The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, November 1993

I Promise I Won’t Razz the Jackets, at least not much

        

It would really be a great time to crow. First, my beloved Georgia Bulldogs defeated the dratted Yellow Jackets of Georgia Tech Thursday in what may have been - I have no facts to back this up, but that has never stopped me before - the earliest starting Eastern time zone college football game since television took over the sport.  They kicked this thing off at Bobby Dodd Stadium at Historic Grant Field, the oldest college football stadium near a fast food restaurant in America, at 11 in the morning.  Imagine if you lived in Hawaii. The game would have appeared on your set at something like 5 a.m.  One day, television will ask two collegiated combatants to tee it up at 6 on Christmas morning, figuring a lot of people will be up watching the kids open presents and it will thus have a captive audience.  And two schools, slaves to the revenue as gender equity marches on, will agree to it. Lord, please don't let one of them be the University of Georgia.  Secondly, Georgia not only beat the Jackets, the game turned out to be a laugher. A slaughter. Georgia won 43-10. It won the second half 30-0.

The crowd seated near me, all adorned in red and black, chanted "We want 50!"  I’ll settle for the 43. It covered everything I had in the works.  Thirdly, there was a helluva fight between the two teams near the end of the game. I had Georgia winning that on my card, too. ABC's Keith Jackson, I was told, commented it was Georgia's coach, Ray Goff who was responsible for the fight because he was running up the score. I thought Bill Lewis of Georgia Tech was responsible for keeping the other team from scoring a lot of points.  And, finally, there was the jerk driving the van northward from the stadium as my happy group headed home.  Our vehicle did, in fact, have a Georgia sticker on the back bumper and we had displayed one of those right-after-the-game score cards that read 43-10 in the front window.  We were in the right lane. The van, covered in Tech stickers, tailgated us for several blocks, and the driver was having a large time with his horn.  We finally pulled over so he could pass.  On the right. As he roared by, he screamed out his window, "Get out of our lane!" That made me mad.  "Your lane?" I thought. "So Tech owns the streets now. No wonder the traffic is so bad in Atlanta."

So I had and I have every reason to sit here and do my best to add further to the Tech misery.  But I won't and here's why.  All season I've listened to fellow Georgia fans discuss the shambles they say is now the Bulldogs' football program. I've read the sports pages that buried the Dawgs on a daily basis.  And I've listened to the radio talk shows and heard our own describe the situation in Athens with such adjectives as "pitiful" and even "sickening."  I certainly agree it's been a year the locusts have feasted upon our crops.  But if we're in all that bad a shape, think of the relative condition of the Tech program.  The Jackets lost to a Georgia team that has been derided unmercifully by 33 points.  

Then there was the game itself. Georgia behind 21-20, ninety-three yards away, time running out.

"We need a miracle!" screamed Dorsey Hill, now fortified with more than collards.

Georgia got its miracle. Buck Belue to Lindsay Scott, for ninety-three yards and the winning touchdown with only seconds remaining. If that wasn1t enough, there was the astounding news from Atlanta. Georgia Tech had tied No.1 Notre Dame. Surely, Georgia will be ranked first in America when the ratings are released.

"A tie was a gift from Heaven," said Dorsey. "Notre Dame gets knocked out of number one but Tech doesn't get a win. God is a Bulldog."

Verily.

I must make one confession here. I did it, and I must suffer the consequences.

I gave up at Jacksonville Saturday afternoon. Florida had the ball. Florida had the lead. There was only three minutes to play. I left the stadium. I was in the street when the miracle came.

"You are a gutless disgrace," Dorsey Hill said to me later.

He detailed my punishment: "We're going to a tattoo parlor in this very town tonight," he began. "And you're going to have '26' tattooed on one of your cheeks in red. And you're going to have '21' tattooed in black on the other cheek. I don't want you to forget what you did."

I won't, but which cheeks is between me and the tattooist.

--Lewis Grizzard