Georgia football: What on earth was James Jackson thinking?
Apr 22, 2017; Athens, GA, USA; Georgia football mascot UGA shown on the field during the Georgia Spring Game at Sanford Stadium. Red defeated Black 25-22. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports
Mistakes are going to happen, that’s unavoidable. One Georgia football quarterback nearly made a horrible mistake in 1986 that luckily didn’t cost the team a win.
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James Jackson, now there’s a name that doesn’t get brought up very often. Jackson was a Georgia football quarterback from 1984-to-1987 and was the starter for the last three years.
Now Jackson was nothing special during his time in Athens. While the mid-1980’s saw the beginning of the passing games rise in college football, Georgia was still a run first, run second and maybe pass third team.
Jackson only passed 1,000 yards passing twice in his time at Georgia. He had 1,475 yards as a junior in 1986 and 1,026 yards as a senior. However, Jackson was a solid option quarterback. In his three years as a starter, Jackson rushed for 1,318 yards with 15 touchdowns. Jackson also led the Bulldogs in total offense for each of those three seasons.
But when talking about Georgia’s run game in the mid-1980’s, fans mention Lars Tate, Tim Worley and Keith Henderson much more than Jackson. He was a solid quarterback though. He wasn’t a guy who cost Georgia victories and the Bulldogs record progressively got better with him as the starter.
Jackson is a very notable Georgia quarterback however, he was the first black quarterback in Georgia football history.
Jackson told the Augusta Chronicle in 2002 that Georgia and Vince Dooley promised him the chance to play quarterback while other schools wouldn’t. Jackson even recalls a visit to Florida State where assistant coach Wayne McDuffie told him “Son, you’ll never play quarterback at Florida State.”
Jackson left that night, spending not even a full day in Tallahassee.
Despite being motivated by breaking that barrier, Jackson downplays the significance of him being Georgia’s first black starting quarterback.
“People asked me back then what it meant to be the first black starting quarterback, but I didn’t see myself that way then, and I don’t see myself that way now. I was just another quarterback who went out and got the job done.”
But one day in 1986, Jackson could have made one of the biggest blunders in Georgia football history. A blunder so big that it would have made James Jackson a name that Bulldog fans would remember mainly for one bad play.