On behalf of the Classic City Collective and the Touchdown Club of Athens, we are thrilled to extend a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: Plant the next generation of Sanford Stadium hedges!

That's the first line in an email I received last week from The Georgia Bulldog Club, the fundraising arm of the University's athletics department. The catch there is that the so-called once-in-a-lifetime opportunity¹ is limited to 32 slots and costs $5,000. Skinflint that I am, even I don't think $5,000 is too big an ask, but I think I will decline the honor, partially because of who would get that money.

I received the email because I have given money to The Bulldog Club's William C. Hartman Fund every year for over two decades in order to be eligible for football season tickets. (Actually, when I started donating, it was called the Georgia Student Education Fund. It was renamed after former fund chairman Hartman died in 2006.²) Hartman Fund money is intended to support all student athlete scholarships, academic support, medical support, and more. I'm certainly okay with all that, and I expect I'll be donating to the Hartman Fund for years to come.

The Touchdown Club of Athens is Hartman adjacent. (Hartman was a founding member.³) It's pretty much a fraternal organization built around a collective love of Georgia football. I certainly don't have any problem with that, though I don't think they need any of my money. Although I also love Georgia football, I've long shared Groucho Marx's rule about not belonging to any club that would have me as a member.

The organization I have qualms about is the Classic City Collective, which by their own admission aims to be a facilitator for "Name, Image, Likeness" (NIL) contracts for University of Georgia athletes. That means, essentially, that they find ways to buy athletes, luring them to Georgia with more lucrative income opportunities than they might find at other schools. Something about that rubs me the wrong way. While I certainly believe that the athletes should share in the millions of dollars the University makes off their hard work, I think there's something unseemly about buying college players. Maybe I'm just an old prude who was raised in a simpler time of "amateur" athletics, but even if that's the way things are done now, it still feels like cheating. I'd personally rather the football team was made up of students who wanted to study at Georgia, not mercenaries playing for the highest bidder, even if that means we only win as often as Vanderbilt.

All that said, it would be disingenuous of me to say that the participation of the Classic City Collective is the only reason I'm politely declining this opportunity. There's also the fact that this fundraiser is about planting hedges. Sorry, but I don't do yard work. If I'm paying $5,000, it better be someone else who is getting their hands dirty.

¹ This should be considered a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity only if you have the lifespan of an English Bulldog. Even the athletic department admits that the hedges live a maximum of 40 years (georgiadogs.com). And while most of the current hedges were last replaced for the 1996 Olympics, some are only as old as 2001, when the hedges were trampled after rowdy students stormed the field three times in a season. (For the record, the hedges were first installed as a crowd control measure when Sanford Stadium was built in 1929 — when the stadium sat 30,000.)

² In 2004, the GSEF was briefly renamed the Georgia Education Enhancement Fund (GEEF) before becoming the Hartman Fund. I only mention that here because that timeline is surprisingly difficult to find in a diligent Google search. In the Internet age, it seems no one much cares when exactly the GSEF became the GEEF, and I can't entirely blame them; I was working on campus at the time, and I can't remember the switch either. These days it's all just Hartman, Hartman, Hartman, which I'm sure would make the former UGA football star proud.

³ According to the official public relations arm of the University (news.ugau.edu), the Georgia Student Education Fund (GSEF) was founded in 1946 in part by 23-year-old Bill Hartman — then Wally Butts' backfield coach. However, I have to wonder if they haven't conflated the GSEF with the Touchdown Club. Hartman's obituary and Wikipedia page don't mention founding, only that he was a former chairman of the GSEF beginning in 1960. (I suppose it's possible that the Touchdown Club created the GSEF, so all Touchdown Club founders are also GSEF founders.) I'm sure more information about the origins of the GSEF are hidden in the moldering stacks of the Athens library; maybe one day they'll be more accessible to online armchair detectives.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: football georgia sanford stadium william c. hartman

Last week, knowing that Mom would be busy tending to her wounded beau, I sent a message to my standing group text with my friends looking for someone to accompany me to tonight's 7PM football game between #2 UGA and #9 Mississippi. They ignored me.

To add insult to injury, my so-called "friends" were unsympathetic the following day when I complained about people who put up and decorate Christmas trees the first week in November. Are they really my friends if they hate live football and think Christmas should be celebrated before Thanksgiving? I say no.

So I did what any sane person would do: I deleted the group text chain from my phone and went to the game by myself.

Sure, it was cold and drizzly, but I still had a great time (and a hand warmer), mostly because the Bulldogs were totally dominant (and because Mom wasn't there to talk me out of bringing a hand warmer to the game). The seniors were celebrated; the veterans were celebrated; the SEC Champion soccer team was celebrated.... After halftime, it was pretty much all celebration inside the 9th largest football stadium in the world. These are good times to be a Bulldogs fan.

There are still two games remaining on the season, but this was the last home game of the year, an unusually early ending to a (mostly lousy) home schedule. Looking back at the four I attended, Kentucky was the most fun, but this was an easy second place. The question is whether I will be back next year.

It is getting very hard to find people to go to the games with me, especially since I have fewer friends than I thought I did. (Christmas tree-hugging bastards!) So spending thousands on a couple of tickets I can't (and don't want to) always use is starting to seem like a bad use of my money.

I'll see how I feel when the bill comes due in February.

In the meantime, do as Miss Manners advises and "finish your turkey before putting up Christmas." Assholes.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: athens christmas football friends georgia holidays mississippi sanford

I am having the worst time finding a replacement for my Georgia cap.

You will not be surprised to learn that I'm kind of particular. I prefer pictures of bulldogs to the traditional, elliptical Georgia "G." Elastic hat bands are passible; adjustable straps are not. Most importantly, the cap has had to be red.

For most of the past two decades, I've been able to buy a new cap for most football seasons despite my laundry list of requirements. That stopped in 2020, in part because I didn't need a hat that season. Since then, it's been hard to find any hats that fit my criteria, much less ones with art I like. The stores in my town seem don't seem to want to sell anything to me. (Does no one wear ball caps anymore?)

Last week, I threw in the towel and decided that my best bet for a non-adjustable 2023 might be an actual Nike UGA baseball hat — even though they aren't all red. So I found one in my size on the Internet and ordered it, and of course, when it arrived, it didn't fit. Too big. Apparently they run a little large.

I gave that hat to someone who still has hair, and it fits him fine. Meanwhile, my search continues. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll find something before kickoff this September.

Comments (2) | Leave a Comment | Tags: fashion walter

No sooner had I put money towards buying 2023 UGA football season tickets than it was announced that the team's new offensive coordinator will be its old offensive coordinator, Mike Bobo.

As evidenced by my keyword tag "bobo is a bozo," I was very, very hard on Mike Bobo during his first turn as UGA OC from 2007 through 2014. The Bulldogs went 75-31 during the time, and many pundits have lauded Bobo for those teams' amazing offensive production. Personally, I always attributed that success to superior on-field talent thanks to Mark Richt's great recruiting. To say that Bobo's offensive plays were "unimaginative" would be doing him a kindness.

Georgia's record with Bobo as OC earned him a head coaching job at Colorado State for 5 years (28-35) then OC jobs in South Carolina (6-16) and Auburn (6-6) before returning to UGA last year so that he could rehabilitate his tarnished "offensive genius" bone fides as an analyst for OC Todd Monken on the way to UGA's second consecutive national title with Monken at the helm.

And now Bobo's UGA's OC again. Once again, Bobo will be handed the reigns of a Georgia team with superior on-field talent thanks to Kirby Smart's great recruiting. And frankly, I'm on board for it.

If Bobo is as great as the pundits have always said, UGA is destined to win more championships. But if his play-calling is as stale as it was in 2014, well, I look forward to the opportunity for many more "bobo is a bozo" posts in the future.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: bobo is a bozo football georgia kirby smart mark richt

Today, the UGA Bulldogs won their first SEC Championship game since 2017 in dominating fashion. Hooray!

But the real news of the day is that I have a new dog.

Like Henry before him, this good boy is a rescue puppy whose first family couldn't care for him. His original name was Ricky, though his temporary foster parents discovered he didn't seem to know it. They renamed him Coco Puff, but he never really cottoned to that name, either. Mom decided we might as well call him something that sounded good alongside "Henry."

(Side note: I might have ambushed Mom with the idea of a new dog just yesterday, so she justifiably needed some appeasing before she would allow another standard poodle in her house run by Audrey the Hungry Havanese — whose birthday is tomorrow! If that means Mom gets to name my new dog, so be it.)

Therefore, allow me to introduce Louis, pronounced like a French king, unless you're my dad, who insists on saying it "the American way."

Of course, I'm particularly sensitive to whether Henry might get his feelings hurt by having a new dog in the house, so I woke up early (for me) to take Henry to the PetSmart in Peachtree City for an interview with his prospective new playmate. As it happens, the Peachtree City PetSmart is right beside a cemetery, and when Henry and Louis (nee Coco) politely paused their inaugural rollicking to let a group of funeral-bound mourners pet them, I was pretty sure we were going to be all right.

I'm quite pleased that Louis is a brown poodle, a first for my family. White poodles can be pretty, but you really have to keep them on their pedestal, especially on rainy days when playing with new puppies in the mud.

Immediately after this picture was taken, I introduced Louis to my bathtub. It was an eventful day, indeed.

Comments (2) | Leave a Comment | Tags: audrey dad dogs family football georgia henry louis mom poodles walter

On Tuesday, November 2, the initial College Football Playoff rankings of the 2022 season were released, and the Tennessee Volunteers leapfrogged the Georgia Bulldogs, who were atop the Associated Press poll, to become the top-ranked football team in the country.

Then they played Georgia on a soggy Saturday afternoon in Athens.

To be the best, you've got to beat the best, Vols. And you didn't. Final score: Tennessee 13, UGA 27. Honestly, it wasn't really even that close.

Driven in no small part by the chip on Bulldogs fans' shoulders, the game atmosphere was truly great, the best in years. The enthusastic fans were really into the game from long before kickoff, were only made more rabid when the refs stole a safety from Georgia in the second quarter, and somehow managed to get even more energetic when the rain started falling in the third quarter. What a bunch of damn good dawgs!

Reminder to future Walter: This is why you buy season tickets, to go to games like this one. Fantastic.

Thanks to friend James for keeping me company in the rain. I certainly enjoyed myself.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: athens football friends georgia james sanford sunsets tennessee walter

Today was the 100th annual Georgia Homecoming football game. As is often the case, it was against Vanderbilt, who played UGA in the very first homecoming game on November 18, 1922. As is often the case, the Bulldogs won big. (To be fair, Vandy won 12-0 in 1922, and went on to finish the season undefeated, their second undefeated season in a row. Obviously, 1922 was a different time.)

Despite the score, I had a lot more fun this week, in part because the Dawgs scored early (and often), in part because Mom came with me, and in part because we arrived a hour before kickoff and got to watch plenty of Homecoming pomp.

One thing worth documenting: As I've mentioned before, UGA has replaced paper tickets with e-tickets, accessible only on smartphones. I had both tickets on my phone, and both had to be scanned for Mom and me to enter the stadium. However, after scanning the first ticket, my phone received a text notification... which temporarily locked out the ticket app. Oops! It was no big deal at the time — we were, in fact, the only people in our line — but this presages potential trouble on a busier day when, say, a boisterous (read: drunk) Tennessee crowd comes to town.

From now on, airplane mode.

(Side note: It didn't help anything that my phone case broke on Wednesday. So I did what anyone would do and fixed my smartphone with duct tape. It really is good for everything!)

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: athens diy football georgia sanford vanderbilt walter

UGA football legend (and gameshow-host Donald Trump's best "see-I'm-not-racist-I-have-a-black-friend" friend) Herschel Walker won the Georgia Republican party primary for U.S. Senate with over 801,000 votes (68%). He literally won every single county in the state. He trounced his closest opponent, Gary Black (13%), who has been the state Agriculture Commissioner for the past 11 years! If I was writing headlines, this would read: Football Culture Trumps Agriculture.*

Now Walker will head into the general election to face sitting senator Raphael Warnock. So far Walker — who it should be noted has a net worth upwards of $29 million yet has sent me, a UGA football season ticket holder, at least 7 letters asking for campaign contributions — has refused to describe any specifics of his platform (other than "Teamwork good" and "Democrats evil") or debate any of his Republican rivals, instead relying purely on the goodwill garnered in college in the 1980s. And it's easy to see why he's so reluctant to speak up. When asked on friendly Fox News what he would do to prevent future mass murder of elementary school students like the 19 who died this week in Texas — Walker's home state for the past decade, right up until he decided to run for Senator of Georgia — he said this:

You know, Cain killed Abel and that's a problem that we have. And I said what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You know, you talked about doing a disinformation. What about getting a department that can look at young men/women that's looking at their social media. What about doing that? Looking into things like that? And we can stop that that way.

Yes, poor Abel would still be alive today if Adam had only kept his eyes on TikTok instead of Eve's fig leaf.

Besides, Cain killed Abel with a rock, the Daniel Defense DDM4® V7® AR15 with Improved Flash Suppressor rifle of its day. No one would ever try to ban rocks, so why would you want to ban 30-round magazine automatic rifles? (According to Christian dogma, the rock was given to Cain by The Devil, which I'm sure Walker would insist in no way reflects on for-profit gun manufacturers selling military-designed long guns to 18-year-old civilians.)

Sadly, I think there's every chance that bible-thumping, gun lobby-supporting, social media-spying Walker will win a seat in the U.S. Senate on nostalgic name recognition alone. And if that is the case, Georgians will be getting exactly the representation in government they deserve. That's democracy in action, folks!

* While Trump did indeed endorse Walker, it's not like Black wasn't trying his damnedest to earn his evil overlord's favor too, including refusing to admit that Biden is the lawfully elected president of the United States. Trump's endorsement in this race means far less than Walker's 82 touchdowns as a Georgia Bulldog.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: death football herschel walker news politics religion trumps america

As I drink my wake-up coffee (because I'm old enough now that I need extra caffeine just to get out of bed), I'm watching the parade for the UGA Bulldogs football team in Athens in the frigid weather.

I was offered my usual seats in Sanford Stadium for the celebration, but I declined. If I wouldn't go out in the pandemic to watch the Bulldogs play football in person this year, I'm certainly not going to go watch them NOT play football.

Obviously, tens of thousands of people are unlike me. If going 40 years between titles brings this many people this much joy, perhaps it would be best if they always went that long between championships. Compare Georgia's current hundred thousand plus to the estimated fifteen thousand Alabama fans in Tuscaloosa last year after Saban won his sixth title in twelve years. There aren't many parades when your report card says "meets expectations."

I'm glad the Dawgs won, and I'm glad it brings people happiness. Just enjoy what we've got while we have it, Dawg fans.

This sure is good coffee.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: football georgia walter

A poll earlier this week showed former UGA running back and current U.S. Senate candidate for the state of Georgia Herschel Walker leading all other Republican primary candidates with an estimated 75% support of voters surveyed. That's a lot, especially for a guy who has never held public office, hasn't made any public statements about what he plans to do if he held public office, and hasn't even lived in Georgia for the past decade.

Hershel is a legend in this state, and rightly so, for carrying the University of Georgia to its (most recent) national title in 1980. He was truly a great running back and deserves all possible accolades for his performance on the field. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I don't think that alone qualifies anyone for political office, at least not until Congress decides that the only way though its political gridlock is physical violence on the gridiron.

Seventy-five percent of one party is a lot, but I wonder if Hershel's support might not be even higher if he wasn't personal friends with Donald Trump. The two go way back to Hershel's time in the United States Football League. Hershel was the star player on the team that Trump bought then promptly ran out of business. What a way to earn a guy's eternal loyalty!

(Immediately after buying the team, Trump tried to hire coach Don Shula, the only coach with a perfect NFL season, away from the Miami Dolphins. As a negotiating tactic, Trump made the mistake of trying to pressure Shula via the press. A resentful Shula stayed with the Dolphins to become the winningest coach in NFL history; America elected the bad negotiator to the presidency.)

As a Bulldogs fan, it bothers me to say that I would vote against Hershel. I think, aside from his misguided allegiance to a disgraced former president, he's probably a decent enough fellow. But I don't think "decent enough" qualifies anyone for political office either, even if you couple it with great athleticism.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: football herschel walker politics trumps america