Georgia Bulldog of the Week: W.A. Cunningham, the standard setter

The Georgia Bulldog of the Week for this week is former football coach W.W. Cunningham who coached at Georgia from 1910-1919.

Georgia Bulldog fans for decades have known Georgia as one of the better programs in college football. The Bulldogs have 794 wins which is the 11th most in college football. They’ve been to 51 bowl games, fifth in college ball. And they’ve spent 547 weeks in the AP Top 25, that is 14th best.

But that tradition of excellence had to start somewhere. Georgia wasn’t conceived as a winning football program, in fact it took Georgia football 18 years to have any success. From 1892-1909, Georgia posted a record of 46-52-10 and they only had seven winning seasons.

While other southern programs were developing into consistent winners, Georgia was floating around the bottom. Then came William Alexander Cunningham from the Gordon Military Institute.

Cunningham played football in the 1900’s at Vanderbilt under Dan McGugin who coached Vandy in their glory days (194-55-19 from 1904-1934). He then became baseball coach at Gordon where he met University of Georgia Athletics Director Steadman Vincent Sanford during a game between Gordon and Georgia. Sanford offered Cunningham a 1,350 dollar contact and Cunningham accepted.

When Cunningham arrived in Athens, he was joined by Bob McWhorter who went on to be Georgia’s first All-American in 1913 and College Football Hall of Fame Inductee in 1954.

Cunningham also brought winning to Athens. In his first season, Georgia finished 6-2-1. In 1911 and 1912, the soon to be nicknamed Bulldogs finished 7-1-1 and 6-1-1 respectively. And in 1913 Georgia ended the year 6-2. For the first time in their young history, Georgia had four straight winning seasons.

In those four years, Georgia was 4-0 against Alabama and Georgia Tech. 3-0-1 against Clemson, and 1-2-1 against Auburn.

Cunningham’s Georgia squad had a rough season in 1914, they ended that season 3-5-1 losing to Clemson and Georgia Tech for the first times since 1909.

Georgia didn’t stay down however. In the final two years before they stopped playing football for World War I, Georgia finished 5-2-2 in 1915 and 6-3 in 1916. They managed to beat Clemson both years and began their eventual rivalry with Florida with a pair of shutout victories. During World War I, Cunningham served in the Army.

When the war ended, Cunningham returned to Athens to lead Georgia to a 4-2-3 campaign. Georgia only allowed 27 points that season, but an inability to score in the final five games caused a collapse.

But after the 1919, Cunningham decided to return to the Army where he eventually earned the rank of general. He later served in World War II. Despite only coaching at Georgia for eight seasons, he left Georgia football in a much better shape than how he found it.

In 1920 Herman Stegman became head coach and he led Georgia to a 9-0-1 SIAA Championship season. George Woodruff took over soon after and led Georgia to their first share of a national Championship in 1927. In 1942, Georgia won their first consensus National Championship with Wally Butts.

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The success Stegman, Woodruff, Butts and later coaches like Vince Dooley and Mark Richt enjoyed was built on the foundation that Cunningham constructed. In his eight seasons, Georgia was 43-18-9, a stark contrast from the 1890’s and 1900’s.

The tradition of excellence in the Georgia Bulldogs football program began with William Alexander Cunningham.

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