The Dawgs’ national championship has produced lots of commemorative keepsakes for fans.
Even before the 41-year drought without a national title was broken, UGA consistently ranked among the top-selling universities when it comes to merchandising. But, once the win over Bama in Indianapolis was final, Dawgs fans embarked on a remarkable spending spree.
Fanatics, one of the main sellers of sports memorabilia, reported that, in less than 24 hours, it sold more Georgia title merchandise than it did in the 30 days after Alabama won last year, and that Bama team was the company’s previous top-selling college football champion.
You could fill several store shelves with all the items available to Dawgs fans, ranging from caps, T-shirts, sweatshirts, key rings, pint glasses, magnets, posters, wooden plaques and framed posters, magazine covers and newspaper pages, to a pricier items, including a commemorative silver coin, replica helmets and footballs autographed by Kirby Smart and even a Waterford crystal football emblazoned with UGA’s national championship logo.
Plus, thanks to various news organizations that covered the Dawgs’ rise to the top, there also are four picture-packed commemorative books capturing the 2021 football season. Fans will enjoy reliving the season through these books, reading about the quarterback situation, the smothering defense and the rise of young receivers Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey.
First out of the gate among the celebratory tomes was “Top Dawgs: Celebrating a Championship Season for the Georgia Bulldogs” (128 pages, KCI Sports Publishing, $14.95), the only one of the books officially licensed by UGA.
This book is a recap of the season, opening with the national championship game against Alabama in Indianapolis and then running chronologically through the rest of the games, starting with Clemson in the Duke’s Mayo Classic in Charlotte and ending with the Orange Bowl win over Michigan.
Although you have to look carefully to spot the only credit in the book (saying the photos are from the Associated Press), a little checking shows that the text consists of reprints of regular AP game recaps. Reading them, you can follow the main story arc of the season — the quarterback controversy — beginning with the UAB game story, where the writer notes that Stetson Bennett had started five games the previous season before JT Daniels took over. Called to replace an injured Daniels in the starting job against UAB, the prescient writer noted, “it looks as if Bennett hasn’t given up on winning it back.”
There’s also an article looking at the Smart vs. Nick Saban rivalry (written after the Dawgs’ SEC Championship Game loss), as well as a feature on awards won by Jordan Davis and Nakobe Dean.
However, the main reason you’d want this paperback book, printed on glossy paper, is the photos, which mostly take up a full page or two pages. Many of these shots are very impressive, including a great view of AD Mitchell making a touchdown catch over Bama’s Khyree Jackson, and a close-up of Kelee Ringo returning the key interception for a touchdown in the natty. The pictures are of excellent quality, and it’s fascinating in the close-ups to be able to see the players’ facial expressions.
Next up in the Bulldogs book parade was the similarly titled “Top Dawgs: The Georgia Bulldogs’ Remarkable Road to the National Championship” (128 pages, Triumph Books, $14.95 paperback, $24.95 hardcover), featuring coverage of the Dawgs’ championship season from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
After a foreword by longtime UGA historian and broadcaster Loran Smith (complete with a vintage Loran line: “To be the playoff champion of college football is the greatest thing since the Notre Dame box formation”), the book opens with a new introduction by longtime AJC sports columnist Steve Hummer, and a reprint of a column by Mark Bradley about Smart.
This one also puts coverage of the national championship game up front and then moves chronologically through the rest of the games, from Clemson through Michigan.
What’s different about this book, though, is that it uses a mix of beat writer Chip Towers’ game recaps and analytical opinion pieces by the paper’s columnists, including Michael Cunningham in addition to Hummer and Bradley. The Clemson game, for example, is represented by both Cunningham’s column and a Towers piece about defender Christopher Smith.
Thrown into the mix are a feature by Hummer that has past Georgia defensive greats assessing the 2021 unit (from the off week before the Florida game), a feature on Nolan Smith from DawgNation’s Connor Riley, a preview of the SEC Championship matchup by Cunningham, features on Bennett by Towers and on Davis by Hummer (also from before the game in Atlanta), a report from Towers on Dean winning the Butkus Award, and a Hummer feature on freshman sensation Bowers.
The photos in the book, mostly taken by AJC staff photographers and printed on paper with a matte finish, rather than glossy, also are excellent, and are presented in more varied sizes than in the KCI book.
The AJC-Triumph book winds up with an epilogue by DawgNation’s Brandon Adams that uses the late Larry Munson’s use of “we” when talking about the Dawgs as a jumping off point for discussing UGA fandom, and, particularly, his own father, who first introduced him to Georgia football, and who passed away last year.
“That’s what I’ll think about when I think of Georgia football in 2021,” Adams writes. “It was the year we finally did it. We won the national championship — all of us, including the ones who are no longer with us.”
It’s a welcome injection of fandom — and emotion — into an otherwise journalistic look at the Dawgs’ big season.
The third of the commemorative books is “Dominant Dawgs: Georgia’s Journey to the 2021 National Championship” (160 pages, Pediment Publishing, $39.95), a handsome hardcover coffee-table book that is presented in a horizontal format, as opposed to the traditional vertical setup used by the other books.
This one, also printed on matte-finish paper, presents coverage of the season from the Athens Banner-Herald, as well as photos from the ABH and the USA Today Network (of which the ABH is a member).
The book opens with a loving, emotional piece by Fletcher Page, USA Today Georgia sports group editor, in the form of a letter to his father, Pete, who perennially predicted the Dawgs winning “the whole damn thing” before his death in 2017. It winds up: “Here’s to seasons we’ll always remember and voices we can’t forget.”
After you wipe your eyes, you can proceed through game-by-game coverage of the season, starting with Clemson and ending with the rematch against Bama in Indy. The game stories are by the ABH’s Dawgs beat writer, Marc Weiszer, and are in the “five takeaways from the game” format he routinely uses. For the bigger games, those recaps are supplemented by Weiszer’s reports on postgame quotes from Smart and others.
There also are features on Davis, the inside linebackers, a piece on whether Georgia could win the natty with Bennett at QB (from before the national title game), and a feature by ABH sports editor Ryne Dennis on Vince Dooley’s attendance at the Jan. 10 championship game in Indianapolis.
This book obviously had a later deadline than the first two, and so it also includes a Weiszer piece, with photos, about the parade for the national champion Bulldogs held Jan. 15 in Athens.
This is a very attractively designed book that really does deserve a spot on your coffee table (if, unlike my family, you still have one).
The fourth of the books celebrating the Dawgs’ championship is “Delivered: How the 2021 Georgia Bulldogs Made History and Became National Champions” (100 pages, The Red & Black Publishing Co., $15), featuring articles and photos from The Red & Black, the independent student newspaper at UGA.
This one is a bit different, in that its glossy pages are laid out magazine-style, and it has a few full-page advertisements in the front and back of the book.
“Delivered” opens with several feature articles, including one on UGA fans that also includes photos from the parade held in Athens the weekend after the national championship game.
Then come the chronological game recaps from the season (starting with Clemson and ending with the natty). These are generally shorter game stories and sidebars than in the other books, and, while they show talented young journalists at work, I wish they’d added more of the UGA student viewpoint or experience to the story of this remarkable season.
All of the books (except the AJC-Triumph volume) include the roster of the 2021 Bulldogs, and the Banner-Herald tome also lists Smart’s coaching staff.
Overall, each of these books has something to offer. The KCI book presents a straightforward rundown of the season with awesome photos, the AJC book adds insight by emphasizing its columnists’ appraisals of the games, the Banner-Herald book adds some hometown flavor and an appealing layout, and the Red & Black volume gives you a taste of the impressive work by UGA’s student journalists.
I appreciate all of these books, and I’ll treasure them as souvenirs from a terrific season. But, after reading all four, I couldn’t help but feel there was something missing.
I realize the publishers of these books wanted to get them out as quickly as possible after the championship game, to take advantage of that previously mentioned fan buying spree. However, there’s still room on my shelf (and I’m sure many others’) for a book about the 2021 season that does more than just reprint news coverage as it appeared at the time.
I’d love for someone take the time to do a deeper dive behind the scenes into why Georgia’s football program finally broke through this year, after four decades of frustration.
That is a story well worth telling.
