ATHENS, Ga. – The sun has done little more than peek briefly between dark and gray clouds above the University of Georgia campus since Saturday night’s loss to Boise State. Tropical Storm Lee has simply added to the general gloom that hovers over Bulldog Nation.

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Georgia’s football players can’t escape it. In the old days they could avoid reading newspapers or watching TV. Now the overriding angst of folks who purport to support the Dogs invades directly into their lives. While tight end Orson Charles said he’s taking a Twitter vacation for “a couple of weeks” to avoid what he knows is out there, others haven’t been so lucky.

“It’s hard not to get caught up in it when people are sending you messages every day and writing on your wall and getting your phone number and texting you,” said senior tight end Aron White. “I mean, who are you? I appreciate your opinion and you’re entitled to it. But I hope the fans know to let us focus this week because that’s what we need.”

Saturday in Sanford Stadium has been infused with urgency by the tone of the hype leading up to the Southeastern Confer­ence opener between Georgia and South Carolina. Both sides have a lot at stake in the outcome of this game.

For the 0-1 Bulldogs and head coach Mark Richt, the consequences seem more dire. Richt had a terse response prepared for any suggestions that South Carolina was a pivotal referendum on his future with the program.

“I view it as a very important game,” he said simply at the first question about it being pivotal.

A few minutes later came round two. Is this a must-win game for you?

“Didn’t I just say it was a very important game?” Richt said with all the effort he could muster to sound pleasant. “Want to ask me again? Because you can. I’ll give you the same answer.”

It’s probably grossly unfair to base judgment on Richt’s rebuilding efforts after Georgia’s first losing season since 1996 on two games against teams currently ranked fourth and 12th in the nation, but that’s just where it is at the moment. Should the Bulldogs lose to a favored Gamecocks team on Saturday, their cumulative record will fall to 14-14 overall and a woeful 5-10 in the SEC since the conclusion of a 2008 season in which Georgia started preseason No. 1. Many fans believe they already have the results of their long-term analysis in hand and feel a change is necessary. They don’t need to see how the rest of the season pans out after the added “Dream Team” recruiting talent has had a chance to acclimate to the collegiate game.

Anything short of a victory will raise hysteria to a level that drowns out any rational debate.

“If we start worrying about everything else, like if this loss is going to start a slide like it did last season, we lose focus,” said White. “And we need to be completely focused because we have a great team coming in to play us.”

Of course, White and his teammates understand why everyone is so troubled. With eight months to plan for a Boise State game that drew national attention, the Bulldogs looked overmatched and under-prepared. Losing to an experienced top-five team is one thing. Getting pushed around by a team that doesn’t have the kind of size or blue-chip talent that most SEC schools have is another.

“I think that coming off the first losing season in like 14 years and then opening with a loss, that’s never good,” said White. “I think people have something to say about it. It’s tough to swallow when you care a lot about the team and your teammates and you’re here living it every day and seeing everything we’re putting into it. …

“Our fans have so much pride in the SEC and the way we’ve represented ourselves in the past, to have a team from a nonautomatic qualifying conference – regardless of how much success they’ve had – they expected us to win. It’s hard for them to swallow. We have so much pride in Georgia and so much history and such a rich tradition here that it kind of gets under the skin of our fans a little bit more than it might at any other school.”

White stopped short of saying the messages he received since Saturday qualified as “hate mail.”

“Just frustration,” he said. “All lot of people are frustrated with the way things went last year. People have such high expectations cause we were making all these steps (in the offseason). We’re disappointed ourselves in the way we represented the “G” on Saturday. We just hope everybody will stay positive. Because it doesn’t help anything to send somebody a message and say crazy stuff. It’s out there for everybody to see. It’s disheartening but we haven’t lost faith. We know they’re just saying the stuff out of frustration.”

Richt’s job this week – should he want to keep it – is to channel all of the negative into producing something positive from here on out. That starts against a South Carolina team that pushed Georgia around pretty good last year en route to its first SEC East title. Most people think the Gamecocks will repeat, but the Bulldogs could change everything with one big rebound Saturday.

“Even though we lost last week, the whole team came together and realized that we didn’t work the entire offseason for just one game,” said Richt. “We have more goals that we are trying to get to. South Carolina is the first game that we need to win to achieve some of the goals that we set for ourselves. We still have a long season ahead of us. Last week doesn’t mean anything right now. This week is when it counts, against an SEC team.”

Amid all the negativity, the Bulldogs have a lot to prove and a short week to prove it. Two losses to the caliber of opponents Georgia is playing would not be the end of the world. But it could be the end of an era if it festers into the same kind of tailspin as 2010.

“We kind of got in that rut last year, losing four games in a row, where we kind of let it become the norm and slipped into mediocrity there,” said White. “That’s something we don’t want to let happen again. I don’t think we have a mediocre team at all. I don’t think we have mediocre talent, I don’t think we have mediocre coaches. I don’t think we play with mediocre effort. Hopefully it will reflect on Saturday in between the hedges.”

If it doesn’t reflect favorably, the gloom will only set in to the point of permanently staining Richt’s reign.