Television doing Dawgs no favor

ATHENS – The television networks haven’t done Georgia a lot of favors this season.

The Bulldogs have suffered the indignity of playing three non-televised games and were stuck kicking off at 9 p.m. in Oxford, Miss. This week, though, is different.

Saturday’s 12:30 p.m. start time against No. 5 Auburn couldn’t be much better for the Bulldogs (6-4, 3-4 SEC). They can thank Lincoln Financial Sports, which will broadcast the game, or, more specifically, the three networks that passed on the game to allow it to fall to LFS.

“For us, it’s probably a benefit,” Coach Mark Richt said. “Most fans get a little bit more electric in the nighttime. Whatever the electricity is coming from, I don’t know, but it tends to be a little bit louder and a little bit wilder at night.

“If we can find some success early, it might keep the crowd from getting going.”

The Tigers (9-1, 5-1) have played three games that kicked off at 11:30 CT, and they haven’t dazzled in any of them. In those games: they started slowly in a 34-0 win over Mississippi State, lost 27-10 to Arkansas and narrowly defeated Ole Miss 23-17.

Auburn quarterback Brandon Cox said the Arkansas game was his team’s worst of the season, but added, “I don’t think (the time) had anything to do with us playing bad.”

Wide receiver Courtney Taylor is puzzled about why people would make a connection between start time and sluggish performance. “I’ll never understand why people say, ‘It’s an early game, you guys must not have been (fired) up,’” he said. “That’s not the case, trust me.”