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AJC > Sports > UGA > Blog > Archives > 2005 > August > 29 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USGrowing up in Athens town …
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Let’s talk Georgia Bulldogs.
I’m a lifelong Dog. Literally.
Born and raised in Athens, I don’t remember a time when the Bulldogs weren’t an everyday part of my consciousness.
I grew up within earshot of Sanford Stadium — when I was too young to go to games, I remember being able to hear the distant sound of the Redcoat band from our back yard.
My earliest Bulldog memories include my Dad nervously devouring a bag of oranges while he listened to Ed Thilenius call games on the radio. Watching the game highlights on Sunday, along with a sportswriters roundtable show hosted by Furman Bisher. I woke up with mumps on New Year’s Day 1960, but that didn’t stop me from getting propped up with pillows in the den to watch Athens homeboy Fran Tarkenton and the Bulldogs on television — the first time we’d ever had that opportunity! — beating Missouri in the Orange Bowl. My memory is hazy (I was only 7 and sick, after all), but I seem to recall being disappointed the Dogs had to wear the white road jerseys instead of the beloved red ones.
Although I have vague recollections of being taken to a game when I was very young (I only recall the band), the first games I really remember were during the Johnny Griffith years, with Larry Rakestraw at quarterback. Still the era of the silver helmets as well as the silver britches. I can clearly recall listening to that 1963 game against Miami where Rakestraw set an NCAA passing record.
I began attending home games regularly with the advent of the Vince Dooley era. That was back when you could still show up at the stadium for most games and get “high school” tickets if you were under college age. To ensure I got into even the sold-out games, though, I started selling programs, and did that throughout junior high and high school.
Then came my four years at UGA — the years when my Athens High classmate Andy Johnson was our best running quarterback ever. By then, my devotion to the UGA even stood out amid my fellow students. I chose not to go the fraternity route but a friend who was a Kappa Sig once said to me, “Damn, you love those Dogs better than any Greek I know!”
And so it has continued. The past 30 years, I’ve been a Bulldog Club member and season ticket holder. I married a UGA grad, one of my brothers was a Redcoat and my son — who I brainwashed from the cradle — never wanted to go anywhere else. He’s now a UGA junior, and was practically christened at Sanford Stadium! (Well, OK, at the nearby Episcopal chapel.) My 11-year-old daughter got really excited seeing all the girls gathered for rush when we cut through the Tate Center recently on our way to the UGA bookstore (where she stocked up on official UGA notebooks and added to her growing Bulldog wardrobe).
Here at the AJC, my Bulldog mania is well established. A former news editor who was an ardent fan of the North Avenue Trade School used to sneeringly refer to me as “Mr. Bulldog.” Since I couldn’t think of anything polite to call him back, I used to just say, “woof woof!” (As much as I love UGA, I hate that other school. I don’t even like setting foot on their campus, so you know how much I love my daughter when I say I attended all her ballet recitals at the Ferst Center!)
So those are some of my Bulldog bona fides. That doesn’t mean I have nothing but good to say on the subject of Georgia football. I figure a lifetime of support has earned me the right to gripe when I think it’s warranted, as you’ll no doubt find out.
But when all is said and done, I’m Bulldog through and through.
And when that lone trumpeter up in the southwest corner of the upper deck of Sanford Stadium begins playing those opening notes of the battle hymn of the Bulldog Nation on Saturday, the chills will go up and down my spine like they always do.
Like I said, let’s talk Georgia Bulldogs!
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Comments
Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By Tdawg
August 29, 2005 07:30 AM | Link to this
Woof woof woof brother.
Tdawg
By JPKDawg
August 29, 2005 09:28 AM | Link to this
The Redcoats have a saying that is chanted at the end of the post game concert…ONCE A DAWG, ALWAYS A DAWG - HOW SWEET IT IS!
Redcoat Alumni Class of ‘79 JPKDawg
By Adriane
August 29, 2005 10:48 AM | Link to this
One of my very first memories is of a bulldawg game. I just can’t wait til Saturday! Woof!
By Jeff
August 29, 2005 11:07 AM | Link to this
I grew up Red & Black. My grandfather played baseball for Wally Butts down in Milledgeville. His loyalties went where Butts went. He was buried with a UGA tie and that old single ear piece radio in his ear…on 750 AM of course. My father, mother, uncle and brother went to UGA. I spent my childhood moving around the south. But every Saturday morning was spent either in front of the TV or sitting in my room listening to Larry. Oh how I remember crying and praying in the Ole Miss games of the 70’s. Or how I jumped up and down as Rex Robinson kicked a game winner against Kentucky. There was only one place for me and college; Athens. It was a great 6 1/2 years getting that four year degree. Through all the moves since, the Bulldogs have stayed fresh in my heart. I even moved to Montana for four years. When the games weren’t on TV, I listened via the internet. As I sat in my office on those Saturdays, I would close my eyes and just listen. I could hear the Red Coat band as though me and the other Kappa Sigs were sitting right behind them. I could hear the constant chant, “It’s great to be a Georgia Bulldog. I say it’s great to be a Georgia Bulldog”I could actualy see the players of my childhood and college days. I saw McClendon, Hoage, Woerner, Buck, Zier, Hampton, and of course Herschel. “There goes Herschel!” And if I really sat still, very still and inhaled through my nose, I could smell the sour mash bourbon that made the fall Saturdays really rowdy. I can smell Sanford stadium now as I type…man I miss Athens. It really is true, I am Georgian by birth, but Bulldog by the grace of God himself.
By Charles
August 29, 2005 11:19 AM | Link to this
If you grew up when you said you did and where you said you did, you heard the DIXIE Redcoat Band, not the Redcoat Band.
It makes a big difference in whether or not a person is a Johnny-come-lately Dawg fan or not.
By Bill King
August 29, 2005 11:33 AM | Link to this
Yeah, Dixie Redcoats what they were called when I was a boy. That’s not what they’re called now. Get over it. If 40 years of games makes me a Johnny-come-lately, so be it.
By Jackets fan
August 29, 2005 11:57 AM | Link to this
Wow, I’m surprised the AJC found a Dawg fan that they deemed literate enough to do a blog. Good luck with that. So what’s new with the Clarke County Jail, I mean the UGA football program?
By Bill King
August 29, 2005 12:05 PM | Link to this
How’s the drug ring investigation going over on the Flats? Go find your own blog to play in. Please.
By JP
August 29, 2005 12:12 PM | Link to this
I know Bill King. He is no Johnny-come Lately. He bleeds red and black and always has. He’s the real deal, and his parents still live in Athens. And don’t say anything good about Tech around him.
By Jackets fan
August 29, 2005 12:16 PM | Link to this
Hey, I’d gladly move over to the “BUZZ BLOG”, but the AJC hasn’t been kind enough to add a cleverly named blog just for the Ramblin Wreck or North Ave Trade School as you put it. Seems that UGA has the plain old “UGA Blog” and the “Junkyard Blawg” too. We deserve equal time.
Oh and the drug investigation is going just fine. Their just taking down the names of all the UGA players that the dope in question was destined to be sold to. 1 criminal to your 10+ (that we know about). I’ll take those odds anyday.
By Jackets fan
August 29, 2005 12:23 PM | Link to this
My apologies. There is a Ramblin (On) Wreck blog. The sidebar didn’t have a link to it, until I click out and back in. Good luck pups.
By James Gilchrist
August 29, 2005 12:38 PM | Link to this
I lived and died with the bulldogs listening to Ed Thilenius on the radio. With all due respect to Larry Munson I think Ed Thilenius was the best I ever heard. When he called a game it was like he was calling a war. Theron Sapp should be knighted. JG
By t.taylor
August 29, 2005 12:59 PM | Link to this
One of my fondess memories of my grandfather was the day he and his brother took me and my brother, then 13 and 12 respectively, to our first real football game, in Athens. Little did I know the impact this saturday trip would have on the course of my life. My grandfather grew up in backwater South Carolina. He was the first in his family to go to college. He was a very serious man; God and Country and Family, the whole nine. But he loved sports. He coached baseball,basketball and football on the Highschool level in Maysville, S.C., and then on the college level, where he met my grandmother. My grandfather graduated from the University of S.Carolina and had then accepted the unfortunate burden of becoming a life long Gamecock fan. It was only an hour and a half drive from Greenville, S.C. but when we arrived it seemed a world away. Athens was flooded with people gearing up for the battle between Ga. and S.C. Old campus seemed, and still does, so majestic to me. The fans, the colors, the food and booze, the noise, the beautiful girls( thank God for Marrietta, Ga.) was an acid pinwheel of activity. I remember sitting on the fifty yard line, baking in the sun @ gametime. Back then the end of the stadium opposite the Tate Student Center was open, and some guy with his girlfriend had positioned their black Trans-am on the train tracks and were blaring Molly Hacket on their souped up stereo…..Until a train pulled up and they had to back out to a roar of the crowd. So cool. Georgia, as is custom, beat the Gamecocks that day and it was there, at the fifty yard line, surrounded by thousands, a life long Georgia fan was born. My grandfather did not live to see me graduate from U.G.A. Back then the goal was to grab a handle of bourbon, the cutest girl you could find, watch half the game the go running through a frat party naked. Today it is different, a little more nostalgic. I now live in New York, and in the fall of 2001 I went to the nearest bar to watch the bullbogs play on T.V. I found myself in an Iranian Sports bar in Brooklyn, asking the bartender if he would mind if I watch some football. Imediately he said with a smile “Absolutely, my friend.”, and turned on soccer. “No.” I said,” I am hoping to watch some American College Football.” Unfortunately that day Georgia lost to Fla. But by the third Quarter my infectuous interest in the game had recruited several Persian veiwers, who cheared with me and bemoaned the loss. As I sat there, sipping bourbon through a dessert glass, I thought of my days at Georgia and of my grandfather and how great they were..and now every fall I can in some little way, no matter where I am, , go back, and feel it all again. Gooooooooooooooo, Dawgs. Sic’em.
By daslicksta
August 29, 2005 01:13 PM | Link to this
Nasty Bee sting??? Huh, beware of the DAWG bite…Saturday will be the 1 time I will pull for Auburn
By Cheer Shepard
August 29, 2005 02:10 PM | Link to this
Thanks, Bill, great stuff. You’re not the only one to “raise a child right”. My oldest could sing “Glory, Glory” before he could walk. We always got to the game early enough to watch the Redcoats warm up and march into the stadium under The Bridge, always stopped to pet UGA. He’s an ‘02 grad in Journalism, and spent the last three years at the AB-H, the last two as the basketball beat writer, covering the Harrick story like the dew covers Dixie. He’s now in Jackson, MS, at the Clarion-Ledger. Thanks, and Go Dawgs!
By Brad Stephens
August 29, 2005 03:43 PM | Link to this
Mom doesn’t remember the opponent, but thinks it was Clemson we had just lost to back when that game was THE game. We had stopped in the Pizza Hut in Canton (a bulldog bastion that night) on our way back home to Jasper from Athens. I was in a booster seat and could barely talk. Mom said the mood was very somber in the restaurant and many beers were being quietly drained. All of a sudden, I somehow stood up out of my seat and yelled at the top of my lungs ” GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”. Mom didn’t know what in the heck I was doing, the place went dead silent when I finished with “YOU HEA-WEE DAWGS. SIC’ EM WOOF WOOF WOOF!!” Mom said the place erupted with cheers. Needless to say I didn’t apply to Auburn’s forestry school. If my three-week year old son isn’t able to sleep come Saturday, you can bet it’ll be because Larry is rattling the cobwebs out of the old speakers!! GO DAWGS! WE LOVE YA!!
By Brad Stephens
August 29, 2005 03:52 PM | Link to this
And if any of you smart-alec fans from the OTHER schools are reading, no I didn’t learn ‘three-week year old’ during my time in Athens. I just type kinda fast and get excited thinking about the impending DAWG season.
By Kat1dawg
August 29, 2005 04:09 PM | Link to this
Hi fellow Dawg fans, I am 25 and my first game was when I was a baby in 1980 at the National Championship game at the Sugar Bowl.
I have been going to the games ever since then with my family and best friend Jane. We used to wear our little cheerleading outfits to the games when younger, and have continued the tradition of going to the games to this day. Our mothers are so sweet to make devilled eggs, pimiento cheese sandwiches and many other delicious tailgate foods. We usually head to my brother’s tailgate to drink, then up to our mothers tailgate to meet up with them, eat and talk Dawgs.
We have been counting down for months and cannot wait until this Saturday! I think this game will be a tough starter for UGA, but hopefully Shockley will be ready to go, so gooo Dawgs, sic em, whoof whoof whoof!
By Mike
August 29, 2005 04:10 PM | Link to this
Well I’ll be Billy, you coulda been one o’ them their brain surg-e-ons. Congrats to you and all.
By Kat1dawg
August 29, 2005 04:14 PM | Link to this
Hey Jackets fan, I forget, what has Tech been ranked the past few years here? LOL.
By Charles
August 29, 2005 04:46 PM | Link to this
Touchy, touchy, Bill. My comment about the Dixie Redcoat Band was not perjorative, merely time-oriented. With your lack of humor, I can believe what JP says about you. You do bleed, don’t you? From the heart, right?
By CJ
August 29, 2005 04:51 PM | Link to this
This is obviously a work of fiction since there has never been a sports editor at the AJC who has been a GT fan.
By Mark
August 29, 2005 04:55 PM | Link to this
Greatest Bulldawg memomry. Half the fraternity was in Jacksonville and the other half was in the TV room with several kegs watching the GA-FLA game in 1980. Things looked bad, and the beer was being consumed at a rioutous rate. Fourth quarter and not much time. Buck gets the ball from center, eludes a tackeler at the goal line, waves to Lindsay and tosses a strike that Lindsay jumps in the air to grab, hits the ground and starts running. The defender has fallen that was covering him and now it is a race to the endzone with the corners trying to cut him off. ” RUN LINDSAY, RUN!!!!! ” Lindsay outruns the other team and Vince Dooley who is running down the sidelines with him. All cups of beer go in the air and we all fall into one writhing pile on the TV room floor. We then file out the front door on South Millidge and run out into the middle of at that time 441. We stop traffic, jumping up and down, screaming, laughing and crying. A cop finnally rides up the sidewalk and gives the entire AGR fraternity a ticket for rioting in the streets. We were totally incoherent and could not explain why we had stopped traffic because one person would start talking and another would try to finish the sentence. He then leaves and we continue our celebration in the front yard. Five minutes later we hear a siren again and the cop pulls into our front yard with the lights on. He demands the ticket. He then tears it up and tells us to stay out of the damn street. He had got the news over his radio. I know it was good to be in J’ville that day, but it was great to be there in Athens and we rang the bell all night long. Go Dawgs. It is one of the greatest privledges of my life to be a Dawg and one that I have passed on to my children. Win or lose, I bleed Red and Black. Mark Symms aka Cuzindude
By Megan
August 29, 2005 05:01 PM | Link to this
There is nothing better than being a Dawg Fan. As a junior at UGA, I applied to one school and one school only, UGA because UGA is second to none in my book.
One of my best memories of growing up a dawg fan was when I was probably 4 or 5. I remember that I had a pajama set (gray long sleeves and pants and red cuffs) that had UGA on the corner. I thought I was the cutest thing around because my dad had the exact same pajamas. To this day, they are my favorite pajamas and lucky for me, my mom saved my dad’s pjs for me to wear. I cannot wait for Saturday to arrive. It’s only Monday up here in Bulldog Nation, but already Saturday’s festivities are being finalized. I’ll be the crazy girl shouting out to my favorites: Coach Richt and Sean Bailey!
By Hunter
August 29, 2005 05:43 PM | Link to this
I attended Georgia games for 35 years. I traveled from all over South Carolina. I had to give up my tickets when they got rid of Dooley. I was contributing 300.00. When Adams raised my contribution to 800.00. Too much. I will always be a dawg fan.
By Mikey01
August 29, 2005 06:09 PM | Link to this
UGA - a large state school (excuse me “flagship”) that’s not particularly the best in any one thing it tries.
Its efforts are replicated in at least 35 states around the country. Very special.
GO DAWGS!
By Bill King
August 29, 2005 06:11 PM | Link to this
Hey George, why is it your kind can never even discuss college football without trying to inject your right-wing politics into it?
By Bill King
August 29, 2005 06:14 PM | Link to this
Oh, excuse me, I meant Charles. I guess it was the resemblance to some guy named Wallace that confused me!
By Matthew
August 29, 2005 06:41 PM | Link to this
Mikey, UGA’s the best, or one of in many areas.
It has one of the best pharmacology schools in the nation.
One of the best business schools.
One of the best schools for education majors.
One of the best in classes offered for students on a Med and Law school tract.
And yes, one of the best in athletics as a whole.
The North Avenue Trade School can’t claim this. It can’t claim best Engineering school. MIT and Cal Poly beat you there.
And your athletics are a pathetic joke compared to UGA’s.
Your AD, despite his last name, has no brain.
Face the facts. You go, or went to, or support a school that has no chance of ever being as popular in this state. Not with students. Not with boosters. Not with fans. Not with athletes.
I’llgive you one thing. You don’t have Michael Adams. That’s a big thing, and that’s the one thing you have. So be happy with that, and with your 6 and 7 win football seasons.
Oh, and stop insisting that Mark Richt is going to leave us for FSU. Just because your favorite coach saw your little trade school as a stepping stone to (what he thought would be) bigger and better things, doesn’t mean our coach feels that way. Why should he? He will win Championships here. Everyone knows there is no chance of that happening in the Flats.
Get used to Richt dominating whatever coach y’all throw up against him. He’s going to be around for a long, long time. His words, not mine.
By Kat1dawg
August 29, 2005 07:02 PM | Link to this
Matthew, Touche to your comments. Tech may be a tough school academically once you are in, but UGA is also a damn good school as well, and we are pretty consistant in collegiate athletics as well. I know tennis, golf, football, track, and with the exception of basketball, are pretty much all the time doing quite well in rankings. Anyone who tries to even make a comment about UGA’s athletics, especially a yellow jacket, needs to look at what their football team (biggest moneymaker) has done the past few years or so.
By Mtn. Dawg
August 29, 2005 07:20 PM | Link to this
Maybe things up here in the North Georgia Mountains are simpler than down there in the big city, but nothing beats sitting in the back of the truck, dove hunting and listning to Larry on the radio……….it’s the next best thing to being there. GO DAWGS!!!
By GT
August 30, 2005 03:21 PM | Link to this
If there is something more Americana than Georgia Bulldog Football, they have not invented it yet. One of the first soldiers in Iraq was a Georgia Bulldog A sport’s event could be in California and they pan the crowd and there’s a Georgia cap on somebody’s head. “How bout them Dawgs” is spoken in every language in the world.
By Matt
August 30, 2005 11:46 PM | Link to this
We are the Georgia Bulldog nation Athens, Atlanta, and every little Georgia town We are the Red and Black generation Nothing can stop us now, Hunker Down
By Mayor Dog
August 31, 2005 12:24 AM | Link to this
The article really gets the blood flowing in anticipation of Saturday. Go Dogs! And when asked who I am pulling for between tech and Auburn, I say “injuries.”
By roman
August 31, 2005 12:43 AM | Link to this
Mayor dawg, youre pulling for young men to get hurt, man you are a deuche bag.
By Jenn
August 31, 2005 04:18 AM | Link to this
My fiance and I are a strange match. I am a UGA student majoring in education. He is a Tech student majoring in computer science. The only reason we ever even met each other was because of football. He has tried to get me to cheer for his team, yet I refuse. Why? It’s just not right. I may be a newer Bulldog fan and student since I moved here in the middle of high school, but the truth is my love for the red and black is still just as strong as those lifelong fans.
My first game was TN vs. UGA in 2000. The stadium was going bananas at the thrashing we were laying down on that team, not just because we were winning, but also because it had been so long since we had beat TN on our field. The goal posts ended up somewhere downtown. Fans were everywhere. I lost my voice sometime in the third quarter from cheering so loud. With an experience like that, how could I stop my heart from swelling with pride whenever I hear those fight songs? I’ve also managed to convert all of my friends around the country into Georgia fans. Once a Georgia fan…always a Georgia fan.
By Michael Scharff
August 31, 2005 09:52 AM | Link to this
My Dad, my Mom, my two brothers, my cousins, my Uncle, and I are all UGA Alumni, and now my middle son is a Freshman at UGA. My Dad got season tickets when he graduated in 1955 and has kept them ever since. I have been going to games both Home and Away since I was 5 years old. I have been to many campuses throughout the South, and Athens is by far the most beautiful I have ever seen. I can’t wait until Saturday - GO DAWGS!
By Bill King
August 31, 2005 02:21 PM | Link to this
A spring or fall day on the old North Campus in Athens is pretty hard to top. Ditto Sanford Stadium (though I have to say, I’m not a fan of those skyboxes they’ve perched on top of the upper deck. Maybe they’d look better if they went all the way around the stadium).
By BIGNCDAWG
August 31, 2005 05:56 PM | Link to this
GREAT ARTICLE BILL.
I GREW UP IN ATHENS. MY FIRST MEMORIES WERE OF ZEAK IN 1950. MY GREATEST MEMORIES WERE OF FRAN THROWING THE WINNING TOUCHDOWN AGAINST AUBURN TO WIN THE SEC. SECOND WOULD BE THERON SAPP SCORING THE WINING TOUCHDOWN IN 59 TO BEAT TECH AND BREAK THE DOUGHT.
I WENT TO ALL THE GAMES DURING THE FIFTIES AND EARLY SIXTIES. I WAS AT ATHENS HIGH WHEN TARKINTON WAS A SENIOR.
I HAVE NEVER UNDERSTOON WHY EVERY AMERICAN IS NOT A DAWG FAN. I MOVED AWAY FROM ATHENS IN 1970. IT WAS THE BIGGEST MISTAKE I EVER MADE.
THERE IS NOTHING LIKE SANFORD ON A SAT. I HAVE BEEN BLESSED TO BE A DAWG AND TO HAVE GROWN UP IN ATHENS.
GIVEM HELL DAWGS.
By Matthew Young
August 31, 2005 08:45 PM | Link to this
Loved the story Mr. King- I happened to grow up in Gainesville, Fl. My Dad is a UF grad and has been an instructor there for over 20 years. I have been a Dawg my whole life. I happened to be born while he was in dental school at Emory. As soon as I was old enough to know where I was from I declared “well then I am a Dawg”. As hard as that was for my dad to swallow, he never tried to sway me. We have attended every UGA/UF game since 1980 ( I was four years old). I can’t say that I remember anything from that game but they tell me some guy named Scott made a great play that year. My first real memory was watching #34 fly high over the pile for a touch down in 82. We happened to have seats on the ground just past the end zone and it was as if Walker was going to land in my lap. Yes, I laughed through the 80’s and cried through the 90’s. I have to say your article made me a little jealous, but when we do beat the jean short wearing, mullet head, nascar loving, no class yankees, there is no place I would rather be than Gainesville. It’s been a good year down here!