Green provides Georgia with solid foundation

By Steve Hummer


The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In this quiet time before Florida-Georgia week gets its drunk and disorderly on, before even the first Jell-O shot is fired, allow the Bulldogs to relish one recent victory.

This one happened in early 2007, two states away from Jacksonville. On the wings of his first national championship, Florida’s Urban Meyer had swooped into Summerville, S.C. He was there to spirit away this star receiver who was verbally committed to Georgia, but still fair game.

A.J. Green was polite, but decidedly undazzled.

Green’s former offensive coordinator at Summerville High, Joe Call, picks up the story: “We sat right in (head coach John) McKissick’s office. Urban Meyer is there asking A.J., ‘Is there anything I can say, any way I can convince you to at least come take a visit to Florida?’”

Get ready, here comes the big tah-dah moment: “And A.J. just said, ‘No, sir. I appreciate it. But I’m a Bulldog.’”

Just imagine losing that one to Florida. Imagine where these modest, 4-3 Bulldogs would be today without Green’s singular playmaking.

How much more trying would this season be if not for his touchdown catch before the half against South Carolina, if not for his 137 receiving yards and two touchdowns against Arkansas, if not for jumping over the moon to block an Arizona State field goal?

Last Saturday, Georgia’s offensive coordinator Mike Bobo said he made one egregious mistake.

As quarterback Joe Cox slung a quick pass wide to Green, who was all of one stride beyond the line of scrimmage, “I looked down (to his play sheet) to call the next play,” Bobo said.

C’mon, coach. You should know better than anyone that you never look away when the ball and Adriel Jeremiah Green intersect. Do you start reading the program when Itzhak Perlman settles his chin on the violin? Do you go for popcorn when Criss Angel is about to make the elephant disappear?

Thus, Bobo missed the beginnings of Green’s longest career reception, when he evaded the entire Vandy secondary and transformed that modest pass into a 65-yard touchdown.

That play may not even make the first page of the Green scrapbook. So many others are already on record.

Cox, for one, said he would have ranked Green’s last-minute catch in the end zone against LSU No. 1, if only the lead had held.

But a penalty against Green for excessive celebration helped set up the Tigers for a winning touchdown. Days later that penalty was judged absurd by SEC officials.

Anyone who knew Green, who knew where he came from and the people who helped give his life definition, could have told them straight away he never would do anything to sabotage his team that way.

Growing up in small town

The Greens did not raise an excessive celebrant.

Dora Green has been at Walmart nearly 22 years. Woodrow Green has been laid off his job driving a loader for a cement company. No one in the family is wired to be showy.

In a mother’s voice, you hear neither boastfulness nor entitlement when reacting to A.J.’s acrobatic catches. Just wonder. “Oh Lord, it’s shock mostly,” Dora said. “I can’t believe it. I’m amazed every time. Unbelievable, I’m telling you.”

The Greens weren’t trying to build a privileged athlete, just a decent kid. He was brought up in a small town about 25 miles from Charleston, with no particular expectation of athletic fame.

No one in his family had had much use for games. His only sibling, older brother Avionce, died in an automobile accident when A.J. was only 4. He had no real model for how to become a member of the athletic elite.

His foundation was poured as simply as this: “He was raised to act right,” said Call. “It was, ‘Yes sir, no sir, yes ma’am, no ma’am.’ That’s how they raised him, and he’s always been that way. And that carries onto the field.”

What the Greens wrought was a young star who knew what he wanted and was single-minded in the pursuit.

He was Georgia’s early, from the time he was a high school sophomore. His first impressions were binding — he loved Georgia’s colors, was a big fan of Champ Bailey, loved the setting from his first visit. No matter how other coaches tried to shake Green, as he became one of the most coveted receivers in the country, he was resolute. Wouldn’t even visit another campus.

All through the process, he’d tell Call, “Coach, I get to go anywhere I want to in the country, I might as well go to my favorite place.”

The nation was spared one of those silly spectacles of a high school senior summoning the press to his school, arraying the caps of various schools before him and milking the last drop of drama before choosing one.

“I don’t like all that flashy stuff,” Green said.

A loving mentor

Louis Mulkey did not mentor any showboats.

“He’d always say to A.J., ‘So what? You caught the ball. That’s what you’re supposed to do,’” said Mulkey’s widow, Lauren.

You can’t tell Green’s story without telling Mulkey’s as well.

“Without Louis Mulkey, I’m not sure A.J. would be here,” said Bulldogs coach Mark Richt.

Mulkey was a fireman who, when he wasn’t at the station, was working as an assistant junior varsity basketball and football coach when he first spotted Green. It was difficult not to notice a 6-foot-1 eighth grader who already could dunk.

Mulkey became a major part of all his young players’ lives because he’d do whatever it took to help them along.

“In my eighth grade year, he sat in my math class. It was crazy. I wasn’t doing too good, was talking and stuff, and he sat through it a couple weeks making sure I was paying attention,” Green said.

Along with Summerville school counselors, this fireman/coach helped Green get through a reading disability and urged him along when there were real questions about whether he would academically qualify for Georgia.

It was Mulkey who drove Green the 275 miles to Athens to attend a Nike camp, the first time he laid eyes on campus. And it was Mulkey who, on little sleep and after loading up the pepperoni rolls his wife packed, brought Green back to Athens his junior year. That was when the young star verbally committed to the Bulldogs.

“In this business, guys want to sway players to certain schools, whether it was their alma mater or they have certain ties somewhere,” said John Eason, the Georgia receiver coach during Green’s recruitment, now the director of football operations.

“In this particular case, Coach Mulkey just asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ Then said, ‘OK, I’m going to help you.’

Mulkey never got the payoff of seeing Green catch his first pass at Georgia. In June 2007, he was one of nine firemen who died in a Sofa Super Store blaze, the largest loss of firefighters since 9-11. He was 34 years old.

“The whole town shut down,” said Richt, who, along with Eason, attended Mulkey’s funeral.

“Red, yellow, black and white — everybody loved that man,” Richt said. “A lot of people associate him with A.J., but he loved all those kids. I saw a bunch of young kids cutting his name or his firehouse number into their hair. All of them had shirts to honor him.”

The emotions only compounded and the story deepened from there, as a grieving basketball team, all of the players connected to Mulkey, advanced to the 2007 state finals. Even Hollywood is looking back on what happened around that time, scriptwriters having interviewed Green and his basketball teammates with a possible movie in mind.

In that final, playing for the memory of their late coach, Summerville held a 50-48 lead in the final seconds. Green was on the bench, fouling out after scoring 25 points. On the inbounds, a Spartanburg player heaved a desperate 60-foot shot at the horn.

“I watched the ball leave his hand,” Green remembered, replaying the sequence in slow motion. “When it got to halfcourt I thought, ‘This thing might go in.’ Then, oh, man, that thing went in. I dropped to my knees, everyone was crying, saying, ‘No! No!’”

But, wait. The referees huddled. They chewed over the timing of that last shot for close to 15 minutes as a crowded gym went still and breathless. The huddle broke, one ref waved his arms and declared the shot too late, no good. Summerville wins.

“It was so exciting, such an accomplishment. It was so much more than a game; it was a tribute to their coach,” said Lauren Mulkey.

Green, for all the big moments to come his way, said he may never know one bigger than his last high school basketball game.

Here’s how that movie, if it is ever made, should conclude, with a scene that played out on the team’s bus ride home from Columbia after the championship:

The route home happens to pass by the cemetery where Louis Mulkey rests. The bus pulls over. The players climb out and encircle Mulkey’s grave. They all drape their championship medals on his headstone. Then they continue on their way.

Green’s connection to the man who plowed such a wide path for him hardly ends there.

“I think about it every game, every time I go on the practice field: What if he was here? I know he’d be so proud of me,” Green said.

Green’s play is a celebration of good people, some even heroic. How could that ever be judged excessive?