Select Richt Thursday comments

Here's some of what Mark Richt had to say this afternoon. One of the writers ran the idea by him of doing the Soulja Boy dance. It was a funny conversation. Richt corrected him that it's "Soulja" not "Soldier" and was kiddingly impressed with himself that he knew that much. Some of that stuff's toward the bottom and in the lead of my Friday notebook:

On practicing at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday:
It might’ve been nicer in the morning than it was later in the afternoon. I know the wind was whipping pretty good today. We got most of it in without a lot of wind and we got most of it in before the sun came up. It came up around 6:55 a.m. if anybody’s wondering when it came up. It was funny. We wanted to make sure we warmed ‘em up real good so we took an extra five minutes to warm ‘em up. And then the very first thing we do after that is, during period one, the first thing we did is a pass skeleton drill. I think the very first play was a long bomb to Mohamed and coach Van, he was cringing because he was in charge of warming them up and if he’d have pulled a hamstring on the first play on a cold morning at the crack of dawn, he’d have probably gotten blamed for it. But he was thankful that nothing bad happened. He was like, ‘Why are you throwing a bomb on the first play?’ And I said, ‘Hey, you’re in charge of warming them up. They need to be ready.’ But anyway, we’re ready.

Did the players drag at all because of the hour?
I’m sure in the locker room they were dragging around, but once we got rolling, it wasn’t bad at all. When the weather’s a little cool, you can’t help but move around a little bit quicker even if you don’t want to. But it wasn’t just terribly cold or anything. The wind was really fairly calm most of the time. It got whipping a little bit, but nothing like it did later in the day.

On Rennie Curran:
Rennie’s catching everybody’s eye, I see, and rightfully so. We had him down for 11 tackles last game and I think Dannell also had 11, if I didn’t forget exactly what they had. But when Rennie and Dannell are in there, they’re both playing very fast right now. But to answer your question directly, Rennie does have a good nose for the ball and he can go get it. He plays low. I would say he was born in a football position and he’s ready to strike at anytime. He just kinda slithers his way through there and gets in on a lot of tackles, hustles. He’s gonna be pretty good – and he’s only a freshman.

You guys come through the week pretty well?
Yeah, pretty good. I don’t think (Jason Johnson) will play this week – he has a burner kinda deal, neck. Other than that, no other injury issues. I’m trying to think if somebody’s coming back. I know we’ve mostly got guys back from previous things. But I don’t think we had anymore setbacks. (He said Quintin Banks, Tony Wilson and Donavon Baldwin should all be availabl on Saturday).

On discovering what the Soulja Boy dance is:
I did a thing for Hero for Children, a little fundraiser thing or helping them get ready to do a fundraiser on campus. Backstage they were like, ‘Coach, you’ve just gotta do the Soulja Boy dance.’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ I had no earthly idea what they were talking about. That’s when I first heard about that. Of course, I’m learning rapidly what that is. I’m not learning how to do it, but at least I know what it is. I think I could recognize the song that they dance to.

On the Richt family trying to get him to do the dance:
They’re working on me, not practicing it, they’re working on me trying to get me to learn how to do it. But see I don’t even know how to do the electric slide yet, so I don’t know if you’re allowed to jump right into the Soulja Boy dance or not. I don’t know if there’s a progression there.

On what him dancing would mean:
That would be out of character, OK. All this other stuff, I didn’t do anything that far out of character.

More on that:
If I’m dancing on the sidelines, someone needs to … I won’t even say.

A little more on that. He was understandably amused by the prospect of him dancing:
If I felt like I could do it and it would look like what it’s supposed to look like, I might consider it.

On some opponents' fans' opinions that this dancing stuff is disrespectful or unsportsmanlike:
I don’t think it’s being disrespectful. I don’t think anybody’s trying to rub something in. It’s not like that’s the first time it ever happened. Those guys have been doing a little bit of that getting ready for a kickoff or something. I’ve seen other teams get their kickoff team and do their little thing and jump up and get fired up. I don’t think anybody’s trying to disrespect anybody. I don’t think you can probably go through the season without making somebody mad at you, but we’re not trying to.

On whether he'd consider moving their practices to the morning:
I would do anything I could to make our schedules better for our players, where they could get to where they need to get and be able to eat. I think we have a very tight schedule right now in the fall, especially for a true freshman. I talked to other people and it just seems like everybody’s true freshmen are just getting worn slap out because of all the mandatory study hall and all the things you’ve gotta ask ‘em to do. I don’t know if trading the time would make it better for them, but if it would, I would consider that. I think sometimes teams do it just because of their university class schedules. Sometimes you do it because you have to do it, this is the only time we could make it work type thing. But I really do want to dig into our fall schedule. Our spring schedule’s not too bad, but our fall schedule’s so busy, I’m gonna look into seeing if there’s a better way. And if it includes doing it in the morning every morning or a couple mornings a week, I’d consider doing that.
That’s not a bad thought. I don’t disagree with that. And the hot days, the early season days where it’s super hot out there, it’d probably be a welcome change to get ‘em in the cooler temperature and like you say more time to recover.

On which players on the team might make good coaches:
When I left Miami, I was by far the least likely to ever become a coach, so I don’t know if you can tell right now. But there’s some guys that would be outstanding and there’s some guys out and about right now that have been through our system that are in high school coaching or just finishing up an opportunity to play in the NFL or whatever, or at least to try to make it, that would be good coaches too. There’s some good candidates out there. I would love to have more University of Georgia guys become our graduate assistants. The ones especially that have been through our system, the way we like to do things, and bought into what we do.