When Charley Trippi took
off his sweaty shoulder pads in 1942, the future NFL Hall of Famer hung his
gear on a nail. Seventy-five years
later, the Bulldog legend can’t believe how much college football has
changed. As we walked through the
University of Georgia’s new $31 million indoor-practice facility—stretching
over 102,306 square feet—my 95-year-old friend just kept shaking his head.
College
football has become a spending-frenzy arms race. Whatever glitz Nick Saban adds to Alabama’s
program, the scramble is on to one-up the Crimson Tide at Georgia, Florida,
Auburn, LSU, Tennessee and the rest of the Southeastern Conference. National champion Clemson and the Atlantic
Coast Conference are running in overdrive, too.
No one wants to be left behind.
Still,
Charley Trippi kept saying, “I can’t
believe how much things have changed since I played.”
And play he did.
As a quarterback, halfback and safety, Charley wore number 62 and played
all 60 minutes of the game. His coach,
Wally Butts, proclaimed his greatest backfield ever was Charley Trippi, Dick
McPhee, John Rauch and Jesup’s John Donaldson.
I
met Charley in the 1980s, when The
Press-Sentinel sponsored a John Donaldson Day. One by one, as I contacted that famous fleet
of backs, each accepted the invitation to honor their teammate. So when Charley said he wanted to see the
jaw-dropping indoor facility of our alma mater, I emailed Athletic Director
Greg McGarity. For
90 minutes, Charley; his wife, Peggy; and our mutual friend Spratt Bullock, a
UGA baseball catcher from the 1960s, trailed our guide, Vince Thomas of
Douglas. When he discovered my hometown,
Vince said, “Jesup. I played golf with
Hunter Stuckey at the College of Coastal Georgia.” And my friends smiled. They know the axis of my world is Jesup.
In
fact, Charley smiled all the way through the tour. Even though his picture is everywhere in the
sprawling Butts-Mehre athletic complex, you won’t hear the Bulldog great brag. As Vince, Spratt, Peggy or I pointed out where
Charley’s gridiron heroics were featured, he would smile and say, “I remember
that, but things have changed a lot since I played.”
Before
we left, I asked Charley whether there was anything else he wanted to see.
With
another smile, he said, “Yeah, my nail on
the wall.”
