Georgia Bulldogs DE/LB Mykel Williams on the game against Clemson
Georgia Bulldogs DE/LB Mykel Williams on the game against Clemson
Georgia and Clemson first met on the football field in 1897 in Athens, with the Bulldogs winning 24-0. The two teams met again and again over the years, with the Bulldogs leading 43-18-4.
At Sanford Stadium, the home team has lost just twice in 23 meetings, and the Red and Black have an 8-7-2 record at Memorial Stadium. In neutral-court games, Georgia has a 7-1-1 advantage and will hope to continue that trend this weekend at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
Frank Howard of the Tigers and Wallace Butts of UGA used to be close friends and would give sparkling after-dinner speeches. One evening in the late 1950s, the Touchdown Club of Athens was holding one of its regular meetings, and in walked Frank Howard and Bill Murray, the head coach of Duke, unannounced.
This caused the greatest excitement among the members. They had come to enjoy a steak and have the opportunity to support their friend Wallace Butts. But having two well-known head coaches crash the party caused a great deal of excitement. Murray later became a friend when the Coaches All-America game was played in Atlanta. Murray retired from Duke and became the general manager of that ill-fated game. I was fortunate enough to work as the publicity manager for the game and developed a long friendship with Coach Howard.
One time, when I was living in Atlanta, I was assigned to do a story for a magazine about the Clemson coach who had just retired. I flew to Columbia, where Coach Howard picked me up, and we drove to Dillon, which is near the North Carolina border. He gave a speech to the Dillon Chamber of Commerce. The dinner was sold out.
At the time, Jimmy Carlen had just taken over as head coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks and had made a deal with his school that would see him own the television rights to his Sunday show as coach. He would sell the show, produce it and then market it. He kept the network, which was pretty innovative for the time.
Coach Howard mentioned this in his speech, saying that Carlen already had two major sponsors, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Schick Razors. “They’re going to call his show ‘The Chicken Schick Show,'” he exclaimed as the crowd roared with laughter.
He was crazy and had a classic personality. He could dish it out and take it too. He was never thin-skinned, although he once threatened to sue the fledgling Athens Daily News when the late Lewis Grizzard wrote an entertaining column poking fun at Coach Howard’s tobacco-enhanced accent.
Georgia’s success in recruiting the best talent in the state of South Carolina got on the coach’s nerves and he felt he had to defend himself. Although legend has it that he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa as a student at Alabama, where he played for the legendary Wallace Wade, his down-to-earth humor endeared him to audiences across the country, especially in the Southeast.
The Atlanta Touchdown Club was a very influential club that enthusiastically supported college football. The club hosted an annual weekend extravaganza in January at a hotel in downtown Atlanta.
They paid a handsome fee that often attracted the national coach of the year, but the highlight was a Saturday lunch where Coach Howard and his friend Peahead Walker of Wake Forest (and later the Montreal Alouettes) traded barbs that had members and visitors bursting with laughter.
It was a session without rules, and one of its “victims” was often Noah Langdale, who was president of the state of Georgia and had played on the line at Alabama.
Coaches don’t socialize during the offseason. They don’t make fun of each other. They don’t cultivate friendships or go fishing or golfing together. The main reason is that they’re too busy – they just don’t have time. The main reason, however, is that the alumni wouldn’t tolerate such behavior.
Remember the story of Bear Bryant and Shug Jordan who were fishing and Bryant decided to wade to shore and immediately sank into the water when Jordan reached out and pulled him to safety?
“Now, Shug, please don’t tell the Alabama fans that I can’t walk on water,” Bryant said. Shug replied, “No problem, Bear, if you don’t tell the Auburn fans, I saved you from drowning.”
