Tag Archive for: football

This is the first of our football season previews for 2022! In our second preview, we look at the new coaches you’ll see on the sidelines, the players stepping up to replace our drafted and graduated Dawgs and the new recruits we’ve signed.

The majority of Bulldog Nation is probably still riding high from Jan. 10, but with Sept. 3 right around the corner, let’s take a look at the opponents our defending national champion Georgia Bulldogs will face in the 2022 season!

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON

Saturday, Sep. 3, 2022 | 3:30 PM | ABC
Mercedes Benz Stadium – Atlanta, GA

Midway through last season, this looked like a highlight match-up between a Georgia team at the top of the college football world and an Oregon team that knocked off Ohio State. Then, the rest of the season happened: Georgia took the crown, but Oregon endured two woodshed-beatings against Utah, then lost their head coach to Miami. It’s a tough spot for new Ducks coach Dan Lanning to make his return to Georgia, but UGA will be dealing with some transition of its own in new coaches and new starters. Still, this second-ever meeting between the two squads is more likely to be a long day for the Ducks than for the Dawgs.

SAMFORD UNIVERSITY

Saturday, Sep. 10, 2022 | 4 PM | SEC Network
Sanford Stadium – Athens, GA

Georgia’s home opener should be an opportunity to see a lot of UGA’s roster. Samford, which plays in the Football Championship Subdivision’s Southern Conference, has played UGA once: a 42-14 victory for Georgia in 2017. Two interesting facts about this game: it is the first of two games UGA will play in 2022 against teams with Bulldogs as their mascots; and Samford head coach Chris Hatcher was the head coach of the Valdosta State University Blazers while Kirby Smart was an assistant coach there in 2000 and 2001.

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA

Saturday, Sep. 17, 2022 | 12 PM | ESPN
Williams-Brice Stadium – Columbia, SC

Although the final score of last year’s UGA-USC contest shows a 27-point margin of victory for Georgia, many a Bulldog fan will remember South Carolina receiver Josh Vann tallying over 100 receiving yards and the Gamecocks’ lone touchdown. Second-year head coach Shane Beamer got his team to a surprising 7-6 record in 2021—not incredible, but it did include respectable wins over Florida, Auburn and North Carolina. Building on that momentum, the Gamecocks landed major transfer wins in quarterback Spencer Rattler and tight end Austin Stogner. If Rattler returns to form, if the Bulldogs let some early-season sloppiness creep in and if the Columbia crowd shows up, USC may make things uncomfortable for the Dawgs.

KENT STATE UNIVERSITY

Saturday, Sep. 24, 2022 | 12 PM | SEC Network
Sanford Stadium – Athens, GA

These two teams have played each other just once, when Jim Donnan led the Dawgs to a 56-3 win over the Golden Flashes in 1998. It’s been 11 years since Georgia lost to a Group of 5 school—a school in the American Athletic, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West or Sun Belt conferences—and that loss was to a formidable Boise State team. Kent State’s head coach, Sean Lewis, is responsible for creating some impressive offenses in his time with the program, but a generational Boise State team the 2022 Flashes are not.

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI

Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022 | 7:30 PM | SEC Network
Faurot Field – Columbia, MO

With Georgia coming off of a national championship win and the Tigers coming off two consecutive non-winning seasons, there aren’t many reasons to think Eli Drinkwitz can end UGA’s eight-game winning streak over Mizzou. But the Missouri faithful will hope that back-to-back solid recruiting classes (per 247 Sports, the 27^th ranked signing class in 2021 and the 15^th ranked class in 2022—likely the best in the program’s history) can start to realize their promise. Keep an eye for Luther Burden, who was among the nation’s best high school receivers and returners last year and could become Missouri’s primary weapon.

AUBURN UNIVERSITY

Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022 | 3:30 PM | CBS
Sanford Stadium – Athens, GA

In the last 18 months, Auburn went from cautious optimism (hiring Bryan Harsin) to disappointment (a close loss to Penn State) to despair (consecutive losses to Texas A&M, Mississippi State and South Carolina) to near-ecstasy (the majority of the Alabama game) to despondency (the end of the Alabama game) to confusion (Harsin was almost ousted after the season). To call this program tumultuous would be an understatement, but they still have running back Tank Bigsby, they still have a respectable defense and they still very nearly beat last year’s SEC champions. However, given the chaos within the program, a new defensive coordinator for the Tigers and uncertainty around the quarterback position—longtime starter Bo Nix transferred to Oregon—a sixth consecutive Georgia win seems likely in the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry.

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY

Saturday, Oct. 15, 2022 | 3:30 PM | SEC Network
Sanford Stadium – Athens, GA

The victim of the Dawgs’ most dominant 2021 victory (which set the record for the largest margin of victory in the history of the UGA-Vandy series) comes into this season having taken a few positive steps in the offseason—most notably a recruiting class ranked 32^nd nationally—but Clark Lea’s rebuild of the Commodores will continue to take some time. This probably won’t be as brutal as last year’s game, but you can still expect to see the Bulldogs’ backups take the field well before the fourth quarter. Fun fact: two of the ‘Dores freshmen come from Germany, and one is from the United Kingdom.

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

Saturday, Oct. 29, 2022 | 3:30 PM | CBS
TIAA Bank Field – Jacksonville, FL

The Gators are now led by former University of Louisiana coach Billy Napier. Much of Napier’s focus thus far has been on the kind of administrative and organizational work that can build a strong program but doesn’t necessarily translate to immediate wins. Florida’s new coach is a proven winner—he turned the Ragin’ Cajuns into a top 25 program with a 40-12 record over four years—but will UF’s powers-that-be allow him the time to right the ship? They will need some patience this year, with tough games against Utah, Georgia and Texas A&M. Quarterback Anthony Richardson is back and the defense returns eight starters, but they—and the team as a whole—need to show they can perform consistently before they pose a threat to the Dawgs.

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE

Saturday, Nov. 5, 2022 | 3:30 PM | CBS
Sanford Stadium – Athens, GA

Quarterback Hendon Hooker returns to Knoxville for his senior season after throwing just shy of 3,000 yards and notching 31 passing touchdowns, earning the best single-season passer rating in Tennessee’s history (reminder: Peyton Manning played there). Cedric Tillman also returns for his senior year, and the two could well eclipse Tillman’s totals from last year: 64 receptions, 1,081 yards and 12 touchdowns. UT’s experienced offense could take advantage of youth in Georgia’s defense, but can they do it for a full 60 minutes AND hold off Georgia’s offense with a Volunteers defense that is full of question marks? Signs point to a Bulldogs win, which would establish the longest UGA winning streak in this rivalry, but it may not be as easy as last year.

MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY

Saturday, Nov. 12, 2022 | 7 PM | ESPN
Davis Wade Stadium – Starkville, MS

Three years in, Mike Leach’s pass-happy system is well established and, to a certain extent, proven in the SEC. That caveat is required because for every five-touchdown showing for a Leach quarterback, there is a game where the Air Raid never really takes flight. The bad Bulldogs do return SIXTEEN starters across offense and defense, so experience is not a question. Also, the MSU defense is better than you might think: they were in the top 30 in total defense last year. But an Air Raid offense’s biggest weakness is disciplined defense: something our guys know a lot about. Expect UGA’s defense to keep the game in front of them, and expect UGA’s offense to chew up the clock while steadily hammering away at the Starkville canines.

UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

Saturday, Nov. 19, 2022 | 3:30 PM | CBS
Kroger Field – Lexington, KY

Only three Kentucky coaches have ever achieved multiple seasons of nine wins or more since the 40s: one was Bear Bryant, and the other is the Wildcats’ current coach. But despite this historical distinction, Mark Stoops has never claimed victory against Georgia. The ‘Cats hopes of breaking that streak rest on the shoulders of quarterback Will Levis, who could have entered the NFL Draft last year, but elected to spend one more year developing in Lexington. If Levis performs up to expectation, if Kentucky finds a replacement for star receiver Wan’Dale Robinson and the defense maintains the Wildcats’ stingy tradition, they could be trouble. But is UK better than it’s been in 12 years, and are the Dawgs weaker than they’ve been in 12 years? Unlikely.

GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Saturday, Nov. 26, 2022 | 12 PM | ESPN
Sanford Stadium – Athens, GA

Let’s start with the obvious: fourth-year head coach Geoff Collins is out of goodwill in Atlanta. After taking on the unenviable task of transitioning Tech out of the Paul Johnson era, Collins tried to re-energize the program and its fanbase with infectious energy, social media campaigns, a rebrand and more. They’ve won nine games since then. A slow start is forgivable, but the Jackets have shown vanishingly little to make their fans believe. They’ve won just seven ACC games, they’ve scored seven points in two games against Georgia (while Georgia scored 97) and the best player they’ve had in recent memory—running back Jahmyr Gibbs—transferred to Alabama in the offseason. A loss to the Bulldogs is all but guaranteed, and if Collins hopes to keep his position, he’ll need to mount one helluva comeback this year.

While we wait for kickoff in Atlanta, why not grab some championship memorabilia and support UGA students while you’re at it? Grab one of (or all of!) the three collectible national championship editions of the spring 2022 Georgia Magazine.

Anyone inside Michigan Stadium on Oct. 2, 1965, was able to see two of college football’s most iconic, classic uniforms together on the field for the first time ever—though they probably didn’t know it at the time.

Michigan’s winged helmet had already established itself as a symbol of college football, but in 1965, Georgia was only in its second year with an oval G on a red helmet. In the half-century since, both teams’ uniforms have held close to the way they looked on that Saturday in Ann Arbor, and the success both programs have enjoyed over that span has cemented those uniforms in the minds of college football fans.

The winged helmet and the oval G would clash that day and then never again… until this New Year’s Eve. As we head into this long-awaited rematch, let’s look back at the people and decisions that defined the looks of the 1965 Bulldogs and Wolverines and how those looks have (and have not) changed since.

The Maize and Blue

The Michigan Wolverines’ colors of maize and blue date back to the late 1860s, when a committee of Michigan students chose “azure blue and maize” as the university’s colors. This color combination may have appeared in some form or fashion on the Michigan football team’s jerseys from the 1890s up through the early 20^th century, but it wasn’t until the team adopted their winged helmet in the 1930s that the two stood side-by-side in stark contrast and created a visual identity that would stand the test of time.

Fritz Crisler arrived in Ann Arbor in 1938 as Michigan’s new head football coach. Before leading the Wolverines, he coached at Princeton, where, in 1935, he had ordered leather helmets with a “wing” panel across the top-front of the helmet. In an effort to help his quarterbacks find their receivers downfield, Crisler had the wing panel painted a different color from the rest of the helmet, creating a stark contrast easier to spot amid the chaos of a football game.

So, in 1938, Crisler brought his helmet innovation to Ann Arbor, and on October 1, 1938, the maize-and-blue winged helmet took the field for the first time against Michigan State.

Crisler’s career as Michigan’s head football coach would run nine years, accumulating a 116-32-9 record, two conference titles and a national championship, but his most lasting contribution to Michigan football (and the University of Michigan’s identity, perhaps) lies in the wing design that has lasted 83 years and counting.

The Red and Black

Vince Dooley might have gone to Auburn, but he knew what Georgia’s colors were: red and black. So, when the young coach arrived in Athens in 1964, he was confused at the amount of silver the Dawgs wore on game day: They had red jerseys, but their helmets and pants were silver.

Dooley wanted to put his stamp on a program that had been through some tough years following the departure of long-time coach Wally Butts. With months to go before a single snap of football was played, Dooley decided to start by establishing a consistent visual identity.

First out were the silver britches in favor of red or white pants with a stripe down the outside of the leg—although the silver britches would return in 1980.  Next, it was time for a new helmet. Dooley knew he wanted red, and while UGA had begun sporting helmets with a square G in ’62, the logo’s use was sporadic, so Dooley figured it was time to lock in a new logo.

John Donaldson (BSED ’52) was a coach on Dooley’s first staff, and he volunteered his wife, Ann (BFA ’55), who studied commercial art at Georgia, to create the new logo. What she developed was accepted immediately by Dooley, and it has come to be known as the “oval G,” “Power G,” or “Super G.”

The logo has often been compared to the Green Bay Packers’ signature mark—developed three years prior to Georgia’s ‘G’—and Dooley was aware of the similarity. He reached out to the Packers organization and cleared the use of the Bulldogs’ new logo. Interestingly, as time has passed, the Packers have subtly adjusted their own logo to a form that more closely resembles UGA’s oval G.

With his new helmets and new pants, Dooley had made his first mark (of many) on the program. The Dawgs went 7-3-1 in their first season wearing Dooley’s duds, and they opened 1965 with two wins before heading up to Michigan.

Since the Bulldogs’ 1965 victory over the Wolverines, both teams have indulged in the occasional wardrobe variation—like Michigan’s 2017 all-Maize unis and Georgia’s 2007 Blackout jerseys—but their standard outfits have remained largely consistent over the last 56 years.

The helmets might be fancier, the numbers might be sharper and the players might be a whole lot bigger, but the Dawgs and Wolverines of 2021 still look an awful lot like their 1965 counterparts.

All black-and-white photos owned by Regents of the University of Michigan and licensed under CC BY 4.0