The Georgia High School Football Hall of Fame inducted its second class Saturday night with the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech holding a reunion of sorts. Georgia had 22 of the 40 inductees while Georgia Tech had eight
But it was the players’ high school exploits that served as their chief credentials.
Mike Bobo, Georgia’s current offensive coordinator and a star Bulldogs quarterback in the 1990s, was the AJC’s high school co-offensive player of the year for all classifications playing for Thomasville in 1992.
Pepper Rodgers, the MVP of the 1953 Sugar Bowl while a Tech quarterback and Tech’s head coach from 1974 to 1979, was a star high school quarterback too. Rodgers threw four touchdown passes in a 1949 state championship game that gave Atlanta’s Brown High the title.
Rodgers, who died in 2020, went into the Hall of Fame with his former Tech players Eddie Lee Ivery (Thomson), Mackel Harris (Americus) and Lucius Sanford (West Fulton). Other former Tech players in this class were Billy Lothridge (Gainesville), Pat Swilling (Stephens County), John Davis (Gilmer) and Ken Swilling (Stephens County).
Ray Goff, a 1972 Moultrie High quarterback, was a Georgia player and coach, and he was joined among inductees by former teammates Ray Donaldson (East Rome) and Anthony Flanagan (Southwest Atlanta) along with four others who played for him while he was head coach from 1989 to 1995. Those were Bobo, Randall Godfrey (Lowndes), Adam Meadows (McEachern), and Marcus Stroud (Brooks County).
Other Georgia players inducted were Catfish Smith (Lanier-Macon), Bill Hartman (GMC Prep), Billy Henderson (Lanier-Macon), Buzy Rosenberg (Northside-Atlanta), Scott Woerner (Jonesboro), Guy McIntyre (Thomasville), Keith Henderson (Cartersville), Quincy Carter (Southwest DeKalb), Charles Grant (Miller County), Jon Stinchcomb (Parkview), Reggie Brown (Carrollton), D.J. Shockley (North Clayton), Charles Johnson (Hawkinsville), Rennie Curran (Brookwood) and Jarvis Jones (Carver-Columbus).
The 10 with no Georgia or Georgia Tech ties were Dan Reeves (Americus), Bruce Bennett (Valdosta), Ernie Green (Spencer), Julius Adams (Ballard-Hudson), Al Pinkins (Mitchell-Baker), Jeff Saturday (Shamrock), Deon Grant (Josey), Jeff Backus (Norcross), Jamal Lewis (Douglass) and Ronnie Brown (Cartersville).
Green and Adams were long-time NFL players who played high school football in the Georgia Interscholastic Association during segregation.
The induction took place at the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta.
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