GHSA playoff delay draws parallels to Douglass-Lakeside chaos 50 years ago
Seven state championship games are set for next week at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, but the Class 5A bracket remains in limbo after a November melee delayed the semifinals until Thursday.
A brawl, suspensions of more than three dozen players, appeals, rulings and a court-ordered injunction after a Gainesville-Brunswick game turned the 5A playoffs into a legal and logistical mess that froze teams from Atlanta to Thomasville to Rome.
It’s the kind of chaos Georgia high school football has seen before.
Fifty years ago, a hotly disputed final seconds of the 1975 Douglass-Lakeside semifinal spiraled into 10 days of rulings that linger today. Only, rather than punches and body slams, there was a clock.
“That’s where football hit legality for me,” said Stan Driskell, Douglass’ senior quarterback that season. “I had never been exposed to that type of confrontation before.”
When ‘Battle of Atlanta’ went haywire
On an early December night in 1975, at least 15,000 fans packed DeKalb Memorial Stadium for what was christened the Battle of Atlanta.
Frederick Douglass High — then a 7-year-old Atlanta public school making its first playoff appearance — dressed just 34 players.
“I played offense, defense and special teams,” said Oscar Dillard, then a Douglass senior. “Some of us never came off the field, but we were in great shape and had mental toughness.”
Lakeside High, the DeKalb powerhouse with state titles in 1970 and ’72 and a finals run in ’74, brought nearly 100 players.
“We were real confident,” said Mark Fleetwood, a freshman who dressed for the game. “Our eyes were on the state final and nothing less.”
Driskell’s 61-yard touchdown strike put Douglass ahead 13-10 with 1:50 remaining.
Lakeside drove into field-goal range with 14 seconds left, but a botched snap on first down led to a blocked kick by all-state linebacker Anthony Blount, later an NFL player. Lakeside recovered the ball, and the clock, an on-field official acknowledged later, should have run out. Only it didn’t.
“It’s so crazy, we’re looking around and the game is over,” Dillard said. “But then they said there was still time on the clock.”
Confusion followed. Wrongly thinking it was fourth down, an official stopped the clock with two seconds left, seemingly to award Douglass the ball. Officials then reversed themselves and returned possession to Lakeside, which had no timeouts. Trying to sort out the mess, Douglass coach Charlie Brannon called a timeout, a move he later said he regretted.
The officials gave Lakeside another field-goal try with the clock starting on the snap. John Creviston buried the 38-yard kick to tie the game, and because Georgia had no overtime in 1975, Lakeside advanced on the first-downs-and-penetration tiebreaker.
Lakeside walked off the field as winners. But the outcome wasn’t settled.
As appeals weighed, Central Macon waited
Brannon and Douglass protested immediately. One day later, the Georgia High School Association agreed with them, ruling the clock should have expired after the first field goal attempt and restoring the 13–10 Douglass win.
Lakeside appealed. After an initial denial, the Vikings paid to have the GHSA executive committee rehear the case.
Lakeside principal John Kicklighter warned what might follow.
“This has far-reaching implications,” he said at the time. “The decision has eliminated the rule of officials, subjected them to appeal at any time and made scapegoats of them all.”
As the case dragged on, frustration mounted statewide, especially in Macon, where players were still waiting to find out who their finals opponent would be.
“You’re darned right it places us at a disadvantage,” Central Macon coach Gene Brodie told The Atlanta Journal at the time. “Who are we supposed to be preparing for?”
Brodie later added: “To heck with all this crap.”
Three championship games proceeded on Dec. 13. Class AAA waited until Dec. 19.
All these years later, Central Macon quarterback Mike Jolly remembers which team he wanted to face. Lakeside defeated Central for the state title in 1972, when Jolly was a freshman.
“I wouldn’t have minded getting some revenge off of them,” Jolly said.
Lakeside coach Wayman Creel described the delay at the time with a metaphor while packing a pipe with tobacco: “I feel just like I did when our third child was born. Our first two were girls. I wanted a boy this time. I was sitting there waiting, wondering whether I was going to get another cheerleader or a football player. And finally, they told me it was a boy. That’s how I feel right now, waiting.”
The final ruling came Dec. 15, 10 days after the game had ended. The GHSA reaffirmed Douglass as the winner.
“The whole school started cheering,” Dillard said. “They made an announcement during classes and everybody just went crazy.”
Douglass celebrates high water mark Saturday
Douglass lost to Central Macon four days later, 21–14, on a late touchdown by Jolly, who went on to play at Georgia Tech. It’s the only state championship in Central Macon football history.
Douglass has not advanced past the quarterfinals since.
“We did something 50 years ago that no other team has done at Douglass,” said Driskell, who went on to play football at Duke. “As we live longer, it becomes more special. I still hope I’ll see the day when a Douglass team wins the state championship.”
On Saturday, Driskell and Dillard plan to attend a celebration at Douglass High to honor the 1975 run and raise money for the school.
Fleetwood, the Lakeside freshman that year, said he wishes former Lakeside players had been invited, too.
“The lessons learned in life, whether right or wrong, that’s not the point,” said Fleetwood, who became a University of South Carolina kicker and a longtime high school and college football coach.
“It would be a neat deal to hug each other’s necks and say, ‘We still love each other, and we’re all OK.’”
Lakeside remained an annual contender the next two decades, winning a state championship in 1991 and reaching the title game in ‘96.
After delay, Gainesville faces Rome
On Thursday, Gainesville High will face Rome and Thomas County Central takes on Roswell. The Class 5A championship will take place Dec. 17, moved to the final title game during the GHSA’s three-day slate in Atlanta.
Gainesville initially had 39 players suspended after a fight in a Nov. 21 playoff game against Brunswick. Gainesville appealed the decision with the GHSA, and four players’ suspensions were reversed. Then the school took the case to court, where a judge granted a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction, preventing the GHSA from enforcing the suspensions.
The Red Elephants then knocked off No. 1-ranked Langston Hughes to keep their championship hopes alive.
Once again, rulings dominated attention across the state. And opinions were divided.
“Brunswick started the fight, so I thought it was wrong that they would penalize those kids from Gainesville,” said Dillard, who went on to play at Morehouse College and has coached and trained players for more than three decades.
Fleetwood sees it differently. He questions how the GHSA can maintain credibility. To him a rule was broken, he said, and enforcement folded.
The debate pulled him straight back to 1975.
“Sometimes it’s not fair and this is the way it was dealt,” he said. “There was nothing we could do about it (back in ’75). There was going to be a game the next week and we weren’t going to be in it.”
About the Author
Fletcher Page is Athens bureau chief covering northeast Georgia for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
