I've been in Athens for about seven months now, and never has there been an outcry and gnashing of teeth as you'd heard Tuesday. That was when the Associated Press and USA Today made the appalling decision to leapfrog USC over Georgia in their weekly football polls.

This tragedy was not taken lightly, judging from the response both in comments on our Web site and the ever philosophical and educational forums known as "sports talk radio shows."

Look, everyone loves to be No. 1 and the Bulldogs certainly earned their preseason ranking. But for some reason these silly poll voters overlooked UGA's solid and workman-like home win over over a team from the former Div I-AA and instead focused on the Trojans traveling 3000 miles to beat a BCS (albeit a mid-level-at-best ACC) team like they stole something, and on national TV no less.

Mark Richt isn’t downplaying Georgia’s No. 1 ranking, he’s embracing it.

The Associated Press media members ranked the Bulldogs No. 1 Saturday. Just like the coaches who vote in the USA Today coaches’ poll.

Instead of saying it’s how you finish that matters, the Georgia coach took a different approach with the dual No. 1 rankings.

“To me, I can’t think of any other word than just `excitement,’” Richt said after a Saturday morning practice. “I think it’s exciting for our program that people feel that way about us. It fires me up. There’s a lot of responsibility that goes along with it, but let’s face it, the football world thinks we’ve got a shot and they are holding us in high esteem right now. We need to do everything in our power to keep it there.”