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As the advance representative, managing team travel arrangements for the Bulldogs, I arrived at Ann Arbor where Michigan was the defending Rose Bowl champion. The attitude was like, “Who is this high school we are playing this week?”
“What conference do you guys play in?” asked the man behind the desk at our team hotel in Ypsilanti, 12 miles away. “How big is your stadium?” was the next question, as he smirked with knowledge that, even in the Big Ten, not many stadiums could match the Wolverines’ 105,000 seats.
It was obvious that Michigan partisans considered Georgia to be in the “Little Leagues.” When the game was over, however, it was a different story.
When the Michigan game of almost six decades is recalled, one interesting sidebar is that there has never been a greater reception for a victorious team returning to Athens. Folks back home in the Classic City had listened to Ed Thilenius call the game, which was over by 5:00 p.m. Ann Arbor is in the Eastern Time zone and the Bulldogs flew two Southern Airways Martin 404’s, stopping in Memphis, as I recall, for refueling. We probably reached Athens around 11:00 p.m.
As the planes banked to land from the east, we could see headlights in bumper to bumper traffic all the way from the airport to downtown Athens. In the history of UGA football there has never been a greater reception for a returning team. Considering all factors, the erudite Mr. Felton is probably right about the results last weekend in Austin: sterling victory against the No.1 team in the country before a record crowd of 105,215 and a move to a No. 2 ranking in the polls.
It had to be head turning in 1927 when UGA defeated Yale in New Haven, 14-10; beating Texas 10-9 in the Cotton Bowl in 1984 remains a memorable victory for the Dawgs and so was edging Notre Dame at South Bend, 20-19 in 2017.
The good news for the fans is that with an open date on the schedule, there were two weeks to enjoy the celebratory highlights of the last game. It was Georgia’s best played game since Clemson and should mollify most doubters.
Fortunately for Georgia, the Bulldogs have a coach who started de-focusing on the Texas victory as soon as he turned in for the night. That is no small thing in his business.
