Georgia Bulldogs Football: Is UGA in Midst of Image Crisis?

The hits just keep on coming for the Georgia Bulldogs.

And I'm not talking about their football practices, either.

Less than a week after Damon Evans was arrested and forced to resign his post as the program's athletic director, one of the Bulldogs' top recruits has also landed himself in hot water.

Stemming from an undisclosed school system rules infraction, Butler High School senior, and the No. 2 quarterback recruit in the country, Christian LeMay was handed a 30-day suspension from his school.

During this suspension, LeMay will be unable to attend school or school functions, including football practices or games.

Just mere months ago, Georgia kicked quarterback Zach Mettenberger off the team as a result of conduct issues, which turned out to be an arrest for two counts of sexual battery.

While the school handled the Evans and Mettenberger situations to the best of its ability, it remains to be seen if LeMay's suspension will affect his standing with the Bulldogs.

No matter the case, each incident casts a shadow over the entire Georgia athletics program.

In the game of football—as in the game of life—image can be everything.

And whether that image is a disgraced athletic director's mugshot or a high school student at a disciplinary hearing, the result is the same.

The program becomes a joke.

I'll admit, it makes for a pretty good one.

"A dismissed quarterback, a disgraced athletic director and a suspended recruit all walk into a bar..."

And all this on the heels of a five-loss season.

I've already heard them laughing. From Atlanta to Gainesville, and beyond.

And it isn't to say that these aren't genuinely good people that just made a mistake. That very well could be the case.

But the public has a tendency for remembering us for our mistakes as opposed to our strong suits.

Georgia isn't USC. It can't get away with glaring image problems and still maintain its status as one of the premier programs in the nation.

And that isn't fair to guys like head coach Mark Richt who have done everything right over the years, who play by the the rules yet don't get the respect that they deserve.

But that's the way it is. It all comes down to image and right now, Georgia's isn't very pretty.

But there is a simple fix. It won't satisfy everyone because haters will always find a reason to hate a program, but it will help dampen the negative feelings from fans and neutral observers.

Ready?

Just win football games.

The best way to make people forget about the negative aspects of the program is to be so good that they can't ignore the positives.

Right now there's little else to look at but these negative incidents, but a 10 or 11-win season can do wonders for public opinion.

Whether Georgia can do that or not remains to be seen.

But if it wants its image to be more red and less black, it has to be done, and it has to be done now.