What Georgia football learned from Blockbuster Video that got it back to the title game

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LOS ANGELES — It was the top company in its field. Blockbuster ruled the home video market at the start of this century, and there was no reason to think it was going away. So when the people who ran a fledgling competitor came to Blockbuster offices sometime in the year 2000 and offered themselves up to be bought for $50 million, the answer was no, we don’t want Netflix. It has gone down as one of the most disastrous business decisions of all time, an example of extreme hubris, and an offseason lesson for the Georgia football team.

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“Blockbuster got complacent. And Netflix continued to grow,” Georgia defensive back Javon Bullard said. “That’s the same thing with us. You can’t get back to where we are now with complacency.”

The lesson came via a talk from Drew Brannon, a sports psychologist with Amplos Consulting, who is contracted to work with the Georgia program. During a speech in the team meeting room, Brannon used the Blockbuster example as one of several organizations that were at the top, assumed they would stay there, and thus did not.

“How the mighty fall: We studied that a lot,” Georgia linebacker Nolan Smith said. “That was one of the things we took into ourselves, is looking in ourselves and try to worry about us before worrying about anyone else. Complacency and egos, worrying about yourself, me-me-me.”

And here Georgia is, back in the national championship, a win over TCU away from being the first repeat college football champions in a decade.

There are plenty of reasons why Georgia is back in the title game: A very good offense, a very good defense, the combination of great talent and coaching. But a big one is the thought process behind the scenes: Rather than rest on the laurels of the program’s first national title in 41 years, the offseason mantra was about maintaining. Be Netflix, not Blockbuster.

“It’s been a continuous theme,” defensive tackle Zion Logue said. “It was us wanting to write our own destiny. Not being looked at as the same, not being compared to the team last year. Wanting to make our own narrative, and I think we’ve done that all along the year, not just defense but offense as well. Just keep proving who we are every week.”

For a lot of people, the story could have ended last year. Think of the many Georgia fans who were ready to sell their souls for one national title, who would trade 10 bad seasons just to celebrate that one great moment. The years of watching SEC rivals win titles — Florida three times, Auburn once and almost twice, Alabama so many times, even Tennessee — along with Georgia’s near-misses had created a desperation level that ended with a giant exhale in Indianapolis the night of Jan. 10, 2022.

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Kirby Smart understood it, being a Georgia kid, that one brought home an end to the drought. But he also understood, having worked at Alabama all those years, that it’s about consistency.

“I think Kirby drives that,” offensive coordinator Todd Monken said. “And when a head coach drives that, and he drives it for us, and he drives it to them, and then you hear them say those things later, then you know you’ve hit them. But ultimately it’s having the talent that does that. Because if you’re not talented enough, you can say all those things, but somebody’s still going to beat you.”

Nobody has yet this year, and Monken is right about talent being the main factor. But conversations with players this week revealed thoughts on how this Georgia team avoided the pitfalls of laurel-resting.

Stetson Bennett coming back for this season was a big one, per multiple players. The quarterback could have ridden off into the sunset but instead came back, risking his legacy. That sent a message similar to how the return of Nick Chubb, Sony Michel, Lorenzo Carter and Davin Bellamy set the tone for the 2017 season.

“We wouldn’t be here without Stetson,” Smith said. “We play great defense. But the drive and the leadership that comes from the quarterback seat is something that you have to have to play as a good football team. … Just the fact that people have trust in him, and people who trust start buying in. Just the fact we have a great quarterback who buys into the program himself.”

Smith has some other strong thoughts. A senior who would have been drafted last year, Smith returned and ended up suffering a season-ending injury. He’s stayed around the team as a de-factor student assistant, a leader and unofficial conscience of the team. And on Saturday, at national championship media day, he opined on another reason Georgia is here and others are not: An over-reliance on NIL deals, as Smith sees it.

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“You see why programs are falling apart, they’re trying to put NIL deals on top of stuff that just — it doesn’t make sense to me,” Smith said. “Realistically guys make a lot of money off NIL deals if you’re an offensive player. But it’s a team sport, it’s a team game, you need 22 players to get to this spot that we’re in right now. We can’t have 11 guys worrying about if they’re making 15 bands ($15,000) a month and they’re going to be your starters.”

Smith didn’t offer any specifics on other teams, but his point was clear: Georgia was unselfish. That may be easy to say now, after the Bulldogs went 14-0. Winning tends to keep teams together. But other players did point to motivational reasons for all that winning.

Kelee Ringo had the seminal moment of last year’s championship and could dine out on that for the rest of his life in Georgia. But he also knew not to let that be the pinnacle of his career. He drew motivation from the idea the team would have a drop-off. And then to silence any questions that emerged as the season came on.

“The doubters, how much they were telling us our chances are much lower this year, to being able to be in the same situation we are right now,” Ringo said. “And being continuously doubted throughout the year: for example, the Tennessee game, the Ohio State game. And also more than that, just continuing to stay true to ourselves, and know that we’re better than some say we are.”

AD Mitchell caught the game-winning touchdown in last year’s national championship. He missed almost all of this season with a high ankle sprain but returned to play a full allotment in the Peach Bowl — where he also caught the game-winning touchdown.

As another national championship game approaches, Mitchell reflected on those offseason discussions.

“We talked about how the mighty stay mighty, and how the mighty fall,” Mitchell said. “The mighty stay mighty when they’re humble, they keep working, they just keep their nose in the ground and keep working. They don’t look at the accomplishments they had. How the mighty fall is they become complacent. And that’s one thing this team and the coaching staff, we always want to work, we always to be better, at everything we do.”

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Why did it resonate?

“Because we want to make history. We don’t want to be a one-shot wonder or anything like that,” Mitchell said. “We want to continue to build and continue to be great.”

You may recall the mantra entering last year’s championship game: Burn the boats. That was also from a Drew Brannon speech to the team leading up to the rematch with Alabama. You’re here and not looking back, Brannon told the Bulldogs, just like a 16th-century conquistador told his troops as they went to fight the Aztecs: The boats are burned, you can’t leave, you have to stay and fight together. When Georgia won, Smart and players talked about it.

A few months later, Brannon was back in front of the team talking about Blockbuster.

“It’s one thing to tell a story. It’s another to tell a story that’s meaningful and that our players will understand,” Georgia defensive coordinator Will Muschamp said. “Burn the boats last year going into the national championship game. Great and talented. This is it, this is it, this is all we’ve got. But then changing the narrative here and there, that keeps our players interested. And it relates well with our team. And it’s a message that coach Smart wants delivered, and I think it’s been huge for us.”

It actually didn’t resonate much at the time for Broderick Jones, Georgia’s starting left tackle, but he’s started to think about it more as the season went on. There were plenty of other things mentioned, a few other examples, but Blockbuster-Netflix was a way to relate it in a way the players could understand. The thrust of the message: Don’t live off one year.

“It’s starting to hit me a little more, just because of innovation, being able to evolve,” Jones said. “I believe that’s what I took most from it, just being able to evolve. I think it was a great thing to bring up. They talk about a lot of things, but that was probably the one that hit home the most.”

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The idea of running it back took a while to catch on even among the Georgia fan base. When a gas station a few blocks from the team facility posted: “Dawgs Run It Back” in late November, it may have been the first in the Athens area to post the sentiment. Everyone seemed to still be in the afterglow of Indianapolis.

There were good reasons to feel that way. Even some on the team, such as kicker Jack Podlesny, remembered the feeling after the game: Oh no, we’re losing all these not only great players but great leaders. It wasn’t until spring practice that he realized they could be great again. And eventually, the next stage in the process hit Podlesny.

“It really built off the year before. At first it was: How can we build the program to where we want it to be, and now it was: OK, how can we sustain this?” Podlesny said. “As in how do the mighty fall. We don’t want to be the mighty that fall.”

(Top photo: Brett Davis / USA Today)