Preview: Georgia Football 2022 Book

Georgia Secures Its Second Consecutive National Title with a Perfect Season

GLORIOUS

On the cover

FRONT COVER: Quarterback Stetson Bennett, left, and coach Kirby Smart each celebrate with the national championship trophy after Georgia defeated TCU 65–7 on Jan. 9, 2023.

PHOTOS JOSHUA L. JONES / ATHENS BANNER-HERALD

Copyright © 2023 by Athens Banner-Herald

All Rights Reserved • ISBN: 978-1-63846-056-5

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owner or the publisher.

Published by Pediment Publishing, a division of The Pediment Group, Inc. • www.pediment.com

This book is an unofficial account of the Georgia Bulldogs’ 2022–23 season and is not endorsed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association or the University of Georgia.

Printed in Canada.

Credits

Athens Banner-Herald

Fletcher Page USA TODAY GEORGIA SPORTS EDITOR

Ryne Dennis ATHENS BANNER-HERALD SPORTS EDITOR

Marc Weiszer ATHENS BANNER-HERALD UGA BEAT WRITER

McClain Baxley ATHENS BANNER-HERALD REPORTER

Chris Starrs CONTRIBUTING EDITOR FOR THE ATHENS BANNER-HERALD

Special thanks to Aaron Murray, former Georgia quarterback, for addressing fans in the foreword

Photography

Joshua Jones ATHENS BANNER-HERALD

Special thanks to USA TODAY Network photographers

Our condolences to the families of UGA football player Devin Willock and staff member Chandler LeCroy, who each died in a car crash shortly after the Bulldogs national championship parade and celebration.

Kirby Smart and Georgia flip the page from national title. ‘We will not be hunted at UGA’

BY MARC WEISZER • ATHENS BANNER-HERALD

ATLANTA — In a quiet moment before the hustle and bustle of making the rounds for hours Wednesday morning at SEC Media Days, Kirby Smart declared himself “caffeine activated.”

Smart is about the last one that would be considered needing a jolt of energy, but winning a national championship has the danger of making one fat and happy.

Especially since Smart just led Georgia to the promised land of a national title for the first time in 41 years.

“I’m not wired that way,” Smart said. “I’m wired to worry the day after the game about who we were going to sign. I kind of told our team when we came back, I said, ‘Look guys, I believe in these mind tricks where when people tell you something it triggers something.’ Every time someone tells me congrats on the national championship — and there have been a gazillion of those — I tell myself

each week, this week I’m going to call three more recruits. Next week, I’m going to think about what we can do on third down better.”

So he asks his players like a motivational speaker, “What have you done today to be better for tomorrow?”

Now Smart is entering his seventh season as head coach looking for more.

“People ask the question, ‘How does it feel to be hunted?’ ” Smart said. “We will not be hunted at the University of Georgia. I can promise you that. The hunting we do will be from us going the other direction. We’re not going to sit back and be passive.”

Smart spoke 190 days after Georgia won the national title on the night of Jan. 10 by slaying Alabama.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who had both the winning and losing team in the game in Indianapolis, was struck by Smart’s postgame moment.

“I’ve never seen a head coach running up and chest bumping people as much as Kirby did after the victory,” Sankey said. “He started to do the same with me. I looked at him and say, ‘If you do that to me, you’ll probably knock me down and hurt me.’ We had a handshake moment.”

Neither Smart nor any of the three Georgia player representatives sported their national championship rings on Wednesday at the College Football Hall of Fame.

“Absolutely not,” center Sedrick Van Pran-Granger said when asked if he had any thoughts of flashing the bling for the cameras Wednesday. “That’s something I feel personally I can look at when I’m done at the University of Georgia.”

In an area out of public view inside the Omni Hotel before they each took the stage Wednesday morning, Kirby Smart and former Bulldogs offensive line coach Sam Pittman gave each other big

OPPOSITE: Georgia head coach Kirby Smart prior to the SEC Championship game against the Alabama Crimson Tide at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta, Dec. 4, 2021. DALE ZANINE / USA TODAY SPORTS

UGA shuts down FCS opponent Samford as defensive dominance keeps rolling

BY MARC WEISZER • ATHENS BANNER-HERALD

There will probably be some Saturdays to come for No. 2 Georgia where they will have to dig deep, to make a big defensive stop or convert a crucial third-and-long with a game on the line.

There’s no guarantee it will be a cakewalk for the Bulldogs to get back to Atlanta for the SEC Championship game. Maybe next week’s noon game at South Carolina will offer Georgia its first bit of significant resistance from an opponent this season.

Samford, an FCS team picked to finish sixth in the Southern Conference, certainly didn’t provide much in the Bulldogs’ home opener Saturday.

“Our defending national champion Georgia Bulldogs!” Brook Whitmire announced during the starting lineups.

Georgia has looked the part again with another lopsided win after a 49–3 takedown of a top 15 Oregon team in the opener. Samford held Georgia to just 3 second-half points, but the fourth quarter was shortened to 12 minutes by mutual agreement with the threat of inclement weather a factor.

“They were outmanned and outmatched today,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “They played really hard and physical today. They did the best job they could. We’ve got to play better. We didn’t play our best game. We know that. Our kids acknowledge that.”

Here are five takeaways from Georgia’s easy win with a score that wasn’t as big as might have been expected:

Georgia football defense pitches a shutout

Georgia’s defense will head into the road game in Columbia, S.C., still not having allowed a touchdown this season

“We don’t worry about that,” outside linebacker Nolan Smith said. “We just play football. If they don’t score, they don’t win.”

Samford, a team that went to Florida last November and lost a 70–52 shootout, was held to a single first down in the first half and 59 total yards for an average of 2.6 yards per play.

Samford finished with 128 total yards. It was the fewest yards Georgia had given up since holding Vanderbilt to 77 on Sept. 25, 2021.

“You win championships with great

OPPOSITE: Georgia wide receiver Jackson Meeks (9) leads the team on to the field for the game between Samford and Georgia in Athens, Ga., Sept. 10, 2022. JOSHUA L. JONES / ATHENS BANNER-HERALD

Georgia football great and former NFL No. 1 overall pick Charley Trippi dies at 100

BY MARC WEISZER • ATHENS BANNER-HERALD • PUBLISHED OCT.

19, 2022

One of Georgia’s greatest football players and athletes, who had the distinction of being the oldest living former NFL No. 1 overall pick, has died.

Charley Trippi, who turned 100 last Dec. 14, passed away peacefully Wednesday morning at his home in Athens, according to UGA.

Trippi hailed from Pittston, Pa., as the son of a coal miner but made a name for himself for the Bulldogs when the halfback burst onto the scene in the 1943 Rose Bowl against UCLA. He went on to become a Heisman Trophy runner-up in 1946 and landed a $100,000, four-year deal with the NFL’s Chicago Cardinals.

Trippi scored on a 75-yard punt return and 44-yard run in the 1947 NFL

championship game win over Philadelphia. He later played two seasons at quarterback and another three at defensive back during his nine-year NFL career and was named to the NFL’s all-1940s team.

No wonder the Georgia football team’s most versatile player award is named for Trippi, who was the NFL No. 1 overall pick in 1945.

During World War II, he served in the Air Force and was named to the all-service team and returned to Georgia to play the final six games of the 1945 season.

“You know, football has enriched my life in so many ways that it also gave me a lifetime ambition, and made me set many goals, but this goal today is probably the greatest,” Trippi said at his Pro Football

Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 1968.

Trippi made Athens his home where he lived with wife Peggy. Wally Butts, his coach at Georgia, hired the former twotime All-American after his pro career to coach the UGA backfield.

He shared a backfield with another alltime great, Frank Sinkwich, but ankle injuries sidelined him for the Rose Bowl during that 1942 season. Trippi rushed for 115 yards on 27 carries.

Georgia went unbeaten and won a national championship in 1946 with Trippi as a senior All-American. He led the SEC in scoring and finished second to Army’s Glenn Davis for the Heisman. Trippi threw a 67-yard touchdown pass in a Sugar Bowl win over North Carolina.

Trippi was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1968. He was also a baseball All-American at Georgia and played professionally in 1947 with the Atlanta Crackers.

He was still signing autographs on football game weekends at the UGA bookstore during his 90s.

“He is proud to be a Bulldog,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said while visiting Trippi when he blew out the candles on his 100th birthday. “His legacy, like that of so many of the great players who have come through here, has enabled us to develop one of the great traditions in college football.”

Trippi’s No. 62 jersey is one of only four that Georgia has retired.

OPPOSITE: Former Georgia player Charley Trippi, a two-time All-American, receives a College Football Hall of Fame ring at the game between Georgia and Georgia Tech, Nov. 29, 2014, in Athens, Ga. DAVE TULIS / AP PHOTO

RIGHT: Ohio State place kicker Noah Ruggles (95) misses a possible gamewinning kick in the final seconds of the second half.

JOSHUA L. JONES / ATHENS BANNER-HERALD

OPPOSITE: Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett (13) hugs his brother Georgia walk-on Luke Bennett (29) after the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl NCAA College Football Playoff semifinal game.

JOSHUA L. JONES / ATHENS BANNER-HERALD

Stetson and Kirby deserve a statue, and here’s the perfect legendary tribute

BY RYNE DENNIS • ATHENS BANNER-HERALD

Stetson Bennett and Kirby Smart have led Georgia football to a back-to-back college football championships.

Bennett’s improbable story reached its climax in Monday’s 65–7 beatdown of TCU. His legacy legendary, and Smart, in just his seventh season at Georgia, has joined the all-time greats.

So, we ask: How should their statues look, and where should they stand?

UGA doesn’t do much when honoring its legends. No named streets around the stadium. Only a handful of ‘retired’ numbers for greats and no statues in Sanford Stadium.

Georgia’s lone athletic statue sits on the far south corner of campus and honors Vince Dooley. It’s a nice recognition for the late Georgia coach, but it’s nowhere near the school’s stadium where his name is on the field.

There’s nothing at Sanford Stadium for Bulldog fans to praise. The only Herschel Walker statue in Athens stood inside Creature Comforts Brewery before being sent down Pulaski Street on the northwest corner of downtown. It was sculpted by an alumnus and sits next to

a railroad track.

The university has to do more for Bennett and Smart.

For Stetson, there’s too many memories for inspiration.

There could be a statue of him holding up the national championship trophy. Maybe a replica of him with his hand next to his helmet like a cellphone as he mocks Tennessee fans who called incessantly the night before that November matchup.

Perhaps the bronze figure could be of him with double gun fingers, like he’s waved before when celebrating a touchdown. Or simply him in his mailman cap while sipping a 23-year-old bourbon straight out of the bottle.

Smart’s likeness could be holding up a national championship trophy, or passionately pulling his headset microphone aside as he screams orders to the defense. Maybe he’s clapping, hands up just under his chin with a slight smirk.

Nope.

There’s no need for two statues. Only one will symbolize this remarkable achievement.

The University of Georgia needs to build a statue of Smart with his arm around Bennett as they walk with smiles on their faces.

Every Georgia fan will understand. They’ve seen it a million times the past three years.

In the good times and the bad. Throughout the highs and the lows. After touchdowns and interceptions.

Many times there weren’t smiles when Smart had his arm around Bennett.

Smart always critiqued. Bennett always listened. Smart analyzed while Bennett learned and grew.

Together, they became two-time national champions.

The smiles on the statue would reflect the end of their journey.

What a monument it would be.

Respect and friendship. Like father and son. It would epitomize their relationship.

“I got a long story to tell you, I can assure you that,” Smart said on Saturday during Georgia’s media session. “You think about the things he and I have been through, decisions made. I mean, from the recruitment process to his official

visit to what will happen Monday night. I mean, where to begin?”

It began with Bennett mimicking Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield in 2017 Rose Bowl practice. The story includes a departure and return. An implausible rise from walk-on to starting on the only 15–0 team in Georgia history.

Through it all, Smart saw something most didn’t. He believed in the 5-foot-11, 190ish pounder as much as Bennett believed in himself — which we’ve learned is saying a lot.

Bennett’s results are remarkable. He closed his career Monday with a 6-touchdown performance that goes down as one of the best of all time. His list of MVP performances include two national championships, a Peach Bowl, an Orange Bowl and an SEC Championship.

Smart called a timeout on Monday so that Bennett could soak in the glory as he came to the sideline. The pair embraced.

“He told me he loved me,” Bennett said after the game. “The journey that we’ve been through together.”

“It’s hard for people to go back and do what got them there, and that’s why it

OPPOSITE: Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett (13) after the NCAA College Football National Championship game between TCU and Georgia on Jan. 9, 2023, in Inglewood, Calif. Georgia won 65–7 against TCU. MACKENZIE MILES / ATHENS BANNER-HERALD