There are two types of upsets. There's the type that garners the victor national attention and the type that results in infamy for the loser. Georgia Southern's win over Florida was the latter.
Down in Georgia, there is a bit of a battle over which is the real GSU between Georgia State and Georgia Southern. However in Gainesville those initials will always be associated with Georgia Southern. The story goes that back when Will Muschamp was an assistant under Nick Saban at LSU, Georgia Southern was being discussed as a possible money game opponent. Muschamp, then the defensive coordinator watched the tape of their wishbone offense, took the tape to Saban and asked if he'd seen them play. He hadn't. Saban watched the tape, walked down to the athletic director's office and told him they weren't playing the Eagles.
Saban waited until he had a national championship defense at Alabama to schedule Southern and even then the Eagles piled on 341 yards and 21 points against 2011's BCS national champions.
Right about now, Muschamp is probably wishing he'd followed his own advice. Georgia Southern isn't at their best. They aren't making a push for their seventh FCS championship and they aren't on the same level as the 2007 Appalachian State Mountaineers or two-time defending FCS Champion North Dakota State.
If there's one thing we assumed Muschamp's Gators excelled at, it was swallowing up opposing rushing attacks. Instead, the nation's 15th-ranked rushing defense met a triple-headed option chimera it couldn't chomp on. Southern rushed for 459 yards and backup quarterback Jerick McKinnon scored the game-winning touchdown on a jet sweep up the right sideline. Injuries have wreaked havoc over the Gators program, but a loss to Georgia Southern, in combination with his comments after suffering their fifth-straight in-conference loss to South Carolina have expeditied his death sentence.
"You know, these kids have fought their butts off. There's a lot of negativity out there, and some of our fans need to get a grip." said Muschamp in his postgame press conference last week ."They really do. They got a bunch of kids in that locker room fighting their butt off."
"They can criticize me all you want, I'm great with that. They pay me enough money to deal with it. But those kids don't. They really don't. And they fought their butts off, and they continue to fight and play hard. Nobody's ever questioned their efforts." Muschamp added.
It's been strange enough watching a former UGA defensive captain try to fit in with his alma mater's biggest rival and espouse Florida Gator virtues as if he'd been dong it his whole life. He's an outsider in a strange world at Florida. Anybody that's watched UGA football this season knows that the Bulldogs defense is a sieve. Maybe Muschamp isn't a double agent tasked with bringing down the Gators program from inside, however, it looks like the Muschamp sabotage may be over soon. There probably won't be a mulligan for 2013. Muchamp is a brilliant defensive mind, but he still has much to learn about running a college football program. Georgia Southern may have extinguished his flame at Florida, but if Muschamp heads back to Sanford as a defensive coordinator, UGA will be the beneficiary.
