That 34-14 thing may have been one of Pepper’s few errors since he came rolling back to the old campus campaigning like a circus ringmaster. A Georgia Bulldog is no elephant, but he never forgets when it comes to something like Tech. . . . It was gloating time. . . . The Technicians and ilk wallowed in it. They rollicked and rolled slogans off their tongues all winter. Georgians were spitting mad. They went home and spent the winter smarting, like wounded bears in caves.
Furman Bisher
The Atlanta Journal
November 28, 1975
Being a loyal denizen of Bulldog Nation, I am no friend to Furman Bisher. That said, optimistic Georgia fans are attempting to temper their confidence, so I suppose I should reciprocate by making some effort to curb my unremitting pessimism . . . hence, the Bisher quotation above, a juxtaposition which I now will endeavor to explain.
Not long after last autumn’s season-sinking debacle against the Yellow Jackets, I compared Paul Johnson to Pepper Rodgers. The analogy seemed to me then, and seems to me now, apt.
It’s not hard to see the parallels. Coach Rodgers, like Coach Johnson, arrived at the Flats with prior head coaching experience at two previous stops and installed an option offense. In their respective first seasons (1974 and 2008), each took a Yellow Jacket squad to Athens on a cold, wet, miserable day and hung an embarrassingly high point total on the Bulldogs between the hedges.
It’s high time we took that analogy to its logical conclusion.
As Bisher noted in the Atlanta papers just before the 1975 clash between the two teams, the insufferable attitude of the Ramblin’ Wreck faithful after the establishment of a one-game winning streak under a first-year head coach served only to fire up the Red and Black, making them more determined than ever to reassert what any even remotely unbiased observer recognizes is Georgia’s natural dominance over Georgia Tech. If you’re like me, you’ve been on the receiving end of quite a bit more crap from the Georgia Tech faithful in the last seven months than you ever dished out in their direction in the preceding seven years.
In 1975, in the season finale at Grant Field, Vince Dooley pulled his starters at the end of the third quarter . . . after the ‘Dawgs had built up a 42-0 advantage on the Engineers.
I’m not saying it’ll be quite that lopsided in Bobby Dodd Stadium next November, but, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Bisher, who was right then, is right now, as well, and for the same reason.
I hope one in a row was fun for y’all, nerds. I know winning’s a rarity for you, so you don’t quite know how to handle it when it happens, but try not to be quite so obnoxious about it next time. Payback is coming, and there’s a saying about payback with which you ought to be familiar, since payback is what you’ve been of ours for 33 of the last 45 years.
Go ‘Dawgs! . . . the male ones, anyway.