Twice a decade not enough for Georgia-Clemson!
The news this week that Georgia and Clemson finally have set the dates for their 2013-2014 series and will open those seasons against each other has gotten a lot of us longtime fans nostalgic for what was once one of football’s greatest, most hotly contested rivalries.
The Bulldogs have met the Tigers 62 times on the gridiron, second only to in-state rival Georgia Tech among nonconference foes, and they played every year except two between 1962 and 1987, before conference schedule requirements got in the way.
While Georgia leads the series 41-17-4 and has won the past five meetings, the rivalry was dead even during its glory days in 1977-87 — a period that saw each school win a national championship — with the two teams going 5-5-1.
Younger fans probably may not appreciate just how big the Georgia-Clemson rivalry used to be, but I think a good argument can be made that in that decade the close proximity of the schools and the parity between them on the field made Clemson UGA’s biggest rival, topping even Florida and Georgia Tech.
Clemson’s only regular-season losses in 1978, 1982 and 1991 were to the Dogs, and Georgia’s only regular-season loss during that great three-year Herschel Walker run was in Death Valley to the eventual 1981 national champion Tigers.
Great rivalries make for great trash talking, and aside from Tech, Lewis Grizzard got off some of his best shots at “Clempson,” the school he referred to as “Auburn with a lake.” My favorite was after protesting farmers staged a tractorcade at the state Capitol in 1978. Lewis cracked that he hadn’t seen that many tractors since the last time Clemson played in Athens.
It’s a real shame that the two schools no longer play each other on a regular basis in football. I know the desire of some fans to see the Dogs and Tigers play every year isn’t realistic, given that both schools are locked into annual battles with major nonconference opponents, but twice a decade just isn’t enough. When the two schools play in 2013, the decade break in the series will be the longest ever since they first met in 1897.
Hopefully with Georgia now having an athletic director who grew up a Bulldog in Athens during the years when the rivalry was at its peak we’ll see some consideration given to upping the frequency of the meetings. Ideally, I’d like to see Georgia and Clemson play home-and-home series every two years, meaning two years on and two years off, but even playing the Tigers just four years out of every 10 would be an improvement.
Anyway, as a reminder of what a great rivalry Georgia-Clemson has been in the past, here are my favorite games from the series:
1968: Georgia wins 31-13 in Athens. I remember after I finished selling my game programs at Sanford Stadium I managed to snag a seat near the 50-yard line in the south stands for this great game in an SEC championship season. The typically tough Erk Russell defense notched two safeties that day, but it actually was an atypical game for the Dawgs in the Vince Dooley era in that Georgia had 300 yards passing, including a 37-yard touchdown strike from Mike Cavan to big Dennis Hughes.
1969: Georgia wins 30-0 at Clemson. Cavan threw two touchdown passes and ran for another score as the Dogs shut out the Tigers in Death Valley.
1976: Georgia wins 41-0 at Clemson. Before a national television audience on ABC, Georgia’s quarterback tandem of Ray Goff and Matt Robinson humiliated the Tigers. Goff had a 73-yard scoring run and Robinson threw three touchdown passes, including an 85-yarder to Gene Washington. Quite a day.
1980: Georgia wins 20-16 in Athens. A tightly fought game during the national championship season in which Scott Woerner ran back a punt 67 yards for a touchdown and returned an interception 98 yards to set up a Buck Belue score.
1982: Georgia wins 13-7 in Athens. This was a big, big game, Georgia’s first under the new Sanford Stadium lights as the two preceding national champions met on national TV on Labor Day night. Hey, Jim Nabors was there to sing the national anthem! Herschel had an injured thumb and no one was sure how much he’d play, if at all. When he entered the game as a decoy in the second quarter the focus was so much on him that Tron Jackson was able to score on a 41-yard reverse, though the score was wiped out by a penalty. But the Georgia defense rose to the occasion, intercepting Athens native Homer Jordan four times and blocking a punt that turned into a touchdown for the Dogs. And Kevin Butler kicked two field goals.
1984: Georgia wins 26-23 in Athens. Speaking of Butler, his legend was made on this day as the Dogs upset the No. 2-ranked Tigers when he kicked it 100,000 miles, as Larry Munson said (actually 60 yards) for the winning field goal with 11 seconds to go. The stadium, as Munson screamed, was “worse than bonkers.”
1985: Georgia wins 20-13 in Clemson. Breaking out their red britches for the first time in a few years, the Dogs won a big upset in Death Valley thanks mostly to the spark provided by second-string quarterback James Jackson.
1991: Georgia wins 27-12 in Athens. On Goff’s best day as head coach, the Dogs upset the No. 6-ranked Tigers on national television.
2002: Georgia wins 31-28 in Athens. The close calls that characterized Georgia’s first SEC title season in 20 years started on this day at Sanford Stadium as QB David Greene struggled. But backup D.J. Shockley threw for one touchdown and ran for another, Fred Gibson returned a kickoff 91 yards for a score and Billy Bennett made a late fourth-quarter field goal for the margin of victory. A Tiger field goal attempt that would have tied it up fell short, and the Dogs clinched it when they converted on fourth down with 40 seconds left. Whew.
2003: Georgia wins 30-0 at Clemson. The Dogs entered the game with a shaky offensive line, two starters out injured and eight other players out on suspension, but Greene connected early with Gibson on a beautiful 56-yard touchdown strike. Greenie also had a 3-yard touchdown run, Shockley scored on a 29-yard run, Bennett added three field goals and the defense, which held Clemson to 7 yards rushing in the first half, saved a shutout with a David Pollack interception. Perfect.
And that’s the last time Georgia and Clemson played.
Feel free to share your own memories of the rivalry. And do you agree that the Dogs and Tigers should meet more often?
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106 comments Add your comment
Ringleader
May 21st, 2011
8:55 am
Without the 40% Georgia boys on Clemsons roster, they would be Wake Forest. There is no reason to plaly them more often. It would be like playing FSU more often, it would only make their recruiting easier in Georgia.
And I recall, after Clemsons winning and cheating in the early 80’s, Florida hired the mastermind Charlie Pell, to do the same in Gainesville.
Barack Dawg
May 21st, 2011
9:55 am
258DAWG
We need to play impact games like Clemson because that is in our back yard and will help with recruiting in the south east. We couldn’t careless about recruiting in California, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Ohio, et cetera. So we don’t really get a lot of benefit of playing USC, Penn State, et cetera. Those only really have a down side and no upside. We play a tough schedule every year with our confernce currently so we don’t have to justify that like an Ohio State or Penn State or USC in order to get value from our schedule. Rather – we need to be smart and play games that improve our recruiting in our home base.
In addition – we have a good shot at playing schools like Penn State, Ohio State, USC, et cetera when we play in bowl games and if we are playing well then in BCS bowls so don’t add that to a battering SEC schedule unnecessarily.
We should focus on Clemson and Florida State because those schools outside of the SEC are the biggest threats to our recruiting base.
FBFan
May 21st, 2011
11:14 am
Clemson has never won except for the period in the late seventies early eighties when they were caught in the largest cheating scandal of that era and the 2nd worse scandal EVER. Why give that sorry program the exposure? The old geezers of that fan base brags about that time period as if the cheating never happened. A bunch of win at all cost losers! Forget them!
DawgVoiceofReason
May 22nd, 2011
9:40 pm
Georgia-Clemson WAS a pretty good rivalry, with the definite high-water mark being the 80s and a few games in the 90s and one or two in the 2000s. But in my view, that time has come and gone. Clemson hasn’t won the ACC since Florida State came to town. They used to be THE football school in the ACC but they just can’t seem to get back to where they were. Let’s beat them two in a row and then forget about them for another decade.
DawgVoiceofReason
May 22nd, 2011
9:46 pm
I never got to see Herschel play in-person while he was in college. I was supposed to have gone to the 81 game in Clemson. My grandfather was a Clemson alumnus and had mailed me his tickets to the game. But they never arrived; I don’t know whether they were lost or stolen; I never found them.
As it turns out, that was Herchel’s worst game of his career and Georgia’s worst game of his era. So, I’ve always had mixed emotions about it. If I had been there and seen it in person, I would have been crushed by the outcome and what happened. But, as it turned out that was my one chance to see him (and the Dawgs) while he was there.
leslie22h
May 25th, 2011
9:17 am
The UGA-Clemson game that stands out in my memory was the loss to Clemson my sophomore year in 1986 at Sanford Stadium. Treadwell kicked a last minute FG that gave Clemson the 31-28 win over Georgia. I yelled so loud for so long that my vocal cords tied up in knots and required surgery the following Spring. My voice has never been the same thanks to Clemson.