Big Chests, Big Wins, and Big Heads

One Old Dawg is going to have to buy new buttons for his Georgia logo button downs, because his chest is so swollen, he’s about popped all of them off. As he says, “All my teams won this weekend.” Our grandson, Walker, won his middle school football game on Thursday. One Old Dawg works with FCA in a volunteer capacity as a chaplain for the Athens Academy Football team, they also won a big game on Friday, and then, well, you know, Georgia beat South Carolina. Big Time. Although One Old Dawg was there to cheer the Bulldogs on to victory, he watched the recorded game again on television.

 

Someone asks him. “You just want to see Steve Spurrier’s face, don’t you?”

 

He grins and nods.

It really was a good weekend.

Now, he sighs as he makes a cat move out of his recliner and settles down to pontificate the fourth game of the season in 1965. He takes a big sip of his Coke Zero and begins. (He doesn’t even get anything for plugging Coke Zero. He just loves it.)

“In 1965 our fourth game of the season was Clemson between the hedges; we didn’t even know Southern University (The Bulldog’s opponent this Saturday) existed. Georgia - Clemson was a heated rivalry that began back in 1897. The close physical proximity of the schools had a lot to do with the intensity of the rivalry but along the way, the head coaches also fueled it. Wally Butts was Georgia’s legendary coach from 1939-1960. Frank Howard started at Clemson in 1931 as an assistant and was named head coach in 1940, a position he held until he retired in 1969. For you young folks who have no memory of these two men they were truly colorful characters of the highest order. Their bantering back and forth made the rivalry more than it really should have been since Georgia had dominated the series since 1920 (12-1-1)

“We had beaten Clemson in 1962, tied them in 1963 and won again in 1964. We were number four in the nation after beating Alabama, Vanderbilt and Michigan. Clemson had beat North Carolina State and Virginia but was nursing a wounded ego after falling to Georgia Tech 38-6 in Atlanta. They could just smell a big upset that would get their season back on track. And I confess we may have been a little bit big-headed.

“Anyway, Clemson was leading 9-6 in the third quarter. Jimmy Cooley, a defensive guard, who saved my bacon in the Michigan game, came in on special teams when Clemson was punting from their 38 yard-line. I’m not sure but I think Jimmy may have had one hand foam-padded and taped due to an injury. In any event, he broke through and blocked the punt and the ball shot back 38 yards all the way to the goal line where our other defensive end, Larry Kohn (All SEC) picked it up and rolled into the end zone for a touchdown. That seemed to awaken us from our complacent slumber and we went on win the game 23-9."

 

 

Furman Bisher in the Atlanta Journal Constitution also noted the contributions of quarterback Preston Ridlehuber (Atlanta Falcons, Oakland Raiders, Buffalo Bills, New York Jets), end Pat Hodgson (All SEC, Washington Redskins, Coach at San Diego Chargers, New York Giants, Pittsburgh Steelers, New York Jets), and kicker Bobby Etter (Atlanta Flacons, Memphis Southmen). In a

separate account, writer Hal Hayes quotes Erk Russell who gave accolades to Lynn Hughes (All SEC, All American) as safety.

"His leadership has been most important. He has done an outstanding job in readjusting to defense after playing quarterback for so long." Erk continues with high praise for George Patton (All SEC, All American, Atlanta Falcons) "And certainly, George Patton turned in another of his typically brilliant games. He is the type boy who continually is making the big plays; just like he did against Alabama. And Saturday, he was just tremendous." Erk goes on with praise for Jimmy Cooley, Ken Whiddon, and Jerry Varnado. "Our boys kept a lot of pressure on Clemson passers all day and this was pleasant to the coaches' eyes."

 

 

One Old Dawg continues, "An interesting note is that advance scheduling resulted in a problem for Georgia. SEC teams were required to play six conference opponents each year. Georgia Tech had withdrawn from the SEC in 1963 and that left us only five conference games in 1965. It was impossible at that late date to change the schedule so the SEC designated Clemson as a conference game for us that year. So Clemson went 0-1 in its short SEC stay and Georgia moved into first place in the conference. We were still riding high.”

One Old Dawg puts his soda down as he thinks about the more serious lessons he learned from his experiences in 1965. “Spiritually speaking I’m thinking of what Moses told the Israelites over and over. When things are going well for you do not forget the Lord Your God. But they did forget, over and over again, resulting in God’s judgment which meant hard times. They would then turn back to God and repeat the process.

“Last week’s spiritual point was about pride and thinking too highly of ourselves. We were guilty of that in the 1965 Vanderbilt game after we jumped out to a 10-0 lead. I think we silently said to ourselves, “Yes, we are as good we thought we were.” But in an instant, Vanderbilt tied the game, and we realized we had a fight on our hands.  A big play got us back on track, and we settled down and went on to win the game 24-10. Then the big win over Michigan and just two weeks after Vanderbilt, we again had to overcome a case of the big head in the Clemson game. Will we never learn? I repeat Romans 12:3: ‘Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment….’”

One Old Dawg concludes with his thoughts about this week’s game. “I did a little research on Southern University and found the school was really quite impressive. However, it is still a small Division 1 school in the Southwestern Athletic Conference. The 2015 Dawgs are good, maybe on the way to being great; so if we don’t get to thinking too highly of ourselves this week, the Jaguars should prove easy pickings for a pack of full-grown Bulldawgs.”

Thanks for joining us this week at One Old Dawg. If you’re receiving this by email and feel you may have missed a post, please click HERE to peruse the archives or see our most popular posts. We’ll be right back here next week for the Alabama game. One Old Dawg is going to have lots more “mostly true Bulldog lore.”