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AJC > Sports > UGA > Blog > Archives > 2006 > May
May 2006
Playing hometown favorites
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I saw where the Athens Athletic Hall of Fame is inducting its 2006 honorees, including the late Bulldog legend Bob Poss Jr., Monday at the Classic Center.
Of course, the Hall of Fame is not limited to Athens natives who played football or those went to the University of Georgia — with tennis greats Dan Magill and Danny Birchmore and such non-UGA notables as Homer Jordan (who led Clemson to a national championship) and Billy Gambrell (who starred at South Carolina before playing in the NFL) among the members.
But for such a small town, Athens has produced more than its share of Bulldog football greats over the decades, including quite a few kickers such as John Kasay and Billy Bennett in recent years, and reading about the Hall of Fame set me to thinking about some of my favorite UGA football players who hailed from the Classic City.
My personal all-time favorites are quarterbacks Fran Tarkenton and Andy Johnson and defensive legend Jake Scott
Tarkenton, of course, led Georgia to an SEC championship and Orange Bowl victory before going on to become a scrambling legend in the NFL and later a network TV personality and successful businessman. He’s the first Bulldog star I really remember.
Johnson, probably the Bulldogs’ best running QB ever and engineer (pardon the term) of a thrilling Thanksgiving night win over the Trade School, was a classmate of mine from 7th grade on who led Athens High to a co-state championship with Valdosta in 1969. He had a long NFL career, and he’s also one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet.
I’ve never heard anyone say that about Scott, who cultivated a sort of bad-boy image both in Athens and when he starred for the Dolphins in the NFL, but he was certainly one of the most thrilling defensive backs I’ve ever seen. Like so many other future Bulldog stars, Scott started out playing football at the Athens YMCA under Coburn Kelley, but moved to Virginia to finish high school before coming back to UGA. My own memory of him is that he was one of the instructors of my summer Driver’s Ed class!
I wondered who other Athens natives would pick, so I conducted a totally unscientific poll (this is the Internet, after all!) asking hometown folks to name their favorite Dawgs. Not the best or greatest, but their favorite. I expected Tarkenton to come out on top, but Andy Johnson was the favorite pick by far. Tarkenton (who one friend of mine remembered teaching him to swim at the Y) finished in a tie for second with Clarke Central running back Horace King, who after becoming one of UGA’s first group of black football players went on to play eight seasons with Detroit in the NFL.
The next group, drawing support from multiple respondents, included Jake Scott, all-SEC defensive tackle Jimmy Payne, Bobby Poss (son of Bob Poss Jr., mentioned primarily as a great storyteller!) and quarterback Paul Gilbert (who for quite a few years sat in front of me with his family at Sanford Stadium).
Quite a few other Bulldogs were mentioned, some because they were memorable players, others because of personal fond memories folks had of them. These included Billy Slaughter, Bobby Towns, Jeff Pyburn, Charlie Dean, Richard Appleby, Pete Dickens (who was in the hospital across the hall from my Mom when he was still at Athens High and joined her in her room to watch a game on TV, and whose namesake road I drive by frequently on U.S. 78), Cary Long (who handled kickoffs in ‘77 and worked with my brother Jon one summer at Six Flags) and Ralph Bray.
One of my brothers, who now lives in Watkinsville, tried to pass off a couple of Oconee County ringers in Tyson Browning and Tony Taylor, but I’m Old School and don’t consider an Athens suburb to count as Athens!
Who knows, perhaps current Athens Dawgs Gordon Ely-Kelso, Quentin Moses or Joe Tereshinski might make this list in the future. And maybe the Athens Athletic Hall of Fame, too.
Any other Athens Dawgs who merit a mention?
It’s not just about football!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Even if you’re one of those UGA fans who pays attention primarily just to the Bulldogs who take the field at Sanford Stadium, you’ve got to be woofing with pride at UGA breaking Florida’s 14-year grip on the SEC’s all-sports trophy!
With UGA having won SEVEN SEC championships this academic year, the program returns to the top, where it belongs. (UGA won the all-sports crown six times between 1981 and 1992 before the Gators ascended.)
Being the conference champ in men’s golf, men’s tennis, gymnastics, women’s swimming, women’s indoor track and women’s outdoor track in addition to football this year is indeed, as athetic director Damon Evans said, a very big deal. Throw in that the Bulldogs won the national championship in gymnastics and are ranked first in the nation in men’s golf and tennis, and you see an athletic program that produces quality across the board (as well as being the nation’s most profitable).
As I’ve said before, they’re ALL Bulldogs and all deserve our support.
Well done!
Woof woof!
Aim high for 12th game
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Let’s get real here. Georgia isn’t going to be able to play seven home games every year unless we want a steady diet of UABs and Western Kentuckys.
OK, we know the home games are going to sell out, even if the opponent is another Troy or Western Carolina or Louisiana Monroe instead of a top-flight team. But while it might be tempting to think about regularly having seven home games to bolster an already impressive bottom line, that’s not in the best interests of the program. It shortchanges the fans and the players, and just ask the folks over at Auburn what a soft nonconference schedule of designated patsies can do to your chances of playing for the BCS championship.
So how should UGA sue the 12th regular season game now granted by the NCAA?
The UGA Athletic Association already has acknowledged that the only way you can add quality teams to your nonconference schedule is to sign home-and-home deals where they come to Athens one year and we go to their place another year. Already, we’ve scheduled such swaps with Colorado (2006 and 2010), Arizona State (2008 and 2009) and Louisville (2011 and 2012). Which means some years we’ll only have six home games. You know, considering we’re the most profitable football program in the country, I think we’ll survive that.
So far, the UGA schedulers seem to be going for a mix of midlevel major teams like those above and DPs like Western Carolina, Georgia Southern and Appalachian State.
Now, Louisville and Colorado are certainly several steps up from those teams, but really they won’t do that much to enhance the national profile of the Bulldogs. And while I’d love to see traditional rival Clemson on our schedule again at least semi-regularly, that game wouldn’t really benefit the UGA program as much as going farther afield.
Going to the West Coast occasionally certainly would help with recruiting out there — The Athens Banner-Herald reported last week that Georgia is talking to Oregon about home-and home games sometime around 2014 — but playing those Pac 10 schools means not many of your fans (or theirs) can make the road trip.
Really, if we want to be a perennial Top 5 program, we need to play other national powers, and not just in bowl games. There’s a lot to gain from taking on the top teams and not much downside, if you’re talking early in the season. It’s a fact of life in the poll system that early losses don’t hurt you as much as losses later in the season, and early losses to a Top 5 program don’t hurt you much at all if you win out. And an early win over a Top 5 team can give you a leg up on making it into one of the two top spots in the BCS standings.
I asked a number of fans which top teams they’d like to see the Dawgs play. The two most popular choices were either a Big 10 power like Michigan or Ohio State, or a matchup with Texas or Oklahoma of the Big 12. A couple of folks also said they wouldn’t mind seeing the Dawgs play Miami or Virginia Tech of the ACC.
I think any of those games would be great additions to the UGA schedule.
DON’T FORGET: The rubber game between the Diamond Dogs and the Insects From North Avenue is at 7:06 p.m. Wednesday at Turner Field. The 16th-ranked Georgia Bulldogs (31-16, 13-11 SEC) have been on fire the past couple of weeks, winning seven straight, including back-to-back SEC sweeps, to move up to second place in the SEC Eastern Division.
Play for pay?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In today’s AJC, NCAA President Myles Brand addressed the issue of paying stipends to student-athletes by saying he supports making scholarships cover the full cost of a college education but not “paying” college players.
Currently, he noted, the average athletic scholarship falls a couple of thousand dollars short of covering that “full cost.” As he put it, “supplying the support that’s necessary to be a successful student is very different from paying student-athletes.”
I can understand the reasoning behind the stipend argument — after all, college athletics is literally making millions of dollars off the backs off players in the revenue-producing sports (football and basketball), but the players don’t get a share.
On the other hand, making money is not supposed to be what the athletes are there for. Sure, some of the more talented ones see college sports as a training way station on the road to a career as a professional athlete, but these are still schools, not minor leagues. Students are there to get an education that’s being paid for by the school in exchange for their athletic talents.
Of course, a stipend of even just a few thousand wouldn’t be the same as a salary, the argument goes. It would just help student-athletes make ends meet.
But as Brand noted, the idea that student-athletes can’t afford to “buy a pizza or you can’t buy a winter coat, it’s just false.”
We all know what’s going to happen if you pay them a lump-sum stipend to spend as they see fit. While some kids will use it the way it’s intended, others will spend it on fancier wheels or jewelry or even something illegal. And maybe get themselves and the program in trouble. Heck, you give ‘em a championship ring and some of them turn around and sell them on eBay.
I’m all for making sure a full-ride scholarship really covers a full ride. Just not in a BMW!
What do you think?
BULLDOG BITES: Wow, Perno’s Pooches really turned things around in the past week. After losing two of three to Tennessee and then another to Western Carolina (a team they’d whomped earlier in the season), they upset the nationally ranked Insects from North Avenue and then went down to Gainesville and swept the Gators! Georgia, ranked 25th in the latest USA Today/ESPN coaches poll, is back home at Foley Field this weekend for three games against the division co-leader Gamecocks — 7 p.m. Friday, 4:06 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free for UGA students, and it sure would be great to see a packed house. So far this season, the Dogs have been a lot stronger on the road in the SEC than at home. This is a good time to change that… . I know Georgia fans’ thoughts and prayers are with ace water girl (and head coach’s wife) Katharyn Richt after her recent surgery for cervical cancer. The prognosis is for full recovery, the coach says. Hope to see her on the sideline again come September!
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