UGA’s players (and possibly its coaches?) clearly didn’t want to be at the New Orleans last night, and it’s not because they don’t like gumbo. I’m a North Carolina native – and a country boy – so I’m going to say what happened the way we say it in Lumberton: they “threw their suckers in the dirt.”

I’m not going to single anyone out, but UGA players were blowing Twitter up during the Clemson-Notre Dame game, lamenting the Playoff Committee’s faulty decision making in choosing the four best teams for the Playoff. And they didn’t hold back. They were brash. Arrogant. Haughty. Loud. And, based on last night’s lackluster performance, UGA players’ bodies were at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, but their minds were out west in Levi’s Stadium…where they will not be playing, because a team that beat them will be. UGA showed everyone watching (including NFL scouts) that, if they weren’t playing in the Playoff, then they weren’t playing at all.

Another country boy saying: Tell the truth and shame the devil.

Here’s the truth. UGA players being comfortable with publicly blasting the Playoff Committee is, without question, a leadership failure. Mic. Drop.

UGA is at a crossroads. I see an opportunity on the other side of what I hope is a nasty taste left in the mouths of the ‘Dawgs leadership (and when I say leadership, I’m including coaches and players). That opportunity is that somebody gets to step up right now. Not during spring practice – today – and cut entitled apathy off at the pass before it becomes an epidemic.

Coach Smart hasn’t asked me to come back and speak to the team since his first year at UGA (and I’m probably dramatically decreasing the odds that he will invite me back now, but that’s fine…sometimes you have to get mad before change can happen), and he hasn’t hired me as a leadership development consultant (yet), but I’m extending some free advice because I know all too well what can happen when an athletes’ character is left unchecked.

Keep in mind, I’m assuming someone is going to step up. I’m assuming someone is going to take the word of a former player who is not speaking from a sanctimonious high horse, but instead from the 20/20 hindsight wisdom of a person who took his foot off the character development pedal the second someone in authority at UGA told me I was going to be a millionaire.

Consider this as the kind of advice an uncle would give his nephews.

Uncle Tim’s wisdom…

Compete. Every game. No exceptions. Ever.