Tony Barnhart, a journalist for more than four decades who has been affectionately nicknamed “Mr. College Football,” announced Thursday that he will retire after this upcoming football season.
The 71-year-old Georgia native said his last working day will be the College Football Playoff national championship game on Jan. 19, 2026, in Miami. He’s been semiretired since voluntarily leaving the SEC Network after the 2023 season.
“I wanted to ease out the door,” he said.
Barnhart, who has been married to his high school sweetheart Maria for 48 years and lives in Dunwoody, said he and his wife will focus on charity work and their two grandchildren.
“We are in good health so that’s not an issue,” he wrote on his personal Facebook page. “I still have a few books left in me. I hope to continue speaking events because they are so much fun.” He decided to hold what he’s calling a “farewell tour” this upcoming season, visiting stadiums around the Southeast.
Credit: KDJOHNSON@AJC.COM
Credit: KDJOHNSON@AJC.COM
He plans to write an online column and continue to join Doug Mathews on a weekly Saturday college football show on Nashville’s 104.5/The Zone.
Barnhart spent about half his career at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, from 1984 to 2008, covering college football. He has also worked at former Atlanta sports talk station 790/The Zone, CBS Sports, ESPN and the SEC Network.
“I’ve enjoyed interacting with the fans, who, with only a few exceptions, were incredibly nice,” Barnhart said.
He said his best times were at the AJC: “The AJC was always my dream job. I got to do everything I wanted there.”
One of his favorite memories, not football related, was hanging out at the Masters with the late AJC sports columnist Furman Bisher, who worked at the paper for a whopping 59 years.
“He was my role model of what a sports writer was supposed to be,” Barnhart said. “Great wordsmith. Every golfer who walked by knew him and he knew them. Walking, talking history book.”
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
Steak Shapiro, a Zone colleague when Barnhart co-hosted the station’s midday show in the early 2010s, called him “a total Southern gentleman, a class act and the best representation that college football could ever have. I’m lucky to have gotten to spend numerous years working alongside him and having him make fun of me as a Yankee from Boston.”
Barnhart grew up in the small rural town of Union Point, 30 minutes from Athens. He recalled at age 12 falling in love with college football after watching the University of Georgia upset Alabama in 1965 with a famous “flea flicker” touchdown, in which the quarterback tricks the defense into thinking he’s doing a run play but throws the ball instead.
A 1976 graduate of Grady College at UGA, Barnhart has written multiple books, including biographies of longtime Bulldogs football coach Vince Dooley and UGA sports announcer Larry Munson. In 2023, he released “The 19 of Greene,” a book about the integration of his high school football team in 1970.
“Our quarterback Charles Turner came from the Black high school,” Barnhart said. “He is now one of my best friends. We play in each other’s charity golf tournaments.”
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Wes Durham, a co-host with Barnhart on the Zone, called him the foremost authority on the rise of college football through the decades, a man who could get a return call from any football coach he wanted or needed.
“He’s a great storyteller,” Durham said. “Coaches were very much at ease when Tony was on the air.”
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