UGA/AUUBRN MEMORIES

This article, in my mind comes the closest to explaining what we are looking at Saturday in Sanford Stadium. Paragraph 9 in this article, first game the author of this well written piece attended was not alone. I was a season ticket holder then, sitting in the North Stands, and witnessed Sullivan to Beasley more times than I like to remember. This was a great UGA football team. So I step out and make this prediction . . . .UGA 27 . . . . AUUBRN 18. Feel that this one has been owed to me since 1971. GO DAWGS!

Subject: About This Coming Weekend.
Posted by: Middle Dawg on Mon Nov 5 2007 10:55:40 PM
Message:

Take this from a Dawg who has been there many, many times. Throw out the predictions,
the matchups, the records, records in each other's stadiums, our offense versus their
defense and vice versa, trends, coaches, injuries, supposed disappointments, all of it. IT
DOESN'T MATTER.

Know this – Auburn will come to play. Count on that and believe it. What you expect to
happen will not happen. Auburn will come to play and we will play hell putting them away.
If we let up for a second they will break our hearts. We can yell so loud it sounds like a
fleet of C5's is circling the stadium 100 feet overhead -- it won't matter. Auburn will play
that much harder.

There are rumors right now that Tubby is about to jump ship and go to TAMU to replace
Coach Fran. It doesn't matter. Auburn will come to play and will play hard.

LSU broke Auburn's heart last weekend. Their chances of getting to Atlanta are slim and
none. It doesn't matter.

Auburn's offense has been rather pedestrian this year. It doesn't matter. If Lester doesn't
run wild, some back you've never heard of from Tifton or someplace that nobody else
wanted will look like Eric Dickerson.

Auburn has a stout defense. That doesn't matter either. Georgia will just as likely shred
theirs while they're shredding ours as not. That is Georgia/Auburn, the wackiest, most
unpredictable, maddening, hearbreaking series in all of college football.

All that you need to know is that no two teams in the history of this game have broken one
another's hearts as often as Georgia and Auburn. Expect the unexpected. Know that this
will be total war. Florida will quit when you hit them in the mouth hard enough -- like
Saturday before last. Auburn will not quit, especially when they know they can stick it to
Georgia. They live for games like this against Georgia. They pray for them. They will play
out of their minds.

Coach Richt says the players want us to wear black shirts. I'm not one for nerdy stuff like
blackouts or white outs or whatever, but if it will fire up our kids one iota, I'll dig out my
black shirt with the Georgia \"G\" on it and wear it. Heck, I'll show up naked if it will fire the
kids up enough to score one more point -- not that I think it would.

Let me tell you about the first Georgia game I ever attended in person. It was 1971, in
Athens. I have said for 36 years and sitll believe it that the 1971 Georgia team was Vince
Dooley's finest -- better overall than the Herschel teams. That team had 8 All SEC players,
three on the offensive line and two on the defensive line. Royce Smith at OG was one of
the finest linemen we've ever had at Georgia. I went to high school with Buzzy Rosenberg.
Buzzy was an outstanding athlete and cornerback who once rang up 202 yards and 2 TD's
returning punts -- in a single game earlier that season against Oregon State. Andy
Johnson, another fantastic athlete was the QB, a soph. Andy's finest season was 1971. The
Media Guide lists Ricky Lake as the starting tailback, don't be fooled. The man of the hour
was Jimmy Poulus, another soph who was nothing short of fantastic.

Think the Herschel years were the high water mark for rushing the ball during the Dooley
years? Nope. In 1971, UGA averaged 303 yards rushing per game. Defense? The 1971
Georgia Dawgs gave up a miserly 10 points per game and already had four shutouts to its
credit. The Dawgs had given up 25 to Oregon State in the opener in a wild game. No team
scored more than 7 points on Georgia in the next eight. Four touchdowns yielded in eight
games.

The 1971 Dawgs were a fantastic team.

Auburn countered with Heisman QB Pat Sullivan, yes, the same one who is AD at UAB, and
Terry Beasley, an All American WR.

Georgia was 9-0 and Auburn 8-0. The Dawgs had just pasted Florida 49-7 in Jacksonville.
Auburn had Bama waiting with Bear running some new fangled offense called the
wishbone that had revived the football fortunes of the Tide.

It was war. Both teams slugged it out all afternoon. Georgia running the ball with Poulus
and Johnson carrying the load; Auburn tossing the ball all over the place. Sullivan to
Beasley again and again and again... and again. The box score is long gone, but Sullivan
put on an amazing show that day. Erk's defense swarmed him. They were all over him.
Four or five Dawgs would be dragging him down and he'd flip the ball to Beasley who
would juke one of our outstanding corners and break another one.

Auburn pulled away late and won 35-20. They broke my young Dawg loving heart.

And they would do it again and again and again over the years. A 22-22 tie foisted on the
Wonder Dawgs in 1978 cost Georgia a SEC title. It was Auburn that broke UGA's long
winning streak in 1983 wresting the SEC title away from the suddenly Herscheless Georgia.
Go back to 1942, a Georgia team that had a Heisman winner in Sinkwich and a should
have been Heisman winner named Trippi in the same backfield. The lone UGA loss that
cost us a consensus national championship was to a pedestrian 4-6 Auburn.

They will break your heart if you give them half a chance.

When UGA runs out of the tunnel, we should have a pretty good idea of whether the door
to go to Atlanta is wide open or still just cracked. Arkansas and McFadden play Tennessee
at 12:30. We'll know all about halfway through the first quarter.

If the news is that Arkansas has run through around and over Tennessee, expect Auburn
to dig in and play harder. Count on it.

Florida is our biggest rival in the SEC. Auburn is our nemesis. That is something you can
count on.

If you've ever brought it in your life, bring your A game Saturday. If you don't, if the team
doesn't play even harder than it did against Florida in that glorious catharsis two weeks
back, Auburn will break our hearts.

Not this time. Can't let 'em do it.