MY BRIEF — AND LOSS-FILLED — LIFE AS A GEORGIA BULLDOG

I live in Columbus, Ga., right on the Georgia-Alabama line, where nobody wants to hear about the Vanderbilt Commodores unless they happen to be playing Tigers, Bulldogs or Tide. A couple of weeks ago, I posted a column I wrote in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, where I'm a news editor, about how I almost became an Auburn Tiger. Here's a column that ran this past Saturday about my stint as a graduate student at UGA, in which the highlight was a homecoming beat-down at the hands of Ronnie Gordon, Jermaine Johnson and a bunch of other Commodores who weren't good enough to play for the Bulldogs.


A couple of weeks ago, I told you how as a young man I was headed toward a life of blurting “War Eagle!” to strangers, but through an unlikely string of events ended up getting into Vanderbilt, becoming a fan of the hapless Commodores and even graduating from that fine institution.

At state schools, students learn useful skills like pharmacy, animal husbandry or landscape architecture, and then they graduate and get a job that actually relates to what they studied.

At a private school like Vanderbilt, students read a lot of books with big words and big ideas and then incorporate these words and ideas into their everyday conversations to show how smart they are and then when they graduate they either (A) go work for Daddy's Fortune 500 company or (B) go back to school to be a doctor or lawyer.

As for me, I had to pay off my ROTC scholarship by serving four years in the Army. First, I spent half a year in Arizona studying Soviet order of battle and Soviet weapons. As soon as I finished my training, the Soviet Union dissolved.

Then I was stationed in Germany. My new wife had a double major in European history and fine arts, and we bought a Volkswagen and hit the autobahn.

But this isn't about all the places we visited in Europe. This is about what happened when we returned to the States to go to graduate school. My criteria: A state school with a creative writing program and a powerhouse football team.

I'm not kidding.

For four years, I'd been doing more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day and I was looking forward to reading some novels, writing some short stories and watching an SEC football team actually win.

We chose the University of Georgia.

A good school to be sure. Not as rigorous as Vanderbilt, even for graduate school, but they had a great Southern literature professor named Hubert McAlexander and two accomplished creative non-fiction authors named James Kilgo and Judith Cofer.

Oh, and a promising young head coach named Ray Goff.

Coach Goff was coming off a bad season, but he'd won 10 games the season before that and had a team loaded with talent, including quarterback Eric Zeier and two future Super Bowl MVPs named Terrell Davis and Hines Ward.

My wife and I loved living in Athens, which for us meant eating at Rocky's and Last Resort, admiring bungalows in the old neighborhoods near married student housing, jogging through the woods near the intramural fields, checking out the double-barreled cannon downtown, and getting ice cream cones for a quarter at Hodgson's Pharmacy.

Oh yeah, and going to football games at Sanford Stadium. What a big place! What a big band! What big football players! What big numbers they'd ring up on that big scoreboard!

Then it was homecoming. And the Dogs’ opponent?

You got it. Vanderbilt.

Just before kickoff, we sat high in the stadium and listened to one half of the stadium shout, “Zeier!” and the other half shout, “Heisman!”

Not everybody was there. In fact, most ticket holders were still enjoying all those homecoming parties and all that tailgating. But no rush. They were playing Vanderbilt.

Lowly Vanderbilt.

Except Vanderbilt had a bunch of players from the Peach State who'd grown up wanting to be Bulldogs, but the Bulldogs didn't want them. So they went up to Nashville to play for a laughingstock team and now they were back home getting a shot at the Red and Black.

And they made the most of it.

By halftime, as most of the fans found the stadium and climbed to their seats, the Commodores were winning handily.

So the fans headed back through the portals and returned to the party.

When it was over, Vanderbilt had rolled up 415 yards rushing and a 43-30 victory. Outside, vendors were selling T-shirts that said “Fire Ray Gump.”

That Vanderbilt victory sealed Ray Goff's fate. Just like a Vanderbilt victory a couple of weeks ago sealed the fate of a certain coordinator from Auburn. I think he specialized in the spread offense. Invented it, I heard.

Today, I'm headed back to Athens to see the Commodores play the Bulldogs. Yes, for homecoming.

I still haven't given up on my undergraduate alma mater. In fact, we need only one victory to become bowl-eligible for the first time in 26 years.

Could we do it today, winning like we did two years ago during homecoming in Athens? Not likely, but maybe.

Could we play hard and chalk up a moral victory like we did last year in Nashville?

Now that's more like it.

But if you're a Dog fan, don't worry about us gaining 415 yards rushing or scoring 43 points like we did in 1994.

Ray Goff's not your coach anymore.

Dang.