Happy National Goal Line Stalker Day!

No. 34 is 55 years young today! How I miss that glorious tear away jersey.

"It was a big deal and something I'll always remember."

This is a spectacular read by Schlabach. It has an interactive sense as he blends the story on Herschel running over Bates 35 years ago with memories from the key people involved,video, and other images from way back when freshmen rarely played.

Bill Bates: We started blitzing, because we didn't think (Walker) would be able to pick them up. We had a blitz from one of the sides. He cut back to the left, and our coaches always told us to break down for a tackle. So I broke down.

Of course, you know how it ends. But click over if you haven't already read it and indulge yourself.

Never give up on your dreams young man...

Regarding the Herschel news...so you're saying there's a chance...???

If Herschel makes the Falcons’ roster then there’s still hope for me to be an Milledge route UGA bus driver.

— Bernie (@BernieDawg) June 26, 2015

Herschel Walker, netline stalker

Forgot to share this earlier. Took the family to Athens last weekend for the NCAA Men's match against FSU. Pasha and Co. make quick work of Jameis' former team the Seminoles. Before taking the stands, we walked through the ITA Hall of Fame, aka the house that Magill built. It was quite the experience. Here's just one of the gems you can find there.

That's football's greatest player, executing a perfect net volley which assuredly blazed right past someone like Cris Collingsorth or maybe Bo Jackson before they just dropped their cute little wooden rackets and walked off the court.

Visiting the ITA HoF isn't quite the same now that it's legendary curator and Athens' finest Dawg has left this Earth. But it's a trip worth making, for sure.

Gator Hate Check, 4 days

Yesterday I gave you one to temper the enthusiasm. The idea being that even when Georgia has the better team, is favored to win, and all things seem to be going our way, they can turn against us just as quickly.

Well today, let's just remember a time when we beat their ass real good!

courtesy of Dawg19

Recently the wife stumbled on a stat that left her dumbfounded. Against Florida in 1981 Herschel had 47 carries. "FORTY-seven carries? In one GAME?" Then last night as we re-watched the 1980 game on SEC Network she just turned to me and said, "The ball ain't heavy."

Nope. Go Dawgs!

Gurley is the one who knocks.

Hitting the road. Well, after taking a final dig at that one Sakerlina fan I work with. I'll be back here tomorrow with two keys to the victory and maybe some pics/vids from around the beautiful USCe campus warehouses. Until then, remember....

Guess I've had Heisenberg on the brain the last couple days for some reason. But with all due respect to Mr. White, in Columbia SC, Todd GrownDamnMan Gurley is the one who knocks.

HE...is the danger.

Go Dawgs!

Friday Misery - chicken soup for the cocks' soul

"Man did he turn it on when he had to!" - Larry Munson on Herschel trucking past some chickens

Inspiration is for those who need it
I've never read one, but those chicken soup books were all the rage a couple few years ago, weren't they? They had one for every subset of human existence - chicken soup for the teachers' soul, Jesse Palmer's teleprompter, golfers, dads and moms, B1G coaches, dog lovers, cat lovers, teenagers, pre-teenagers, dads and moms of pre-teenagers, Beyoncé (no...just Beyonce), elementary school crossing guards, college students, Waffle House short order cooks, bloggers, Urban Meyer pan pizza deliverers, grandmas, rent-a-Santas, Knoxville periodontists, the Internal Revenue Service, Chicago Cubs fans, encyclopedia salesmen, encyclopedia saleswomen, Wikipedia editors, drivers ed teachers, Mrs. Bernie (no...just Mrs. Bernie), blog readers, all the single ladies, teenage mutant ninja turtles, engiNerds, sisters, the brothers, Michael Adams' tailgate, Canadians, that person in Montana, runners, walkers, emerging scooter and alley enthusiasts, Indian Armed Forces (no, really), NBA majority owners, gardeners, Craig James' dead hookers, House Baratheon, iPhone 1 users, Walter White's chemistry students, my college advisor(s), and even your local legislators of all people. Bless their hearts.

I missed a few probably. But you get the point. Whoever it is that needs their soul soothed, their confidence lifted, their spirit heightened to new altitudes, there's a book for that poor bastard.

Us..you, me, and most of the other dumbasses reading this right now...we don't need that shit. Soup is for the sick and the downtrodden. How do you make soup? You throw a chicken carcass in a pot of boiling water and then go find a spoon. I don't want chicken soup. I want what comes first. I want what makes that chicken carcass a chicken carcass. I want the blood that Richt was referring to the other day. I want the meat and not the slimy discarded byproducts.

Got chicken? (via)

I want to roast that sucker to perfection, carve it up like Gurley, grab a hunk like Leonard Floyd grabs Dylan by the scruff of his neck, dip that sucker in a vat of sauce and the feast on the mother.

Then I want to turn to Spurrier and say, "The spoons are in the Light/Inspirational reading section."

A badass is not born from a greasy wishbone
Two years ago we were there outside of Williams-Brice pretty early. Three older Damn Good Dawgs had arrived even earlier than us and waved us in. I had met them only once before but they had graciously offered to let us join them after Robert vouched for us.

Now, if you've never been to a Georgia-Sakerlina game, you probably listen to the rest of us talk about the stadium being set against a barren landscape and think those guys love them some hyperbole. But truly, it's a shithole. Perhaps Tyler put it best - "...you know that Columbia is a utopia of good breeding, manners, and well designed urban planning. Or the exact opposite of all those things." I've even met some Gamecock fans that will admit to the unattractiveness of the stadium's environs. That is if they themselves have ever ventured to other stadiums. You know, ones that are actually a part of the campus. So yeh, it's a dicey tailgate scene.

And as we hunkered down in a dilapidated warehouse district we watched both Georgia and Carolina fans trickle in. Just across the way a very large tailgate was set up and the music started. I say music, but it wasn't. It was sound being blared at a decibel level taller than Jadeveon Clowney with his dreads on end. The noise bounced off the brick facades until all you heard were "lyrics" about "bitches" and "ho's" and "mother f---ing haters".

It wasn't even 9am and we were already miserable. I turned to Ben and Brian and said something. If the words escaped my mouth it was a miracle. I tried again before giving up. And it was then that I noticed Larry walking over there to "greet" these dudes.

Now, I'm an older fella. And this guy could be my uncle and was wearing a knee brace. He towers over most people much like Paul Bunyun did I would imagine, Except Larry wears red and black better than Bunyun ever could. The twenty to forty gamecock fans (actually, I'm pretty sure they were former players that get that spot every home game for a reunion of sorts) on the other side never saw Big Larry coming.

I guess Dean saw the tension in my eyes. After all, he couldn't hear it in my voice since some mother f---er was about to bitchslap some ho across a dance floor. But I did manage to hear his words as he leaned in close. "Now watch this. They're gonna turn that shit down."

"Should we..."

"Naw," Dean interrupted, understanding where I was going. "Ol' Larry has a way with words."

His emphasis on those last three words didn't ease the tension and I readied for whatever the hell comes when a group of 30 some odd gamecocks turn on one solitary giant Dawg fan. In my head it was fight or flight, but what it should of told me was to just sit my ass down and light a cigar cuz Badass Larry is on the mother.

What seemed like an hour but was actually just a few seconds passed and finally Larry limped back in our direction. The music dropped so low you could almost hear him grunt as he settled back into his chair. He casually re-engaged with the television that he could now hear as well as see, and sipped his bloody mary.

Or perhaps it was White Lightning, or jet fuel. Hell, it may have just been a Diet Coke. Didn't matter. Badass Larry had set the tone for the day. There have been many times since then that I wished he had been the one to give the pregame speech for Georgia. To this day I still don't know what it is that he said to that head henpecker in the garnet and black jersey. Don't really care. Like Dean said, Larry has a way of making people see what's in everyone's best interest.

In other words, show some respect and don't be a goddamn cock.

Let's close with a prayer shall we?...Dear Lord, please feed Gurley the ball. Forever and ever, Amen.

The one where Gurley > Herschel

The comparisons between the two make me uncomfortable to tell you the truth. Different backs in different eras. Of course, similar impacts. But I digress.

I hadn't thought of it until reading this Emerson piece on special teams, but Herschel wouldn't have returned kickoffs had Todd Gurley been born in the early to mid-1960s.

Walker returned 14 kickoffs in his three years at Georgia – six each as a freshman and sophomore, and two as a junior. He never reached the end zone, averaging 17.6 yards per return. When Walker got to the NFL he had 198 career kickoff returns, returning two for touchdowns.

Gurley has now eight career kickoff returns for an average of 42.9 yards. One-quarter of those returns have been for touchdowns, each a 100-yarder. He only got one chance on Saturday night; the first two were touchbacks, the next was the touchdown, and then Clemson booted it short to open the second half, having seen enough.

Of course, the bigger story is the fact that Richt approves of sending his all-world tailback out there in the first place. Who the hell is this guy anyway?

Read more here: http://www.macon.com/2014/09/04/3286167/gurley-returning-kickoffs-herschel.html?sp=/99/160/166/#storylink=cpy

"It's a great day to be a Bulldog!"

With one highlight of Bill Bates flat on his back, a freshman from Wrightsville would set the bar for all future tailbacks at the University of Georgia. But more than fifty years prior to that night in Knoxville, something even more momentous happened.

Daniel Hamilton Magill fell in love with UGA.

And it was a love affair that spanned from the Great Depression through 15 presidential terms. Of course, Herschel would go on to be affectionately referred to as The Goalline Stalker. And it was Magill who coined the moniker. Yesterday the University of Georgia lost its longtime publicist and greatest representative. Coach Magill was 93 years young.

Publicity was always Magill's forte. If carrying the football was an effortless task for Georgia's greatest running back, then carrying the torch for UGA for the better part of a century came even easier for Dan Magill.

He built collegiate tennis and made Ag Hill its epicenter. He once held three jobs within the athletic offices and still found time to give free tennis lessons to local kids of the Athens community. He retired as tennis' all time winningest coach, and as amazing as that feat seems, it was just a drop in the bucket as to his impact at UGA.

The greatest example of his tenacity and incredible loyalty is likely just a couple of asterisks. During World War II, Georgia's football team was depleted due to its men enlisting to fight over seas. Still, the game went on and in the rivalry with Georgia Tech we saw lopsided losses in both 1943 and 1944. The combined score of 92-0 could mostly be attributed to Tech's ability to recruit naval officers to its campus while Georgia's lettermen (ie. Frank Sinkwich, Charley Trippi) were fighting the war. So Magill had the facts added to the history books.

"There's no question about it, there's no way they are true Georgia-Georgia Tech games," Magill said. "There's no question about that. We had a freshman team.

"We still carry the scores, we just have the asterisks to explain the facts."

So when the discrepancy in the records both Georgia and the North Avenue Trade School offer is inevitably brought up again, you can tip your cap to ol' Coach Magill. He had our best interests at heart before most of our hearts even started beating.

No, no one has understood and lived out UGA Athletics like Dan Magill. Running backs have passed through Athens without ever clearing the hurdle #34 set. Probably, no one ever will. The same can be said for any and all fans of the Georgia Bulldogs. UGA will never have an alumnus greater than Coach Magill. It will never have a bigger fan and it will never have a more passionate torch bearer. If you truly bleed red and black, you understand that as fact. Because every piece of history you've come to know and appreciate, every highlight from years past, and every moment when an athlete wearing the Georgia G went toe to toe with an SEC foe, Magill was there.

And he shouted "It's a great day to be a Bulldog!"

No, we'll never be a greater Georgia Bulldog than Dan Magill. But we'll try. We'll always try, because that is what he would have us do.

Happy Birthday Herschel!

And thanks for proving year in and year out that age is just a number.

Keith Marshall curbed

Although he doesn't exactly say who "they" are, looks like the coaches are suggesting Keith Marshall hang up the track shoes.

Georgia tailback Keith Marshall thinks his days of running track could be over.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t let me run again, but I would like to run again,” Marshall said. “Football’s definitely first.”

Marshall missed the first week of spring practices after pulling a hamstring Feb. 9 while running the 60-meter dash at Virginia Tech.

Herschel continues to be like a Highlander, "There can be only one."

The ball wasn't heavy

Quite simply, the greatest to ever play the game. So it never gets old watching his highlights.

Happy 51st Birthday Herschel!

Also...

Just Sayin'...

Monday's Meatloaf - Et tu, Herschel?

Is Herschel Walker actually from New Bern, North Carolina?

Bernie, you know all I drink is
water. And awesome sauce.

Get the picture now. You walk into the brand new restaurant and are immediately greeted by a near life-size picture of one of the greatest idols of your lifetime. You get the girl with the Dawg tattoo to snap a picture of you standing next to "him". Your heart beats even faster as the waitress seats the party. The walls are filled with memories that they seemingly plucked right from your cerebral cortex: Herschel in the ballcap sitting on the bench next to Kevin Butler, the Heisman, Bill Bates flat on his back...they're all there. Plus there's a casual, easy feel to the place. You knew even as you crossed the threshold that this is a place where everyone is happy and content.

You sit down and quickly grasp the menu. You've already texted the wife for the sole purpose of bragging that you're here and she's not. That's an anger bridge you can cross later because you've long wondered what great flavors and great food will grace this menu that you now clutch in your own two hands!!! Just like the football he carried, it ain't heavy, and it's filled with savory and unique pub food. It's like a walk through his life: from his mama's chicken to "The Bobsled" to a grilled cheese that pays tribute to the one and only Larry Munson.

My joy is slowly being overtaken by anxiety however as I'm not sure what to order. And there's not enough money in my wallet to get everything. What am I going to do?!? And then the waitress asks, "Can I get you something to drink while you look over the menu?"

Oh that is a fantastic idea. Ordering something to drink is simple and buys Brad and I some more time to weigh our options against what little room is in our stomachs. Someone at the table asks for a coke as I'm deciding between a simple iced tea or something from the beer menu. But wait...what was that the waitress said? Did she say the words..."Is Pepsi okay?"

.....radio silence....frowny faces....dropped jaws....dreams dashed....buzz killed...

Today's Ingredients
- Of all my enemies, Gator tears are the best tears. (h/t Senator)
- Tyler goes deep into the numbers of Grantham's defense. Part one, and part two.
- Earlier this morning I look at the QB depth going forward. Here ecdawg looks more closely at Faton Bauta.
- Meanwhile at the running back position, Lady Sportswriter looks at what AJ Turman could bring to the backfield.
- Coach Fox's team won their fifth in a row with a hard faught win over TAMU Saturday.
- One of the amazing things about the win over the Aggies was that KCP only had ten points. But last week Daugman looked at just how productive the Georgia star has been.
- Lugnut Dawg is happy for the hoops streak, but wonders how much of it is a reflection of the competition.
- Kyle King also has some thoughts on the hoops team and what could lie ahead.
- Lastly, hope to have a guest on the blog later this week to answer some post-NSD questions for us. And I'm also rounding up the old tailgate crew to do the same before spring practice starts.

I mean, pepsi don't mix into any hard liquor right and it's been linked to such illnesses as diabetes, hang nails, sore throats, gout and all manner of venereal diseases. It's a syrupy mess that's only function is to attract flies, ants and other annoying pests that pass it off as something called "pop". It was born in New Bern, North Carolina but it now hails from some city in New York covered under so much snow that I forget what the actual name is. Maybe it's Karo, NY. Because that's what pepsi tastes like - Karo syrup poured over ice....or not, if you really wanna fly your freak flag.

An artist's early rendering of
a bottle of Pepsi.

I once survived a trip to New Bern NC. The family and I stopped there for the night thinking it was named after me or something, maybe an ancestor or just a really deranged fan. Turns out it had nothing to do with your favorite blogger, but it was the birthplace of PepsiCo. We spent 16.5 hours trying to find an adequate drink that was both refreshing and digestible. You see, New Bern is just close enough to the coast to make the tap water a little marshy. So unless you smuggled in your own cooler of beer, Coca-Cola and bottled water you weren't quenching any thirst in New Bern.

But I digress. I submitted my angst riddled complaint thorough review and suggestion for improvement through the Herschel Walker's Famous 34 Pub and Grill website the next day. If you're as confused and bewildered as I am by this development I would urge you to do the same. It only takes a moment and may save someone's bourbon from being ruined at the bar. Or more importantly, it may save some young child from the despair of a world where a southern restaurant thinks it's okay to save a little coin on the soft drink menu choices.


Yes, I know Herschel has likely never put something as unhealthy as a soft drink into that chiseled body of his. But where in the Sam Hill does someone from Wrightsville GA get the notion to allow a "beverage" like pepsi into his restaurant? That's like choosing a bagel over a biscuit, wasting a decent piece of cheese on a turkey burger, trying to pass off a glass of iced tea with a sugar packet on the side as sweet tea, or saying something like "Bacon is so unhealthy for you".

I just have no more words...I just can't....it's unthinkable...

Bernie

Flashback: 1982 Georgia Tech

Herschel's last Sanford Stadium stand.

h/t Dawg19

It takes two...to stand nearly as tall as Herschel

I haven't grown tired of the "Gurshall" stuff. I think it's pretty cool actually. They're both very gifted players and seem to be just as great at being human beings. However, with all of our scientific advances in DNA and cloning, I'm still surprised that 30 years after the Goalline Stalker exited Sanford it still takes two to match his production, as Emerson lays out in this piece with the help of the UGA SID's office.

via

After 10 games, Gurley has 973 rushing yards, which already ranks third all-time for a Georgia freshman. It's actually second all time for a true freshman, as Knowshon Moreno's 1,334-yard season in 2007 came after a redshirt year. 

Walker's freshman record seems safe: Gurley would need a lot of yards to catch Walker, who had 1,616 yards as a freshman in 1980. 

But if you combine Gurley with freshman teammate Keith Marshall, then "Gurshall" have 1,598 yards, which is just 18 yards away from Herschel. The pair have already passed Herschel's touchdown total (15) from his freshman year. Gurley has 11 and Marshall has six.

Regardless, ultimately only championships matter. So in that category "Gurshall" has a ways to go...but they also have plenty of time to get there.

Read more here: http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2012/11/12/2274440/gurshall-set-to-pass-herschel.html#storylink=c

Flashback - "Look at the Sugar falling out of the sky!"

Too often it seems, if we are going to achieve any type of SEC honor, it must be earned on the plains against Auburn. That will be the case on Saturday, just as it was in 1982 as top ranked Georgia and Herschel Walker squared off against Auburn and Bo Jackson.

Remembered for Munson's call, but also in that it propelled our star tailback to the front of the Heisman voting line as well as Georgia into the Sugar Bowl. To honor the coach, the team carried Dooley off the field. Meanwhile Munson got a faceful of bourbon. And yet he seemed honored by the sentiment.

Glory Glory!

h/t Dawg19

Jeff Sanchez's celebration after breaking up the Campbell pass in the endzone is classic. That is what it must feel like to have sugar rain down on you in Opelika. Hopefully our guys can achieve a similar result Saturday night. Go Dawgs!

Also, if you'd like to see the complete game replay Dawg19 has that uploaded as well.

Hunkering down on Homecoming

What better way to start off Homecoming than with a vintage video. In this one that Dawg19 has graciously uploaded for us, we go back and relive the year that stands above all others. The only thing better than the music and the highlights is the commentary and memories it stirs up.

Have a great day in Athens, or wherever you are hunkering today. And if you are around town make sure and stop by the Redzone downtown to meet Rex Robinson and Scott Woerner who are promoting the 1980Dawgs DVD.

"Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah!"

Willie McClendon was the workhorse and Rex Robinson kicked the whatchamacallit out of it.

via Dawg19

Flashback - 1981 Tennessee

From Dawg19 again, here a classic from 'tween the hedges to get you ready for what we hope is a beatdown similar to the 1981 matchup between these two teams. Can "Gurshall" repeat what Herschel did on this day?

Leinart meets Herschel

I hear this was originally cast for Reggie Bush. (ZING!)