When they sang “Auld Lang Syne” this year, the vast majority of sports fans in Northeast Georgia must have meant it. If ever there was year for old acquaintance to be forgot and never brought to mind, 2009 was it.

The Bulldogs floundered on the football field, the Falcons fell back to earth and the Braves were flat-out mediocre. None of the teams were truly bad, and that only made matters worse, because nothing hurts like hope.

At least when a team has no chance, its fans don’t carry the burden of expectation from week to week and game to game. But most of 2009’s teams were just good enough to make you believe, just cruel enough to flash excellence before falling back in line with the commoners.

And those, as legions of former Mark Richt and Bobby Cox supporters will tell you, are the most frustrating kind of teams to follow.

Even the teams that treated us to their successes — Georgia Tech and Gainesville football — ended their seasons on a sour note.

So in the interest of putting the past where it belongs and in the hopes that we’ll take a cup of kindness yet, here are a few predictions for 2010.

Georgia won’t get Kirby Smart as its defensive coordinator ... but it won’t matter.

Most Bulldog fans have considered Smart, the man ostensibly in charge of Alabama’s defense, the No. 1 option since Willie Martinez was finally vanquished last month. But Smart doesn’t carry the same status in the Richt’s mind or Georgia wouldn’t have already made overtures to Virginia Tech’s Bud Foster, LSU’s John Chavis, and others.

At first blush, it doesn’t make sense that Smart would leave a program on the cusp of becoming the next college football dynasty. The two arguments for the move include his loyalty to his alma mater and getting out from under Nick Saban’s domineering thumb.

But if Georgia was Smart’s dream destination, would he have already left a UGA job twice in the last 10 years?

The good news for Bulldog fans is that despite the accolades, Smart is still a largely unproven commodity. Yes, he holds the title of defensive coordinator at Alabama, but that doesn’t necessarily mean much on a Saban staff.

Georgia may or may not do better than Smart, but they can definitely do safer. And they can’t do much worse that what they had.

Jonathan Dwyer will go pro ... and it will matter.

Face it Jackets, he’s gone. He’s gotta go. A running back has a career life expectancy that barely exceeds the average Oakland Raiders coach, and with the beating he takes in Paul Johnson’s offense, Dwyer’s could be even shorter. Factor in the looming 2011 NFL rookie salary cap and the fact that he’s a first-round pick no matter when he leaves, and it’s a no-brainer.

His absence won’t send the Jackets to the bottom of the ACC heap, but backs like Dwyer are rare, and he will be missed.

Braves fans will spend another year waiting until next year.

Many of general manager Frank Wren’s deals have been puzzling on the surface — Melky Cabrera anybody? — but there’s a method to this Marlins-like madness. After getting fleeced in the Mark Teixeira rental, the franchise hunkered down and began building for the future. And when your budget is significantly south of baseball’s big boys, that’s a solid plan.

In a short time, it’s yielded one of the most fertile farm systems in baseball.

That’s the good news.

The flip side is that very little of that talent will ripen in 2010, and Braves fans are most likely in for another .500 season.

The Falcons will clinch a playoff spot before most of us finish our Christmas shopping.

If it could go wrong in 2009, it did. The two most indispensable players on offense missed crucial time in the second half of the season, and the team got nothing from their top two draft picks, also due to injuries. All this while playing a challenging schedule (only one of the team’s losses came against a team with a losing record).

Still, the team won it’s last three games and scored the first back-to-back winning seasons in franchise history.
If what goes up must come down, the reverse must also be true right?

With a little luck and a manageable schedule on their side (eight teams on the 2010 slate had losing records this season), look for the Falcons to bounce back in Year 3 of the Dimitroff/Smith/Ryan regime.