillon Bell fights for every catch like a man fighting for his life, but the separation from defenders comes too rarely.

Discipline is the Foundation of All Achievement

Against Mississippi State—a team that lost to Toledo as surely as winter follows autumn—Georgia’s players tackled better than they had all season. This was progress, like a sick man taking his first steps from his bed chamber after a long illness. But I am not convinced that this improvement signals a cure rather than merely a temporary remission.

The time to learn proper tackling is in the heat of August, when the sun beats down mercilessly and every repetition feels like a small death. You do not learn such things in October, any more than you learn virtue in old age or wisdom in the midst of crisis. Poor tackling, like poor character, stems from a lack of discipline—that quality which separates the civilized from the savage, the champion from the also-ran.

All successful football teams are alike; all dysfunctional football teams are dysfunctional in their own way. Today the defense found new ways to fail, giving up large gains not through missed tackles but through blown coverages, through eyes that wandered when they should have remained fixed. Daylen Everette and Julian Humphrey both allowed receivers to run past them while their attention was captured by movement in the backfield—the football equivalent of a sentry watching little sparrows while the enemy approaches the gate.

The penalties too spoke of undisciplined minds. Leading 34-10, with Mississippi State wounded and the crowd sensing victory, Georgia should have delivered the killing blow. Instead, Chris Cole wrapped himself around a receiver like a man embracing his own destruction, earning a flag that extended the drive. Then Chaz Chambliss, having made a fine play to sack the quarterback, could not resist the theatrical gesture of removing the boy’s helmet, earning another penalty that gifted the opponents another chance.

These were not the actions of a disciplined team, but of young men who had not yet learned that in football, as in life, it is often what we do not do that determines our fate. The visitors used these gifts to score, and momentum—that invisible force that governs contests as surely as gravity governs falling objects—began to shift.

The Melancholy of Truth

Not all victories are equal, just as not all defeats carry the same weight. To struggle against Mississippi State is to struggle against one’s own limitations, to reveal oneself as smaller than one’s dreams. Elite teams—those destined for greatness—they dispose of inferior opponents with the casual efficiency of a farmer harvesting grain. They do not play down to their competition, do not give lesser teams hope through their own lack of focus.

This Georgia team has played with fire all season, like a man who tests his luck by walking close to cliffs for the perverse joy of seeing a few pebbles fall towards the sea below. Do this enough times, and eventually the edge crumbles beneath your feet. The team that showed up for large portions of this game would be destroyed in Austin, dismantled before a national television audience like a peasant’s hut in a hurricane.

I know these words bring pain to those who love this team, who have invested their hopes in these young men’s success. But what service would I perform by telling comfortable lies? What kindness would there be in false reassurance? The truth may be harsh, but it is the only foundation upon which improvement can be built.

Six games into a season, as six years into a marriage or six decades into a life, the essential character has revealed itself. What we are is what we are, and what we are fills me with worry rather than hope. The time for fixing these flaws was in April, during spring practice, or in August, during fall camp. Now we can only watch and hope that young men might transcend their limitations through sheer force of will.

I will still cheer for them, still live and die with each play, for what else can a man do when he has given his heart to a cause? But I will not close my eyes to what stands before me. Hard truths do not become falsehoods because we find them unpleasant, and flawed teams do not become perfect overnight through wishful thinking.

Until we meet again in victory or defeat, in triumph or in sorrow—

Go ‘Dawgs!!!