Oliver Barry, CRS, GRI
The Miss Congeniality of the SEC
Georgia, Often Good but Rarely Great, Takes Its Shot at Glory
By RACHEL BACHMAN
Associated Press
The Bulldogs celebrate a touchdown on the field early in their 2007 win over Florida.
Georgia is a power football program. The Bulldogs play in the powerful Southeastern Conference. They have a power running game. They even call their helmet logo the "Power G."
But there is one area in which the Bulldogs have been weaklings lately: winning the national championship. While SEC brethren Alabama, Auburn, Florida and Louisiana State have combined to win the past six national titles, Georgia's last came in 1980 behind chiseled (and now 50-year-old) running back Herschel Walker.
The drought isn't because the Bulldogs are lousy: Over the last 10 years, they are the third-winningest team in the SEC. A typical Georgia season is a top-20 ranking and a nice, irrelevant bowl game. Put another way: Georgia is the Miss Congeniality of the SEC.
All of that could change Saturday, when the third-ranked Bulldogs face No. 2 Alabama in the SEC title game in friendly Atlanta, just 70 miles from campus. A win likely will vault Georgia into the Jan. 7 national-title game against No. 1 Notre Dame.
Sports Imagery/Getty ImagesFormer Georgia star Herschel Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner
So Saturday's showdown is the biggest game in decades for a program that is often good but seldom great—although Georgia folk don't want to hear that.
"Since I've left, people keep saying, 'What is Georgia after Herschel?' " said Walker, who won the Heisman Trophy in 1982. "But I'm like, 'Guys, look at Georgia after Herschel. They put so many great guys in the NFL and they've been winning games.' "
For better or worse, the Bulldogs' virility has been a theme throughout their history. In 2001, a last-second Georgia touchdown to beat Tennessee birthed a legendary call from late Bulldogs radio announcer Larry Munson: "We just stepped on their face with a hobnail boot and broke their nose! We just crushed their face!" Before the 2002 Georgia-Alabama game, former Bulldogs All-American (and ex-Auburn coach) Pat Dye said on a radio show that Georgia wasn't "man enough to whip Alabama." The Bulldogs won.
Getty ImagesUga IX, Georgia's mascot
But despite being the flagship program in a talent-rich, football-mad state, Georgia has just one undisputed national title—1980. (The 1942 team also was named No. 1 by several polls.) That 2002 Bulldogs team finished third. In 2008, Georgia was the preseason No. 1 in the Associated Press poll but finished 13th.
"When they were preseason No. 1, that was a spot that I think they should have relished. And they just succumbed to the pressure of being No. 1," former Georgia and NFL running back Terrell Davis said. "When they play a team of a higher rank…they tend not to play as well. They have a great opportunity this year to really just wipe all that away."
Among Georgia faithful, anticipation for Saturday's game began building Nov. 17, when undefeated Oregon and Kansas State lost, clearing a path for Georgia to win the national title if it won out. On Thursday tickets to the Georgia-Alabama game were reselling for an average of more than $480, according to secondary ticket-market aggregator TiqIQ.
Onetime Georgia student Ryan Seacrest, host of the "American Idol" TV program, has been talking up the game on his Los Angeles-based radio show. "Everyone in Georgia, especially in my hometown of Atlanta, has been waiting a long time for this game," he said in an email.
Associated PressCoach Mark Richt gets doused after the Bulldogs' 2002 SEC-title game victory.
And this isn't just any opponent the Bulldogs are facing Saturday. This is Alabama, the defending national champion, with whom Georgia has a neglected rivalry punctuated by a bizarre, long-ago scandal.
In 1963, a story in the Saturday Evening Post accused Georgia athletic director Wally Butts and Alabama coach Bear Bryant of conspiring to fix the 1962 game, won by 17-point favorite Alabama, 35-0. Butts and Bryant sued the Post—Butts winning a $460,000 judgment and Bryant a $300,000 settlement—in what became a landmark libel case and helped hasten the magazine's decline. Georgia and Alabama have played just 17 times in the 50 seasons since then.
In recent years, Georgia has played a secondary role in the giant, live-action menagerie that is the SEC. There is frowning, flawless Alabama coach Nick Saban, mad-genius LSU coach Les Miles, explosive, overachieving Florida coach Will Muschamp and snide, smiling Steve Spurrier of South Carolina. Lost in the madness is mild-mannered Mark Richt, the 12th-year Georgia coach most publicly criticized for not punishing players harshly enough.
"Maybe we're not as flashy as some of those other places," Georgia president Michael Adams said. "But I think when you put the combination of our academic standards with our athletic success, we have a pretty good record." Indeed, only Florida outranks Georgia among public SEC schools on U.S. News & World Report's best-colleges list.
Georgia wasn't always the strong silent type. In the 1980s, iconic college football TV announcer Keith Jackson popularized the greeting, "How 'bout them Dawgs?" said Vince Dooley, coach of the 1980 title team. The correct response, Dooley said, was "How 'bout them Dawgs!"
Today Georgia football enjoys a massive following. The 93,000-seat Sanford Stadium regularly sells out. Last year Georgia ranked eighth nationally on the Collegiate Licensing Company's list of top-selling merchandise—one spot ahead of Notre Dame.
Some fans see a chance for symmetry with a looming title-game matchup against the Fighting Irish, whom Georgia beat in the Sugar Bowl to clinch the 1980 title. "We've got two games left," said Doc Eldridge, former mayor of Athens and the current president of its chamber of commerce. "If we win both of our two games, we'll be the king. Of course, Alabama can say that, too."
Write to Rachel Bachman at rachel.bachman@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
Only Florida outranks Georgia among public SEC schools on U.S. News & World Report's best-colleges list. An earlier version of this article incorrectly omitted the word public.
--Helen Huntley(727) 823-3801www.helenhuntley.com
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