What might’ve been murmurs about the off-field issues for Georgia’s football program have graduated to full-blown chatter in recent days with another arrest of a player. And the continuing nature of these problems, particularly those around dangerous driving and speeding, have made head coach Kirby Smart and the Bulldogs the butt of plenty of jokes.
Even from unexpected sources.
While most college football fans remember Jake Olson when he was featured on SportsCenter’s “My Wish” series as a child, then going blind, who connected with the USC football program under Pete Carroll. Olson would grow up without eyesight, but go on to join the USC football team as a long snapper, participating in a handful of games.
And Olson, whose grace and perspective on going blind even as a kid was an inspiration, used his lack of eyesight to set up his joke in response to a prompt from On3’s J.D. PicKell about “absolute” truths in college football.
“I could’ve driven to practice if I were to have long snapped at Georgia,” Olson said on social media.
While Olson can certainly afford to make light of the situation online, public pressure and scrutiny continues to ratchet up on Smart.
Smart has said in the past that players have faced internal punishments for off-field issues and more recently revealed that the Bulldogs’ NIL collective has been, in essence, fining players for off-field problems.
However, whatever has been deployed to try and fix the problem behavior in Athens has yet to take hold and Smart and Co. will likely need to keep searching for answers. Because as past events have shown, being made fun of online for dangerous driving is among the least-harmful, shortest-lasting consequences for Georgia, its players and staff.