Each year, I hear from Dawgs fans preparing to attend their first home football game.
A UGA fan’s first game in Athens generally is one of those unforgettable lifetime bucket list moments, unless, like me, you grew up in the Classic City and were too young to remember much about the experience.
I vaguely recall holding my father’s hand and hearing the Redcoat Band playing, which, frankly, was more exciting to a young child than the game being played on the field.
As I’ve written before, the first game I clearly remember attending was in 1963 when Larry Rakestraw was the senior starter at quarterback. I had just turned 11. I seem to recall sophomore backup Preston Ridlehuber getting to play some late in the game. I think it most likely was the game against Vandy, a 20-0 Bulldog win. This was before the stadium was double-decked and I remember we sat in the North stands and that the silver helmets that the Bulldogs wore at that time glinted in the afternoon sun.
Once Vince Dooley became coach, my Dad started taking me to games more often. I went to a few games (though not all) during the 1964 season, and then began a 15-year run of not missing a home game, starting with the 1965 opener against Alabama, the famed “flea-flicker” game.
After that, I didn’t miss a game in Athens until the home opener in 1980 (a 42-0 romp over Texas A&M), and that’s because we had taken my parents to visit family in the U.K.
A few years back, I surveyed Blawg readers on how old they were when they first attended a UGA football game, and the breakdown was surprisingly even, with 26 percent between the ages of 6 and 12, 26 percent ages 13-18 and 25 percent college age. Only 14 percent attended a game when they were younger than 6, and 9 percent saw their first game after their college days.
I think my middle brother Jon, who was 8 then, was with me and Dad at the 1965 win over Bama, but he doesn’t remember. The first game he can recall was later that season, when he went with some boys from his Cub Scouts den and sat behind the East End Zone with the Y boys, who used to play before home games.
In contrast to the fuzzy memories I have of my first game, the family’s younger generations have much more vivid recollections.
My son recalls exactly when he and his sister first got to go with me to see the Dawgs play. For young Bill, it was the 1991 game against Cal State Fullerton, when he was 6 years old, and for his sister, Olivia, it was the Louisiana-Monroe game in 2005, when she was 11.
“I remember the game some,” Bill said, along with “the walk through campus, with cars parked on the sidewalk of Lumpkin Street, and the band pre-game and the sheer size of the stadium.”
Olivia’s recollections from her first game? “It wasn’t hot or raining. It wasn’t sold out. And we went to Waffle House first.” My wife, Leslie, is pretty sure she didn’t attend a game until she was a UGA freshman.
Actually, attending your first game as a freshman at UGA appears to be a pretty common experience. So is attending your first game when your children enter the state’s flagship university.
I heard from one of those parents this summer. Dayana Toledo contacted me in early June and said she was an “out-of-state mom with a freshman starting this fall” and another daughter starting her second year at UGA, and she was planning on attending a game this season. (She’s from Florida, she said, but “don’t worry, we hate the Gators.”)
She wanted my opinion on which was better, seats in Section 129, Row 25, or Section 228, Row 20. She wondered whether the former would be too low, or the latter too high.
Although my wife and I have had the same seats for many years, I’ve viewed games from many different vantage points in my life.
When I was a student in junior high and high school in Athens, selling game programs (back when those were a thing), we were supposed to sit on the grassy hill that used to be next to the west end of the North stands after we’d cashed in for the day. But I wasn’t willing to settle for that, and I always found some empty seat somewhere, ranging from seats where you barely could see over the hedges to upper-deck seats to a prime spot on the 50-yard line in the lower level.
While at UGA, I watched games from the student section on the North side, and as a brand-new alum after graduation in 1974, I had a season ticket that was pretty far down, somewhere around Section 126 or 127 on the South side.
But the next year I bought a pair of seats on the North side for me and my fiancée — top row of Section 104 in the lower level, under the overhang, at about the 20-yard line — and we’ve kept those seats ever since. They’re protected from the weather and have a good view. The folks around us are nice, too.
I also got to see one game from a private box back in 2009, when the AJC ran a contest for Junkyard Blawg readers, in which I joined the winners there to view a game.
I enjoyed getting to spend time with fan Mark Symms and his two daughters at the game, and the free catering was pretty nice, too, but I didn’t like the overall viewing experience. Being walled off from the rest of the stadium by glass, hearing the public address system through a radio-like speaker and looking down on the field from up that high just didn’t feel like really being at a football game to me.
So, anyway, based on all those years of watching games from different points in the stadium, I advised Dayana to go for the seats in Section 129, and that’s what she did.
In recent years, I no longer go to every home game — frankly, opponents like UT Martin and UAB just aren’t worth the time and effort when I can watch them on the big-screen TV at home in air conditioning — but family members and friends are happy to use the tickets if we don’t.
And so it is that my son’s brother-in-law is going to get to take his 6-year-old son to his very first Georgia Bulldogs game this season.
It should prove to be a sweet memory for both of them.
Like I said, attending your first Dawgs game is a very big deal. Gabe Rudd, my brother Jon’s grandson, remembers attending his first game, Georgia vs. Missouri in 2015, at age 11 with his Pops. As he recalled: “It was a Homecoming game, and it was also the field goal game, no touchdowns were scored. Georgia won 9-6.”
He also got to see the alumni Redcoat Band practicing before the game, but his favorite memory was “definitely experiencing tailgating in Athens.”
Nick Billman, who’s married to my niece Caroline, saw his first game as a high school freshman in 2003. It was Middle Tennessee State, and he remembers sitting “up high in the east end zone, near where they raised the first SEC championship flag in 20 years. Don’t really remember the play on the field, but absolutely fell in love with the scene.”
Of course, there are a lot of folks like Dayana, who attend their first Georgia game as an adult, and I hear from quite a few of them with questions about the game day routine in Athens, with parking of particular interest. Many of them have no clue just how difficult football traffic and parking can be at UGA, and they have unrealistic ideas of how close to Sanford Stadium they’re going to be able to park.
I tell them: Unless you’ve given big bucks to the Georgia Bulldog Club/Hartman Fund and received the opportunity to buy close-in parking with your tickets, or have managed to snap up one of the spots in campus parking decks that sell out quickly, you’d best be planning on paying in the vicinity of $50 to $60 per game at various parking lots along Lumpkin or Baxter streets, and walking at least 20 minutes or so. Don’t risk parking in a residential area, I warn them, unless you want your car towed.
However, aside from the parking and traffic tie-ups (particularly after a game), Dooley Field at Sanford Stadium is a great place to see a game and usually is rated among the top college football venues in the country, thanks to its beautiful setting in a natural bowl on the UGA campus.
Despite what trash-talking Tennessee players and their fans said in advance of last year’s game in Athens, Sanford Stadium crowds know how to bring the noise, too.
In fact, in that game last year, the Vols were flagged 7 times for false starts due to the din created by the Athens crowd. Afterward, there was debate among Georgia fans over whether it was the loudest in anyone’s memory (some thought it didn’t quite equal the 2013 wins over LSU and South Carolina). Suffice it to say it was plenty loud enough, with the decibel level registering above 127 several times.
“These fans are elite,” Kirby Smart told CBS on the field right after the game.
And, thanks to Smart, Georgia fans have an elite program to cheer on now.
This season, as the Dawgs come off two consecutive national championships and — unusually — open with four consecutive home games, both new and returning fans will find the UGA football experience slightly different than in the past, thanks to completion of the first phase of a $68.5 million renovation program on the South side of the stadium.
As the AJC’s Chip Towers explained, “What Georgia has been able to do since the end of last season is pretty impressive. They’ve blown out the concourses on the lower levels of the South side of the stadium to make them more than twice their previous size. The South 100 Concourse, as it’s known, had been 9 feet wide since the stadium was first built between 1928-29. Now those hallways are more than 21 feet wide, surrounded by walls adorned with colorful graphics documenting Georgia football’s present and past accomplishments.”
The athletic association also has built a large concession and restrooms plaza in the southwest corner of the stadium (like the North side has Reed Plaza), with an enormous women’s restroom added, along with family restrooms. They also have connected the South 100 concourse and West End Zone plaza; have upgraded seating alignment and added seats for disabled fans on the South 100 concourse; and have added a “sensory room” at Section 128 for “fans that may need a quiet space if sights and sounds in the stadium become overwhelming,” as a press release said.
For many fans, however, the most noticeable change will be that most of Gillis Bridge on Sanford Drive, running alongside the stadium behind the scoreboard/video screen, no longer will be open to the public on game days. Instead, it will close at 7 p.m. on Fridays on home-game weekends and Gates 1 and 9 now will be located at each end of the bridge, which can be accessed only by those with tickets.
More than a few fans aren’t thrilled with the incorporating of Gillis Bridge into the ticketed area of the stadium on game days. Not only will that mean no more free views of the stadium during the game and no more taking your kids to the bridge just to watch the Dawg Walk down below, but also, if you approach the stadium from the south but sit in the North stands (or vice versa), you’ll either have to enter at the bridge and try to work your way around the stadium to your seats, or alter your approach (with some extra walking involved).
Frankly, as I’ve written before, closing the bridge and eliminating a prime pedestrian traffic area on game days is not a great idea, no matter what the reason (which hasn’t been explained clearly).
However, it won’t be quite as bad as one Blawg reader had feared. I heard from Dawgs fan Jimmy Bennett, who was worried about access to the stadium from the UGA Bookstore, where his family always stops before a game. With the new setup, he wondered, will they still be able to come out of the bookstore, walk up the steps, cross Sanford Drive and enter Gate 2 as in the past?
The answer from Tanner Stines, associate athletic director for facility operations and capital projects: Yes, you still can walk straight from the bookstore to Gate 2. So, that’s good news!
By the way, if you want to attend a game in Athens this season and don’t already have tickets lined up, you’re going to have to hit the secondary market; they’re all sold out.
EXHIBIT REMEMBERS DOOLEY
A new season also brings a new football exhibit from my friend Jason Hasty, the UGA athletics history specialist at the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, located at 300 S. Hull St. (off Baxter) in Athens.
This year’s exhibit, opening Sept. 1 and running through May 31, 2024, is “Legacy: Vince Dooley, 1932-2022.”
“It will focus on Coach Dooley’s life and career,” Jason said. “Football will be a big part of that, but I will also be looking at his time as athletic director, his passion for gardening, the books he’s written, and his time at Auburn before he came to UGA.”
Jason will give guided tours of the exhibit at 3 p.m. on Fridays before home games. The tours last 45 minutes to an hour and are free and open to the public.
Describing the Dooley exhibit, Jason said it has “quite a few artifacts from his life and career, including his 1954 College All-Star Game jersey, playbooks from his time coaching at Georgia and as an assistant at Auburn (which includes a scouting report he did on Georgia!), and documents from his career as athletic director. I’ll also display (and I hope that this won’t be too controversial), his Auburn letterman sweater.”
In addition, Jason has created an area at the end of the gallery with short reminiscences and favorite memories or thoughts about Dooley’s legacy from a range of UGA fans. (I’m honored to be one of them.)
On the opposite wall is an area with a board where people visiting the exhibit can write their own thoughts.
Jason said he thinks that is “a nice way to bring the exhibit to an end point, while also creating a memorial for Coach that would grow in the months that the exhibit will be up.”
Jason’s exhibits always are worthwhile, and Hargrett is one of UGA’s treasures. Both definitely are worth checking out if you’re around campus.
