Geiger’s Counter:
Perhaps a Gimmickout is in order
The view from the second floor window of Tasty World in downtown Athens was sublime.
One was reminded of why Athens and UGA were chosen many years ago over a smaller school just up the road in Oxford. In Oxford, there were eight or 10 pretty girls spotted. In Athens, pretty girls roamed - and still roam - the streets and campus in packs of eight or 10 or more.
Beyond the arches on north campus a tailgate beyond description was underway. Revelers in Blackout black were so thick on the lawn that only narrow pig trails wound between the various camps.
Brats and burgers grilled, filling the early fall air with the aroma of college football at its finest.
Along Lumpkin Street, portable satellite dishes were staked up everywhere - their cables snaking into a red and black tent city packed to the bursting point with the Dawgnation.
Just a few yards away, students had been crowded around ESPN’s Gameday set since dawn - nearly 14 hours before kickoff. The world’s leader in sports television had its share of satellite equipment but Georgia’s fans had more.
There was a buzz of anticipation in the air that only a colossal college gridiron battle can create. Athens was, in the hours before kickoff, the center of the sports universe.
There were tens of thousands of fans in the fair city who had no tickets and no prospects of acquiring them. Roadside scalpers who usually flash handfuls of the precious ducats had none. Those without tickets stayed in their tailgate spots, partied and watched on big screen, high definition televisions powered by portable generators.
Once the over 92,000 fans holding tickets worked their way into the Sanford Stadium, the amped up frenzy was refined into something seldom seen there.
Eighty-nine thousand of those people had on black as called for by the UGA coaches and players. The other 3000 plus had on Alabama white with crimson trim. The air was filled with a constant roar that intensified to ear-splitting levels when the home team erupted from the dressing room chute in their black jerseys.
For a lifelong college football fan and veteran of many battles between the hedges, it was a sight to behold.
Sadly it was upon this magnificent stage with the white hot spotlight upon them that the Georgia Bulldogs laid an egg of mammoth proportions
The Tide scored on its first five possessions, building a 31-0 halftime lead.
Georgia - quarterback Matthew Stafford in particular - fought back valiantly in the second half but ultimately fell 41-30.
And the vaunted Blackout - a producer of a mammoth win the first time it was trotted out - lay in ruins like black crepe paper in the ditch months after the homecoming parade is over and the bonfire reduced to ashes.
Perhaps, next time out a Gimmickout is in order. Perhaps, the Dogs need just line up and play smash mouth football to restore order and allegiance among the legions that follow them.
They needed look only just across the line of scrimmage Saturday at the Alabama Crimson Tide for a lesson in just how that is done.
