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Tuesday, September 23, 2008
My Memories of Munson
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Where do you start?
With a few mere words on a computer screen, how do you adequately sum up the career of man who, unbeknownst to him, provided a big chunk of the sound track that has defined your life?
Like most people, I’ll never forget the day I first came face to face with Larry Munson. It was Oct. 11, 1975. Georgia was playing a road game at Ole Miss and I was a rookie reporter working for the Red and Black, the UGA student newspaper. Back then a member of the R&B staff got to travel with the team in order to cover the game. Coach Dan Magill saw to that. For a little boy from Union Point, Ga., this was a big deal. A really big deal.
As a green reporter should do, I arrived at Hemingway Stadium (John Vaught’s name would not be added until 1982) ridiculously early. But when I got to the press box, sitting outside in the stands waiting for somebody to open it, there was Larry Munson.
He didn’t say hello. He just looked at me and said:
“Hey, kid. You realize that we’re in big trouble over here today.”
He was right. Georgia lost 28-13.
Like most of you who grew up following Georgia football, I remember where I was and what I was doing when Larry made many of his now-famous calls:
• On Nov. 3, 1973 I was driving between Union Point and Statesboro where I was attending Georgia Southern. I had just made up mind that I was going to transfer to Georgia and attend journalism school because I had this silly idea that I wanted to be a sports writer. That’s when I heard Larry say: “My god! Georgia has just beaten Tennessee in Knoxville!” Andy Johnson had picked up a bobbled handoff on a bounce and scored to give Georgia a 35-31 win.
• On Nov. 8, 1975, I was in the dearly departed Fifth Quarter Lounge on the Atlanta highway in Athens with about 8 million other students watching the Georgia-Florida game on a big screen. Tight end Richard Appleby stopped, planted his foot and threw to Gene Washington for an 80-yard touchdown and a stunning 10-7 win over the Gators. Munson’s call that Washington was “thinking of Montreal and the Olympics” and that the “girders were bending” at the old Gator Bowl, was played over and over and over in Athens the following week. People could not get enough of it. That’s when Magill and the powers that be knew that they were on to something and started saving Larry’s calls.
• In 1978 I was working for the newspaper in Greensboro, N.C. There was no Internet and no way to listen to Georgia football. But if Georgia played on a Saturday night, you could get WSB radio all the way up there. That is how I got to hear Munson’s call of the 24-17 win at LSU and Rex Robinson immortal winning field goal, where Munson just screamed “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!” to beat Kentucky 17-16 in Lexington.
• I can’t remember the date. But I can remember calling my mother back home in Georgia and asking her just to put the phone down next to the radio so I could listen to Munson call the game for a little while. That little while turned out to be over an hour. She didn’t completely understand why her son wanted to run up his long-distance bill just to listen to a man talk about a football game. But like all good mothers do she accommodated me.
• On Nov. 8, 1980, I was in Tallahassee, Fla. on assignment for my North Carolina newspaper when Georgia and Florida played a couple of hours down I-10 in Jacksonville. I had a game that night and part of me thought about driving over and trying to make it back. But instead I sat in a small room in the Econo-Lodge and watched the game. When Buck Belue hit Lindsay Scott for the most famous touchdown in Georgia history, I jumped out of my chair and my fist went right through a hanging lamp and just destroyed it.
My first thought was that I was going to have to pay for a lamp. My second thought was that I had to hear Munson’s call because my understanding of that play, as big as it was, would not be complete I had heard what Larry said. The words “Man, is there going to be some property destroyed tonight!” became a part of Bulldog lore.
(Side note: When the hotel manager, a Florida State fan, found out that I broke the lamp while pulling AGAINST Florida, he didn’t make me pay for it.)
• I often tell people that the two happiest days of my life were when I married my bride and when my daughter was born. But No. 3 is Sept. 22, 1984. I had just gotten the job at the AJC as the UGA beat writer and I was at Sanford Stadium covering a big game against Clemson. Understand that growing up my sports writing heroes were Furman Bisher and Jesse Outlar. When I decided to become a sports writer I only had one goal and that was to work for the AJC with those two men. When that game began, Furman was sitting on my left and Jesse was sitting on my right. Needless to say, that was a big day for me.
But what I most remember was trying to listen on my little radio when Munson called Kevin Butler’s 60-yard field goal to beat the Tigers 26-23.
I could go on and on to include “Sugar falling out of the sky” at Auburn in 1982, the “hobnailed boot” in Knoxville in 2001 and Michael Johnson’s catch at Auburn in 2002. But you get the point. Where a lot of people use music to track the various mileposts in their lives, those of us who grew up in Georgia and followed the Bulldogs used Munson’s calls. I am one of the fortunate ones who have been around from his first call in 1966 for Georgia until his last against Central Michigan on Sept. 6. And it has been one helluva ride.
I was speaking in Macon last night when the news broke. And I told the folks there that Larry Munson was as much a part of Georgia football as Vince Dooley, Herschel Walker, Sanford Stadium, and Uga. He was the emotional connection between the fans and the program. When they couldn’t be in Athens or on the road and when very few games were on television, Munson was the one who kept that connection alive. Guys like Munson, John Ward (Tennessee), John Forney (Alabama), Bob Fulton (South Carolina) and Jack Cristil (Mississippi State) played a huge role in building SEC football into what it is today. They cannot be replaced.
Larry, if you’re reading today please consider these few words as my thank you note. You will never really know how many lives you have touched and influenced. You certainly had an impact on mine. And for that I will be forever grateful.
If any of you out there have some favorite memories of Munson, I’d love to hear about them.
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