Bowling nights give UGA players alcohol-free fun

Athens — It was late Thursday night, a time when blood-alcohol levels on many college campuses compete with GPAs. A different type of trouble was brewing at Georgia.

Just 36 hours before kickoff of the Vanderbilt game, a big, sum-of-all-Bulldog-fears headline was in the making:

“Stafford, Moreno Found in Gutter.”

It wasn’t the first time they’ve been there, nor will it be the last by the looks of their approach.

It was undeniable; witnesses were everywhere. Heck, their coach was only 15 feet away.

“That’s OK,” piped up Mark Richt, encouraging his quarterback after a second-frame gutter ball. “It was on a strike. Doesn’t matter. You can get it back.”

Welcome to the Coach Richt Challenge, an in-season bowling league that he began as an answer to the boozy temptations of downtown Athens. You get eight players arrested in the offseason, and you start searching for new ways to keep the fellas occupied.

Forty-eight of Richt’s players mingle weekly with 80 Georgia students in this alcohol-free league. On any given Thursday, on the whims of a random draw, the business majors four-man team might be bowling against the wide receivers squad. This is the one opportunity for all of them to compete on a level wooden field and, in the process, be steered away from the party scene on Broad Street.

‘The Untouchables’

This Thursday was a mixed bag for The Untouchables, the team Richt put together and unapologetically stacked — “I recruited well,” he said. Stafford and running back Knowshon Moreno struggled all night. At one point, Moreno was so frustrated that he experimented with throwing one ball left-handed. Another time, he stooped at the foul line and rolled out the ball with two hands.

And the ringer brought in from the baseball team, outfielder Adam Fuller, was routinely high and outside.

But Richt hadn’t gone bowling like this since the Sugar Bowl rout of Hawaii. After a first-game 158, things got a little ridiculous.

This is finishing the drill: Carrying a 163 average, Richt ended with four strikes to close out a career-best 242 game.

Then, continuing to teach Stafford something about pocket presence, the coach kept burying strike after strike on the way to a 219 game three. That nicely rounded out his first-ever 600-plus series.

Just because this was his idea of adding some good, clean fun to the Thursday night docket doesn’t mean Richt won’t try to win every frame.

Hard to imagine Florida’s Urban Meyer mixing it up on the lanes on the week of a big game. This would be as unthinkable to Alabama’s Nick Saban as leaving the film room to call bingo at the Tuscaloosa VFW.

But Richt has been the dependable regular since beginning this league.

The routine hasn’t varied for him: Put the kids to bed. Don the bowling shirt with the nickname “Super Boca” stitched across the chest (referring to his Boca Raton roots). Load up the 16-pound strike ball and the red 14-pound spare ball decorated with the big Bulldog head. And don’t forget the bowling shoes he got for Christmas, the ones with the faux wood-grain look straight off the dashboard of a 1998 Mercury Marquis.

“It’s his baby,” said Wayne Barr, the program director at Showtime Bowl. “And it’s good for us, good for the college, good for the players.”

There’s never a beer frame at the Showtime Bowl, an alcohol-free facility. That perfectly fits Richt’s design. The alley’s schedule also was wide open at just the right time to keep the crowd busy during prime drinking hours. They get the first ball rolling at 10:30 every Thursday night, ending around

12:30 a.m.

“Thursday nights at most campuses around the country tend to be the one that people go out and do whatever they do,” Richt said. As one student put it, what they do is “get an early start on the weekend.”

“I was trying to find something that would be fun and safe that would include our guys and the student body,” Richt said.

“Some people thought the kids wouldn’t respond. I figured, let’s give it a try. What the heck? We got nothing to lose.”

Students line up

Alerted with only a brief notice in the university newspaper, students began lining up outside the alley three hours before registration opened this summer.

When it was done, Showtime Bowl had its only league that spreads over every one of its 32 lanes.

There’s a waiting list of 150. A dozen five-man teams were from the football team. The other 20 came from the student body, all competing for weekly plaques. The Athletic Association pays the expenses, estimated at just over $16,000 by the time the 12th and final week of bowling is done.

“It has been great to be able to bring the student body together,” said Erica Keel, a senior from Atlanta. “Everybody thinks [the football players] are like gods on campus. But they’re just normal guys who can hang around with us, and even cheer us on sometimes.”

Just how normal is proven every time these athletes attempt to transfer their gifts to the lanes.

Receiver Mohamed Massaquoi takes a very slow two-step approach, in running shoes, before lofting his all-or-nothing big hook from somewhere just beneath his armpit.

Cornerback Prince Miller’s approach is similarly abbreviated, finishing on the wrong foot about five feet behind the foul line.

Stafford treats every frame like a two-minute drill, rushing forward almost before the pins have been reset. “They ask me what’s my plan. I say I’m just throwing it at all those pins in front of me,” the quarterback said.

Thanks in large part to an off night by Stafford and Moreno — Moreno threw an 85 his last game — The Untouchables lost three of a possible four points Thursday to a student bunch named Team Yes-Shon. Whether that factors into the complicated BCS rankings is anyone’s guess.

For the victors, it was a transcendent moment. “I can’t believe it, I throw a strike and Mark Richt is pointing at me, congratulating me. It’s almost surreal,” said Team Yes-Shon’s Jesse Smith, a senior from Savannah.

Having at least gotten away from the pressures of big-time football for a couple of hours, The Untouchables lost with grace. They even posed with their opponents for a happy post-match photo.

All the students agree — any Thursday that ends with a smiling portrait rather than a mug shot is a good night.