Adam Anderson, one of Georgia’s most promising young players on defense, became an instant legend to some Bulldog fans with the way he dominated the team’s hot-wing eating contest last month.

The sophomore outside linebacker gulped down his four wings in less than 30 seconds. He smiled and politely shrugged his shoulders while his veteran teammates were on the brink of tears from trying to eat the wings coated in hot sauce.

/Dawgnation)

Anderson’s high school coach, John Reid, got a good chuckle when he saw his prized pupil as the headliner in the video of the contest.

“I liked Adam’s facial expressions — he was just putting them away,” said Reid. “Those other guys are wiping tears, drinking water … and Adam goes about it like he was eating jello. I was not surprised one bit.”

The former 5-star recruit was a schoolboy legend in Rome, Ga., for his enormous appetite. Reid realized it as soon as he moved to town to become the head football coach:

“He was a sophomore, and he helped me move some things around,” Reid said. “It was always a deal where ‘I’ll take you to eat if you help,’ and with Adam I found out right away that was usually a bad deal for me. He was a legendary eater, especially as a young man in high school. It was … you just couldn’t fill him up.

“It’s hard to believe, because you’d think he’d stick out like a python that just ate a pig. He doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him.”

Anderson is chiseled at 6-foot-5 and 225 pounds, and appears to have the prototype physique at outside linebacker. Last year as a freshman at Georgia, Anderson contributed immediately on special teams. As he learned more about the college game, the Bulldogs used him in special blitz packages. By the end of the season (and partly due to injuries to other players), Anderson was sometimes playing in an every-down role.

“One asset he’s always had is great speed and explosiveness,” Reid said. “He’s very long (with his reach), and they like that. I think it’s going to be really, really fun to see the things he’s capable of doing over the next few years.”

But back to that Hall of Fame appetite: Reid shared a few memorable moments from Anderson’s glorious high school days.

  • “I think (his biggest accomplishment) was something like eight double-cheeseburgers, if you could imagine. You think it would put you in some sort of coma. We always fed the team after games. There were also different pizza deals – maybe he ate two pizzas in one sitting?
  • “I remember Adam would go to Zaxby’s, and they had a wing plate with atomic hot sauce or something like that. And he just killed that. Then there was a time we took him to LSU and stopped at a Buffalo Wild Wings. And, of course, his order was whatever was the hottest sauce. Nobody else at the table ventured to go outside of medium, while Adam picked the ‘Blazin’ sauce.
  • “We never had a hot-wing eating contest when Adam was here (in high school), because it wouldn’t have been a contest.”

Check back at DawgNation later this week for a profile on Adam Anderson.