Is playing Between the Hedges now a more intimidating experience for UGA opponents?
For many years, Sanford Stadium has been hailed as perhaps the most beautiful setting for a game in all of college football, but it rarely was mentioned in the same breath as LSU’s Death Valley or Texas A&M’s Kyle Field when it came to discussing the difficult places for opponents to play. And Georgia generally was not considered to have the loudest home crowds — at least, not routinely.
However, that appears to be changing. Recently, si.com ran a story with a headline saying: “Former Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart deemed Georgia’s Sanford Stadium the best road atmosphere in college football.” The article quoted a Chatusup interview with Dart in which he said that “the best atmosphere that I played in was Athens, Georgia, 2023 senior night, blackout game and it was Brock Bowers’ return.”
He added that it “was freaking electric.”
Dart’s accolade for Sanford followed last summer’s news that, in promotion for the release of its College Football 25 video game, EA Sports ranked UGA’s stadium as the fifth most difficult place for opponents to play.
The company said it took into account home winning percentage, home game attendance, active home winning streaks, team prestige and other factors, but you had to figure that Georgia’s winning streak in Athens was a big part of that ranking. After this past season, that streak now stands at 31 consecutive wins at home dating back to 2019. That record leads FBS.
Of course, the talent level of UGA teams in the Kirby Smart era undoubtedly is the biggest factor in that home streak (and the program’s overall success), but Pete Sampson, who covers Notre Dame football for The Athletic, came away after Georgia’s 2019 win over the Fighting Irish in Athens impressed with more than just the elite athletes in red jerseys.
“From personal experience,” he wrote, “nothing tops Sanford Stadium in Athens. Georgia got on the light show trend early and knows how to keep a party going all day and all night. And good luck snapping the ball. At Georgia, no one can hear you yell ‘hike.’ It’s a perfect marriage of fan culture and five-star talent.”
As someone who has attended games at Sanford Stadium since the days before Vince Dooley, that’s certainly a change in reputation. But I, too, have noticed that the atmosphere at Georgia football games has been kicked up a few notches lately.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a part of some intense game day atmospheres at Sanford through the decades — memorable games where the home crowd definitely was a factor.
The 1976 win over a Bear Bryant-coached Alabama team comes to mind. That game between the No. 6 Bulldogs and the No. 10 Crimson Tide was the loudest I ever heard a Sanford crowd from kickoff to final whistle until they enclosed the east end of the stadium.
Other high points for fan involvement included the Georgia win over Clemson in 1982 — the atmosphere was electric for the first night game at Sanford Stadium after the lights were put back in — and the Dawgs’ total domination of defending national champion LSU in 2004 drew a particularly loud and rowdy crowd.
Then there was the first “Blackout” game against Auburn in 2007, although that one sort of stands apart because it was obvious that the crowd was really revved up even before kickoff by the prospect of seeing the Dawgs in black jerseys.
Still, during the pre-Smart years, those games tended to be memorable because the typical game didn’t exactly feature the most fear-inducing atmosphere. Generally, the student sections did their part (most of the time), but many areas of the stadium dominated by alums and others generally didn’t make a helluva lot of noise unless the game was on the line or the PA announcer was particularly insistent on getting them to “make some noise.”
That started to improve during the Mark Richt years, although games where the Georgia crowd was loud from beginning to end still were the exception to the more laid-back atmosphere you generally experienced at Sanford Stadium. While Georgia was considered to have one of the best and most dedicated fan bases in college football, Sanford Stadium crowds didn’t always provide the sort of loud, boisterous “12th man” factor in games that the home team would prefer.
Two of those games where they did become a factor were in the 2013 season, however. Having experienced the difficulty his team had hearing its signals in games at places like Clemson, leading to a number of costly penalties and poor pass protection, Richt had spent the week before Steve Spurrier’s South Carolina Gamecocks came to town preaching the need for Dawg fans to show up early, get loud and try and make it difficult for the Gamecocks to hear their offensive signals.
And we did. As I wrote at the time: “I don’t know how much our yelling this past Saturday really messed with South Carolina’s offense, but it certainly was the loudest crowd to watch a game Between the Hedges since the 2007 Blackout game against Auburn. In fact … the crowd was so noisy that Georgia players had to gesture for fans to quieten down when the Bulldogs were calling their own offensive signals.”
Richt hailed the Georgia fans’ vocal support in that game and then, three weeks later, with ESPN’s “College GameDay” in town and the eyes of the nation on the quarterback showdown between former roomies Aaron Murray and Zach Mettenberger, the resulting “Redout” game was one of the most thrilling days I ever spent at a Georgia athletic event — and, to date, the absolutely loudest I’ve ever heard Sanford Stadium from the first kickoff to the final whistle.
On the last futile drive by LSU, the stadium literally was vibrating with an unreal decibel level — a spine-tingling moment that never will be forgotten by the fans who were there.
Of course, everything about Georgia football has been cranked up since Smart came back to coach the Bulldogs, and I believe that includes crowd response at Sanford Stadium, too.
The addition of more sophisticated lighting also has helped (as has the Dawgs playing more night games) though I have to agree with my wife Leslie that some of the ways they try to drive fan response at Sanford are “gimmicky,” especially the constant use of fan shots on the big video screen when many of us would prefer more replays.
Probably another factor in Sanford having louder crowds in recent years is the increased frequency of “big” games. The 2019 clash with the Irish in Athens that Sampson was talking about had the feeling of a playoff game even though it was early in the season. After a week of incredible buildup, game day was electric with anticipation, with tens of thousands of Georgia fans without tickets making their way to Athens just to soak up the atmosphere
And, what an atmosphere it was, aided by the stadium’s new LED lighting system, which dimmed at the end of the third quarter to make the fans’ Light Up Sanford even more impressive, and then turned everything red. The home crowd certainly was the 12th man that day.
The roaring fans appeared chiefly responsible for Notre Dame having 6 false starts and, more importantly, having to burn four premature timeouts, two in each half. Here’s how the Indianapolis Star summed up Sanford in its game report: “How loud is it at this place? Loud enough to wonder how those famous English privet hedges, the ones that ring the playing field, refuse to wilt beneath the roars of 93,000 wild-eyed fans.”
Said Smart of the UGA crowd that day: “They impacted the game tonight more than I’ve ever seen a game impacted, here or anywhere.”
But I think the game that generally is considered to have come the closest to matching the 2013 LSU game’s all-time-loudest status is the 2022 showdown between Georgia and Tennessee, when both teams came into the game with a No. 1 ranking — the Dawgs atop the AP and coaches’ lists and the Vols ranked first by the College Football Playoff committee.
Smart’s players seemed determined to prove a point to that latter group, who had them in third place behind Tennessee and Ohio State, and the same went for the Bulldogs’ fans who packed Sanford Stadium — and remained till the end, even after it started raining and the Dawgs had the game well in hand.
Vols fans and one of their former quarterbacks had talked trash in the week before the game, dismissing Sanford as not that loud and not intimidating.
The faithful in red and black lustily proved otherwise, as 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 the game 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 132.6, coming close to the level of a plane taking off. The crowd involvement led to 7 false-start penalties against the Vols.
Said Tennessee wide receiver Jalin Hyatt: “Sometimes, we could not hear the snap or the play call ... I give credit to the fans. That would probably be the biggest thing that got us today.”
“The crowd was so loud and electric!” said Malinda Teasley Erwin, who sits in front of my family’s seats at Sanford Stadium.
Such vocal support by the home fans still is not an every-game occurrence — last year, Smart ragged on the Georgia home crowd after a rather workmanlike win over Auburn, saying he felt there was a lack of game-affecting passion on the part of the fans.
“I can’t get crowd noise,” he said. “We’ve got to do a better job as fans.”
I said then that I thought the heat, a game-day setup at Sanford that increasingly is less fan-friendly and the tendency of Smart’s 2024 team to get off to a very slow start and play rather uninspired football had something to do with the lack of noise.
But many fans took Smart’s criticism to heart and responded the next week with so much noise that Mississippi State players had trouble hearing their signals. By game’s end, Georgia’s head coach was back to praising the fans in attendance, saying “I was really pleased with the crowd … the energy in the stadium.”
So, yeah, Georgia’s crowd noise still has its ups and downs, but I think that, overall, Sanford is a tougher place for opponents to play now than it has been in the past.
I ran that idea past other Georgia football fans and observers this past week, and most agreed with me.
“I absolutely think it’s much tougher than it used to be,” said Chip Towers, who recently retired as the AJC’s UGA beat reporter. “That has to do with both the players Kirby’s putting in there and the coach’s attitude about it. Ever since he made the shout-out for 93K for G-Day, he made it known that was a priority for him. … Now, it could be incredibly electric at times years ago, too, like the 2008 Blackout, Mett vs. Murray, Bama ‘76 and ‘85. But now it’s an every-home-Saturday expectation.”
I told Chip I thought it was more likely to happen when Georgia plays a ranked team at home. With that in mind, I said, the coming season’s home schedule, which brings Alabama, Ole Miss and Texas to Athens, could take it to new heights. Chip agreed: “Should be boffo.”
Jeff Dantzler of the Georgia sports radio network believes “Sanford definitely is one of the toughest places to play in college football.” And, he said, the football program becoming more elite “absolutely” is a factor. “Our fans and players feed off each other.”
Joel Provano said he thinks the “fan intensity is definitely higher, and I think it’s a direct result of our recent success. Kirby’s personality plays into it as well, compared to the laid-back approach of Mark Richt.”
Scott Peacocke thinks a combination of night games and ranked opponents has Sanford popping. “Given the relatively lackluster home schedule the past couple of years,” he wondered, “perhaps pent-up fan passion has been unleashed in those games?”
Lifelong Dawgs fan Helen Castronis also thinks fan support at home games has improved. “It was more sedate/polite in the past,” she said. “When I started really enjoying how pro team fans are loud and boisterous, that’s when I decided that I would be more like that (and have been). It has made the game much more fun. I love it when the fans influence a sack, safety or offsides and can remember many in the near past.
“I will say this about UGA fans in general,” she said. “They will stay at a game until they believe the outcome has been decided and then leave. Doesn’t matter the half or quarter, and I think that is some of what Kirby is referring to [when he has criticized home fans]. I hate it for the players when the stands look empty while the game is still going on.”
Dave Williams, who recently retired from the UGA Athletic Association, thinks Sanford has become “one of the hardest places to play for a visiting team.”
The loudest stadium he ever has experienced, he said, is “Baton Rouge on a Saturday night,” but “I think the fan engagement has improved greatly at Sanford, and that contributes to the atmosphere.”
And Williams thinks the increased level of success the program has had under Smart is a big factor. “We are now in the hunt every year, and fans stay interested.”
Alan Cayson, who runs the Dawg Bites fan group on Facebook, said he thinks UGA fans “definitely have upped our game. The past five years have been different, and not just for big games.”
He attributes that to Georgia’s winning streaks and Smart asking fans for support and praising them when they are a factor in games.
Longtime Blawg reader Mark Symms agrees that Sanford is a tougher place for opponents to play now. “Kirby brought an intensity that was missing from our previous coaches,” he said. “That intensity spread into the game-day atmosphere. Kirby tells the fans to bring the noise. And they do — something that Coach Dooley probably would not have done.”
Symms also agrees that Georgia playing more night games is a factor. “Fans with elevated alcohol levels from all-day drinking roar at ear-splitting decibels,” he said.
Chris Hale thinks “all the new electronics, lighting, sound, and schools fighting for the biggest Jumbotron scoreboard makes for a very loud atmosphere.”
Steve Short, one of the most ardent Dawgs fans I know, agrees that it is tougher for opponents now. “The Tennessee atmosphere at home in Athens has been electric the past few years!,” he said.
Darrell Huckaby thinks there’s “no doubt” home crowds are louder now, “especially for a big game. Just look at how many false starts the other teams have and how many timeouts they have to burn. Our fans get pumped up and loud as anybody. It is really amazing the job Kirby has done.”
Huckaby also cited the talent level Smart has attracted to Georgia, including the six former Dawgs who just won Super Bowl rings with the Philadelphia Eagles. And this past season, he said, Georgia was “SEC champions, beat Texas twice” and was “two fluke plays from playing in a third national championship in four years. Remarkable. And this with a roster that was obviously not as strong.”
He added that it’s going to be “a fun year with Bama, Ole Miss and Texas coming in. I’m excited.”
Also giving Smart credit for making Sanford a tougher place to play is Lee Eidson, who said he thinks the 2025 home schedule should “offer more opportunities to prove it. The Alabama game will be potentially the most exciting game to ever be played in Sanford Stadium. And Texas will run a close second. Those attending might want to wear noise protection to both of those games!”
LET ME HEAR FROM YOU
I’ll dip into the Junkyard Mail next week, and I’d like to hear what your expectations are for the Dawgs this coming season and any concerns you might have. Also, feel free to ask questions — or share your views on anything related to UGA athletics. You can post in the comments below or email me at junkyardblawg@gmail.com.
