Archive for March, 2009

A couple of news reports out of Athens this week got me to thinking about a possible solution to one of Mark Richt’s lingering problems: kickoffs.

Freshman placekicker Blair Walsh’s performance as kickoff man was decidedly less than satisfactory last season. Because he had trouble getting the ball into the end zone, the coaches elected to go with high, short kicks that often gave the other team great field position, especially on the eight times Walsh kicked it out of bounds (including twice in the Tech game). It didn’t help that the Dawgs’ kick coverage in general was pretty awful, part of the generally dismal state of special teams play last year. At season’s end, a frustrated Richt declared he might go as far as Poland to find someone who could boom kickoffs out of the end zone. 

But here we are with spring practice having begun and no new kicker on the roster while Walsh is maintaining he wants to try and continue to do the kickoffs as well as field goals and PATs. Richt …

Continue reading Getting a kick out of spring »

Since football season ticket order forms usually arrive around the first week of March, with a March 31 deadline to purchase the tickets, and I hadn’t seen anything in the mail, I called over to the Georgia Bulldog Club yesterday to find out if the order forms had been sent out yet. They had not. They’re going out Wednesday, I was told. The price remains $40 per ticket for the six home games scheduled in 2009.

When my order form comes, I’ll check the box to keep the same seats I had this past year. They are, in fact, the same two seats I’ve had since 1975. I’m sure I could have moved closer to the 50-yard-line over the years if I’d wanted to, but my lower-level seats in the North stands are under the overhang, making them somewhat weather protected, and I like the view, so I’ve kept them all these years.

My first year out of UGA I bought a single season ticket, a mediocre spot low down on the South side, but I opted for two tickets the next year since by then I had a fiancée …

Continue reading Those precious season tickets »

I was particularly interested to see current Bulldog Jeff Owens writing on his blog last week about his top five all-time favorite UGA football players, as I’d recently gone through a similar exercise while putting together my bio for the “new look” Blawg. (Just click on “About Bill King” over on the right-hand side of the page to check it out.)

It’s not as easy as it sounds, particularly if you’ve been following the Dawgs as long as I have. Jeff’s five favorites were Herschel Walker, Knowshon Moreno, David Pollack, Champ Bailey and Greg Blue, two of whom he played with.  

Now I don’t know Jeff’s criteria, but for my favorites list I didn’t necessarily think about who were the greatest, best or most valuable players, though those adjectives certainly apply to most of the folks I ended up picking. Instead, I went with those players that I felt a special affinity for during their Georgia playing days and continued to follow in years after. I ended up with seven favorites for my …

Continue reading All-time favorite Dawgs »