Dan Wolken

USA TODAY Sports

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — During a wide-ranging interview Thursday morning in his office at the University of Miami, it only seemed natural to steer new coach Mark Richt toward the topic of player discipline in light of what happened in the past week at Baylor.

Richt, after all, was central to one of the great Internet memes in the history of the SEC when a raft of key football players at Georgia were suspended for the 2012 opener. Suddenly, “Mark Richt has lost control” became a thing both within the Georgia fan base and outside of it, where it evolved into a shorthand for pretty much any deficiency in the program.

But the irony of “Mark Richt has lost control” as a concept is that Georgia’s annual list of player dismissals and suspensions meant he actually had quite a bit of control. And regardless of whether it was a star player or an expendable backup, Georgia players were going to face discipline for offseason infractions — usually to a greater degree than their counterparts at other SEC schools.

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There were even occasions players dismissed from Georgia resurfaced at other SEC schools and, in the case of former Auburn quarterback Nick Marshall, had a direct hand in putting Richt a little closer to the hot seat.

Yet so warped is the mindset of the college football fan that Richt’s greatest virtue — his willingness to do the right thing for the program, even if it was against his self-interest as a coach trying to keep his job — became something people beat him over the head with time and time again.

“That’s O.K.,” Richt said. “I care about doing the right thing, what’s in the best interest of the team and the best interest of the player. Even when I got let go at Georgia, some of the text messages I got were from guys I had dismissed from the team. They were saying, ‘Coach, thank you, you helped me. You shocked my system where I got my act together and went on in a positive way.’

“My goal isn’t to throw guys off the team. We had a meeting yesterday and I told the guys, ‘I want everybody to be here. But I want everybody to do it the way we’re going to ask you to do it. Everything we’re asking you to do is helping you be a better student, a better person, a better football player. Period.’ ”

It would be nice, particularly in light of the Baylor situation, if college football moved closer to Richt’s way of doing things. And maybe it is, in some ways. It was Georgia, after all, that proposed SEC legislation last year banning transfers who had been dismissed from their previous schools for sexual assault or other forms of sexual or domestic violence. It was passed after a former Georgia player, Jonathan Taylor, enrolled at Alabama despite a pending domestic violence charge only to be dismissed several weeks later following another off-field incident.

And though Richt doesn’t want to come across as holier-than-thou, he is one of the few coaches in college football whose sincerity should not be questioned on the subject of player discipline. His track record — including already at Miami, where he booted kicker Jonathan Semerene after a second DUI in 20 months — suggests he will suspend or dismiss a player in situations where many of his colleagues would simply pull the old “internal matter” card.

But given what we saw at Baylor, where Art Briles put players on the field despite serious allegations of violence and misconduct, wouldn’t you rather have Richt’s approach?

“It’s part of loving ’em,” Richt said. “Discipline, if you break down what the word means, love is at the heart of that definition. If you have children, if you love them, you’re going to discipline them. If you don’t love them, you’re going to let them do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it and they’ll be a trainwreck.

“If I love my guys, I’m going to try to help discipline them and train them to do this, this, this and this so when you leave here you’ll be successful in life. If you don’t want to do that, you don’t need to be a part of this team. But I’m telling you, if you do these things, it will help you be a great player, it will help you be a great person, it will help you get your degree. Everything I do is for your benefit to bless your life, your wife, your kids and your grandkids, so just understand that first of all.

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“And most of the guys get it. Some guys blow it. They make mistakes. Sometimes it’s a minor thing. You’re late, 5:30 next morning you’re here running. Miss a class, it’ll be a little rougher for you. If you miss too many classes, you miss a game. If you constantly won’t comply, just go somewhere else.”

But here’s the rub: Richt never won a national title at Georgia. And though it’s impossible to pinpoint one thing that could have gotten him over the hump, Georgia fans will forever be torn over their devotion to the so-called “Georgia Way” and their burning desire to be a little more like Alabama.

If the roaring, full house at Georgia’s spring game was any indication, the pendulum in Athens has swung to the latter. Kirby Smart isn’t going to get everything he wants — Georgia’s stricter-than-industry-standard drug policy is staying intact for now, anyway — but little by little the Sabanization of the Bulldogs is taking hold.

We’ll soon find out whether that means more Saban-style discipline and willingness to give players as many chances as they need if they’re good enough to deliver titles, but the hunch here is it will. And Georgia fans will cheer just as loudly for that as they did puffing out their chests about how Richt did it the “right way.”

But the truth is, now is as good a time as any to appreciate the way Richt does it. Though he’s living a new lifestyle and experiencing a new challenge in trying to rebuild Miami, that won’t change. Miami won’t be perfect, but Richt won’t ever be afraid of making a tough decision that might help keep his campus safer. Lost control? Just the opposite.

“I think you have to be consistent in your discipline whether he’s a walk on or whether he’s a five-star guy,” Richt said. “Whether it’s Todd Gurley or Joe Smith, it’s got to be consistent, because if you treat one guy this way with the rules and another guy a different way and favor one group of guys, you’re going to lose your team eventually and you’re not doing what’s right.”