When a dog gets hurt, the common
thing it does is to lick the wound.
That’s
what the Bulldog Nation was doing Saturday night.
Doggone, this loss to Alabama really did
hurt, as in Jalen Hurts.
After
losing the national championship game in January, the Dawgs were growling for a
chance of redemption.
Uh-oh.
In
the 2018 SEC championship game, on the same Mercedes-Benz Stadium turf, another
backup quarterback rallied the Crimson Tide.
Georgia’s hopes of a back-to-back league title and another shot at a
national crown were swamped.
Last
January Tua Tagovailoa came off the bench to engineer an overtime victory for
Bama. Eleven months later, Tua hobbles
out. Jalen Hurts trots in.
A
different Tide quarterback sang the second verse of the same song.
Double doggone.
Oh, no!
The good news is
that the sun did come up Sunday morning.
We can quit licking our wounds. The coulda-woulda-shoulda fretting won’t
change the score. Here’s how I’m
managing the disappointment. I’m calling
up instant replays from 1965 and 1990.
Good memories help me suppress bad memories.
I
don’t care how many times I’ve heard about the Kirby-Moore-to-Pat-Hodgson-to-Bob-Taylor
flea-flicker play, I want my friend, Kirby, to keep telling it over and over. That was the year before I got to UGA. Still I was listening to the game—stretched
out on the carpet of my parents’ living room at 187 S. Ninth St.
On
that glorious Saturday, Sept. 18, 1965, Vince Dooley’s Dawgs stunned Bear
Bryant’s Tide, 18-17. And when Kirby retold the story in January—while a group
of us were watching the national championship game—I got goose bumps all over, again.
Just
like a Goody’s headache powder, I pulled out that flashback Saturday night, when
the clock was drained and the scoreboard read 35-28. It almost stopped my
temples from thumping, but not quite. That’s
when I dialed up another classic victory over the Tide, 17-16, on Sept. 22,
1990.
On
that Saturday afternoon, I was sitting near a classmate, Billy Payne. The former student-body president and All-SEC
Bulldog defensive end had just returned from Tokyo. His dream had come true. Atlanta was going to host the 1996 Olympics.
As
Billy and I were walking out of Sanford Stadium, I knew the timing was perfect
to ask the question. With the double
euphoria of winning the Centennial Olympics’ bid and beating Bama, I had to
ask: “Billy, would you come to Jesup and tell your Olympics story?”
Without
breaking stride, he laughed and said, “Sure thing, Dink.” During his chamber of commerce banquet talk,
he mesmerized Wayne County with the back story leading up to that historic
announcement. And, yep, that still gives
me goosebumps, too.
And
as I sit here, I can see Sunday’s sports page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The headline reads: “THIS ONE HURTS.” Yes, it does. But I’m done licking.
Bring
on Texas.
As
Larry Munson said in the Herschel Era, “You can’t spell Sugar (Bowl) without UGA.”
dnesmith@cninewspapers.com
