Tennessee running back Tauren Poole answers questions Thursday during SEC media days at the Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover. (Doug Finger | NYT Regional Media Group)
HOOVER — Georgia coach Mark Richt and the Bulldogs begin the 2011 season with one challenge after another.
The opening game in the Chick-Fil-A kickoff game in the Georgia Dome against Boise State will provide Georgia with somewhat of a home-game type atmosphere.
Richt said playing in such a high-profile game is a “big deal” for the Bulldogs.
Boise State, he said, is “a team that as you watch their film, you realize that they are a special football team in the way they approach it.”
Just how special is Boise? Considering the Broncos are “the winningest college football team in America over the last 10 seasons,” Richt knows.
“I've probably never seen anybody play any harder than they play as a team down after down, film after film,” he said. “They are a very confident team.”
In week two comes Georgia's SEC opener against South Carolina, last year's SEC east division winner a season ago when Georgia finished 6-7.
“Of course, everybody is kind of picking them to win the east,” Richt said. “So what a tremendous challenge for us.”
The importance of those two games isn't lost on Georgia cornerback Brandon Boykin.
“If you win those first two games, you get national talk and potentially talk about winning the SEC if you beat South Carolina,” he said. “They're a really strong team. Taking care of those first two games is really vital to our season, not just from a standpoint of getting to the national championship, but our pride as a Georgia Bulldog.”
“This has been an incredible journey for myself, our assistant coaches at Auburn, our players, our fans, our Auburn family, just an incredible past year,” Auburn coach gene Chizik said of the Tigers storybook 2010 season that ended with a BCS national tile. “I know we've all moved on.”
That's especially true for 20-plus seniors from last year's team.
“There's going to be a lot of new names and a lot of new faces you're going to have to get used to this year,” Chizik said. “We have a very young team.”
Second-year University of Tennessee coach Derek Dooley is dealing with a Volunteers squad that is “probably the youngest football team I've ever been a part of and seen.”
Looking at the roster before he got to media days, Dooley easily clicked off the numbers: 57 freshmen and sophomores, 24 juniors and seniors representing about 70 percent underclassmen.
Of the 10 seniors, only two are returning starters.
“That's our makeup,” Dooley said. “What I felt like was important when we turned the page from last year was we had to present this data to our football team and make a decision from the beginning that we weren't going to allow youth to be an excuse for failure. And we're not going to do that.”
Kentucky coach Joker Phillips and the Wildcats want to climb to greater heights with its football program during the 2011 season.
“Our theme this year is ‘Rise,'” Phillips said, of a concept developed by Kentucky's marketing department. “We have shown that we at Kentucky can compete in this league.
Part of making a rise, involves challenging players “to fill the void of some of the departure players we just lost,” and “to make sure” that's what they do.
“In order for this program to continue to rise we have got to do the things that are necessary for it to rise,” Phillips said. ‘Rise,' meaning not just going to bowl games, but being able to contend for championships in this league.”
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